Chicago City Wire

State Rep. Mary E. Flowers (D-Chicago) has sponsored a change to provide for a right for “culturally sensitive” caregivers in a medical setting.

The bill under consideration is HB1021.

“Amends the Medical Patient Rights Act. Provides that each patient has the right to receive care from a medical professional who is culturally sensitive to the patient's life experience,” the bill’s synopsis reads.

The bill would amend the Medical Patient Rights Act. The full text of the bill elaborates.

“The right of each patient to receive care from a medical professional who is culturally sensitive to the patient's life experience,” the bill reads.

The amendment is the last part of the bill. It is unclear how success of such an amendment would be measured.

Flowers, 71, is the longest-serving Black legislator in the state’s history. She currently serves in House leadership as deputy majority leader.

“I hope my legacy will be that people will remember me for trying to help someone along the way,” she told Capital News Illinois. “I would like for people to know that I gave it my best.”

Flowers as of late has been enmeshed in race-based legislation. She has also put forth legislation this year mandating a 40-book reading list for all Illinois public school students. That legislation is an old draft that the previous General Assembly failed to enact.

Critics say that the bill's excessive reading requirements would be problematic because they would supplant other nonbiased reading that is already incorporated in lesson plans.

The previous time around, politicians were criticized for putting themselves in the classroom and ignoring teachers and the unique learning objectives of students, and instead pushing highly controversial and political texts on schools that many have deemed anti-white.

“(The list) outlines a highly skewed 42-book list of mandatory reading for every public elementary, middle and high school student, and includes titles such as 'Hood Feminism,' 'How to Be an Antiracist' and 'White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism,'" Beth Feeley wrote in a 2021 column for the Chicago Tribune. “Not every book on the list reflects the critical race theory-inspired ideologies like those of included authors Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. But 42 books — almost 10,000 pages — on race? The reading list will dominate the curriculum.”