Prejudiced

We were in the OR yesterday, on our last case of the day, when a resident from the Gyn team (who covers our patients when they're in the hospital) popped her head in with a message:

The boyfriend/baby daddy/whatever of our previous case had demanded, on behalf of his girlfriend/baby momma/whatever that she receive a private hospital room, or that if she had to have a shared room, that she only have a black roommate.

(They're both African-American.)

The whole OR was shocked. Seriously? Who in their right mind thinks this is OK?

He apparently told the resident, point blank, "I'm prejudiced. I don't want a white person sharing her room."

Then we all started talking, and it turned out this guy had been weird to all of us. When the fellow met the patient and her guy, he asked her if she was Indian. (She was born and raised in Ethiopa, then moved to Seattle.) No, she replied, I'm black. Black?!?!? he exclaimed. Where are you from? She said she knew what he was getting at (her skin has definite honey undertones to it) so she replied, Seattle, just to piss him off. And when she left the room, she could hear him say to the patient, I don't care what she says, she's not black enough for me. What an idiot. As the fellow said, "I'm from AFRICA. How much more black do you want?"

When I introduced myself to the patient before the surgery (and the patient is totally pleasant, by the way), the boyfriend said to me, in a total non-sequitor interjection, You must be from California. California? What makes you think that? I asked him. He responded, Because you're tan and your accent. I just smiled and told him I felt very pale (I do) and that I was from the Philly area (not a lie). He really didn't know what to make of it, but was obviously confused -- and ignorant. Anyone who knows anybody from California knows that I couldn't fit in there at all. I'm too high-strung and rude :)

So when we were close to being done, the attending left the OR to go talk to the guy. Of course, he was totally nice and respectful to her, even though he had already abused all the residents and nurses (not unusual), and all he said to her was that he wanted his girlfriend to have a private room. She laid the issue to rest, saying that if the patient got worse over night, they would move her to a private room, and told him to go home and let his girlfriend recuperate. Whew.

Part of what I found so interesting about the whole thing, aside from the ridiculous asshole boyfriend, was the makeup of our OR when we the learned the story. My attending was born in Delhi and came to the U.S. a couple decades ago. My fellow is from Ethiopa. The resident was African-American from the northeast. The anesthesia resident was African-American and from Mississippi. The scrub nurse and the circulator were Filipino, the resident who came in to relay the message was Caucasian with Irish in her background, and I'm half-Chinese.

That's what I miss about the east coast when I'm in Kentucky: the diversity. There just isn't any. It's a small-ish thing, but as the years have passed I've definitely noticed it more and more, and I love being back in Philadelphia right now.

It's the idiots like this who give me good stories to tell, so that's the silver lining. I can't pay too much attention to the dark cloud -- that there are lots of people out there still promoting and perpetrating racism -- or I'll get depressed.