You can fight the prejudice by watching for positive examples of black people outside of the ER. In the ER you don’t control who comes in and you see a lot of people who are scared or abusing the system so watch when you are elsewhere and see what you find.
For example, most of the homeless people that accost me and yell at me for being a selfish bitch when I won’t give them a quarter are black. However, my daughter’s pediatrician is also black and is possibly the greatest doctor ever and works in an office with other fabulous doctors of whom 95% are black. The stupid potheads who sit in the stairwell and fill our apartment building with nasty smelling smoke are almost all hispanic. However, the lovely neighbors in the apartment next door who sign for our packages when we aren’t home are also hispanic. The woman with no front teeth outside the grocery store who is trying to convince me to give her cash in exchange for her SNAP card is obviously poor and abusing the system. The large majority of people I’ve noticed using the SNAP benefits in the store are buying fresh vegetables and lean meats without a single sugary treat to be seen as they buy their groceries. If I only paid attention to those people who are reflecting poorly on their “group” I could find myself becoming prejudiced as well but because I force myself to be aware most of the time it is easier to determine that assholes are just assholes no matter what demographic they belong to otherwise.
Hmm…I will, however coddle you. I am not asking to feel better. I am asking for some perspective and some ways to cope with working in an environment that has forced me to face new issues of race, class, and economics.
I am getting a lot of great feedback. Just none from you.
Yeah, self-disclaimers are usually suspect. But check out a few minutes of American Hollow, MOL, and see if you don’t walk away with a feeling that willful ignorance and entitlement spreads throughout all of rural white Appalachia like a contagion. You’re a smart city girl, but I bet 40 hours in an eastern Kentucky ER would convince you that all hillbillies milk the system for everything it’s worth. And some do, and when there is an opportunity to exploit like free healthcare, you can bet word spreads among like-minded people like wildfire.
Some subcultures do share similar habits and affectations. It’s not limited to race, that’s all.
It’s not racial, it’s cultural. There is a subset of urban black culture that is very self-centered, arrogant and ignorant. Not a good combination. They feel white man is the root of all their problems and thus owes them anything they feel they need. They deride education and anyone who tries to improve themselves. They prey on one another. It is a vicious cycle that is hard to get out of. Luckily it is a subset that is shrinking and a small minority of Black culture as a whole. Unfortunately you are in a position that catches the full brunt of this malignant culture.
Thanks Troppus, I was about to mention this documentary on YouTube also. I would also like to suggest the film, The Wild, Wonderfull Whites of West Virginia, as a bulwark against subconsciously developing prejudice. It’s a documentary about an Appalachian white family. Their behavior, well, if I described it, you might have a hard time believing anyone lived and acted that way.
Isnt it the overinflated sense of entitlement that people in general have? Not just the unemployed, poor, ethnic. The moneyed often do it too and can be demanding as hell in shops, restaurants, hotels and not always that polite, and yes they can curse too if they dont get their way. Anywhere there are humans there will be problems.
My heart goes out to you working in ER. I witnessed an inner city ER first person (and yes, I was deathly ill with kidney stones and C Dif.) Too bad there wasnt a Fast Track/Convenient Care attached to the ER to triage the emergent cases from the non. Ppl were lying on the floors moaning, vomiting, cursing … it was like bedlam. Standing room only by 1000. I arrived at 0700 and waited “until someone comes in to see patients” for 2 hours. Not a fun place to be, patient or staff.
Lots of Jesco and Popcorn Sutton video available, too. It’s fascinating, frustrating, and if the viewer isn’t careful, these documentaries will infect you with a prejudice that can’t be undone. (Deliverance leave an impression on anyone?)
But even some of the lazy, narrowminded examples here are clever and innovative. Bear in mind that producers have an agenda before the camera rolls, and the shitty, dirty little slices of life represent Appalachia about as well as a DC emergency room represents urban DC.
Its fine to vent here, and I can really see how this job would grind on you. You’re trying to do the best you can for each individual and get perspective and I respect you for that.
If you find yourself lashing out and treating patients (and staff) with less than compassionate care … time to get out.
Bolding mine - I think this is right on.
Also what others have said about confirmation bias, and that you’re seeing people at their worst; the ER is the only place that many people can get medical care of any kind.
The only egregious use of the ER I can think of was by a hypochrondriac (white) friend of mine. She went to the ER for a painful pimple on her hoo-hah, a cold or sinus infection, and a pulled muscle in her shoulder that she was convinced was a heart attack (I drove her to that one.)
I also think it is a healthy thing to acknowledge, question, challenge, and test our biases from time to time, which is what I’m getting from the OP.
I understand what you’re saying here. Any sentence that starts with the general idea of “I’m not racist; I have a lot of black friends, but…” does cause one to go :dubious: right away and take everything that follows with a grain of salt. But what newcrasher describes does seem to be a real phenomenon. I have non-black friends who I would not have pegged at racist or prejudice go into jobs like health care and firefighting in the inner city, and most of them do start developing what I would call prejudiced attitudes. You may argue that they were prejudiced to begin with, and I just didn’t see it. That is indeed possible. But it seems like these kinds of line of works where you’re dealing with a particular subsection of a certain ethnicity is a breeding ground for these sorts of attitudes. I believe *newcrasher is sincere in his statements, and is sincerely looking for another perspective for interpreting what he is seeing.
Wait…What ?? Is this a new ethnic descriptor displacing African-American, which displaced Afro-American? Can I get a text every time this changes so I don’t look hopelessly dated??
I find it kind of funny that he has a bulleted list of facts to support that’s he’s a good white guy. Who does that? If someone ever called me racist, I wouldn’t really have any documentation to support that I’m not. I don’t keep a file cabinet on hand of proof that I’m not racist. It did not help his case that what followed was, of course, racist. I believe that what he says happened has actually happened. He’s had some bad experiences in the ER with black people, and therefore he is now looking at the entire race differently. Ah hmm. Seems to me his prejudices were already there. I don’t respond to repeated terrible interactions with white people (which I’ve had) with “I don’t know about those guys anymore.”
But that’s just my take. Enough about what I think.
When I lived is the city I lived across the street from the ‘projects’. I saw all kids of abuses of the system. I know some of the people were there because of circumstances beyond their control, the at least 90% were working the system and thought they were entitled to whatever they could get. They also thought that people who worked were stupid, why work when you can sit home ans party all day?
Coming from that environment I have a lot of disgust for the system and the people who abuse it. Many times I have been accused of being racist because of my views on welfare because those same people will tell me most people on welfare are black.
Well… no they are not.
(so who are the racist ones?)
And the people I knew who were using and abusing the system? Everyone of them was white. The few black people I knew in the projects were trying to get the hell out.
It goes both ways, it goes across all races.
In another place you could see the opposite.
I have no documentation. Bullet points on a merge board certainly wouldn’t count. No one has called me a racist, this is me being honest about some feelings and experiences I am having, not someone else has leveled accusations at me, other than you. I was simply trying to give some background as to my experiences in life and give some perspective to my situation.
This is why people don’t have HONEST discussions about race. I tried to initiate some open, candid discussion and you found a way to portray me as a racist. This is not how progress is made.
Now please excuse me, I’m off to dinner with friends.
The whole “I’m not racist, I have lots of black friends” thing is tricky. Usually the person saying it IS racist, and usually they don’t actually have black friends anyway (like, they’re counting their black mailman they occasionally say good afternoon to as a “friend”). But in certain cases, of course someone is going to be tempted to tell someone who knows NOTHING about them as is the case here, that they’re not like people are probably going to assume.
You could say that if they know how something is going to make them sound, they shouldn’t be saying it anyway. And that’s reasonable, except he’s not DEFENDING it, he’s asking for help.
And yeah, it does indicate underlying prejudices. Everyone has underlying prejudices.
