*Sigh*

[silverthorne]

Okay. Tolerance is a good thing. Cultural diversity is a good thing. Letting people keep their traditions is a good thing.

...I just received a 200-page-thick workbook for the nurses in post partum.

It is pages and pages of how to deal with people from different cultures. Everything except how to deal with white people.

Thing is, most of it? Is common sense and general ettiquette that even the dreaded 'white people' know. Or at least it was at some point. Lord knows I was raised that way, because most of what I read was 'no shit, I knew that already'. The rest of it, if you listen to your patient in the first place and work with them (and the patient communicates and just doesn't get all closed-mouthed), should come easy enough.

The nurses though will have to go to classes for this. Memorize it all. Take tests. Get certificates for it or do it all over again.

Just so someone's toes don't get stepped on.

I'm all for being polite and meeting people in the social middle.

But this? Shit like this, when it's required reading because if we don't do it, some numbnut somewhere will take exception to the way you bow your head to them or something else which should be pretty damned trivial in the face of trying to take care of a sick patient, will sue the crap out of the hospital for racial discrimination.

The fact that we even need books like this just make me want to hide from everyone on the fucking planet until they remove cranial mass from rectum area.

This is when I start losing faith and losing willingess to listen to 'white people are horrible' things. This right here.

Everyone has got to bend a little, or we will all break.

Comments

Re: 'Caucasian' work better?

[(Anonymous)]

There's a difference between setting boundaries and looking down on other folks and their ability to not be assholes to each other if they would just bother a little bit.

Oh, I do 'suck it up and do my job'. In fact...I think this is the first time I've complained about my job other than the occasional 'where is my truck' and 'god I'm wiped'. Other than that? I work hard, keep my trap shut, don't gossip, and don't try fucking with folks.

...well, okay, except the drivers that have a problem with a girl doing a man's job. Them I usually smile at and tell them how long I've been doing the job they think I cannot do.

And I've kept it for close to a decade. So...must be doing something right.

Honestly? It's usually the other folks that are rude. Hanging up in the middle of sentences. Getting angry and impatient when I run down the list of questions of things I need to know to put down for certain items before I can take them up. Cutting people off in the middle of sentences. And don't get written up for it, either.

Re: 'Caucasian' work better?

[molotovcoqtiz.livejournal.com]

I repeat, go to the ACLU then. If you want there to be change, actively work to enact it.

[(Anonymous)]

I do. I don't go there, but I do my own work.

Re: 'Caucasian' work better?

[(Anonymous)]

I should make that clearer--we have an ethics line.