Identity theft.

It's been a while

I'm not who I was before
You look surprised

your words don't burn me anymore
Been meaning to tell you

but I guess it's clear to see
Don't be mad--it's just a brand new kind of me
Can't be bad--I found a brand new kind of free

~ Alicia Keys.

An elderly woman was perched on the end of a bedside chair. Her neck was layered in pearls and her stocking-covered legs were crossed tightly at the ankles. Perhaps it was a bit too humid for the high-end suit she was wearing but it did match her severe chignon and carefully applied makeup. The ring fingers on both hands were adorned with sparkling diamond rings.

All of it oozing of privilege.

In walked a team of doctors. All in hospital-issued scrubs and white coats. One person leading them in a longer white coat called shots while the others immediately began doing the things that younger doctors and student doctors do. They were caring for the patient in concert as that nattily dressed matriarch looked on.

And all of it was fine and good. It was.

Then, one of those team members stepped toward the side of the bed near that chair. This young student doctor with a beautiful cocoa complexion and hair pulled back into an equally elegant bun. The only difference is that hers involved a network of African braids. And this student doctor, my advisee, made careful, confident eye contact with the patient and also her loved one.

And all of that part was fine and good, too.

That women glanced over at that student doctor and offered her a tight-lipped smile. Swinging those same crossed legs sideways, she twisted her torso and reached out for the bedside rolling table. In one subtle motion, she then nudged it in the direction of that young student doctor. The Coco-esque one gestured toward the cocoa-complexioned one and spoke in a gravelly, Southern voice.

"Are you here to pick up the lunch tray?" she asked.

And that student, who (like her colleagues) was holding gauze in her hands and who was dressed identically to the five other caregivers in that room, looked around from side to side to confirm that this woman in her St. John's suit was speaking to someone else.

Problem is, she wasn't.

"Excuse me?" My advisee gave that reply quietly--yet deliberately. And she did that because she wanted to give this woman the benefit of the doubt. Like, she didn't want to be "that person" -- you know, the one that immediately thinks that all things are rooted in some racial slight. This was the point where that woman was supposed to turn beet red and then vehemently apologize for mistaking this young doctor-to-be who was clad in the same tell-tale uniform as the others as something she wasn't.

And.

Let's be clear. There is nothing wrong with being the person who IS responsible for retrieving lunch trays. Nothing at all. But it hurt my heart when my student told me about this moment and it hurt my heart even more to realize that here we are in the sixth month of two thousand and thirteen with a black family in the White House for the second term in a row. . . a family that includes two grown black people-- both of whom graduated from Harvard freaking Law no less -- and that this brilliant and accomplished woman (who also happens to be an alum of an equally prestigious undergraduate institution) had to be sized up in this way. As less than her potential. As what this woman perhaps deemed as "the help."

And yes. That was more about that woman and her limited world view than my student. And yes, perhaps people like her and maybe Paula Deen really are good souls at their very center which I will not argue. But even when you know things like that and can tell yourself such things, it's hard.

It is.

And no. I was not there physically. I wasn't. But from the way she told me that story, I feel like I was. I feel like I was there and, in a way, I was there since I've had similar experiences myself.

Yep.

You know? On the bright side, I feel proud that there was a mechanism for my advisee to process this. That she had my cell phone number and that without flinching, she knew that it was okay to text me and call me to talk about this critical incident. Yes, this critical incident. This critical incident that pretty much flew under the team's radar or at least was not made to be the critical incident that it was. Partly because these things happen more than folks realize. And when they do, sometimes you realize that on that day you are just too tired to go marching on Washington. Or that you have exams or just shit on your mind or just . . .just. . .yeah.

Grrrr. I keep replaying it all in my head. Over and over, you know. Wishing I could find that woman and say things like:

No, lady. My student was NOT there to get the damn lunch tray. She was there to do what every other one of those people who happened to look like you and not her were there to do. And let me tell you, lady, that if she WAS there to get that tray that she still would have been equally as amazing and wonderfully and fearfully made. Which means that whether she was a future physician or not, she was just as good as you.

Maybe even better considering that ignorant comment.

Ignorant. That's what it was. And yes, I am rambling and unpacking because there is just stuff on my mind. Stuff that relates to my race and what it means and how it feels to sometimes be looked through instead of at. Or when someone doesn't realize what it means to someone like me to even have these opportunities or to get to this point. A point where my name gets recorded next to accolades previously not given to people of color and how it feels when the magnitude of it all is not realized.

By others that is.

Sometimes it's subtle like someone just sort of shrugging off some big thing that has happened. Or like them not even noticing that the big thing that has happened was big -- not just because it was big but because in context of who you are that makes it even bigger. And also bigger than just you.

Yes. That. Like how it feels when I see Michelle Obama walking across a stage. It is more than just the fact that she is smart and confident and amazing. For me, it is more. And it gets all weird when you start trying to explain all that to people, you know? Explain how it feels to see her and what it says to me about my own potential. But then there is this hope that I can find a way to communicate that. To communicate that it's not just that she is the awesome First Lady but that she is an African-American woman, too. And that's a big deal. A really, big fucking deal.

Sorry for the f-bomb.

Yes, lady. Haven't you turned on a television? Or opened your eyes? Or have you simply assigned Michelle Obama as some kind of alien, not applicable to all of the little sisters running behind her on the trail that she and others like her are blazing every single day?

Sigh. I don't know. I don't.

Oh, and in case you're wondering? When my student clarified who that woman was talking to? The Coco-esque one let her know that it was exactly what my student perceived it to be. That, in this woman's mind, the only reason why a young black woman would be at her loved one's bedside was to clear the lunch tray out of the room.

I'm not sure what I would have said if I had been there. I'm not. But knowing me, I would have wanted to say something. And it would have likely been fueled by anger and would not have involved any part of the high road, that's for sure. Which is probably why I would have just ended up saying nothing once I thought it through.

Yep.

But right now? This is what I'm mostly saying. And what I'm saying is to myself and to my student and not that woman at all:

"Don't be mad. Be excellent."

And as someone striving to be excellent, I'd want that lady in her Coco Chanel baubles to know that I'm not above either moving a lunch tray or at least finding who can -- especially if it makes the person lying in that hospital bed feel more at ease. But I'm also not beneath being the one trained and qualified to be that same patient's doctor. No, ma'am, I am not. And I won't let someone else reduce me--or any of my learners--to feeling anything otherwise. No matter how much privilege that someone else knows. Because that? That's the worst kind of identity theft there is.

Yeah, man.

Now excuse me while I focus on my patients. And my potential.

I'll leave you with words from another really cool First Lady:

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

~ Eleanor Roosevelt.

Word.

That's all I got today. Thanks for listening, okay?

***
Happy Friday. 

Now playing on my mental iPod. . . . .


(And no, this didn't happen at Grady. But really, it could have happened anywhere.)