week 6- personal side of Bias, Prejudice and Oppression

I was in a hospital taking my daughter to see the doctor. It is a hospital in Beijing that serves the “expats” community. Most of the doctors, there are foreign doctors. This will also mean the medical fees you have to pay are higher than other regular local hospitals.  As foreign doctors have to get a local Chinese license in order to practice in the hospitals in Beijing, it is not easy to this hospital to get foreign doctors in certain expert areas.  There was a white woman coming to the receptionist to ask for an appointment with the doctor.  The receptionist gave her a couple of Chinese.  But the lady specifically said she did not want a Chinese doctor even he might be able to speak perfect English.  Such statement or request for it is beyond racial discrimination. It embedded the message of micro-invalidation that she did not trust Chinese doctor would have the capability equivalent to the foreign doctor counterpart. Prejudice is “an attitude, opinion, or feeling formed without adequate prior knowledge, thought, or reason” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010) It was an obvious prejudice as she even did not know the background or capability of the Chinese doctors.

The incident above diminished equity. Equity is defined as “treatment that is fair and just, taking into account the capacities of individuals, while not discriminating because of racial identity, ethnicity, gender, religion, ability, or any other aspect of their identity”.  Firstly the lady was biased with racial identity. She explicitly ruled out Chinese doctors. Secondly she also ruled out the ability of Chinese doctors in general meaning she did not have the confidence in Chinese doctors being able to help her medical problems.  Thirdly she probably worried about language problems of the Chinese physician.

I felt sorry for the Chinese doctors working in this hospital. I was told that the salary for Chinese doctors and foreign doctors was also different. The Chinese doctors were being paid on local terms while the foreign doctors were on expats terms with a lot of various allowances and subsidies.  Such differences were not based on the background or experiences or credentials of the doctors but based on their nationalities or where they come from.  Are Chinese doctors capabilities worse than the foreign doctors?  Statistics has shown that Chinese doctors working in local hospitals have more experiences than their foreign doctors working in other countries in the same number of years as the quantity of patients that Chinese doctors have to see per day in China is a lot more than those in foreign countries given the population size in China.

To improve the situation, the hospital should make promotion about the background and experiences of the Chinese doctors so that patients will know there might be no differences between the two types of physicians.  Of course, the pay scale of both doctors should be the same so that the hospital can attract the best Chinese doctors to work for them. Thirdly the hospital should provide support to Chinese doctors in terms of language translation so that Chinese doctors can communicate well with a foreign patient.

References:

Derman-Sparks L. & Edwards J.O. (2010). Anti-Bias Education for young children or ourselves Key Terms (ppxi-xiii), NAEYC.

week 4 - microagressions

This is an example of microaggression of myself.  It is the end of the financial year, and our Finance colleague should prepare the year-end financial summary for management to review. As the finance manager is sick, I have to instruct the accountant to make the statements, etc.  Our accountant has been with the company for more than five years. She is a causal person always wearing jeans and T-shirt.  I always feel she is young and looks like a student.  I have seldom contacted the accountant directly for works in the past. She is  quite senior in the company finance department.  So I sent her an email listing all the required documents and statements I need. Also, I list her details of all the process and data where she should be able to find, etc. in very significant details. I also send her the sample of the reports that I need and the government may need for review.  Then she wrote me back an email politely acknowledged the receipt of my email and information. Then she also told me that she was the one doing all these works during the last five years. With a second thought, I think I am committing the microinvalidation. I think I do realize she is the one doing the reports most of the time. I have not dealt with her on reports before. So I gave her all details how to do it even I knew she might have known how and what to do.  I felt embarrassed when she told me she did this for more than five years. I was thinking “just in case” she did not know how to do it. I was with good intention to remind her what and how to do it. But in this way, I was invalidating her capability and knowledge and experience she had in her profession. She is an accountant. Of course, she should have known how to do it. She might feel bad as the boss did not know what jobs she was doing and how.  It was not nice to have a non-professional to tell a professional what to do her job.  I apologized for sending her an email.

Why did I send her email like this? I think her appearance and dress code in the office is very casual. In this way, she has not given me the confidence level that she can perform the professional job as an accountant. Further, I don’t have to deal with her directly most of the time. I do not know how well she performs so far.  It is my discrimination and stereotype based on her outlook, appearance and dress code that affect my judgement on her. So never make assumption or judgement on a person based on outside. In fact, all the documents she sent me were perfect and professionally presented.