*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

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's kind of like the fact that the most racially bigoted person I've ever met is a Chinese woman who says to my face that all white people are racists, and that other ethnicities can't be racist against the whites, because of centuries of white racism all adding up. Like original sin or something.

I just wanted to shake her until her head was bobbling, and then point out such lovely things in my racial background like the Trail of Tears, the Germany witch burnings, and the outlawing of Cymric as a spoken language.

It all boils down to people are stupid no matter what their dna looks like.

Makes me want to give mankind a beating as well.
*hugs!*

[derek-bliss.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't get so damned frustrated if the people yelling would at least acknowledge that every damned race has gone through this, and will likelt go through this again in the future...until we all quit pointing fingers at the fucking skin color (and yeah, I'll say it--I just did exactly that anyway), and pointing at the behavior.

I also wouldn't be so damned frustrated if I hadn't just spent ten minutes on the phone with a hispanic that was 'I know how to speak english, but I don't feel like speaking it right now'...and then still expecting me to be able to help her. At least until she cussed at me and hung up when I asked if she could at least slow down a little (because yeah, my spanish is crap).