(a post based on innuendo and unfounded rumors. what's else is new?)

in a hospital dominated by people of color and foreign medical graduates, i think that maybe, white people should take care how they present themselves. (just because you don't intend to be racist doesn't mean that you won't be interpreted as being racist. choose your words with care. unfair you say? see medical student rule #3. this is the sad world that your ancestors created, although i'm actually pretty certain that if my ancestors were in the same place, they would'nt've done any better. (and yes i know: medical student rule #4€€just because this is the way it has always been doesn't make it right. unfortunately, the corollary to medical student rule #4€€just because it isn't right doesn't mean that you don't have to accept that this is the way it is. in less abstract terms, while you shouldn't be Evil, you have to accept that Evil exists.)

in my mind, this is just the sad result of years and years of racism against non-whites and immigrants in the field of medicine. i know that my father was savaged by white attendings when he had to redo his residency here in the u.s., in a time when it was fashionable to demean people of color. to them, his previous medical training (in the philippines, he had already long finished his residency) was completely worthless, nevermind the fact that he could do a lot of things the attendings probably couldn't (like the time as an internal medicine resident in the philippines, he scrubbed in with an internal medicine attending to do an app'y. or the time he delivered a breech birth all by himself, despite it being the first baby he had ever delivered.) while racism is definitely less overt these days, only a fool would generalize to the point of saying that racism no longer exists. and let me tell you, medical students aren't necessarily the most progressive, most culturally sensitive people in the world. (medical student rule #5: most of what you need to learn to practice medicine is not in any textbook.) this leads to a sad antagonism that crosses racial, ethnic, and hierarchical lines.

right or wrong, i have come to the conclusion that the dynamics of a service team completely change depending on the proportion of people of color in the team. obviously, i'm biased, being a person of color myself, but the difference is palpable. (in flagrant, racist terms, when the white people leave, things tend to get more relaxed for some reason. some inarticulable tension breaks.)

anyway. i'm post-call right now, so i'll have to mull over these ideas. suffice it to say this: just be aware that cockiness can easily be interpreted as having racial undertones. disrespect to an attending or senior resident who is a person-of-color coming from white people who are lower down on the hierarchy is taken more sharply than disrespect coming from a person-of-color. of course, these are all anecdotal, my reportage is clearly biased, and i could just be imagining all this in my head.