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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Julia Neuberger

Equal Treatment For All

Good Morning.

On this day back in 1889, Daniel Hale Williams founded the Provident Hospital in Chicago, the first non-segregated hospital in the United States. It seems incredible that all hospitals were segregated until then, but there are still major issues facing black people in our western health systems. Black people, and people from other minority ethnic communities, suffered worse from COVID19 in its early months- and no-one really knows why.

There are many studies that suggest black people’s pain is often not taken as seriously as white people’s, including by black healthcare staff- and once again we don’t know why. Black people’s diseases, such as sickle cell, often don’t get enough recognition or instant treatment in a crisis. We’re working on it, but there’s much more to do. None of this is new. All of it is serious.

So Daniel Hale Williams’ action was enormously important. He took one major step towards equalising treatment for all people. He began the long process- unfinished as yet- of treating people as individuals, whatever their ethnicity, gender, origin, or social class. He was a visionary. But his vision is not yet totally fulfilled. There’s still too much acceptance of things just as they are - that women have to undergo pain in childbirth, or that sickle cell is extremely painful.

Equalising is one part of this. The other part, which we need to fight for, is recognising that everyone should be treated as an individual, with their own wants and needs, beliefs and social attitudes. Today, let’s each resolve to do just one thing that makes one individual feel fully recognised, special, unique, God’s creation, and needing our care.