JUSTICE, EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION SECTION
Back to the Business at Hand! Joanne Williams, MD MAAEM, Academy of Emergency Medicine Founding Member
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s a founding member of the Academy, I can no longer hold my peace! The Academy was “established in 1993 to promote fair and equitable practice environments necessary to allow emergency physicians to deliver the highest quality of patient care.” To my knowledge, I am the only founding member of African descent. I have always been concerned that there should be “more raisins in the oatmeal.” Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) was the first Black Congresswoman. She said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” Through the years we members of color have had to bring our own folding chairs. The truth must be told whether we like it or not! Racism in the house of emergency medicine is real! I grew up in the Jim Crow error and know all too well overt and “subtle” racism. A Caucasian colleague asked me back in the day if I thought he was a racist. My answer to
him, “Ask the man in mirror as only he and he alone can answer that question.” I have been faced with racism from patients and colleagues through the years. The worst years of my career facing racism were at LAC+USC Medical Center (the Keck School of Medicine of USC). I was the first African American woman faculty in the history of that emergency medicine department. I was transferred there when racism and politics caused the closure of my beloved institution, Martin Luther King Jr./Charles R. Drew Medical Center in South Los Angeles where I was instrumental in the training of hundreds of emergency medicine interns and residents from 1989 to 2007. I had not been at LAC+USC for six months when the chair at the time had the audacity to tell me that the interns and residents didn’t think I was qualified to teach them! None of those interns and residents were eligible to sit for the EM qualifying boards (I had been board certified and recertified by then) and many of them weren’t even licensed to practice medicine yet! I had forgotten some things that they had yet to learn!
I am compelled to voice my concern about conversation in response to an article in Common Sense by Dr. L.E. Gomez and Ms. Jada Watts. In my humble opinion, the article did not label anyone a racist and had nothing to do with “tactics.” All are entitled to their opinion, but one should not take someone else’s opinion personally! Ms. Watts was expressing how she felt in a particular situation. I, as a patient in an ED and on a post-op ward, have experienced racism firsthand. Unfortunately, attitudes changed drastically when the fact that I was a physician was revealed. I was asked “why didn’t you tell us you were a doctor?” My response, “I’m not, at this time and place, I’m a patient!” Unless one has experienced racism, one knows nothing of what I speak! As I mentioned before, racism in the house of emergency medicine and medicine in general is real! The question is, how are we in the Academy going to “take the bull by the horns?” Black, Brown, Asian, Native Americans and the LGBTQ community are bringing folding chairs to the table. The Academy must take advantage of the brilliance of all! Diversity will ensure our survival! It is time to unite and get back to the business at hand, promoting “fair and equitable practice environments necessary to allow emergency physicians to deliver the highest quality of patient care.”
ACADEMY MUST >>THE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF
THE BRILLIANCE OF ALL! DIVERSITY WILL ENSURE OUR SURVIVAL! 32
COMMON SENSE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022