Our memo brings together information that reflects the current thinking on how to progress Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workplace. Each month it is bursting with highlights for reflection and inspiration. Let us continue to work together to help influence social change, to achieve a safer and fairer society.
*Please note that this memo reflects the feelings and thoughts of your Diversity Committee. It is not meant to capture all of the feelings within our Department. We openly recognize all may not agree. We do hope these memos help educate all of us about diversity issues and in addition invoke thoughtful and courteous discussion and debate*
~ The Pediatrics Diversity Committee
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June heralds in summer! Hopefully we can all relax a bit more and take a vacation or two, maybe three. June is dubbed LGBTQ Pride Month. In addition, it is Caribbean American Heritage Month.
This memo will highlight June 12th which is, “Loving Day”. We can all use a bit more love right about now! It is not a well-known holiday but one very worthy of celebration. Loving Day honors the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Loving vs. Virginia in 1967, which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws in the 16 states that still had such statutes. The premise of this decision held that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed all citizens due process and equal protection under the law.
In Virginia, interracial marriage was illegal under their 1924 Act to preserve racial integrity. The penalty for breaking this law was 1-5 years in the federal penitentiary. Richard Loving was a white man and Mildred Jeter was a Black woman. They were from Central Point Virginia and married in Washington, DC in June 1958. On July 11, 1958, at 2am, the couple was awakened from their sleep and arrested by the local sheriff because of their interracial marriage. They plead guilty and were each sentenced to one year in prison, which was suspended under the condition they would leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years.
The newlyweds moved to DC and had three children. Mildred Love wrote a letter asking for assistance from Robert F. Kennedy who was at the time the US Attorney General, who referred Mrs. Love to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who was able to take on the case. In 1963, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the conviction. The case made it to the US Supreme Court in April of 1967. On June 12th 1967 there was a unanimous vote that the Virginia Law violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the state”.
The couple returned to Central Point Virginia to raise their children. This case has been used in arguments concerning same-sex marriages.
Other causes for celebration in June include Puerto Rican Day Parade on June 12th and Juneteenth on June 19th. June 19th celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans, and dates back to 1865.
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UPCOMING DIVERSITY TOWN HALL |
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Find out how a couple in love brought forward the landmark case, Loving v. Virginia, which forever changed the color of marriage in the United States.
“What are you doing in bed with this woman?,” Sheriff R Garnett Brooks asked as he shone his flashlight on a couple in bed. It was 2 a.m. on July 11, 1958, and the couple in question, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, had been married for five weeks. “I’m his wife,” Mildred responded. The sheriff, who was acting on an anonymous tip, didn’t relent with his questioning. Richard was of Irish and English descent, and Mildred of African American and Native American descent, and according to state law, it was crime for them to be married. They were arrested for violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act.
Richard spent a night in jail before being released on a $1,000 bond his sister procured. Mildred, however, was not allowed a bond. She spent three nights alone in the small woman’s cell that only fit one. When she was finally released, it was to her father’s care. After the couple pled guilty, the presiding judge, Leon M. Bazile, gave them a choice, leave Virginia for 25 years or go to prison. They left and would spend the next nine years in exile.
The Lovings first met when Mildred was 11 and Richard was 17. He was a family friend, but their dating courtship didn’t begin until years later. Growing up about three or four miles apart, they were raised in a relatively mixed community that saw themselves as a family, regardless of race. Often coming together over music and drag racing, it was not uncommon for people of different races to intermingle, work together and sometimes date. Mildred’s mother was part Rappahannock Indian, and her father was part Cherokee. She later identified herself as Indian.
Richard and Mildred dated on and off for a couple of years before they decided to get married after Mildred became pregnant. (Mildred already had a first child from another relationship.) The Lovings traveled to Washington, D.C. to marry, where interracial marriage was legal, and it was the nation’s capital that they would later return to when they were forced to leave their home.
Leaving behind their family and friends, the Lovings attempted to make a life in Washington, D.C., but they never felt at home. Mildred didn’t adapt to city life; she was a country girl who was used to a rural area where there was room for kids to play. Wanting to see family, the Lovings would defy the court order to periodically return to Virginia. As they were not allowed to return together, they would take precautions not to be seen together in Virginia, Richard often never venturing outside the house.
In the backdrop of the Lovings’ struggle, the civil rights movement was taking root. While the Lovings were too preoccupied with their own hardships to be involved, they were inspired by the activism they saw. In 1964, Mildred wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for help. Kennedy told her to contact the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU lawyers Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop eagerly took the case. Read the full article.
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Multiracial Patient Experiences With Racial Microaggressions in Health Care Settings
Abstract
Purpose
Illuminating patients’ experiences of microaggressions in health care settings can help practitioners develop care that is more culturally responsive. While much of the literature on health care disparities focuses on minority groups generally, we sought to identify and to describe the ways in which racial microaggressions manifest for multiracial individuals and families specifically.
Methods
Using a combination of interviews and focus groups, we conducted 15 interviews and 3 focus groups. Eligible participants self-identified as more than one race and/or they self-identified as part of an interracial family, and they and/or someone they considered to be part of their family received health care in the past 12 months. We performed a content analysis to describe the dominant ways racial microaggressions presented in health care interactions.
Results
A total of 31 participants shared their experiences in health care settings, including their experiences with racism, racial bias, and microaggressions. Based on their experiences, we describe 6 prevalent microaggressions: mistaken identity, mistaken relationships, fixed forms, entitled examiner, pervasive stereotypes, and intersectionality. Many acknowledged their experiences with racial microaggressions in health care were similar to those they experienced in everyday settings; however, the power dynamics differed in health care.
Conclusions
Understanding patient perspectives about racial microaggressions suggests opportunities to improve patient-provider communication. For multiracial individuals and families, racial microaggressions may have implications for patient engagement in health care. Findings of this study highlight implications for theory and research as well as opportunities to facilitate systematic improvements in the provision of culturally responsive health care services.
Keywords: racism, minority health, family, health care disparities, culturally responsive care
In 2002, the Institute of Medicine’s landmark report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare,1 concluded that health care provider bias, prejudice, and stereotyping in part contributes to racial and ethnic health care disparities. The work highlights how health care providers can express negative racial attitudes and stereotypes, which can manifest in prejudicial behaviors and treatment. Since this seminal report, health disparities research continues to show that health care providers exhibit racial bias and that patients of color experience various forms of racism in health care settings.2
Such biases include racial microaggressions, a more subtle and cumulative act of everyday racism. Psychiatrist Chester Peirce initially coined the concept of racial microaggressions in the 1970s,3,4 and since then, scholars have expanded the concept. Pérez Huber and Solórzano provided a comprehensive definition of racial microaggressions,5 one that incorporates individual-level racism as well as the larger systems of racism that serve to marginalize and denigrate people of color: “A form of systemic, everyday racism used to keep those at the racial margins in their place. [Racial microaggressions] are: (1) verbal and non-verbal assaults directed toward People of Color, often carried out in subtle, automatic or unconscious forms; (2) layered assaults, based on race and its intersections with gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname; and (3) cumulative assaults that take a psychological, physiological, and academic toll on People of Color.”5. Read the full article.
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by Melinda Epler
Through the power of allyship, each of us can create an equitable, innovative workplace where everyone feels safe, valued, and able to thrive.
How can you help someone else thrive? How can you interrupt the biases, microaggressions, and inequities that prevent people around you from excelling? How can you build an innovative workplace fueled by equity, diversity and belonging?
Every business leader today should be asking themselves these questions. Systems and processes have been skewed too long in favor of some at the expense of others, and things are changing―fast. How to Be an Ally shows how to take personal responsibility for driving change that’s good for people―and for business. You’ll learn the ins and outs of allyship and build the knowledge and skills you need to:
- Listen and learn new perspectives
- Identify your own biases
- Avoid unintentionally harming people with microaggressions
- Express empathy with courage
- Advocate for people in small, everyday ways
- Rethink your work to be more inclusive, equitable, and accessible
- Build team norms that cultivate allyship
- Create equitable, inclusive systems and processes
Uniquely insightful and extremely timely, How to Be an Ally humanizes diversity and inclusion and facilitates greater empathy and understanding between people of all identities. It teaches us that every individual can learn about the imbalance in opportunity and work to correct it.
The key to true diversity, equity, and inclusion is allyship. This one-of-a-kind guide provides everything you need to use allyship to create a better workplace for ourselves and our colleagues.
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We are in the process of developing sub-committees to further our work, expedite our cause, and make it possible for more people to be involved. Your beliefs do not need to be the same as that of the current committee. If you are interested, please let us know which committee would be of interest to you. If you have an area of interest that is not listed, please make that known. The topics for these sub-committees may grow, shrink, or disappear. Please email peds_diversity@med.unc.edu if you are interested in joining.
Our sub-committees to date will include:
- Pediatric Student Curriculum
- Pediatric Resident Curriculum
- Pediatric Fellow Curriculum
- Town Hall and Grand Round Topics
- Advocacy for our Hispanic Population
- Advocacy for our Native American Population
- Promotion Diversity Statements/ Exit Interviews
- Clinical Care
- Mentorship of UIM in Pediatrics
- Wellness
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Wellbeing Coaching and Resources as part of Mentorship
With the help of a pilot grant from the UNC School of Medicine’s Office of Faculty Affairs and the Center for Health Innovation, a team led by Suzanne Kennedy, PhD is carrying out a project to integrate wellbeing coaching into faculty mentoring in Pediatrics. As part of that, a short video/slide presentation was developed for mentors to orient them to resources available, and it can be viewed here [link]. A big thank you to Drs. Hernandez, Mills and Kihlstrom for their starring roles!
Check out this link for more information:
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Reoccuring Events/Resources:
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Underrepresented in Medicine Community List
The purpose of the Underrepresented in Medicine Community List is to allow students, staff, residents, and faculty of underrepresented identities that are affiliated with the UNC School of Medicine to find community, mentorship, and representation. Such identities include those belonging to non-dominant religions, races or ethnicities, and sexualities or gender identities.
This community is open and accessible to anyone with a UNC Onyen and password, including current staff, faculty, students, residents, and fellows.
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June Dates to Note
Other important dates can be found on the
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Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month |
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National Caribbean American Heritage Month |
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June 20 – World Refugee Day
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June 21 – National Indigenous Peoples Day (Canada)
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June 21 – Litha, Summer Solstice (Pagan)
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June 24 – Pride Day (LGBTQIAA+) (varies by city and country)
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Dates to Note is a compilation intended to include, but is not all-inclusive, notable information from the internet, Diversity Best Practices, 2022 Diversity Holiday Calendar, and other sources. |
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Stuart Gold, MD - Committee Chair
Christian Lawrence, MD -Committee Vice Chair
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Alessandra Angelino, MD
Benny Joyner, MD
Christel Wekon-kemeni, MD
Denita Moore, Coordinator
Jen Fuchs, MD
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Jennifer Gutierrez-Wu, MD
Jennifer McElroy, MSN
Kenya McNeal-Trice, MD
Martha Perry, MD
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Nikki Ferrin, MD
Nina Jain, MD
Robin Howard, Coordinator
Steven Weinberg, MD
Zachary Pettigrew, MD
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