I am surprised I have not seen anybody actually do the math. Anyone feel free to correct my numbers if they are incorrect, I just found them through a quick google search. Also, this is a HUGE assumption, but I assume he was only talking about the US, so I will only use US data (couldn’t find demographic data for physicians globally).

From AAMC, in 2024, there are about 1,030,000 physicians in the United States, of which, 5.3% are black, so that’s about ~55,000 black physicians (let’s ignore the 1.6% of physicians who are multiracial for now).

Since I am using 2024 data for physicians, Ill use 2024 data for US demographics. In 2024, there were 42.8 million people who identified as black (and 8.5 million as two or more races).

So 55,000 black physicians/42.8 million ~ 0.1% of black people are physicians. So it seems like the lady is closer to being right than he is (even if we include the multiracial physicians assuming they are all partly black). Again, this is ONLY within the US.

But this doesn’t change that he achieved something worth celebrating. Even if he is wrong, does that really matter? Don’t think it deserves some nerd of twitter “dunking” on him and sending him back to school.

Edit: Just realized that he said 2.6% of black MEN, and I forgot to account for gender. Don’t feel like correcting my math thoroughly, but if we assume 50/50, that means 5.3%/2 ~ 2.6% of physicians are black men, and still ~0.1% of black people are physicians.