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Oct. 8, 2005 Not long ago a middle-aged black lady was in my office with typical viral head cold symptoms, and after getting her history and examining her, I explained that she had a virus cold and we could treat the symptoms. Her body would have to fight off the virus, however, as we had no antibiotics for that. At which point she decided, for reasons of her own, to play the race card. “You won’t give me antibiotics just because I’m a strong black woman with attitude and you can’t tolerate a strong black woman.” At which point, even the friend with her seemed a bit confused. “My wife would be really surprised to hear that,” I said. The patient looked a bit puzzled. “Why is that/” “Well, I just gave my wife the same advice this morning, and she’s a blue-eyed blonde Swedish type. She would be surprised to learn that I wouldn’t give her antibiotics because she’s a strong black woman.” I am not sure the patient completely got it, but she came back another time with another problem, high blood pressure, which we have been treating, and now we’re pretty good friends. And years ago, in a former life, when I was a company commander in the military, the Equal Opportunity guys from headquarters came around, and they said, in so many words, “We’re here to make sure the racial and sex quotas are up to standards. You must have 25% blacks in the outfit.” “I can’t do that,” I replied. “Well, it’s mandatory. You’ll have to reach 25%.” “No can do. Half the unit is black, and I’d have to fire half of them to get down to 25%.” “Oh. Well, you’ll also have to get to 25% females.” “Can’t do that either, as half the unit is female, and I’d have to fire half my female troops to get down to 25%. By the way, I have a Chinese fellow and two Koreans in the unit. Do you have a quota for them?” At which point, they quit annoying me and went off to harass some other commander. And not that long ago, when I was a hospital commander, the EO folks came around and said to my EO officer, “You haven’t had any equal opportunity complaints filed or EO classes held in the past couple years. What’s going on?” “Colonel Mick wouldn’t allow that, sir,” said the EO officer, who just happened to be a black female. “Why, that’s horrible! He won’t permit any EO complaints to be filed? “ “No, sir, you misunderstand. He wouldn’t allow any EO problems to occur. We all know he wouldn’t stand for racism or sexism in this outfit. Since we don’t have a problem, we don’t want to waste time with classes on preventing a problem we don’t have.” At which point, the EO enforcers went away. Currently I live in the Tidewater Area of Virginia, the very ground upon which the first slave ships landed. My wife and I were out to a restaurant last night, a moderately high-class place in Virginia Beach. At the next table there were, it appeared, two or three families, the couples were black-white, and the children were an interesting mixture of black, shades of brown, and some rather pigment-challenged little squirts, and they all appeared to be quite happily playing together, and no one I could see was hauling out the lynching ropes for the black fellows or painting scarlet letters on the ladies. In fact, nobody seemed to be paying any particular attention at all. There were, in fact, at least two other racially mixed couples in the restaurant, and they too were attracting no attention. Indeed, years ago—many, many years ago—violence might have been threatened or visited upon racially mixed couples. Some people are still stewing over old problems. Once upon a time, there was a huge racism monster living in the closet or under the bed. Last time I looked, however, he had mostly shriveled up to a mere shell of his former self. To some people who haven’t looked in the closet for a long time, however, he’s still big and scary. For some, who haven’t bothered to study and work hard and save and invest, the racism monster remains a handy excuse for their failure. And for some who realize that racism has mostly died a natural death, pretending the monster is still big and strong gives them a way to exert power and influence over others. We call that playing the race card, don’t we? ------------ About the author Brooks A. Mick: 63-yr-old physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre. Email: brooks15@cox.net ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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