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.