Medicine, public health, & social equity

March 11, 2011

The current model of “class-mobility” reinforces separatism and a class-hierarchy because it posits that in order to escape oppression, one must become an oppressor – and universities do not merely mediate the boundary between professional and laborer, they teach the body of knowledge, the worldview, the values that mark a person as professional, as “belonging” to the middle- or upper-class.

Universities teach us to renounce our sense of identification with the poor; they teach us this by mainly ignoring the existence of poor people and by treating us as “other” when we do become the subject of discussion. Universities teach us not to care too much, because it will undermine our professional role. Universities teach that we are separate from where we came from, that we are “qualified” (which suggests our families and peers are not), that we are justified in having power over people, in speaking for the subjects of our study. Universities teach us that we are “too good” to wait tables and clean houses, with the implication that those who do those jobs are “not good enough” to deserve better.

Poor people tend to see university as a way out for their kids, but university is also a way in to the class of people whose success is premised on the oppression of the poor. […]For a kid to become educated meant that he or she would live an easier life that was premised on the oppression and invisibility of the very communities s/he came from. This left a foul taste in many mouths.

I have had that foul taste in my mouth for years, and I have come to the conclusion that it is the taste of injustice – of being forced to choose between the indignity of remaining poor and the ethically repellent strategy of privilege seeking. To a poor kid who has the chance to go to college or university, participating in an institution that she identifies as oppressive (either before attending or in the course of her education) might seem like the best choice with regards to her survival, but it is a conflicted survival.

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Megan Lee: “Maybe I’m Not Class-Mobile; Maybe I’m Class-Queer”, from the anthology Feminism For Real: Deconstructing The Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism. Quoted at Racialicious, March 8, 2011.

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Now that I’m in medical school, I feel this a lot more profoundly than ever before. College was actually a pretty happy time for me, despite my long struggles with impostor syndrome and the desire to remain “myself” in the face of constant pressure to be More and Better. And even though MIT is technically one of those elite universities that people (irrationally) aspire to from the womb, I didn’t feel out of place there because, actually, it was the first time in my life that I really felt at home anywhere. Late childhood and puberty were an awkward time for me, for many reasons. Anyway, the point is: as much as I love my current school and classmates, it still feels a little awkward to reveal certain parts of my personal and family history in class discussions and sometimes even in private conversations. It’s normal to be in med school and have parents or close relatives who are doctors. It’s less normal to be in med school and have spent about half of your life actively not wanting to be a doctor because one of your parents passed away as a child, and you felt like being a physician was too much responsibility to bear, until you realized that it would be a powerful way to make things better in the world. I know, right? I don’t have any problem talking candidly about where I come from, my family circumstances, the choices I’ve made, and how my perspective has been shaped by my experiences. But sometimes I wish I could divorce my personal history from my professional life because, well, that’s a lot to reveal in any context, much less at your job. Hi. I believe that, as human beings, everyone has the right to health care. (Because I know exactly what it’s like to not have it.)

On the other hand, I do worry that my excessive education has already made me lose touch with my roots. That’s a story for another day.

Today I argued that those who commit crimes are making economic decisions, in the same way that going to medical school is an economic decision for many of us. It’s just that one set of decisions are legal and another’s not. I don’t entirely believe it (but I do to a large degree) but in any case, it was a really fun debate. It’s been a long time since I’ve argued so passionately for something. It’s really easy to forget what you care about when you’re wrapped up in med school.

(Source: classragespeaks, via lenachen)

9:23pm
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