When I was just a little kid, I ran into a weird incident at the dentist. Like most kids who are ripped from their homes and thrust into the inescapable office of mouth sorcery, I really didn't want to be there, and I tried to distract myself with my Babysitter's Club book. To make matters worse, the nurse wasn't being very nice to me or my mom, for reasons that didn't click at first. Then, in the hallway right outside our (OPEN!) door, she had a conversation with another nurse, joking that she didn't want to go through post-procedure discussions with us because "They wouldn't understand me anyway. I'm not sure they even speak English." It would've been better if they'd just told me, "Sorry, but your whole bone structure is just one big cavity."
My mother, humiliated, just stared at the floor, but Kid Me was confused and angry. Feeling particularly hyped from my Babysitter's Club book (as you'll recall, Kristy is a boss bitch), I stuck my head out and defiantly shouted, "HEY! That's not nice! I DO speak English, and I can understand every word you're saying!" They both turned red and scattered, and my mom let me eat cookies on the car ride back home, so yeah, justice was served.
Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident, though it was the first time I ever noticed it happening to me. Turns out that even in this day and age, your race, ethnicity, and religion does affect the kind of treatment you receive from nurses and doctors. According to a study in the American Journal Of Public Health, a stunning two-thirds of doctors exhibited racial bias toward patients. Those doctors tend to have antiblack sentiments and think of their white patients as more likely to be "compliant." On top of that, they often lecture black patients, speak more slowly to them, and make their office visits longer, which is such a racist notion that it makes me want to rip my own head off and punt it into the middle of a medical convention.
559 Comments