WARNING: This is a controversial topic. Some readers may object to the viewpoints to be posted within. If you are one that cannot tolerate controversy, you have the right to not read this thread. Otherwise, all viewpoints are welcome.
Hello, this is Olive Vines here. I have been wanting to post a thread on this topic for a while. However, I have postponed doing that until now.
My observation is one that many minority nurses can relate too. Especially minorties in small southern towns such as the one I reside in. Here we go.
It seems to me that non-white, non-female nurses have the hardest time getting a job outside of acute care facilities. I live in a small town that is about an hour away from a metropolitan area. I have noticed that when it comes to needing nurses, a lot of physician offices, healthcare clinics, schools seem to overlook equally qualified minority nurses. I am including male nurses as being a minority because that is what they are in this profession.
When I take my daughter or accompany my mother to the doctor's or dentist's office, the staff is 9 times out of 10, overwhelmingly caucasian. But on the other hand, you go to any hospital and you will find that black females abd male nurses account for a large percentage of staff in those areas. We all know that non-acute care can be stressful, but not as near as stressful as primary care or any other branch of nursing. I see this strange trend in long term care facilities as well.
The only places where I have seen the exception is in large metropolitan areas where white people do not tend to reside. And I see a lot of black and male nurses relocating to Birmingham and Atlanta to get top notch jobs because the opportunities have been denied in small cities such as where I live. And while most of the jobs they garner happen to be in acute care facilities in those large cities, there seems to be more job satisfaction for some reason.
And while I'm on the topic. I also have noticed that I have better nights when most of my patients are African-American. Those patients tend to be less demanding of my time and take me more seriously as a health-care provider. But, on the other hand, when I have white patients, especially older white males, I see myself being ran up and down the hall for the non-essential things. And also, I get a lot of lip from the patient as to what they are NOT going to do or what medicine they are NOT going to take until they talk to their doctor. But, hold it right there, here's the kicker. When a nurse, who happens to be white, has had that same patient before, they seem not get that same attitude or disrespect from that same patient. They get a very nice, compliant patient while I put up with crap from them.
And one last thing, and this is just a personal vent: I am so tired of being mistaken for Environmental Services, Dietary or the PCA by white patients. And this is all while I have my namebadge that has RN, BSN on it. That's a big pet peeve of mine.
Now, I welcome any viewpoints on this topic because I feel it needs to be addressed. With a nursing shortage, why be so picky? Why do minorities have to be destined to work in acute care while white female nurses can have their pick and choose? And why aren't male nurses as accepted by older patients as female nurses are? And before I get bashed and called out for being prejudiced against whites, let me just say, my father is white so that pretty much kills that notion. I just call it like I see it and what I experience. What do you all think? I welcome all with open arms and I promise, I will not be offended by anything you say.
In response to lostdruid's post: Isn't the statement "low class trailer park residents" prejudiced? In light of the fact that your post was about biases, I found your assessment that people who live in trailers are low class interesting.
I should have put quotes around the phrase "low class trailer park", which perhaps would have served to communicate my intended point more effectively. This phrase was not used to convey bias, it was used in a response to the pervading idea that southern racism is confined to KKK-ish radicals who are racist because of indoctrination, low socioeconomic status or because they lack refinement. The image of the "low class trailer park" has been bandied about in media forms for a very long time. My choice of words were chosen in response to that characterization that southerners (specifically racist southerners) are confined to a particular socioeconomic group, when in fact it has been my personal experience that when it comes to the question "What kind of person is a racist", it blurs class boundaries. In fact, there was a time when I was naive (and oh so happy) with the firm belief that racism was a question of simply not knowing better, that it was an unfortunate side effect of growing up with negativity. As I grew, it saddened me deeply to discover that hatred and bias defy class lines. That is why I used the example of the church going, school running, president of the bank example. My husband taught in an inner city school in the south and it was heartbreaking the way that the children were referred to and talked about by the very people who were there to help them.
I wish I could remember the proper term, but in a writing class I took several years ago, we explored the phenomena of oppressed peoples adopting the views of their conquerers (think early aztec, early colonialism) against themselves, it was called something like autoethnographic____ something or another. It was fascinating to learn that racism and all forms of bias (sexism, classism, etc) can be internalized by the very people it was intended to suppress. That's some pretty powerful stuff!
Well let me hop down off my soapbox now, I just wanted to let you know that while your sentiment is appreciated (I assume it was made in the spirit of challenging ourselves to look inward at possible biases we may harbor?), I think you misinterpreted my meaning, as I would have to also think rather poorly of myself as I have lived in a few of those "low class trailer parks" my own self. :chuckle
Adri
p.s. Digging through my notes reminded me that it was Mary Louise Pratt who coined the phrase transculturation and it applies to what I was describing above. In my writing class we used her work extensively as the topic for most of our papers. Here is a glimpse of the concepts she utilizes:
[Later, Pratt explains one of her key terms, 'transculturation.'] Ethnographers have used this term to describe how subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture. While subjugated peoples cannot readily control what emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what they absorb into their own, and what they use it for. Transculturation is a phenomenon of the contact zone. [. . . ] While the imperial metropolis tends to understand itself as determining the periphery (in the emanating glow of the civilizing mission or the cash flow of development), it habitually blinds itself to the ways in which the periphery determines the metropolis - beginning, perhaps, with the latter's obsessive need to present and re-present its peripheries and its others continually to itself.
[Next, Pratt more fully explains "the contact zone."] I use [it] to refer to the space of colonial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict. I borrow the term "contact" here from its use in linguistics, where the term contact language refers to improvised languages that develop among speakers of different native language who need to communicate with each other consistently, usually in the context of trade. Such languages begin as pidgins, and are called creoles when they come to have native speakers of their own. Like the societies of the contact zone, such languages are commonly regarded as chaotic, barbarous, lacking in structure. [. . .] "Contact zone" in my discussion is often synonymous with "colonial frontier." But while the latter term is grounded within a European expansionist perspective (the frontier is a frontier only with respect to Europe), "contact zone" is an attempt to invoke the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect. By using the term "contact," I aim to foreground the interactive, improvisational dimensions of colonial encounters so easily ignored or suppressed by diffusionist accounts of conquest and domination. A "contact" perspective emphasizes how subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other. It treats the relations among colonizers and colonized, or travelers and "travelees," not in terms of separateness or apartheid, but in terms of copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices, often within radically asymmetrical relations of power.
Well, I'm in southern Arkansas.....where integration started, as we all know, at Central High in Little Rock.
I don't work in an "acute care" facility, but we have several African American LPNs, one African American RN, and the DON is Native American.
I think we are pretty well rounded out where I work.
Well maybe not.....we don't have any Hispanic nurses here, but there are alot of Hispanic people living in this area now.
My own personal physician has an African American LPN. There are 2 other doctors in that clinic, and I do think their nurses are white.
But of course there are alot more doctors in town, and I don't know what nationalities all their nurses are.
I, too, live in Arkansas (suburb of Little Rock) and I think that our state has come a long way regarding racism. I work in a hospital where there are probably as many African Americans as whites, including the mgt. positions.
I'm not saying that the problem doesn't still exist, however, I think it is much better here than in some surrounding states (i.e. Mississippi, Alabama, etc).
About racism and education level. The most prejudiced person I have ever worked with had doctorate level plus education, and firmly asserted evolution, crudely referring to some racial groups as coming from an inferior lineage. Ugh!!! My bible teaches that we are all God's children, you're my sister,or my brother.
Unfortunately, job discrimination exists everywhere, no matter what your race or national origin is.
My sister, who will be turning 59 next Tuesday actually had a potential employer tell her to her face last year that she didn't want to hire her because she was "afraid that she would get sick". I went ballistic,
when she told me what happened, asking her if she reported this woman and
her employer to the EEOC, for that was pure, unadulturated age
discrimination. "What good will that do?", my sister wanted to know. "It's my word against theirs, and even if I did take them to court, they'd drag it out for years". She finally found a part-time bookeeping job late last year...but only because a former business partner recommended her to one of his customers. Like the old saying, it's not about who you are, but who you know that counts. :angryfire
Now isn't that sad? A younger person could get sick as well. That was a stupid person that your sister talked to and I am so sorry for it. Let me tell you: Your sister is better off being away from an idiot like that. But it is so sad that once you get a certain age, they won't hire you. That's just as bad as racism.
I had several black patients in LTC, and they were not generally as demanding as the whites.... and oddly, they (the black pts.) preferred me over the other aids though I was (the only) white. Clearly they were not prejudiced towards me because I was white. I seemed to have more in common with my black pts. I don't think it was a class thing, because they spanned over a wide range of professions and experiences.
I did have some problems being a white nursing assistant with some nurses. One told me once, that though I had been requested as a permanent assignee for a group of patient, who themselves were a mixture of races, that they could not give me the assignment "because the other NAs would think I got it because I was white". Funny thing was it was a heavy assignment no one wanted. I would get to work before the other assistants, and though many were actually late, they would choose there assignments and I would get what ever was left. Dont know why that was, but because of other statements made, it may have been my being white.
But then in home health I was told to not do so much for my patients, I was taking too good care of them, and then was given a so so rating....despite the facts my nurses said I was there favorite. I don't think that was racial, just a part of the strange strange flopsy mopsy world of nursing assisting. The mind of a supervisor, who can know it?
I said all this to say that yes, prejudice does cut both ways. But I can in no way equate the inconvenience I have experienced in my life to the true cruelty that I have seen blacks experience.
I am so sorry that you had to deal with such stupid people. I tell you, the longer I live, I swear that I come in contact with some people that are outright ignorant. I think our jobs would be so much easier if we didn't have to deal with those dummies.
About racism and education level. The most prejudiced person I have ever worked with had doctorate level plus education, and firmly asserted evolution, crudely referring to some racial groups as coming from an inferior lineage. Ugh!!! My bible teaches that we are all God's children, you're my sister,or my brother.
Isn't that something like Eugenics or something of the sort? I agree with you fully. We are all God's children and we really are the same people in different shades of color. I don't know how this racism thing began, but it is of the devil and I pray that just like the devil, it will one day be banished.
I, too, live in Arkansas (suburb of Little Rock) and I think that our state has come a long way regarding racism. I work in a hospital where there are probably as many African Americans as whites, including the mgt. positions.
I'm not saying that the problem doesn't still exist, however, I think it is much better here than in some surrounding states (i.e. Mississippi, Alabama, etc).
I agree. I think Arkansas has come a long way.
I watched a PBS program last night about what they did to the Japanese Americans during WW 2.
I got in on the program after it had already begun, but apparently the government forced these Americans.......yes, they were Americans, as much as I, myself, born and raised here, out of their homes, took their property away from them, and brought them to these "camps" that the government had built here in Arkansas for just this purpose.
It was so sad. I felt so bad for those people. Many of them are still living today, and they interviewed for this program. They experienced some difficult times, and racial prejudices, also.
And I won't say that the problem doesn't still exist, hidden way down deep in people's personalities, just waiting to surface it's ugly head.
I just know that God created all of us, He loves us all, and when we get to heaven, well......if you don't like color, maybe you'd better implement a change of plans.
:angryfire Dear fellow nurses, southern towns are not the only place where racism is alive and well, I work in St. Louis and let me tell you, all I get from ppl is, "Are you my nurse aid?" (even though I just delegated a task or something to my white NA), or, "So you bettered yourself and went to night school." WHAT?!?!?!? Like I used to live some lowly existence, or I used to be some crack head or something. I went to school in the daytime like everybody else at my university. I hate the way that my patients and Dr's believe anything that come out of a white face, but let me tell them the same thing they have to verify and identify. I could maybe understand if I were unproffesional, but I am not, I am excellent at my job, always perfectly groomed, uniform neatly pressed and clean. It just burns me up that my white co workers are always considered the authority or expert on any subject, even when its not thier pt, oh how many times have I sat there in disbelief as some nurse that does not even have my patient try to answer a question about them from the doctor or family. Finally I just asked a Dr. , "what is it about me that makes you think I cant perform my job?" (the jury is still out on that one folks) I just got accepted into a CRNA program, and I look forward to my unconcious pts. Lawd bring me peace!
Racism is a stupid, horrible thing no matter where it comes from. I am so sorry that so many of you have faced this. I am white and I am finding also that I am at times faced with it. I am ALWAYS courteous to my patients and I can honestly say that I have never even paid attention to whether they are black white, hispanic or other. The other day I went into a pt's room to get her ready for her pitocin induction (she and her family were black). I tried EVERYTHING to get them to talk to me to no avail. All I could get from them were short one word responses. Finally the mother of my patient asked me if we had other patients that morning, whether they were black or white, and if any black nurses worked in the area. Racism crosses all bounderies and no matter what your color, disability, age or sex, it hurts.
Specializes in Peds Cardiology,Peds Neuro,Pedi ER,PICU, IV Jedi.
First off, Olive, I apologize for those patients who treat you as less of a person than you are. As a paramedic I get that a lot. Ignorance is no excuse...I'm guessing their mothers just didn't raise them right.
As a white male who lives in the suburbs of Dallas I can see where you're coming from...at Children's we have a good mixture of all races represented in the staff on days and nights. But where I live? Not really, unless the doctor is not caucasian.
I'm certain that ignorance still prevails in hiring practices...well, I'll hire this white new grad, even though I need an experienced nurse, but I'm hesitant to hire an African American woman. What kind of fecal matter is that??
Did you pass the NCLEX too? Yes? Well dammit you're a nurse, and you deserve to be respected.
I just don't understand.
Hi from Dallas
vamedic4
WARNING: This is a controversial topic. Some readers may object to the viewpoints to be posted within. If you are one that cannot tolerate controversy, you have the right to not read this thread. Otherwise, all viewpoints are welcome.
Hello, this is Olive Vines here. I have been wanting to post a thread on this topic for a while. However, I have postponed doing that until now.
My observation is one that many minority nurses can relate too. Especially minorties in small southern towns such as the one I reside in. Here we go.
It seems to me that non-white, non-female nurses have the hardest time getting a job outside of acute care facilities. I live in a small town that is about an hour away from a metropolitan area. I have noticed that when it comes to needing nurses, a lot of physician offices, healthcare clinics, schools seem to overlook equally qualified minority nurses. I am including male nurses as being a minority because that is what they are in this profession.
When I take my daughter or accompany my mother to the doctor's or dentist's office, the staff is 9 times out of 10, overwhelmingly caucasian. But on the other hand, you go to any hospital and you will find that black females abd male nurses account for a large percentage of staff in those areas. We all know that non-acute care can be stressful, but not as near as stressful as primary care or any other branch of nursing. I see this strange trend in long term care facilities as well.
The only places where I have seen the exception is in large metropolitan areas where white people do not tend to reside. And I see a lot of black and male nurses relocating to Birmingham and Atlanta to get top notch jobs because the opportunities have been denied in small cities such as where I live. And while most of the jobs they garner happen to be in acute care facilities in those large cities, there seems to be more job satisfaction for some reason.
And while I'm on the topic. I also have noticed that I have better nights when most of my patients are African-American. Those patients tend to be less demanding of my time and take me more seriously as a health-care provider. But, on the other hand, when I have white patients, especially older white males, I see myself being ran up and down the hall for the non-essential things. And also, I get a lot of lip from the patient as to what they are NOT going to do or what medicine they are NOT going to take until they talk to their doctor. But, hold it right there, here's the kicker. When a nurse, who happens to be white, has had that same patient before, they seem not get that same attitude or disrespect from that same patient. They get a very nice, compliant patient while I put up with crap from them.
And one last thing, and this is just a personal vent: I am so tired of being mistaken for Environmental Services, Dietary or the PCA by white patients. And this is all while I have my namebadge that has RN, BSN on it. That's a big pet peeve of mine.
Now, I welcome any viewpoints on this topic because I feel it needs to be addressed. With a nursing shortage, why be so picky? Why do minorities have to be destined to work in acute care while white female nurses can have their pick and choose? And why aren't male nurses as accepted by older patients as female nurses are? And before I get bashed and called out for being prejudiced against whites, let me just say, my father is white so that pretty much kills that notion. I just call it like I see it and what I experience. What do you all think? I welcome all with open arms and I promise, I will not be offended by anything you say.
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chadash
1,429 Posts
Oh yeah, the age thing, the hospital won't even look at my resume. Watch out girls (and guys!) this one will bite all your butts!