Tower Of Babel

I am in a ‘right mood’ (as they would say in England) today! This post was stimulated by something that occurred at work at the hospital this morning.

I reached my Ward at about 10 AM this morning, in order to do my rounds and see the patients. When I arrived on the ward, there was a heated little argument taking place between the Nurse In Charge and one of our Ward Assistants. Now, this Nurse was working on our ward for the first time and she is a caucasian from Cuba. Yes, we have a fairly large number of Cuban Nurses here, filling the vacancies created by the mass migration of our good Jamaican Nurses to foreign lands.

The Ward Assistant was refusing to take the blood pressure of a patient because she said that she had been very rude to her when she tried. Now, this Nurse, had the audacity to tell the Ward Assiatant that the patient could not have told her what she said she did, because the patient is white, and white people do not behave that way! The poor ward assistant related to her, that when she tried to put the blood pressure cuff on her arm, she pulled away from her as if to scorn her because she is black! She says she tried to ignore it, but she then proceeded to tell her that she did not want her to take her ‘pressure’ as she wanted the Nurse, who is more qualified, to do it! What a piece of cheek!

Let me go on to enlighten you all about this patient. This Cuban Nurse, as a “New kid on the block” has a lot to learn about this woman. I cannot give you too much detail about her, as she is too ‘politically’ connected, in medicine and otherwise. Unfortunately, the net is by no means private, and I certainly have no control over who comes here to read my posts.

This patient is a Caucasian from England and is married to a Jamaican black man. She has been quite rude to many of the members of staff on our service, medical and otherwise in the past and though she has not made racist statements to any of the doctors, we have come to the conclusion that she does have racist tendencies by her behaviour, despite being married to a man of colour.

Of all the doctors on our service, I have the lightest complexion. She goes out of her way to be extremely polite to me, smiling with me on most occasions and even calling me Sir, at times. She is not overtly rude to the other doctors, but she is not this pleasant with them at all. I do not like this type of behaviour about her. As a consequence, I am ’strictly business’ when I am seeing her on rounds. I am not in any ‘long argument’ (long discourse) when I go to her bedside. As long as her medical needs are attended to, than I move along. At the same time I am not rude either.

Anyhow, I told the Ward Assistant to leave her, I would do the blood pressure, and I did. I then proceeded to give the Nurse a little introduction to our ward, and to myself. First of all, I had to let her know, that the colour of a persons skin dictates in no way, how they will behave in certain situations. Trash comes in all colours, black, white, purple or blue, and they are not listed here in any order of preference or dislike. There is more if you wish to endure…..

I remember on a trip to Florida earlier this year, my cousin Beloved and her Mother (my Aunt Mae) were coming out of the Sawgrass Mills Mall on a Saturday morning. As we stepped out of the mall, we heard screaming and cursing taking place. Immediately, the doctor in me tripped in, and I was wondering if there was an out of control Psychiatric patient in the vicinity, not that there was much that I could do, as I am not registered to practice medicine in the U.S. (and I don’t wish to face any lawsuit either!)

My cousin thought that someone was being held up, she has been living in the States for about twenty years now. In actual fact, what had taken place, is that a young woman was caught shoplifting in Marshall’s. The security officers had apparently been watching her steal in the store and waited until she had got outside, thinking she had escaped with her loot, to accost her. This they did and they were waiting on the Sunrise Police, to come and deal with her. She was Caucasian, with blonde hair and blue eyes.

It may be difficult for some Jamaicans (and obviously Cubans) to comprehend that no matter what ethnic background a person comes from, there exists good and bad. I say this because many Jamaicans have what we like to term a ‘foreign mind’. This means that we assume that anything from overseas, and this refers to consumer goods and indeed to people also, is better than what we have here. Hence, a white person, who is a foreigner, is naturally decent or better behaved, or deserves to be treated in a better fashion than our own black people. Rubbish!

Look at the sort of things that occur on ‘talk’ shows in the US, (perhaps better named ‘cuss’ shows if you ask me).

Yulonda (black): “When she and you was screwing on my couch at my house, and you said that she was just a frien, how the hell you think I feel?” Bubba (white, Yulonda’s boyfriend): “Well, I dunno, jus because me and she was screwin on your couch, it don’t mean dat I still don’t love you…….”

I hope you get the point. Now please don’t read me wrong. We have our fair share of trash here in Jamaica as well. What we refer to as a BHUTU (pronounced butu), a person of rather common behaviour.

I will end by summarising and saying that one should never seek to judge a persons deportment based on the colour of their skin. How we conduct ourselves is simply a matter of how we were raised, our socialisation and perhaps the influence of education. There is good and bad in every colour and racial extraction. Enough said.

Now that I have belched that off of my stomach, I will go and read a few other blogs and see if anyone else is as heated up as I am today. Fret not, I am cool as the breeze that is blowing through the window after rolling off the hills above my home. Tek care.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 25th, 2002 at 6:08 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.