I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Pick a Topic, Any Topic
4th of July
2012 Election
2016 Presidential Election
Amazon
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
Andrew Sullivan
atheists
Barack Obama
baseball
Beer
blogging
Book Review
Books
Bucket List
Caples Lake
Carrie Rubin
Challah
communication
Cooking
Democrats
Deviation
Disneyland
Donald Trump
Exercise
Fear
Fiction
food
Gay Marriage
Goodreads
Haiku
Hillary Clinton
Inspiration
Israel
Kevin Brennan
Kindle
Life
life choices
Listen to it Loud
Love
Martin Luther King
Mitt Romney
Music
NaNoWriMo
NaPoMo
NFL
Northville Five & Dime
Obama
One Night in Bridgeport
parenting
photo
pizza
Poetry
politics
Publishing
Racism
Relationships
religion
Republicans
Retirement
Reviews
Running
S.F. Giants
Self-Publishing
SF Giants
short story
soccer
Spotify
Stephen King
Tallest Man on Earth
The Irrepairable Past
Thoughts
Vacation
We Drink Because We're Poets
Weed Therapy
writing
Your right to throw a punch stops at my nose. Similarly, your right to dictate the race of your medical caretakers stops at the door of the public hospital. This guy knew there were black nurses attending the babies; he should have gone to another hospital or done a home birth.
Btw, I’m betting that this jerk’s baby was delivered via public assistance.
Oh–and Israeli hospitals are full of Palestinian patients. Medical care is not a free speech issue.
I can’t disagree with anything you said. But I’m pretty certain that forcing him into a situation where he has no choice but to accept the care of those he hates will only make him hate more. So, what’s the point?
There are several points. For one, the business of a hospital is not to please patient’s relatives, but to care for the patient. One could assume that the nurses were hired because they were the most capable, no matter the color of their skin. Thus, the point of insisting that the best practitioner care for the baby is to give the baby the best care available. Second point: ignorance is at the root of the father’s prejudice. The only hope of changing his mind is to force him in to a relationship with the hated Other, to teach him that the Other is not so Other.
We all know that the individuals who have the right to direct the care for a minor are the parents, unless they are doing so in a way that is inherently dangerous to the child — for instance, denying a needed blood transfusion. This, however, was not going to result in a dangerous condition for the newborn at the hospital. As for learning the other is not so other … I believe it has to happen organically to have the most success. This guy walked in, showed his swastika, and said no black nurses touch my baby, and left a note saying the same thing. There was nothing he was going to learn in this situation if they hadn’t respected his racist wishes.
And, I can’t believe I’m arguing on this side of this issue.
Yeah, I can’t believe you are either. You’re going to have to give back one of your “I’m a Bleeding Heart Liberal” awards! 🙂
bit tricky. In a public hospital here, you wouldn’t have the right to say who looked after your baby. In a private hospital, I guess you would – although if you were that openly racist, I’m not sure anyone would take your buck. When it’s a baby, your care has to be for the baby and not the parents, so it’s not like you can just say ‘up to you mate’ and leave the baby to look after itself. But with an adult, I think that’s just what you might do.
Parents have the right to direct the medical care of their children as long as they aren’t creating a dangerous situation. There were other, non-African-American nurses available to provide the needed care. As I said in another comment … I can’t believe I’m arguing on the side of this that I am. I need a shower to wash off the dirt.
Now the shrink in me comes out: perhaps you feel so strongly about this because as a parent, your authority has been threatened in some way by the State. Otherwise, I can see no hope for you–other than that shower.
I have a strong belief in parents’ rights with respect to their children. And my bleeding heart nature sometimes ends where empty gestures begin.
I wasn’t going to respond, but I can’t help myself! I’m not a judge or, even, a lawyer. But I have the feeling that parental rights don’t extend to racial preferences in medical care. This is not a simple case of black and white (sorry!). There are many issues embedded within it (which is probably why it’s so tantalizing to argue). I feel about parental rights the way you do about empty gestures.
I take huge offence with this post maybe because I am a WoC and because your analogies are really invalid. The Israel-Palestine is a huge conflict, are you insinuating that there is a similar war against Black people?
You mention that somebody should have the right to refuse medical treatment by people if they are of the same ethnicity of their rapist. Isn’t this discrimination? Isn’t this perpetuating stereotypes? Just because someone was raped by a member of a certain race does not mean that all people of that race are at fault for that person’s actions. Why should the nurses have to put up with such racist behaviour? I think it’s very sad that this still occurs in society. It is very degenerative. We have not come far at all.
I can understand where you are coming from, I really do and I have nothing personal against you but to side with such people (even if it is marginally) is spitting on the people who have had to fight against being stigmatised for decades.
I think Jane put it very nicely. If he was so horrified by the notion of black hands touching his child then he shouldn’t have gone to that hospital in first place. No one should have to put up with such requests.
Once again, this is not an attack on you. I am just stating my opinion and I think it’s good to debate such issues and raise awareness.
Mana … I completely agree with everything you say, including the outrage. I’ll be posting soon about another moral outrage, where I’m one of the outraged and I struggle to understand the people who aren’t … it’s the tweet that referred to a nine-year-old actress with the “c” word. I get the outrage at this incident with this racist. I just don’t know if anything is accomplished by forcing the situation in that hospital. And, telling him he has to go somewhere else then isn’t a solution either. The newborn needs care now, not later. What if they had denied his request and he had turned violent? What if he had taken the baby out of the hospital and the baby had died or suffered irreparable harm as a result? Isn’t providing the necessary care to that baby more important than any other consideration? Including our outrage at the crap the baby has for a father.
You are right about the newborn being the first priority and from what I read in the link you provided his demands were met so at least he walked away from this as a happy chappy.