When a doctor treated her fear, pain, and tears with disdain then anger, Ethel Easter decided hide a recorder in her braids in case her Texas surgeon "accidentally" killed her.
DURING EASTER'S HERNIA OPERATION
DURING EASTER'S HERNIA OPERATION
"After Easter was sedated, the surgeon recounted their dispute to the other doctors. “She’s a handful,” he said in the recording. “She had some choice words for us in the clinic when we didn’t book her case in two weeks.”
“She said, ‘I’m going to call a lawyer and file a complaint,'” he recalled with a laugh. (Easter said she never mentioned a lawyer.)
“That doesn’t seem like the thing to say to the person who’s going to do your surgery,” another male voice retorted.
After repeated jokes about her belly button and peals of laughter at one point in the procedure, referrred to Easter as “always the queen,” The surgeon responded, “I feel sorry for her husband.”
The surgeon also used the name “Precious” several times in a manner that Easter interpreted as racial.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/07/patient-hid-recorder-in-her-hair-as-surgeons-operated-on-her-their-words-left-her-deeply-distressed/
In case you've forgotten, "Precious" is a 2009 movie
about a fictional girl named "Precious" who is
poor, black, & illiterate that winds up being
saved from sexual and physical abuse
by the light and white people
So yeah. Easter isn't confused.
The "Precious" references had racial content and can be estimated to be racist in intention--especially after the Who-Do-You-Think-YOU-ARE-N-WORD when she insisted she couldn't take the pain for two months before he decided to fit her in and do her surgery
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that all the "Precious" comments were about body shaming. Precious was a big girl and white beauty aesthetic says white, rail thin, and doggone near ass-less is beautiful.
But the racism that is the name calling, stereotyping and body shaming is just icing on the cake. The racism cake itself is made up of the disregard for the pain caused by the hernia. The racism cake is almost made up of the disregard for the words that came out of her mouth in regards to her drug allergies.
Easter's breathing problems may have been the result as of something prescribed for her. When somebody tells you that a medication gives them a rash, you don't give the medicine to them anyway unless there's no other choice or you just don't care about the potential side effects....for....some....reason.
Make no mistake. Racist doctors with this level of contempt likely kill people regularly.
The number of black people slaughtered during The Tuskegee Experiment is probably minuscule compared to the unrecorded deaths of black and brown patients at the hands of careless white surgeons who barely saw them as human
You simply cannot have this much disrespect for another person's being and then be expected to work just as fast and just as hard as you would for a person you see as an equal human being when something unexpected happens during surgery.
I have anecdotal evidence that this is true. I have family members that weren't nearly as lucky as Ethel Easter
Some of my relatives have seen the same contempt in the eyes of their white doctors that Easter saw in the eyes of hers. So these family members of mine refused to go to the doctor when they were pain. They wouldn't go until symptoms like coughing up blood appeared, despite incessant badgering from others, not until it was too late. As a result, instead of being my mother's age they're dead.
Don't you ever let anybody convince you that race isn't real, that racism isn't real, and that racism is damn deadly.
Remembering my cousin Garfield today.
A man was recently awarded $500,000 after recording what was said during his operation. I hope that sets precedent for this woman. If she's at a county hospital she could probably use the money. And she deserves a lot more than $500,000 after feeling forced by the pain to go under the knife of a doctor she knows does not see her as a human being.
I hope she gets millions of dollars and that this story gets nationwide attention.
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