Hello, everyone out there in the world of allnurses.com I just need to get something that's been bothering me for a while off of my chest. I just want to talk about this issue especially affecting minority nurses. And that issue is that it can be hard to be a nurse of color.
I am part Somoan/part African-American and consider myself Black for the most part. Well, I just feel that after all these years, minority nurses still don't get as much respect as their white colleagues.
Always being mistaken for for support staff even though my name tag boldly states who I am and my credentials. And I even feel that sometimes, patients feel insulted by me being their nurse. It seems like that when I first go into the patient's room, before I can introduce myself properly, they always assume I am a CNA. After I explain that I am their nurse, they seem to loose that "glow". It's like they don't want ME to be their nurse. And when a previous nurse that happens to be white reports how pleasant a patient was, I don't get that "pleasant" behavior from the same patient.
We as nurses know that patients can often be demanding, rude, and downright ridiculous with any nurse. But, to the minority nurses out there, do you sometimes feel that you are being treated with less respect because your a minority? Do you feel like you get treated differently from the other nurses by the same patient?
Lots of people have been owned besides African Americans, it would depend on where in the world you would like to focus your attention. As far as other types of ownership, I believe women and children would also be among those who could, and have been, sold for profit.
Since my first love in life was history, I would also like to point out that the very sellers of US slaves were their enemies, other people of color. They profited from their brothers, as did those merchants who loaded them into slave ships. While those merchants of many nationalities brought slaves of many backgrounds to the new world, how long ago was the last shipment?
What does that have to do with the young African Americans of today? Do we (people who did not profit for the horrible trade) need to make amends for people (not us) who did horrible things to people (who are no longer with us) ? If so, how? What will erase this part of our history? In my eyes, comraderie and respect with all those we encounter based on their qualities not their looks would be the answer to that question.
Every group has their tale of prejudice, but how long can you say I didn't get the job because: I was dark, light, had an accent, was fat, ugly, had acne, small, too tall, blah blah blah. Because guess what...Those are all the people I work with, maybe it's just you or maybe you are right and the manager didn't like your quirk. Get over it
, go somewhere where you will be appreciated!
Maisy;)
PS SueSquatch I can't help it, we need to move along-not get stuck in the past. I don't believe anyone is helped by dwelling on things that cannot be changed. It is completely non-productive.
Maisy, we are not dwelling on things of the past. We are talking about things that have occurred in 2007. Now the ones stuck in the past are the racist that choose to still practive hate. And contrary to what you say, it will be changed. You know, if people of color listened to anybody saying that things won't change, we would still be in those chains. You go tell Elizabeth Seton and Susan B. Anthony that things cannot be changed. You tell Martin Luther King that things cannot be changed. Things have and will continue to change. It's certain people that fear that change that want to hold others back that won't change.
This is so sad in this day and age that I was in tears many times reading these posts. I am an older WF and I have never had to suffer like this. As much as I care I think of a situation I was in that still bothers me. In the Cath. Lab. there are RN's, LPN's and a few A.D. Paramedic's. We have two people that triage our cases and being new I assumed they were both Paramedics. There are times when we are working super short staffed and there are not two nurses on a team. Usually the team counts the Narc's and then it is verified and signed by a second nurse from another team. I had been there for a very short time and told the triange person that I would gladly verify and sign the count. She is an AA woman and she said "No I am an LPN and sign my own count". I still feel like such a fool assuming she was a paramedic as the other triage person is. Here I thought I would never ever do anything like that. That I was so above that horrible type of assumed behavior even though it had nothing to do with her being AA I could see where she might think it did. I still think of that day and it humbles me thinking of what other discrimination she must have had to deal with all of her life. We went on to be good friends and I admire her as a nurse and go to her as an expert resourse with extensive experience.
Oh, harley, I'm sorry that this has been an upsetting experience. In your case, it was purely innocent. You made an honest mistake. The racist behavior involves more than just a mistaken identity. I started this thread with the intentions of bringing up the issues that we could discuss and relate to. I'm sorry some of this may upset you. I hope you can gain some insight from reading some of these experiences. But by you coming on here and sharing your experience with us shows that you are a great person with a good heart.:balloons:
O.k. let me regain my composure. Where the hell do you people live?:angryfire
THANK GOD our institution definately does not have this problem. We are a HUGE University affiliated hospital, Level 1 trauma center and having worked there 27 plus years I can tell you we are color blind. Perhaps I view my institution with rose colored glasses, but I truly believe this.
We have an extremely diverse staff, encompassing people from all over the world, this is not a black, white, latin issue. Our world is far greater than these few groups. We eat together, party together, get drunk together, date each other (carry this to the next logical step), marry each other.
We go to our friends houses, church or go to classes together. We travel together, not just to educational events, but take real vacations together. We have baby showers and visit our colleagues if they are in the hospital. We celebrate birthdays and holidays..we even have a celebration of cultures where we bring in foods that reflect our cultural background.
And yes..as I have stated in other posts, we fight!!!!!!!!!!we argue!!!!we may not talk to someone for a few days. But we are a family and none of this is racially based.
We have had discussions about race and politics and interpersonal relationships. We do have some differences, but this is not a major part of our professional and personal relationships. It is natural to discuss these issues.
Occasionally you have a patient and/or family who clearly demonstrate prejudice against a person of color. Some clients demand only female nurses. I have witnessed patients and families representing several minority groups who also demonstrate prejudice against professional nurses who are also of color (God I hate that term!!!) Why fight? Make them happy, who cares? Move on, take care of the patient and don't worry what people think of you.
I have been referred to as "that white woman", but where is the insult? where is the injury? why would I care? I am secure in my profession, I am essentially a good person, I tend to be optimistic and I like people.
Frankly there is toooo much discussion of racial differences. To quote one of America's favorite criminals...
"Why can't we all just get along?":balloons:
If you do work with staff or clients who are obsessed with race, whether it is a nurse or a patient or family members..remember, racism is a two way street. The trick is not to personalize it or focus on the negative stereotypes applied to you. Your own insecurity is your greatest enemy, it will eat like a cancer into your soul until you see the world simplified into an "us" against "them" battlefield with predictable results.
So..what do you think?
Eeka End Game RN:welcome:
Thank you for your post. I think that you make a great point. Oh, you ask where I live...In Alabama. There is not much diversity down here. Sadly to say, some people still function with an antiquated mentality.
My only experiences working as a nurse have been in California. Most people assume because California has a reputation for being so "liberal" and diverse that discrimination must not be an issue. I only wish that were true.
I have on numerous occassions seen nurses asked to trade patients with a fully competent nurse who happened to be Asian or African American. Why? Because a patient didn't want to be cared for by them because they were Asian or African American. Nurses I have admired and respected have been treated with such callous and disrespect that it isn't something you can just ignore, "get over", move on from... I have personally taken offense FOR them because these were my colleagues and often times my friends.
I have heard other nurses of all nationalities making negative/derrogatory comments about other nurses speaking to other nurses, doctors, CNA's in their native languages. Why? Who knows, their own insecurity perhaps? Why is it if someone speaks a language around someone who doesn't understand it that people assume they must be talking about them? How arrogant is it to assume that someone would be talking about you?
I happen to be a Caucasian woman (Italian, Irish & Lakota). I grew up with parents who were very much NOT racist. I went to school in San Francisco where I grew up with people from all nationalities and racial backgrounds. I was fortunate to be exposed to so much culture and I feel that it helped make me the woman I am today. It occured to me how lucky I was to know so many people from so many places. I'm multilingual (Spanish & Italian) and have lived outside of the US.
It baffles my mind that there are still so many simple minded people in 2007. And I don't mean the elderly population... I mean my peers. 20 and 30 somethings who are still so ignorant to think that racism isn't a prevalent and harmful presence in society. It exists whether or not you want to acknowledge it. Maybe your experience has afforded you the opportunity to not be exposed to it... if so, please don't think for a minute because you haven't seen, heard or experienced it that it simply doesn't exist. Count yourself LUCKY if you haven't had to deal with racism and discrimination personally.
I recently moved to SE Texas (December 2006). I just received my Texas nursing license the end of July and will be starting my 1st job in this state on Sept. 18th. So far it appears that the place I'll be working is racially diverse. I'm happy about that.
I have to admit that moving to the South I have some biases... Funny that they should be about Caucasians. I realize that not all Southern Caucasians are racists or rednecks, but a lot of what I have encountered thus far in the Nursing community here has made me really nervous. I hope that if there are racist nurses where I work, that they will keep their comments to themselves, as I don't want to hear them.
To those of you who have personally had to experience discrimination first hand, know that for every ignorant person out there making the comments or making assumptions about you... there are people like me who will only see you as a colleague and fellow nurse regardless of what color your skin is or where your ancestry originates from. Keep your heads up and continue to provide professional nursing care with compassion and integrity. We may not be able to change the hearts of others, but if we are able to lead by example some of those hearts will change on their own.
Thank you so much. I would be honored to have a colleague such as you. I wish that everyone could be this way.
I agree with you whole heartly. I work in an hospital where the majority of the patients and minorities, and I find myself being thought of as the CNA. I have even had doctors look to the white nurses they see in scrubs and assume that they were the RN and to there suprise when they see me the AFrican American RN they look suprised. I get upset all the time, but force myself to remain professional. All I can say sista is keep your head up, the world if full of racist, so we shouldn't be suprised when we find them in the workplace.
Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
O.k. let me regain my composure. Where the hell do you people live?:angryfire
I have been living in Texas for the past 2 years. I was born and raised in Southern California, and that's where I lived from birth until 24 years of age. While I've experienced discrimination in both states, the most virulent racism occurred in California.
When I lived there, I was called a "N***er," "Black B*tch," and other racial slurs.
Now that I'm in my new state of residence, my experiences have been more subtle. The 18 year old white female CNAs are often assumed to be the nurses. Black nurses at my facility are frequently mistaken for CNAs. Latino employees are automatically regarded as either housekeeping staff or dietary workers. White male nurses are sometimes mistaken for physicians. If anyone denies the existence of stereotyping and categorizing in healthcare facilities, then (s)he is dwelling on some other planet!
I agree with you whole heartly. I work in an hospital where the majority of the patients and minorities, and I find myself being thought of as the CNA. I have even had doctors look to the white nurses they see in scrubs and assume that they were the RN and to there suprise when they see me the AFrican American RN they look suprised. I get upset all the time, but force myself to remain professional. All I can say sista is keep your head up, the world if full of racist, so we shouldn't be suprised when we find them in the workplace.
I've had that same experience numerous times. I agree with you 100%, but I'd like to add that we shouldn't surprised to find racist and insensitive people on the website either. Not all, but definitely a few whether they admit or not. From some of the responses here, I can only imagine what some of you may say in the presence of those you're totally comfortable with. I get so sick of people here acting like racism and segregation happened so long ago in some far away place. My parents, weren't BORN with the right to vote and both grew up in the segrgated south. My father's family has had a firsthand experience with the KKK, sheets and all, when my grandmother registered to vote many years ago. I had a full beer can thrown at me from a moving car not too long ago and was told "go back to Africa!" So, don't act it doesn't exist and that your black or other minority co-workers are just complainers who want to play the race card when they don't get their way. And don't act everyone should just be so accepting b/c there are just a handful of ignorant people out there, because yes, these same ignorant people can be patients and coworkers too; and they can make your shift hell. These things are hurtful and upsetting, and hard to ignore, as are some of the responses here. Again, I know its not everyone; but perhaps some of you that have posted here should re-examine your feeling towards persons of color, and just people who are different from you in general.
Maisy, while some other groups have also, as I said, been treated quite badly, AA's have been the only ones literally owned. Even indentured servants got out eventually. Being a slave is quite different than being a free person who chooses to take a dangerous job. What is also different is that the other groups of which you speak elected to come here. They weren't torn from their homes and families and chained and shoved into the holds of ships and dragged here against their wills.
It's different.
They "elected" to come here because they were starving in Ireland . They "elected " to come here because the Russian Cossacks, the Spanish royalty, Hitler's Germany, and probably other countries were murdering Jews and/or ordering them out, letting them take only what they could carry, with no time to sell their possessions, having to leave everything behind basically and glad to get out with their loved ones, if any had not been murdered already, and their own skins. Lithuanians, among many others, heard that the streets here were lined with gold - plenty of work, high wages, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they came on over. Why? They were lured here to labor in meat packing plants until the horrendous conditions at work killed them off - if they could even find jobs - there were more starving immigrants than there were jobs - just read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair and you'll see the life of those who "elected" to come here. Study the Industrial Revolution if you want to know about the struggle of many immigrants who "elected" to come here. See how they enjoyed roach-infested, TB-ridden tenements - cold water 5th floor walk-up's. How they rejoiced in their sweatshops, where they never saw daylight, where the women couldn't stop long enought to tend to their menstrual garment changing needs, where they carried work home and the whole family did piece work into the night so they'd have a couple of meals each day. Oh, they were free. They came in steerage, a step up, surely, from chains. But they slaved their lives away to enrich their bosses. Meanwhile, they struggled to make a better life for their children. Don't tell me this isn't so. It is the story of my own family and I know it by heart. I am struggling, not as hard as my parents and grandparents, but it is still a struggle, to make life better for my own children and grandchildren. This is what people do. I thank God for the opportunities that women have now. It is a 2-edged sword, certainly, yet it enables me to keep a roof over our heads, provide college, etc.
Read about man's greed and his demonic arrogance before God and his fellow man in "The Grapes of Wrath". The Joad family in that book was already in America but their treatment by the evil capitalists who shoved them into the dirt, literally throwing them off of their farm in the name of profit, will help open your eyes to the fact that so many, many people have been maltreated and exploited.
Being brought here the way Kunta Kinte was was horrible. It was a sin before God. It should never have happened. It is over, though, just as the exploitation of the other groups I have mentioned is now history. Slavery stopped here in 1865 - 142 years ago. Jim Crow ended about 40 years ago. Blacks HAVE made tremendous strides. The younger blacks that I work with have no idea of how it was even during the MLK days. That really amazes me. I have to tell THEM about Bull Connor and his dogs and his cold water hoses. I have to tell THEM about lunch counter sit-in's, Freedom Riders, and lots of other aspects of those days that are forever marked in my memory because I saw them on TV. They have never been told they couldn't sit wherever they liked, shop in any store, apply for any job. They are products of busing to suburban schools. A couple of them are very disrespectful of my being the RN and I have to take a gentle, motherly stance with them to get them to do things that I, as the RN, believe need doing. I know they all know how to do my job, being CNA's, but I'd somehow like to continue my little delusion that I am actually the decision-maker, since I am the one whose license is on the line.
BTW, I take that as not a racial thing but as a youth vs. old lady thing, LOL. And no matter their color, I have to be sweet yet firm with them. We all, BTW, get along very, very well. I have a good group of staff and tey have a great nurse. But it's because I have learned, over the last 30+ years, how to supervise and manage and deal with subordinate staff. It's still hard some times.
There are at least 2 types of slavery - chattel and wage. You probably and I definitely are wage slaves. We live, most of us, just a couple of months or so from complete disaster if we lose our wages. Maybe some are able to go a year or 2 without wages but a lot more can go only a very short time. No, we're not lashed, yes, we can vote and use the front door, any toilet, try on shoes in the shoe store, etc. The result is still awful, should you lose your wages. We are slaves to the wealthy, powerful, and often very evil people who run this world.
And, as stated earlier by me and others, there is absolutely plenty of fear of lawsuits from blacks on the part of employers. Why? Because the law in this area is like the Inquisition. You are guilty until proven innocent. And we can probably count on one hand the number of people who were ever innocent before the Inquisitors. There is no acceptable defense against being charged with being discriminatory against minorities. If you're charged, you're guilty. Just as there was no defense against white mobs hell-bent on murdering blacks, the situation is that bad today against whites. Not the murder part but the guilty if charged part. And I'm sorry but that is not fair. That is not equality. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, some black Muslims seem to be ok with that. It is hard not to wonder how many average blacks that we work with every day, who are our next door neighbors, who teach our kids in school, etc. feel the same way. They might not say it but we have no way of knowing if they feel it.
There is reluctance to discipline blacks, unless the Supervisor also happens to be black and is trying hard to be fair, there is unwillingness to not promote blacks instead of whites, even if the white person is more qualified, which is not always the case, I'm sure, but the facility HAS to have a certain number of blacks or other minorities to meet the law or get its funding, whatever. That does NOT mean there aren't blacks who should be promoted. Blacks take places in colleges that whites cannot have because they are earmarked for minorities. I am NOT saying blacks shouldn't get to go to college - hear me, now - just that in order for a certain number of minorities to go, a certain number of majorities must be excluded. I guess it's fair but it is still a bitter pill to swallow when you or your child can't get into a certain school but minorities can and you find out that the standards by which they were judged might have been different or that it was based, at least in part, on quotas having to be met.
And whoever used the word "whine" to say what whites are doing - if that isn't insensitive I don't know what is. It trivializes our experiences and feelings and we don't like that any more than you do. So it would be appreciated if you would try to show respect to us, just as you want shown to you.
i am a AA nurse so i have experienced just about everything that has been mentioned. as i get older though, it bothers me a little less (not alot..a little). i don't expect for other races to understand what its like to be black in america. so i try to do the best i can for myself and my family and go on with my life.
I am white and have also experienced prejudice - from blacks. I assure you, you are not alone. As I said before, white is a color, too. I handle it the way you do. I just keep on going, being the best nurse I can be, for all of my patients, regardless of their race, age, gender, politics, religion, illness, size, shape, ugly words or actions, whatever. Of course, being human, I might take a little longer to get around to getting them that extra wash cloth they asked for if they have been rude to me. I'm only human.
whether it is a nurse or a patient or family members..remember, racism is a two way street. The trick is not to personalize it or focus on the negative stereotypes applied to you. Your own insecurity is your greatest enemy, it will eat like a cancer into your soul until you see the world simplified into an "us" against "them" battlefield with predictable results.
of how it was even during the MLK days. That really amazes me. I have to tell THEM about Bull Connor and his dogs and his cold water hoses. I have to tell THEM about lunch counter sit-in's, Freedom Riders, and lots of other aspects of those days that are forever marked in my memory because I saw them on TV. They have never been told they couldn't sit wherever they liked, shop in any store, apply for any job. They are products of busing to suburban schools. A couple of them are very disrespectful of my being the RN and I have to take a gentle, motherly stance with them to get them to do things that I, as the RN, believe need doing. I know they all know how to do my job, 
being CNA's, but I'd somehow like to continue my little delusion that I am actually the decision-maker, since I am the one whose license is on the line.
Kanani_Ikike
167 Posts
Maisy, we are not dwelling on things of the past. We are talking about things that have occurred in 2007. Now the ones stuck in the past are the racist that choose to still practive hate. And contrary to what you say, it will be changed. You know, if people of color listened to anybody saying that things won't change, we would still be in those chains. You go tell Elizabeth Seton and Susan B. Anthony that things cannot be changed. You tell Martin Luther King that things cannot be changed. Things have and will continue to change. It's certain people that fear that change that want to hold others back that won't change.