When people used to ask Uche Blackstock what she wanted to be when she grew up, she gave the same answer every time.

She would be a doctor, just like her mom.

The first Dr. Blackstock was a Harvard-educated nephrologist,

meaning she could have written her own ticket to work anywhere. She chose a hospital in Brooklyn,

where she was eager to care for people she thought of as neighbors who might not otherwise

have had a black physician available to them. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd.

Uche Blackstock did grow up to be a physician, as did her twin sister, it turns out.

She chose emergency medicine, and like her mother before her, has a keen interest not just in understanding the magnitude of racial health inequities,

but in developing ways to remake a system

that doesn't work the same for everyone. Dr. Blackstock is founder and CEO of advancing

health equity and former associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU.

Her book is called Legacy. A black physician reckons with racism in medicine, Uche, welcome to think.

Thanks so much, Chris, for having me. The civil rights and children's rights activist,

Marian Wright Edelman, had this wonderful saying, you can't be what you can't see,

which is about relatable role models. You and your sister were inspired by your mom. She didn't have someone who looked

like her to follow. How did she find her way to a career in medicine? I know. I think, you know,

the fact that she didn't have those role models and the fact that she was able to get to where she

got, you know, actually reflecting back is really quite shocking to me. It's like she beat all odds.

You know, my mother grew up about 15 minutes from where I live now in Brooklyn, in central

Brooklyn, and she had a very different upbringing than I did. She was born to a single mom.

She had five other siblings in poverty. I grew up in public assistance,

often not knowing where her next meal would come from, changing schools often, just there being

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