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I told myself never to do that. My motto has always been: “Emphasize the positive, do not reinforce the negative.” But I have just returned home from my first specialist training and this story seems to be writing itself.
It was another training afternoon in Utrecht. At lunchtime we were greeted with coffee, tea and sandwiches in a central room where participants from various events gathered. I chatted with former colleagues and went to the buffet alone. Suddenly I heard a complete stranger say to me, “You can’t clean this up yet, we just started eating lunch.”
I made it clear with a joke that I wasn’t coming to clean. That was it for me until I turned back to my colleagues table. They looked at me with wide eyes. One of them whispered, “That’s not possible, is it?” The idea that I was the cleaning lady in an unspecified public place where I could have potentially had a thousand other jobs was shocking to them. I waved him off and continued. The training itself was great. But on the way back to the most beautiful corner of Brabant… things started to bother me.
But why did it actually bother you? That worried me more than the sectional inspections. Because I knew this was just a small incident in a pattern I was familiar with. Nothing shocking or unique. I think back to a moment as an assistant doctor in the Corona department in Tilburg. I visited a patient who was on the phone. The insulating materials covered almost everything except my headscarf, which was particularly visible around my neck. The patient first interrupted his conversation and looked up. Without addressing me directly, he continued his conversation: “Just keep talking, it’s just the cleaning lady.” I later heard a colleague say that she found it difficult to be seen as a nurse and not a doctor because of her gender. Once again I joked, “Bring streamers because that’s a promotion for me. If only they thought I was the nurse!”
“Just keep talking, it’s just the cleaning lady.”
So a clear pattern, but was it malignant or benign? Is it discrimination or ignorance? It always felt pretty good to me; doesn’t adequately explain today’s gnawing. Is it even worth writing this down? Or am I only allowed to write when it concerns extraordinary incidents with clearer, racist tones? Should I talk about my internship in general medicine in Eindhoven? When I heard a couple in the waiting room give the GP permission for the intern to be present at the interview, but when I realized I was the intern, 1) both were visibly shocked, 2) one of them said : “Is that possible now? Become a doctor yet?” and 3) the consent was revoked in my presence? I didn’t want to talk about it because it was the exception and not my daily practice. And not at all comparable to what happened today.
Dozens of kilometers later I put my finger on it. The reason for the nagging was the discrepancy between my reaction and that of my colleagues. They didn’t know that was the norm for me. I, on the other hand, initially thought that it was hardly worth registering. Apparently there was a gap, while my motto of not mentioning negative experiences was solely aimed at preventing a gap. Because I assumed that talking about discrimination would seem offensive or unbelievable. That it would be polarizing. Maybe people would even think that I had become so victimized (yuck, yuck) that I had lost sight of the truth. All of this would only alienate colleagues even more. But by not mentioning it, I gave them no opportunity at all to understand my daily practice. So I helped a lot with the blind spots and the gap. Painful.
So let’s name it anyway. And my motto, which is now fifteen years old and which I decided after a lecture on discrimination that I gave in pre-university education, is like a sacred trust.
After that trip, I finally understood why a professor at Radboud had once asked me to teach what it was like to complete the training/specialization with a different ethnicity or religion. At the time, I felt it was unnecessary to classify myself as an “other,” regardless of one’s noble intentions. Now I understand that it was a necessary step towards rapprochement. The trip was over. I parked my car as one last ironic thought crossed my mind: For someone who was constantly mislabeled as a cleaning lady, I’ve done a lot of cleaning over the years.
author
Ihsane Mokadem, geriatrician, Elkerliek Hospital, Helmond
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