On Monday's CBS Mornings, co-host Gayle King doted on a trauma surgeon and author who's running for Congress as a Democrat. His name is Brian Williams -- not that Brian Williams! He's running for a open but safe Democrat seat in Dallas and has a new book titled The Bodies Keep Coming.
Williams operated on white police officers who were shot and killed while protecting protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas in 2016. King recounted the doctor's white wife said he had to go to a press conference because "you're a black man who tried to save white police officers who were shot by a black man....You call that day, a tipping point for you, why?"
Williams said, "That was a point in my life where I was beginning to question my role as a doctor, as a black man in this society where our lives are taken from us with impunity it seemed at times, and what my role is as a father and husband were."
This matches the promotional copy of his book:
Williams diagnoses the roots of the violence that plagues us. He draws a through line between white supremacy, gun violence, and the bodies he tries to revive, and he trains his surgeon's gaze on the structural ills that manifest themselves in the bodies of his patients. What if racism is a feature of our healthcare system, not a bug? What if profiting from racial inequality is exactly what it was designed to do?
Black and brown bodies will continue to be wracked by all types of violence, Williams argues, until something changes. Until we transform policy and law with compassion and care, the bodies will keep coming
King then asked how he navigated criticism from blacks and whites after the press conference. Williams said "Some people said I'm glad you let those cops die, which I wouldn't ever do that. I had people telling me I should never be allowed to care for white people are care for police officers and there was just racism injected into all of that." He decided "I have to use this tragedy, and try to bring something good out of it moving forward."
GAYLE KING: And now you`ve decided...you are running for Congress, and I think you're in a unique position when you think about gun violence in this country, being a Black doctor where only two percent of doctors-- two percent are black male doctors. I found that that statistic staggering. And you want to run for Congress and you`re talking about gun violence and you`re talking about racism in this country. What is your message to the people? To the potential voters?
DR. WILLIAMS: Listen, we all have a part in promoting healing to this country and the book is a call to action for all of us to do something different, after reading the book to be able to create justice for every living person in this nation. And my action is to run for U.S. Congress. I'd be the first trauma surgeon in Congress. I'm a veteran. So it means something to me to defend the Constitution. As a doctor who has seen so much inequity on the frontlines, and as someone -- I worked in Congress, I was an adviser and I`ve seen what's possible, Gayle.
KING: And you say your anger propels you have to do good. Your anger gives you comfort and it gives you pain to change.
WILLIAMS: You know, there is that conflict within me about the anger how it puts up walls between people, but also propels me to do a better work. So I am trying to channel that anger and make something positive come from that.
King concluded the gush by saying the reviewers are right to say the book is "riveting" and "a page-turner."
