Racism and crumpets
Well, having vented my righteous indignation about racism in America, I feel compelled to confess my own sins. I'm a rich girl from lilly-white Bethesda, MD. My ancestors may have been a bit brown (in the oh-so-cultured Cherokee Indian way) but I was raised white and I'm about as much of a bigot as you'd expect. When I was a toddler, I had several bad experiences with people of color, and I started refusing to talk to anybody who was black or hispanic. I got over it by first grade, but old habits die hard, and every so often it comes back to bite me in the ass.
Many of you have heard this story. But I just figured I'd put it on the record.
This happened a couple of years ago, when I was in the midst of applying to medical school for the second time. I was killing time at the Starbucks in downtown Silver Spring, waiting to go meet exedore for a movie. These two women were sitting at the table next to me, studying. They were a bit younger than me, dressed casually, both African American. They were discussing the indications and dosages for coumadin- they were studying pharmacology.
I asked if they were in nursing school.
The girl closest to me was remarkably polite when she said, "No, medical school."
I was mortified. Of course they were in medical school. Accent, posture, mannerisms all spoke clearly of wealth, education and ambition. But everything else: they were young, black, female, 20 miles from the nearest medical school and only a mile and a half from the community college. I had never expected to see med students in the Silver Spring Starbucks. But that's no excuse; most med students are younger than me, more than half of them are women, and lots of them are black. Of all the people in the world, *I* should have known better than to make that assumption-- and speak it aloud!
I apologized profusely and backed out of the conversation as gracefully as I could. There is absolutely no way to get out of that with your dignity intact. It wasn't just the stupidity of my assumption, it was what it said about me, and how they would have heard it. That day, I was one of the people telling those black women that they were different, less, than a white man would have been. Reminding them that they weren't going to be everyone's image of what a doctor should be, suggesting that they weren't worthy. I was part of the problem. And I could not have been more ashamed.
So, yeah. Everyone's a little bit racist.
Many of you have heard this story. But I just figured I'd put it on the record.
This happened a couple of years ago, when I was in the midst of applying to medical school for the second time. I was killing time at the Starbucks in downtown Silver Spring, waiting to go meet exedore for a movie. These two women were sitting at the table next to me, studying. They were a bit younger than me, dressed casually, both African American. They were discussing the indications and dosages for coumadin- they were studying pharmacology.
I asked if they were in nursing school.
The girl closest to me was remarkably polite when she said, "No, medical school."
I was mortified. Of course they were in medical school. Accent, posture, mannerisms all spoke clearly of wealth, education and ambition. But everything else: they were young, black, female, 20 miles from the nearest medical school and only a mile and a half from the community college. I had never expected to see med students in the Silver Spring Starbucks. But that's no excuse; most med students are younger than me, more than half of them are women, and lots of them are black. Of all the people in the world, *I* should have known better than to make that assumption-- and speak it aloud!
I apologized profusely and backed out of the conversation as gracefully as I could. There is absolutely no way to get out of that with your dignity intact. It wasn't just the stupidity of my assumption, it was what it said about me, and how they would have heard it. That day, I was one of the people telling those black women that they were different, less, than a white man would have been. Reminding them that they weren't going to be everyone's image of what a doctor should be, suggesting that they weren't worthy. I was part of the problem. And I could not have been more ashamed.
So, yeah. Everyone's a little bit racist.