Bigots in Hospital Gowns

This feels all too familiar.

After watching the violence unfold in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend, after watching white supremacists descend on the city where I went to medical school, and onto the University of Virginia campus where I became a doctor, this is what I said to myself.

I've seen this anger before.

For four years, my task was to learn to treat people who were sick. Even the ones who wore their Confederate pride openly, even the ones who threatened to shoot me on home health visits. My task was to learn from experienced physicians how to help people get well. Even when they witnessed racist behavior directed toward me. Even when they glossed over that bigotry.

The response to the violence in Charlottesville has had its fair share of denial -- people saying, this is not the city I know, the protesters came from elsewhere, this is not the America I know.

In Charlottesville, this was exactly the America I knew. This was the Virginia I knew. This was the medicine I knew. Even on graduation day, one the happiest days of my life, my family broke bread at a restaurant I later learned was owned by a man affiliated with the University of Virginia who had made controversial and racist statements.

This is the quiet racism of every day -- the small transgressions that we gloss over in our daily lives. The outrage that only comes when men carrying tiki torches march openly. The America I know tolerates racism as long as it's quiet, as long as it doesn't cause a scene. Until it kills an innocent protester.

Michigan Disability Resistance

As behavioral and physical health undergo scrutiny and shifting policy, our community must hold onto the values that will support our lives of freedom and choice.

Bigots in Hospital Gowns