RFK Jr.’s medical racism is to be expected

Since his confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a magnet for controversies, ranging from his shakeup of vaccine schedules and recommendations to his assertion that Americans “shouldn’t be taking medical advice from me.” Among his many medically questionable statements are recurring instances of what leading Black medical experts call “medical racism.”

Last week, Kennedy was confronted with one of his past statements during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ariz., questioned Kennedy on claims he made during a 2024 podcast involving medications and Black children, calling his prior statements “outlandish and disturbing.”

“You suggested that black children on ADHD medication should be ‘re-parented,'” Sewell said. The accusation drew an immediate denial from Kennedy. “I don’t even know what that phrase means, and I doubt that I said it,” Kennedy said.

On June 30, 2024, Kennedy appeared on the 19Keys show and podcast to discuss his vision for the future of American health. It was here that Kennedy made his reparenting claim.

“Every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence,” Kennedy said on the show. His claims are not backed by evidence, as research has not found a clear causal link between antidepressants and violence, for example. “And those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented — to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens. You’ll actually have to talk to people,” Kennedy said.

These communities Kennedy references are known as “wellness farms.” He used the San Patrignano Community, a rehabilitation center in rural Italy as an example. The 48-year-old program has a checkered past, with both sobriety success stories and reports from attendees of rampant physical and psychological abuses. Kennedy praised it as a place where kids can have access to organic food and learn trades like baking, building furniture, or producing wallpaper. Kennedy claimed a “relative” of his who went through the program “lost all of her diagnoses and lives a thriving life now.”

Still, Kennedy denied making the statements during his questioning by Sewell. “You’re just making stuff up,” he shot back. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

The resurfacing of Kennedy’s claims has drawn scathing criticism from those in the medical community. Dr. Chris Pernell, director of the NAACP Center for Health Equity, called the secretary’s views “disgusting.”

“That’s medical racism, not policy,” Pernell said in a statement to Salon, also pointing to Kennedy’s lack of medical credentials and his role in overseeing the worst measles outbreak in the U.S. in three decades. “Secretary Kennedy’s views are dangerous and have already led to numerous preventable deaths. The NAACP has no confidence in his leadership,” he said.

Other lawmakers also questioned Kennedy on his relationship to the nationwide Black community. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., confronted him over health care cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative which cut over $800 million in grants from maternal and childhood programs.

“DOGE canceled funds for several research projects, which could save countless Black mothers,” Davis said, pointing to research at the Morehouse School of Medicine to improve the health outcomes of pregnant and postpartum women. “How can we lower Black maternal health experiences if we’re cutting funds for these critical programs?” Davis asked Kennedy.

Kennedy said the administration is “doing more to advance maternal health than any other administration in history,” claiming “tremendous duplication” of maternal health programs.

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Dr. Thema Bryant, former president of the American Psychological Association, disagrees.

“The maternal mortality rate for Black women is three times the rate of white women, and the racial gap is widening,” Bryant said in a statement to Salon. “To cut funding for programs to address this health disparity is to facilitate the death of Black women.”

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the 2024 maternal mortality rate for Black women was 44.8 per 100,000 live births, significantly higher than the rate of 14.2 for white women. Black women have also historically reported suicidal ideation during the postpartum period at a rate roughly double that of white women.

Compounding the problem is the Trump administration’s 2025 elimination of offices examining racial health disparities, including the Office of Health Equity and the Office of Minority Health, coupled with the removal or alteration of datasets by removing variables relating to race and ethnicity.

“Whether the roots of this decision are disregard or hostility, the outcome remains the same,” Bryant said, calling Kennedy’s policies “destructive to the Black family.”

Kayla Hancock, director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project, said the statements are “classic” Kennedy: “Make reckless and unfounded claims like impugning vaccine safety and then take no responsibility when it comes back to haunt him,” she said in a statement shared with Salon.

Just so, Kennedy has history of making statements that evoke systematically ingrained medical racism. In 2021, Kennedy claimed that Black people should not get the same vaccine schedule as white people. “Their immune system is better than ours,” Kennedy said, pointing to a researcher who has refuted Kennedy’s use of his research.

Kennedy was also a producer of “Medical Racism: The New Apartheid,” a 2021 conspiracy theory film from Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization which Kennedy chaired, where he made over $20,000 a week. It alleges that the U.S. government was using COVID-19 vaccines to intentionally harm ethnic communities nationwide. Critics argue that the many claims in the video have been debunked or lack evidence, and that video led to lower vaccination rates and higher rates of COVID infection among minorities.

Kennedy also previously claimed, without evidence, that the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs could be a factor in mass shootings, saying the NIH was studying “some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence,” he said last August.

Hancock said that Kennedy’s views have a lasting impact on the future of health care in marginalized communities. “The problem is, when someone of Kennedy’s celebrity and power as health secretary carelessly spews discredited myths and blatantly racist rhetoric, it matters and hurts a lot of people,” she said.

HHS did not respond to Salon’s request for comment.

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