Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics

"This would be much easier if you would just say you're not White," she said into the phone. I was speaking with the administrative assistant to the department chair to whom I reported. She and I were arranging a meeting of the search committee for a faculty member that I was hoping to recruit.

I waited, then reminded myself that feigning confusion was often digested better than my innate direct style when talking to other women in this environment.

"Patty, could you explain what you're talking about?" I said, using my best bewildered voice. "I must not be understanding what's needed."

She sighed before explaining that the University had rules about search committees. One member of a 'minority' needed to be included in this group for the hire to be approved by the institution.

"Does the University keep a list somewhere of minority physicians who might allow us to meet this requirement?" I asked.

She said no.

To continue this conversation seemed to be a little like willfully entering a minefield.

"Were there instructions from the University about how to recognize physicians from underrepresented communities?" was the next question that I posed. But there were so many other questions that bubbled through my brain. "Would my assessment that the physician is 'non-White count, or would I have to ask them to self-identify?" "Which minorities 'count'?" "Would a gay physician satisfy this requirement? If so, who could provide the sexual orientation of the faculty?" "Who made this dumb rule?"

Patty didn't have an answer. She only had frustration for what she viewed as a check box but I saw it as an absurd policy. She hadn't made the rules. She was just trying to help. But she was in the unfortunate position of being the messenger of this particularly ridiculous message. Finally, exasperated, she blurted out, "either you can say that you're not White or we can invite Dr. James to this committee. She is Black."

There was a long pause.

"I chose members of this committee who had the knowledge and expertise to judge how well new faculty will fit onto my team. I'm pretty sure another person who's already on the search committee can fulfill this requirement. Dr. James' practice and research don't overlap with those of this new hire at all. Please find out more about the process by which we can qualify this committee as adequate per institutional rules." The conversation ended more abruptly than was congenial. [End Page 249]

I had not spent a lot of time thinking about being perceived as White before moving to the South of the United States to act as the director of a surgical service. As a child with mixed race and ethnicity, I grew up knowing that I wasn't Black. But beyond that, my identity was complicated. I knew I could pass or blend in the White communities where I had grown up, gone to school and worked. But at the same time when, during my fellowship, an administrative assistant in my department looked at me from behind and said, "you have a nice booty for a White girl" I was more caught off guard by being referred to as White than by the fact that she was actively surveying and judging my body. That had not felt right.

In the hospital, I definitely fielded unending questions about my "tan." Are you Italian? Greek? Lebanese? I'd even been asked if I was Armenian by a well-meaning administrative assistant with an Armenian in-law in her family. These questions were not only common but exhausting as they peppered my communication with patients, staff, and colleagues. I fielded these questions and grew capable and competent in the art of deflection as an adult and a physician. After all, I had grown up in the suburbs, surrounded by White children, gone to an elite private college and attended medical school, surrounded by White peers and so I continued my professional life as a privileged, White-adjacent, first-generation American. Aside from the ethnicity questions from patients and that booty incident, the...