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Can Adhesive Bandages Be Racist?

Living in Malawi, Rachel Marie Stone — an American teaching in a seminary — has realized that most adhesive bandages are the peachy, apricottish color of her Caucasian skin.

The epiphany came when a little Malawian girl needed first aid for a wounded toe. Rachel fetched a store-bought bandage she had brought from the United States, and while applying it — along with antibiotic — she was struck by the "garish" disparity between the color of the bandage and the color of her young patient's foot. The bandage "may as well be hunter's orange," Rachel wrote in her online diary. "It wasn't made with her skin tone in mind."

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NPR

So what is the solution? Darker bandages present a similar problem.

/ NPR
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NPR

Adhesive bandages, Rachel says, "should be either completely clear — with the nonstick band in the middle being paper white — or, really, any other color that is unlike anything that could be construed to match any shade of human flesh."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Linton Weeks joined NPR in the summer of 2008, as its national correspondent for Digital News. He immediately hit the campaign trail, covering the Democratic and Republican National Conventions; fact-checking the debates; and exploring the candidates, the issues and the electorate.