Well done Ihatetinselbob!
Right, Betablocker, here's your ton of bricks. Enough of the bullshit. Some black midwives can be horrible. Some black midwives (like the one I had) can be wonderful.
Some white midwives can be horrible. Some white midwives (like the other one I had) can be wonderful.
Etc, - same goes for midwives of all religions, Asian midwives, Jewish midwives, male midwives, gay midwives and midwives whose names begin with 'J'.
Your post tends towards the 'I'm not racist, but...' If you think colour is irrelevant here, why tell the story that way? You then say 'who knows if it's culture or bad luck?' I'll tell you who knows: stupid people think it's 'culture' (you actually mean 'colour', when you say "culture", don'tcha?). People with brains think otherwise. Of course it goes without saying that the midwives dealing with your sister should have done a far better job in every way, including not talking around her in a language she didn't understand. But that's exactly the point - she didn't understand them, so her guess about how they were viewing her was exactly that - a guess.
If someone is unpleasant it has nothing to do with their colour or creed. You shouldn't need me to tell you that. I am amazed that someone could be so utterly brainless as to suggest a person's colour or cultural background could be the ONLY factor that could possibly make a person unpleasant. Perhaps they were treated badly by their managers and their discontent was affecting their work - it shouldn't, but for all you know that could be the cause, couldn't it? Why bring up their bloody skin colour?
CarmenBeingDevilsAdvocate: "If she pays herself, then she can have whoever she wants imo." - again, bullshit. If someone's being discriminatory, they're being discriminatory, whether or not they're paying, and that should NOT be tolerated under ANY circumstances.