Monday, April 30, 2012

Filipino Nurses. Not American Enough To Represent The Face Of Our Hospital

Filipino nurses have been in the news recently, and not in a good way, thanks to the remarks of Washington, D.C. former mayor and current Council member Marion Barry. The convicted cocaine abuser remarked, "In fact, it's so bad, that if you go to the hospital now, you find a number of immigrants who are nurses, particularly from the Philippines. And no offense, but let's grow our own teachers, let's grow our own nurses -- and so that we don't have to be scrounging around in our community clinics and other kinds of places -- having to hire people from somewhere else."

We can all agree that it was a very ignorant and racist thing for an elected official to say. Even the other members of the City Council and fellow Democrats have called on Barry to apologize. But is his overt racism any worse than the racism that was recently displayed at our hospital?

Like many hospitals in this country, many, if not most, of our nurses are of Filipino nationality. They are hard working, friendly, and competent nurses. Many have worked here for decades. Recently, the hospital decided to do some promotional advertising and needed a picture of a nurse that worked on our unit. Despite the dozens of Filipino nurses on the ward that day, they got the only white male nurse to do the modeling work. Hmmm.

We all like this nurse. He is a good hardworking nurse that everybody likes to work with. Unfortunately he has only been on our unit for little over a month. Yet they chose him over many nurses that have been working here for years to represent the hospital. This got many of the nurses silently seething with rage and indignation. I also have to mention that the new nursing manager in this ward is also a tall, skinny, extremely pale-faced blonde. It did not take long for people to connect the dots.

So even in 21st century America, workplace discrimination continues. They may not be in a form as overt as Marion Barry, but make no mistake. For some people not matter how many years we have lived in this country, we will never be considered "American". We will always represent the foreigner, the hyphenated American who can never be a true American.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Secret To Getting Into Stanford Is...Ping Pong?

My daughter is just finishing up second grade. But that doesn't mean it's too early to start thinking about which private university she should go to after high school graduation. My wife is all too aware of how difficult it can be for Asian Americans to get into the elite colleges. We've all read the horror stories of Asian kids with nearly perfect SAT scores, high school GPA of 5.0, and president of their chess club and are still denied admission to Harvard or Stanford. Therefore now is the perfect time to start preparing our child to get into college.

The success of Jeremy Lin has changed my wife's thinking about the potential of athletics in advancing our child's academic career. Before Linsanity, sports was considered a black or white man's game, a back door way for somebody to get into an Ivy League without having to put of Ivy League academic numbers. Now she sees that sports can be a differential. My daughter can stand out from all the other Asian nerds trying to get into the same schools by excelling at a sport.

She considered many sports possibilities. Baseball? Too boring. Basketball? Too short. Soccer? Too slow. Then she settled on her personal love--table tennis. My daughter will excel at ping pong, making her stand out from all the other boring Asian geeks. When she presented her idea to me, I was skeptical. "Uh, I don't think the NCAA even recognizes ping pong as an official collegiate sport. I think you have to choose a sport that colleges care enough about to compete with other colleges and provide national exposure for their campus."

Pish posh, was my wife's reply, or something like that but in Chinese. To prove her point, she drove us to a table tennis academy in the San Gabriel Valley that specializes in training youth ping pong. She started talking to some of the parents there. My wife is not into subtlety. She pointedly asked another parent if they think their child's incredible table tennis skills will get him into a good college. Of course, was the reply. Who wouldn't want to recruit my child when he starts competing for the national team to represent America in the Olympics in 2020? After all, table tennis is an official Olympic event.

My wife looked at me with a wide grin. That settled it. Our seven year old daughter will start rigorous ping pong training to get her ready for admission into Stanford. In a few years, when she is ready for the national trials for female table tennis players, she will be ranked number one and Stanford can't possibly refuse her. This is a foolproof plan. Once she's in then she can drop all ideations about having a sports career and start concentrating on getting into medical school.