Experiencing racism and xenophobia when coming to CA to help with Covid

[xwill327]

As a travel nurse, I expect to experience whatever is thrown at me. What I experienced at Metropolitan State Hospital was beyond my expectations. It was an unbelievable encounter with rudeness, hate, racism, and xenophobia. 

On the first day at the facility, the staff was extremely rude to all of us who picked up to come work and help with COVID. All my travel colleagues would agree and could speak to the disrespect given to us. I thought this may not be a place for me to work and almost quit. Wanting to stay in SoCal I continued the contract. 

The extreme hate began on the inpatient unit. A psych tech and I were having a talk about life. I mentioned my “gay culture” to him and he replied, “what is gay culture.” In an aggressive manner. I saw his body language change, eye contact decrease and his fists even ball up. When I explained gay culture is my lifestyle he harshly stated, “That doesn’t exist. All gay people should come to Nigeria and be killed.” I replied stating that would never happen to me and I would protect myself in any way I needed. But I was fearful and shocked that someone could say that. I never reported this but spoke to a friend about what I could do to protect gay patients in hospitals, especially a state-run facility. 

The next situation happened more recently causing me to resign. The snowball effect of hate forced me to never return. A person who came over risking my own health to care for COVID patients had to run far away. I also signed a lease in Long Beach so could not even return home after such a horrific experience. 

So it started on another unit where I was talking shop with this shift lead on unit 409. We were talking shop and election results. The shift lead name Dia stated, “ I support Donald Trump because he is crazy like our patients so we should take care of him like we do our patients.” Her using the word crazy to describe a person with mental illness was alarming in itself. When you hear what happened next, that doesn’t even compare. I am someone who is asked every day, “Are you Arabic or Muslim? Are you from the Middle East?”, she intensely and rudely stated to me, “All Muslims should go back to where they came from!”

I was beside myself and had to leave the office and go to another unit. I absolutely told her she was xenophobic and doesn’t take care of “crazy” people because she hasn’t moved from the desk. I reported it to the manager right away and said I can not work there. They moved me to another unit. I am unsure if any action was taken, but I highly doubt it. The manager did not take any of my information. I quit and no one from the facility had reached out to me (5 days after I am writing this). 

I believe some form of justice should be served. Staff has said this is the culture of Metro and they are not surprised. Taxpayer money of gay and Muslim civilians alike find this facility and pay the salary of those who hate them and verbally express it freely. I fear for the patients who fit the criteria of what some of these staff members see less than and believe should be dead or deported. 

Please respond with helpful advice? How should I move forward to get justice?

[xwill327, ASN, BSN, RN]

As expressed previously: I am not here to be polite. So your comment is not needed. Stick to the facts! No shoulda coulda woulda!

[Tacocat, ADN, RN]

You calling me a disgrace for how I live as a gay woman is bigoted. Full stop.

[xwill327, ASN, BSN, RN]

1 minute ago, Tacocat said:

You calling me a disgrace for how I live as a gay woman is bigoted. Full stop.

The disgrace is that you read the post and didn’t focus on the issue at hand, instead said we shouldn’t be talking about our sexuality at work. Please follow the comments ?(me trying to be nicer to you all)

[Tacocat, ADN, RN]

You don't need to "try to be nicer," you've shown your true colors already. 

I said I PERSONALLY do not discuss my sexuality at work. I PERSONALLY do not find it relevant to my ability to do my job. I said it was my PERSONAL truth. There is no "we." 

[xwill327, ASN, BSN, RN]

Damn. Right:  I am not trying to be polite! My truer gay colors will shine!
 

Well I am telling you that is not helpful into what I am trying to accomplish here. so baiii hun

[Tacocat, ADN, RN]

I already said don't call me hun so now you're just trying to be disrespectful which makes you no better than the people you're crusading against. 

[hppygr8ful, ASN, RN, EMT-I]

59 minutes ago, xwill327 said:

Can’t believe I’m even commenting on this post but: it’s not a preference AMY!

One thing I do agree on is that I wish people would stop call being LGBTQ a “lifestyle” or a “Preference” it is an orientation and part of what a person is. Because I work with Adolescents who are at risk for suicide I have encountered a fair number of young people who are not cis gender. In the interest of taking better care of my patients I educated myself. It really was not all that hard to shift the way I looked at things and I did.

Funny story and then I will shut up. A friend of mine went to Hawaii a year ago and brought me a key chain that had a rainbow with “I ❤️Hawaii “ on it! During a group several patients started talking about their sexuality and ask me if my rainbow key chain was a symbol indicating that I was gay. I said the information was irrelevant to their care but if they really wanted to know then no I was not.  If you abt to talk about my personal evolution I would be happy to open dialogue with you.

Hppy 

[Guest856929]

1 hour ago, hppygr8ful said:

One thing I do agree on is that I wish people would stop call being LGBTQ a “lifestyle” or a “Preference” it is an orientation and part of what a person is. Because I work with Adolescents who are at risk for suicide I have encountered a fair number of young people who are not cis gender. In the interest of taking better care of my patients I educated myself. It really was not all that hard to shift the way I looked at things and I did.

Funny story and then I will shut up. A friend of mine went to Hawaii a year ago and brought me a key chain that had a rainbow with “I ❤️Hawaii “ on it! During a group several patients started talking about their sexuality and ask me if my rainbow key chain was a symbol indicating that I was gay. I said the information was irrelevant to their care but if they really wanted to know then no I was not.  If you abt to talk about my personal evolution I would be happy to open dialogue with you.

Hppy 

I respect the angle that you’re coming from, but soon enough I think English will be self-limiting to describe the fluidity of the evolving changes in gender stratifications. I have seen the context of productive dialogue get distracted by semantics.
 

The beauty of being multilingual is knowing the fallacies and limitations inherent in languages. For instance, in one of my native tongues, there are no pronouns, yet people are knee-deep in the abyss of pronouns in certain segments of society today to the point of butchering grammar. I find it quite unusual to refer to a single person as they or them. My English teacher would be quite disappointed and I can’t even imagine the subsequent punitive measures.
 

Mathematicians and scientists have known for a long time the limitations of language, especially English. It is part of the reason why some foreigners do better in math —some languages can aptly describe equations/fractions with a degree of simplicity that students can digest without much confusion. I digress. It’s easy to wallow in the tyranny of gender semantics. 
 

 

[0.9%NormalSarah, BSN, RN]

2 hours ago, xwill327 said:

The disgrace is that you read the post and didn’t focus on the issue at hand, instead said we shouldn’t be talking about our sexuality at work. Please follow the comments ?(me trying to be nicer to you all)

But that is what the post is about. It’s about you saying something at work that did not get you the reaction you wanted. Granted, the reaction was definitely not cool. I think what posters are trying to do here are to identify ways you can avoid these reactions in the future, and your behavior is actually part of what needs to be modified. There’s a reason why some of us who have alternative orientations almost never receive the kind of reaction you did, and that’s because when it does come up, it does so organically at an appropriate time with people who have gotten to know us. Again, it is not the most interesting or important thing about our identities. We are merely suggesting you see interactions with new coworkers as just that rather than an opportunity for activism. Once you have rapport with others, you can certainly talk with them at an appropriate time about the social issues for which you feel passionate. 

[Russell Thompson]

No offence, but this is Metro we are talking about. It's famous as being an awful place to work and full of awful staff. Lots of discussion about it on Delphi, and probably other, forums for years.

   Did you really have no idea what you were walking into?

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

5 hours ago, 0.9%NormalSarah said:

I agree with you that no one should be made to feel they have to hide their orientation, just as no one should feel they have to hide their religious or political beliefs. I think what some posters are saying is that one may want to feel out a crowd first, there are different ways of talking about these subjects and opening up. I did wonder if the OP brought it up in a very odd or aggressive way, which I have seen happen, almost as if they were attempting to get a rise out of someone. I also agree that it’s unprofessional to just go into any working situation and begin talking openly about personal matters, including sexuality. I personally do not believe someone’s sexuality is the most important or interesting thing about them. And I find it weird when in conversation someone feels the need to tell me who they like to sleep with if it doesn’t relate to the current topic. I’m always like, OK cool.... so as I was saying. It has nothing to do with me disliking that person’s orientation and everything to do with interacting in an appropriate manner with people you don’t know all that well.

It sounds like you are equating being an "out" gay person with discussing their "sexuality" as you put it.  How about I give you a scenario - a straight woman shows up to work and said she had a great time over the weekend driving around the wineries with her boyfriend.  There is nothing shocking about that statement and there is nothing remotely sexual about it. 

Let's say a gay person answered that woman by saying that for the weekend, him and his husband went to the hardware store to buy supplies to update the fixtures in their kitchen.  Again both straight and gay people engage in the same weekend activities and there is nothing sexual about either of these casual topics of conversation. 

Would you be offended by the gay person's response just because you don't agree with their sexual orientation?

[0.9%NormalSarah, BSN, RN]

47 minutes ago, juan de la cruz said:

It sounds like you are equating being an "out" gay person with discussing their "sexuality" as you put it.  How about I give you a scenario - a straight woman shows up to work and said she had a great time over the weekend driving around the wineries with her boyfriend.  There is nothing shocking about that statement and there is nothing remotely sexual about it.  Let's say a gay person answered that woman by saying that for the weekend, him and his husband went to the hardware store and to buy supplies to update the fixtures in their kitchen.  Again both straight and gay people engage in the same weekend activities and there is nothing sexual about either of these casual topics of conversation.  Would you be offended by the gay person's response just because you don't agree with their sexual orientation?

No, and I am glad you brought up this scenario, as it is a common organic interaction among coworkers that I think would be relevant and appropriate. I’ll be honest, I think there is more to the story here. As someone who happens to have an alternative orientation and plenty of opportunities in the past for people to treat me this way, I just think we are missing something.