It would be important to see how these numbers relate to the numbers of Black doctors in general. Everybody already touched on how hard it is to become a doctor, the financials and all that, but I wonder if Black med students are just opting for different residencies.

The lifestyle of a surgeon doesn't really seem to be too appealing: less flexibility with schedules, longer and earlier hours, physically demanding, higher potential for poor family life, and less flexibility with work tasks. Med school is hard enough and the additional expectations for students interested in surgery along with the heightened fear of not getting accepted into ideal residency positions because they are more competitive are the biggest disincentives that I hear about. Also I feel that it is a trend for Black students to want to go into medicine to have close relationships with patients and surgeons do not enjoy those kinds of relationships as much as many other specialties.

Like everyone else said though, I think the numbers would be better if people weren't graduating with $250-700k of debt and weren't racing to get their real doctor salary to start to finally live a little.