That Someone should demand white only staff when delivering a baby

[pigletmania]

I was reading the local paper and it said that a lady demanded that white only staff deliver her baby at the local hospital min Milton Keynes, I am that someone could have that kind of attitude tbh, thought this kind of thing happened in the very distant past.

I am not a troll but a regular but just shock that someone can be so blatantly rascist.

I think this raises ethical issues.
So the mother is racist and would feel uncomfortable with a non-white (english??) MW.
Yes, that needs challenging, and is completely wrong, but is the time to do it when she's in labour? So should they effectively refuse to treat by not complying.
OTOH if I'd been a black MW there I'd have been livid, quite rightly too.

I think you need to separate skin colour from communication.

Most of the colleagues I referred to above are British Asian. Their English is just as good as anyone elses.

Several of my colleagues are EU nationals. They are white but a few have very heavily accented English. Their skin colour apparently deems them acceptable.

Personally I'd want to have someone I can communicate with.

BetaBlocker If you read my post properly you will see that I did not call you brainless.

both my children were delivered by a team of Black, Indian and Chinese staff, all of whom were lovely and I was very grateful to. I think the only white midwife was from Ireland

I think this is disgusting and the fact the hospital allowed it is ever worse.

When I was giving birth I did not care if the staff were white, black or a trained sheep as long as my babies came in to the world safely.

Of course you need to separate skin colour issues from communication ones, but the trouble is they tend to get muddled.

I couldn't care and can't remember if the dcs were delivered by a purple person with green spots, but I'm sure I would remember if I'd been upset that I couldn't understand what they were saying. And when that person happens to be black and has an accent that when it veers into 'is it racism/isn't it racism' territory.

A while back I had an appointment with a consultant at the hospital. I just couldn't understand him. He not only had a really strong accent, but he mumbled terribly. The whole thing was a waste of time. Now, he happened to be Indian, so I felt uncomfortable about complaining and said nothing. Actually, my next door neighbour is a consultant cardiologist and I can't make out a word he says - and he's Irish.

Really what I'm rambling on trying to say is that could all medical professionals pleased be trained to speak like a SatNav person?!

I

exactly gasman, it should be an issue of communication (or lack of ability to) not skin tone.

I've interacted with a a huge number of medical staff in a rainbow of colours in the past year (due to ongoing sight problems) and I couldn't give a toss what colour skin tone they have so long as they can do their job and I can communicate with them. The only one I had a real problem understanding due to very poor English & a thick accent was Polish, lovely "white" skin, but I couldn't understand a word she said...

When we were looking for a carer to look after my late grandfather we specified to the agency that a hindu/Indian male carer would be preferred.

My grandfather was not an ethnic Indian, but we was born and raised in India and spent his last few years watching 1950s Indian films on his satellite TV. My family felt that someone who could watch with him and talk about the films would be much better for him than a carer who could not.

I can't see why it matters what the ethnicity of your MW is as long as she/he can communicate clearly with you. But there are certain instances, like the example above where you should be able to state a preference about the background of your carers.

Doublebuggy, that is actually quite sweet and I can see why you asked. Hope they found someone good.

mrsTittlemouse

Your post was pathetic..

Talk about generalising. What did the doc being middle eastern have to do with it?

Get your tiny mind around the fact he might just be cold, patronising type of guy.

Not all midle eastern men are misogynistic.

I used to work in a hospital blood transfusion lab. Once we had a patient requesting that the blood they needed come "only from white people" - they didn't want any black person's blood in them. We told them (absolutely truthfully) that there was no way we could tell what colour the donor had been - all blood looked the same and would do the same job. Of course there are a few race-related differences in blood antigens - some are more common in some races than others - but in general there is no difference. As it happens, the racist patient in question probably needn't have worried - the vast majority of blood donors were white (and probably still are although I have been out of the profession for 10 years now so it might have changed).

In the end, the patient did accept the blood transfusion but they weren't happy about it. Too bad - they should be grateful for anyone donating blood.

Well (and I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for this) in my previous job, non-white people often requested social workers who were the same race as them.

Sometimes this was because they felt that some issues might have been understood better in a cultural context - fair enough; sometimes it was a language thing - fair enough; and sometimes it was simply because people were feeling vulnerable and just wanted to see what, on a primal level, seemed to be a familiar face - fair enough.

Whatever the reason, this was accommodated (where the client was not white).

Surely, when someone is in labour they are entitled to make any request that makes them feel more vulnerable.

FWIW, I think I had every nation in the delivery room with me and it made no difference, but apparently to some people (black and white) it does.

that should have been more comfortable rather than more vulnerable as that is how they were feeling in the first place!

I couldn't have cared less who delivered my babies as long as they were highly qualified and competent.

As it happened one of the MWs who saw me with DD1 had really bad English and communication skills, not the best thing when you are in a lot of pain. Luckily when I went back in after she sent me home I had another MW.

I think midwifery is a very intimate and personal profession and you should have the ncessary verbal skills to deal with people at a time when they need it most, I really could not understand the MW and had to ask to repeat herself and I think she took a strop.

I will only have another baby if the midwife is 6 foot 5, male, blue eyes, speaks 17 languages, has an IQ of 300 can fly a plane, is a Buddhist and has spent a year building mud huts in the amazon for schools and hand dug 15 wells and saved the rain forest single handed.

I agree completely that not all Middle Eastern men are like that. I've met quite a lot of Middle Eastern men though, and even though most of them were very lovely people, a lot of them didn't have very enlightened attitudes to women. Maybe the fact that they were a generation above me didn't help, I don't know. Maybe they are just like old-fashioned middle aged British men and are also considered a bit stuffy and not-with-it. But that was my experience.

I also know plenty of arrogant misogynist white British men, and sadly I think that the medical profession attracts them - I reckon that they like the God complex. I have certainly had white British doctors that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

My DS1 would have died during birth but for a team of almost exclusively black and Asian doctors and midwives. I couldn't have given a flying fig what colour/ethnicity any of them were as long as they got him out safely.

Message withdrawn

The communication problem does indeed get mixed up with race. I'm partly deaf, and sometimes a strong accent can be a real problem. I do ask people to repeat themselves, but some can get a bit arsy about it even though I tell about my hearing. I don't care what colour or race a person is, if they can just speak clearly!

When I had my daughter 13 years ago, I had this really unsympathetic doctor, who happened to be black. He was absolutely appalling to me and made my birth worse than what it should have been All he kept shouting was 'stop making a fuss'. 'It can't hurt that much' and 'women in my homeland don't make a fuss like this.' It was awful.

I did ring up to complain and said that I would not, under any circumstances, want to see this doctor again, as he was absolutely horrible.

I am pregnant again and I put on my birth plan that I do not want to see Dr ** again.

I am black.

Sometimes it isn't about colour/religion etc. You just want to be able to feel listened to and in the best hands, especially at such a vulnerable time.

I think that as soon as someone expresses these sorts of viewpoints the hospital should just refuse to treat them. If a black midwife is what's available then that's what you're getting, if you don't like it then you won't be getting treatment.
Unless there is a genuine reason (lets say rape victim of asian perpetrator may not want to be examined by an asian ob/gyn) then they should stfu and keep their racist opinions to themselves.

Actually, having thought about this, I think that I am wrong and that my birth experience isn't appropriate for this thread.

Do I think that all Middle Eastern doctors are misogynist? No.
Do I think that all British doctors aren't misogynist? No.
Have I ever requested a British doctor or refused treatment from a foreign doctor? No.
Do I think that I have the right to refuse treatment from a particular type of doctor based on my birth experience? No.

So I am very sorry.

"mumbobumbo it would be equally unacceptable for a black woman to request only black staff attend her. This idea that its OK for non-whites to be racist is just silly. "

But Wonderstuff.... wanting someone of your own CULTURE is not unreasonable, is it? Thats kind of what I meant. Wow, what a minefield. LOL

Horrifying that racism like that is still so rife. Makes me sad