Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The journalist and writer Linda Villarosa

has this new book out. It's called Under the Skin, the Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and the

Health of Our Nation. It's a look at the disparities in health care between black people and white

people, something Villarosa experienced personally.

When her dad was in the hospital with cancer, she went to visit him. And, well, I'll let her describe it. He was shackled, basically, to the bed. He had restraints. And I said, Mom, what is going on? And she said, your father is really sick. And they're treating him like, and she said the N-word. Fiorosa talks to Karen Grisby-Bades from NPR's Code Switch team about how COVID only made

these differences more stark and how it's not even about just what happens in the hospital

or the doctor's office, but the long-term health effects of dealing with racism every day.

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I heard half a dozen stories of people who died because they went to the ER and they said, I can't breathe.

I'm not feeling well. I, you know,

I'm wondering if I have it. And they were sent back home, basically, and then they ended up dead.

Is that still happening? Yes, I think it's still happening. I think because we brought some

awareness, it's better. But the basic underlying problem hasn't been

solved. I am brought to the case of Dr. Susan Moore, who was a physician in Indiana.

She went to the hospital with COVID. She is a doctor. So the very system that she was educated

in that she worked in didn't help her and

in fact may have harmed her. So she said, I have COVID and she said I'm in a lot of pain.

And she was treated as though she was drug seeking when she asked for pain relief.

I was crushed. He made me feel like I was a drug addict, and he knew I was a physician.

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