As I blogged about a couple of days ago, the Republican party sees the health health insurance debate as “Obama’s Waterloo.” They intend to break him. As part of that campaign they have been circulating the following flyer which they title, “House Democrats’ Health Plan.” The purpose is to try and communicate that the Democrats’ plan is a hot mess that will be the end of the world. Scary things like “IRS” are prominently highlighted. It is by no means the Republicans alone that put out unhelpful propaganda like this, but this example is a particularly disgusting commentary on how far our political discourse has sunk:care
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My eagle-eyed friend Ankur, a physician, spotted that the icon of the doctor in the bottom right corner looks like a desi woman. She does to me too (but it makes no difference even if she is Hispanic for the following point). Now take a look at the yellow box with the arrow feeding in to the doctor. It reads “Cultural and Linguistic Competence Training.” This training is important because it allows doctors to better serve under-served minorities. However, the implication here is flipped. The woman is a minority so a mere glance would imply that the Democrats’ health care plan would use taxpayer dollars to teach language skills to foreign doctors. Or cultural skills maybe? The entire poster is a menu of scare tactics but this one is particularly ill-conceived. I wonder if AAPI has any opinion about this.
It matters. It doesn’t matter what people would have seen. A) This is official propganda; B) It involves a minority (most probably desi); C) it is meant as a scare tactic. That is reason enough for me to point it out.
Lol. Reminds me of this: A friend of mine, who’s a nurse from Kerala, had recently moved to the US and was working in a hospital in the mid west. One day, one of her new elderly patients remarked at her complexion, “Gosh, you look like you’ve been out in the sun for long!”, to which my friend replied, “All my life…., all my life.”
How about some cultural training for the patients?
Easier said than done.
I work in healthcare (on the vendor side) and always joke that every hospital I go to always has at least one Dr. Patel.
Not always the case, but it makes peoples laugh.
I don’t think the Repubs can stop this train like they did last time.
And their commercials on TV actually anger me to no end – all this talk of some evil ‘government’ middle man standing between you and your doctor deciding your treatment or care – that’s what the insurance companies do NOW !! And even the AMA is on board now, and they were putting out black and white socialist scare-tactic movies back in the day. And as a Canadian, sick of them using my home and native land as a bogeyman: one in five die under our socialist system ?? Where do they get these numbers ??
Liberal, Conservative, Democrat or Republican – everyone agrees they should be able to receive regular checkups, coverage even with pre-existing conditions, treatment which could save your life, and eliminate bankruptcy due to health care costs.
i don’t know about the cultural training, but it always strikes me as odd when americans make fun of the other nationalities’ english – most americans do NOT speak grammatically proper english. in fact, most desis from abroad, given equal education levels to their american counterparts, would tend to speak more gramattically correct english. i hope that the linguistic training is given equally to native- and foreign-born doctors.
grammars evolve. there are englishes, not english. granted, americans often have a linguistically imperialist attitude and should chill. but it does get irritating when people from india (or bangladesh, or italy, or wherever) react to american arrogance by raising them one, as if samuel johnson defined the english language until the end of days. and yes, i don’t think southern english or ebonics is fundamentally less grammatical than general american english either.
My dad, brother, sis-in-law and most cousins are doctors in the US (I’m the underachiever – an engineer) and I’m a first gen Indian in the US. All my doc family says that it took them a while to get adjusted to how doctors are supposed to treat patients. In India, I remember visiting doctors who basically yell at you, and lack any interpersonal skills – I didn’t realize this until I dealt with doctors here. My dad always tells me stories of new doctors from India being too insensitive to patients, etc. While doctors coming out of India have excellent technical smarts (which many would agree is all that is needed) – but very few medical programs in India focus on patient interaction and doc-patient role-playing that most US medical programs do.
Obviously, patients are not required at all to be sensitive or nice to doctors – but thats a different discussion. However, the yellow box could also mean the following – in many hospitals, a vast majority of patients visiting are non-white – my brother’s hospital is frequented by 80% pakistanis and indians in bronx, NYC, and 70% of the patients at my dad’s previous hospital were of hispanic descent; many of these patients were not english speaking. So I can easily see US taught doctors having to go through different cultural sensitivity training to make sure they don’t break any cultural taboos.
sidebar: one pakistani grandma would bring my sis-in-law food in tupperware everytime she visited her – it was kinda cute.
The first thing that popped into my mind when I was cultural and linguistic training was the OPPOSITE of what you said…
I have actually been looking into Nursing programs, and one of the programs is for Clinical Nurse Leaders… I told them I have an MA in cultural anthropology and they almost jumped of their seats in joy…. they want people to train the nurses, etc to be aware of the many different cultures/languages of the people they serve….
ak “i don’t know about the cultural training, but it always strikes me as odd when americans make fun of the other nationalities’ english – most americans do NOT speak grammatically proper english. in fact, most desis from abroad, given equal education levels to their american counterparts, would tend to speak more gramattically correct english. i hope that the linguistic training is given equally to native- and foreign-born doctors.”
ak… i have to second the “englishes” theory… American English and British English are not exactly the same, they have separate dictionaries and different grammar in some respects, but still both are correct.
For example: “I haven’t got a pen” “I don’t have a pen”
“Shall I make some tea?” “Should I make some tea?”
“I had come home when….” “I came home when….”
These are all issues you have to deal with, when teaching English as well… I usually had to explain both ways when teaching students in Delhi so they could be prepared for a variety of English speakers.
I don’t really know what you mean by “most Americans”…. I can think of less educated Americans (for example in my home state of Maine) who cannot speak grammatically correct… i.e. “i don’t got any paper” … I wouldn’t suggest that they are in the majority though, perhaps I am wrong.
Also.. there is a different between speaking grammatically correct English and understanding the idioms, pronunciation and cultural nuances behind language for a certain culture. If my students in Delhi learn ‘proper British English” and are not exposed to other styles, they will have a hard time understanding people for awhile in the U.S…. especially since American English tends to shift it’s pronunciation for t’s in many cases to a d sound… this has baffled many of my students when they first hear it…
ak.. sorry I just re-read that.. you said desis from ‘abroad’…. does that mean from outside the U.S. or from places outside India? If you meant the latter… my comment doesn’t exactly make sense anymore… 😛
Relax.
How much of the Republican base can read, let alone follow this hopscotch maze to the icon and codewords you found?
If this was really intended for them, the poster would just have a hamburger inside a circle with a line through it.
What I noticed was that the only representation of a doctor in a large chart on health care with dozens of entities, was the image smiling brown skinned woman.
…. I guess it certainly promotes a stilted view of Desis. Gosh I hate stereotyping. Whatever will happen if the average American starts associating a well paid profession with a high social standing with people of color. I’m shocked, shocked, I say.
Hell yeah, I’m all for cultural training! To prevent the sort of ignorance/idiocy that makes a small town doctor (let’s call him STD) in a small/poor county say something like,
‘99% of doctors in America wouldn’t prescribe this treatment because people had daahd (died)’ in reference to a treatment my big city doctor in a big famous hospital back in India had prescribed. Because to STD, all that mattered was that I was a brown person from a third world country, so my (very well-known) doctor was obviously wrong and some kind of quack or witch doctor. STD’s statement is factually incorrect. Over half of all doctors in the US do, in fact, prescribe the treatment I was given. As to daahing? Analogous to saying that you could daah on aspirin, but only if you took the whole bottle.
The condescension was exquisite. I was seething. Oh, and he had a southern accent and overall republican demeanor about him. Coincidence?
linzi, what i basically meant was that the assumption that those medical professionals coming from outside the US do not speak english as good as those doctors who are born and educated here is faulty. esp. since any doctor who has gotten to the level of being accredited/licensed to practise in this country would have gone (presumably) through not only toefl, but also advanced level boards and other examinations in english. that is why i meant that if there is some sort of “standard”/minimal level of english required to be known by doctors practising in the US, that training should be given equally to all doctors, not just those who grew up here.
How insecure are we Desi’s? Pathetic – to dig up an icon as a pretext that whoever design the chart had an Indian in mind. Could have been a Hispanic. Desi’s see what they want to see. There are perhaps a handful of desi doctors as hot as the one in the icon. You’d think we should be glad they offer Cultural and Linguistic Competence Training. Frankly, all Desi’s offer is the ability to be trained and take the training well and work hard at it. You forget who set up the greatest institutions of medical learning – sure as hell aren’t Desis.
Perhaps the “Cultural and Linguistic training program” has to deal with the additional training for health care providers to deal with care for illegals who are already using (abusing?) the system. Free health care entails more free care for these illegals.
I say this statement as someone who has dealt with patients along the Mexican border. I learned decent Spanish in school, but many of my attendings didn’t and routinely sought my help for translation.
How much of the Republican base can read, let alone follow this hopscotch maze to the icon and codewords you found?
I don’t know what the number is, but I’m willing to guess a higher % then the of the population of India or Pakistan.
You all have grossly underestimated uncles and aunties. This is a conspiracy by desi parents. Uncles have infiltrated “them†deep where even jamaat-e-Goras believes that a health care professional ~ brown. Kids start cramming already – 7-11 is passé, now the new brown stereotype is a health care professional. I am so happy happy about this.
Good catch! this is a good example of the problem witht he republican-health insurance industry – conservative democrat – propaganda machine. However, it may be a better example of them failing – racism has apparently become tres passe and so it is ideal to highlight this, from my standpoint – it helps take apart the generally obnoxious propaganda on a point where it’s actually fairly out of step wtih at least some of the powers that be.
this is an excellent example of why literacy is a poor measure of either smarts or decency 😀
a higher % THAN the of the population of India or Pakistan. Not including you.
You’re welcome.
I take personal offense at the goatee she sports. I think that is a dig at women from my state.
That was the last straw. I am never voting Republican again.
@Saaahnjay the self loathing Skeptic: What exactly are the “greatest” institutions of medical leaning? The one the West calls are great, by today’s Western standards? Talk about self-satisfying rules.