*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

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

Okay, I see where you're directing this. Or to whom you're directing this.

That Bangladeshi crew was lazy and needed to be written up, worked with, and then fired on a person-by-person basis. I've had suck employees that I needed to fire, but because I hadn't been keeping track of their transgressions and weaknesses, I had to be REAL careful of getting rid of without maximizing the business' liability.

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.

Bigotry precludes that. In my experience, bigoted people are more common than those whose good manners' extend to all folk they encounter.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, they were, but here's the rub; I did write them up for the specifics of what they weren't doing.

It got pushed under the rug because the company didn't want to be seen as being prejudiced. They didn't want it to become a race thing, either (I was the only white working the store). So, their transgressions were downplayed, and none of them got fired. Not until two of them started dipping into the cash drawer and got caught on tape (and I almost got fired for that one since I was the one responsible for counting the cash. I'd come up short, and they'd say that I was taking it when I was counting for the bank because proceedure was one person in a locked room at that point. It became person in a locked room with a camera because we didnt have the staff to do two people counts.)

And I've encountered the opposite, and that's with living in areas with a huge racial mix. But the ones that pull it? Pull it big time.

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

Yes, they were, but here's the rub; I did write them up for the specifics of what they weren't doing.

It got pushed under the rug because the company didn't want to be seen as being prejudiced.

That's a pity.

What do you mean with encountering the opposite? And what is being pulled?

[(Anonymous)]

That bigoted people outnumber the not-bigoted. I agree that of you go looking for it, you'll find it, and I agree that in certain places, there's a whole lot of them around, but I don't agree that there's more of them.

Because if there were? we'd be in a lot worse shape in the tolerance thing. We not good, but most folks at least aren't out looking for 'different' people to go after. Just a few very vocal folks.

But by the same token, the few bigots I have had the misfortune of meeting, were REALLY bad.

....Like my mom.

I'll have to tell you THAT story off camera as it were.

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

Okay, well, I'll go for the off-camera story later, but I'm telling you, in my experience, and the experience of so many other poc, they don't go looking for bigoted experiences -- white folks keep bringing it.

Part of it isn't looking fuckery. I think that in many cases, it's culturally acceptable for white folks to slight poc. I didn't always think this way, but I've seen it more and more as I've gotten older, and I'm working way harder to manage my emotions and reactions than study rude white folks.

But I think, that privilege, bigotry, racism, and rudeness are related, not synonymous.

I think, I may be more inclined to think along the lines of chiss and rabicam. It seems to me that you think that wrong=wrong. I don't see it that way. But I'm heading home. We'll chat more later.