Now imagine he’s white.

I was in the driver’s seat yesterday, as my wife sat next to me, scrolling through her Google feed to see what was happening in the world. We had just switched positions on our 12 hour drive home from vacation and something she was reading elicited an “OMG” reaction. She started to relay the story of the horrific treatment a patient and his father had received from an ER doctor and I asked, “Was the doctor white?”

She paused for a moment to look at the screen-shot picture from the video attached to the article. “Yes, and it’s a female doctor.” I took a deep breath before asking my next question — one I already knew the answer to, “Were the father and son black?”

She didn’t want to watch the video and it didn’t mention race in the article, but then she found this:

“She (Dr. Beth Keegstra) said, ‘I know why you people are here, you people who come here for drugs,’ and I said ‘What do you mean you people?’” Donald said. “She was rambling on so angrily that’s why I pulled out my phone.”

(You can read the article, with video, here.)

And there it was, confirmation of my suspicion, wrapped up neatly in 2 little words: “you people”. Here’s my next suspicion: Dr. Beth Keegstra, of El Camino Hospital, is going to claim that what she meant by “you people” wasn’t about race, but about drug seekers in general. According to an interview patient Samuel and father Donald Bardwell gave to local news, they waited for over 3 hours for Keegstra to come examine him. When she finally showed up, she had brought security with her — which is exactly what ER doctors do when they believe a patient is an addict who wants narcotics.

Allow me to take a moment to do my best impersonation of Matthew McConaughy’s character, lawyer Jake Tyler Brigance, from the movie A Time to Kill.

I want to tell you a story. I’m going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. This is a story about…

A son rushed to emergency room because he needed medical treatment, but instead he was forced to wait for hours in pain, mocked for it, physically mistreated and manhandled, not believed, and accused of being an addict seeking a high — all while under the threat of security.

Can you see him? I want you to picture that son.

Now imagine he’s white.

So, let’s look at the situation the way I’m expecting Keegstra is going to argue that we should; let’s go “colorblind” and imagine, that from this white woman’s perspective, race had nothing to do with how she “did her job.” Except to do that, we have to pretend, for the moment, that the Bardwells weren’t black. To do that, to believe that Keegstra didn’t see color — that she was actually “colorblind” in her assessment that Bardwell was just another addict/drug-seeker — we (especially we white people) have to picture Samuel and his father being white. We have to imagine that Samuel arrived at the ER with just as much white (male) privilege as any other white (male) brought to the hospital, in an ambulance, after collapsing during basketball practice. We have to close our eyes and imagine that his white father, who had rushed to his side on the basketball court, now sat by his side as they waited for a doctor to treat him for his severe anxiety attack and the severe pain he was now in.

Have you slipped into the default color of the colorblind yet? Have you sufficiently drained Samuel and Donald Bardwell of their blackness yet? Have you turned them into a white son and father yet?

I’ve been to the ER with a drug seeker. This was several years ago and happened before I was completely aware of my housemate’s opioid addiction. Her addiction to painkillers was born out of legitimate, severe, chronic, myofascial pain mixed with a heaping dose of anxiety and PTSD. She had gone through doctor after doctor for her health issues and had finally found an opening at a pain clinic that took her State health insurance and her conditions seriously.

(Side note: when you are poor, on Medicare or Medicaid, and suffer from a mental health condition(s) and/or a chronic pain disorder finding a doctor — a competent, compassionate doctor — is a big-fucking-joke.)

I drove her to the ER one night after she had spent the entire day in bed crying in agony and barely able to move. By the time a doctor finally came in to see her, I was at my wits end — I might not have realized she was an addict yet, but I knew she needed help. I knew she was in unbearable pain, that her anxiety and depression was out of control, and that without medical intervention life for her (and, by default, for me as well) would only get worse. But the doctor walked in with a thick stack of printed-out reports of her medical records, a nasty holier-than-thou scowl on his face, and accompanied by 2 security guards.

Suffering from chronic pain, depression, and anxiety disorders including PTSD was something she and I have in common. Something else we both have in common… we are both white women. The ER doctor that we encountered pulled a lot of the same shit on us that Keegstra pulled on the Bardwells: he never introduced himself or asked about her condition and he showed up — after hours and hours of us waiting for someone to examine her — with security and a preconceived diagnosis of drug-seeker. He was mean, accusatory, and had no intention of listening to anything either one of us had to say.

So, it might seem completely appropriate for me to hold up these 2 examples of emergency room visits, place them side by side, and proclaim: See, it has nothing to do with race! But I can’t and I won’t because, while these 2 experiences might look alike there are 2 major differences.

1. No one put their hands on my housemate aka the patient. They didn’t yank on her arm to get her to sit up as though she was a rag doll rather than a human being because they believed she was faking. If they had — if the doctor had put his hands on her like that it would have been patient abuse and assault. If you’re comparing these 2 situations through “colorblind” eyes, ask yourself: Do I really believe that Keegstra would have yanked on a white patient’s arm the same way she yanked on Bardwell’s arm? Then imagine her doing just that and ask yourself if you feel any differently about her actions.
2. Our ER doctor might have treated my housemate like shit, but he still treated her like an individual, even going so far as not allowing me to see anything in all the records about her because of patient confidentiality. The words: “you people” never emerged from his lips and, quite frankly, if they had there would have been no question as to which people he was referring. Because “you people” wouldn’t have meant white people, or female people, or white female people — it would have meant drug-seeking addicts.

Of course the similarities between the way the ER doctor treated my former housemate and the way Keegstra treated Samuel Bardwell are there. They should be enough, in and of themselves, to raise serious concerns about how emergency room medical professionals deal with patients who present as potential drug-seekers. Anxiety, chronic pain disorders, addictions (especially to the same opioids once overprescribed for chronic pain), or any combination of those things are all conditions that send the people who have them to the ER. Not all of “those people” are looking to get high, in fact the majority of them are looking for actual medical help from competent, compassionate, medical professionals.

If Samuel Bardwell had been purple with green polka dots, the way Keegstra treated him and his father should have gotten her fired — immediately. If Samuel Bardwell had purely been seeking drugs, the way Keegstra treated him and his father should have gotten her fired — immediately.

She can’t justify her actions by saying they weren’t racist. The moment this white woman used the phrase “you people” to refer to a black patient then linked the “you people” to drug-seeking addicts she was being racist. If Samuel Bardwell had been a white basketball player with his white father by his side she would have already lost her job and been 1/2 through losing her medical license by now.

Nor can she justify her actions by saying that she believed Bardwell and his father were just there to get narcotics. Why? Because physically and verbally abusing a patient is NEVER justifiable. And allow me to remind you: that no matter what she believed of him, Samuel Bardwell was her patient. She is a motherfuckingdoctor; it was her job to treat him to the best of her ability.

If that was to the best of her ability or even if that was the one time she ever fucked up (though I’m sure it’s not) can we please hold her accountable for both her racism and her despicable medically unethical behavior? Because she is clearly guilty of both.