Inappropriate embroidery on doctor's wall?

[PeppaPigsMum]

Dh recently took our 7 year old Dd to see a paediatrician. On the wall was a big embroidery with squares, and on each square was a nursery rhyme. It was obviously old, as one of the squares was devoted to the rhyme '10 little n'! DH noticed when DD innocently started to read it out. The dr didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with this, we don't think it's appropriate on any wall, let alone a paediatrician's. Would you take this further?

maybe she is more interested in helping sick children get better

Yes, but that doesn't mean is ok to have racist stuff on the wall!!

YANBU - I cannot think why anyone would brush this off as inoffensive other than they find it acceptable to use the word nigger themselves. It is a hate-full, vile word.

If the Dr wants to display it in her own home, out of public view, much as I dislike it, it would be hard to argue that she didn't have that right. But in her office, a public place, where patients are waiting? No. I would complain.

worra and bamboo I presumed the doctor was white because I've never met a professional person of colour who would post a sign with the word 'nigger' on it in their office. Also the dr's deadpan attitude as to why this might be inappropriate.

I did say it was a presumption, mind, so obv flagging it up as a question....

Yes, she was white. Got to go to sleep now, but will be back tomorrow...

And I disagree that it doesn't matter because she is just focusing on sick children. People need to feel comfortable in a dr's office and having something on your wall that contains a term now used as a piece of racist abuse is obviously not going to help with that.

It doesn't matter whether she put it there, whether she condones it, whether she is secretly an anti-racism campaigner in her spare time.... There are certain appropriate professional codes of conduct, and having stuff up on your office wall with such language on is clearly, clearly inappropriate.

I've never met any reasonable person of any racial background who would find this remotely OK!
I would definitley write to whatever body governs doctors surgeries - and if that doesn't work, I would contact my local councillor or MP or equivalent.

YANBU. Yes write and formerly complain. Include her initial response too as this is just as bad as she clearly doesn't see this as an issue which shows appalling judgement and insensitivity. I wonder how many patients of Aboriginal heritage she has?

If the authorities would not act I would also contact a more forward looking organisation that would publicise this. Zero tolerance is the only way.

The implication that the doctor couldn't have been white as people haven't seen a white doctor for years is a little racist in itself (as a white doctor who works with ethnically diverse colleagues treating ethnically diverse patients...)

I agree its not acceptable to have that kind of thing up on a wall and the doctor's attitude when questioned doesn't sound appropriate either. I personally don't have my own clinic room, I have done clinics in several different rooms in several different buildings and as such am not responsible for the decor. If I did notice something that could be offensive up on a wall I would take it down for the duration of my clinic but on the other hand if it was screwed into the wall or I hadn't noticed, I would be quite unhappy that my patients were going home not trusting my clinical judgement based on something on a wall that I hadn't actually put there and had been too involved in trying to treat the child to notice

I have seen the rhyme in a very very old (about 1910) childrens book I inherited from my nan. Definitely shouldn't be up on the wall in a doctors surgery. What people do in their own house is their own matter but a doctor is a public servant (or supposed to be). I wouldn't have cancelled appointment but I would have complained to the doctor or maybe I might have just taken some scissors to it as someone else suggested.

Probably embroidered by a lovely elderly lady, maybe a long time ago. Absolutely no offence meant then. Very careless place to have it hanging now.
My DDs know they mustn't use my to Robinson's jam apron for school cookery, even though that's what I had it for.
Times change and what was totally appropriate in a rural Welsh school 30 years ago is not appropriate in rural middle England today. (However, I am not throwing golly away because he has lots of happy memories of my total ineptitude in HE lessons).

Its not appropriate, no.

But I can't help be reminded of a West Wing episode, one character gives another a map of the Holy Land circa 17th century, I think, and everyone tells him that he can't display it because it doesnt recognise Israel. Don't be ridiculous he says, of course it doesn't, Israel wouldn't exist for another 200 years. We know, they say, but you can't put it up, it doesn't recognise Israel.

It's nothing like that situation.
Or not in the way that matters anyway.

Hmm neuromantic and startail, I kind of want to take issue with the idea that 'nigger' was ever an acceptable term. I am a historian and afaik, the older 'respectable' term (in the C18th and C19th) was 'Negro' - old-fashioned now, but not really abusive.

Whereas, certainly about 1910, 'nigger' was contemptuous and nasty. D H Lawrence writing just after that has a jealous, abusive husband sneer at his wife 'You'd go off with a nigger if he gave you a packet of chocolate' and Dorothy L Sayers's Peter Wimsey stories contain one episode where a black suspect is accused because traces of hair oil are found at the scene and 'Nigger taste runs to hair oil'.

Both of those usages are clearly deliberately unpleasant. I have never actually seen that word used in a neutral way, and like I say, I've read a fair few C18th and C19th texts on such subjects. I think the rhyme is probably thoughtless rather than nasty, but I don't think the word 'nigger' has ever been PC or 'nice language'.

ha ha ha ha - this made me laugh, a nice emroidered KKK manifesto

but yes, yanbu

I worked for a consultant who used terms like 'worked like a black' and 'nigger in the woodpile'

I told him not to. He was most suprised that he shouldnt and no-one had every told him before.

We were working in a hospital in North London. It took a lairy 20 year old me to point out to this bloke that those terms were unacceptable.

He was a nice man and I dont think he was racist. Not for the reasons given by one of the other doctors 'he was born in barbados so he cant be racist'

No I didn't really mean that it was ever acceptable, more that some people have a harder time seeing things from a different perspective, and that australia is culturally different to the uk in outlook. Bad reference perhaps.