April More Voices: Diversity

Dear readers,

I grew up in a segregated neighborhood–not in Alabama or Mississippi, but in New York City. Stuyvesant Town, a coveted Manhattan location where I spent my youth, was built for veterans–white veterans–after World War II. It did not offer apartments to Black families until the mid-1960s.

When I was a boy, the area below Fourteenth Street, now the desirable East Village, was home to recent immigrants from Puerto Rico. Friends of my parents shook their heads when discussing that community and “those people,” who I grew leery of.

If I saw a Black person in Stuyvesant Town (except for Herman, our building’s maintenance man), I wondered what they were doing there. They don’t belong here, I’d think to myself.

It’s funny that, as a doctor, I ended up caring for a population of immigrants and other minority groups. I suppose it’s because I wanted to get to know these people I was once afraid of, people whose lives and experiences were a mystery to me. People who I’d come to realize had been given a raw deal that I’d been spared. Maybe I wanted to befriend them. Maybe I wanted to repair something.

And I definitely wanted my two daughters to grow up in a more diverse community–ideally, on a racially integrated block in a racially integrated neighborhood.

At the same time, I can’t help but think that many of my Black patients might have liked to have a Black doctor, and my Spanish-speaking patients might have preferred to receive care from a native Spanish speaker.

Truth is, there aren’t enough of those kinds of doctors to serve the communities who might want them. The health center where I spent most of my career did have its share of Black and Hispanic workers. They staffed the front desk and worked as nurses and nursing assistants.

That never seemed right to me. Why couldn’t the staffing be more diverse at all levels? And why weren’t there more Black faces among the medical students I taught? Shouldn’t a medical-school class mirror the community it serves? Wouldn’t many members of a historically disenfranchised group feel more comfortable talking to a doctor who looked like them?

As a young attending, I served on the faculty of a residency program whose trainees were mostly foreign-born. This was my first experience working closely with physicians from India, Pakistan, Nigeria and other countries. That experience challenged any preconceived notions I had about foreign-born physicians. In the process, my eyes were opened, and my heart softened.

The same letting go of mistrust and incomprehension took place over the years when friends, colleagues or youngsters I knew turned out to be gay, or started transitioning.

My interactions with people who don’t look like me, or who grew up under different circumstances, internal or external, inside or outside our nation’s borders, have made me a better person–more curious, more understanding, less fearful and more appreciative of our shared humanity. And now, the current administration’s attempts to scrub diversity initiatives from our institutions and DEI from our vocabularies strike me as shameful. We are all being diminished.

This month’s More Voices theme is Diversity. What has been your experience of diversity–as a patient, health professional or caregiver?

Share your story using the More Voices Submission Form. For more details, visit More Voices FAQs. And have a look at last month’s theme: Dementia.

Remember, your story should be 40-400 words. And no poetry, please.

We look forward to hearing from you. And thank you for being a part of this caring community.

With warm regards,

Paul Gross
Editor