UPDATED November 11, 2021 // Editor's note: This article has been updated with additional comments.
In the tenth grade, Kathleen May nearly got suspended from school for fighting. After years in small, innovative classrooms in an affluent suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, May's education took a turn in the 1980s when court-ordered desegregation led to her transfer to an inner-city high school across the freeway. Gangs and drugs were common, and "as a White student, it was impossible to blend in," said May, an allergist-immunologist and associate professor of pediatrics and medicine at the Medical College of Georgia, in Augusta. "I became an immediate target simply because of the color of my skin."
Kathleen May, MD
Those experiences opened her eyes to a painful truth — racism creates educational barriers that keep people in some minority groups poorly represented in medicine and ultimately the allergy workforce.
"White privilege does exist, and opportunities are not equal, and people don't realize it," President-elect May told Medscape Medical Newsbefore delivering the Bela Schick Lecture at the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (ACAAI) 2021 Annual Meeting, held November 4–8 in New Orleans, Louisiana. "I'm going to make them think about the pipeline in a way they haven't thought about it — from the ground up," May said.
