But the stereotypes followed us, and so did the abuse. When immigration quotas were loosened to address the doctor shortage of the late 1960s, a generation of Asian immigrant doctors who had trained in other countries paved the way for their daughters and now granddaughters to practice medicine. He linked their Asian-American faces and bodies to his torment. “Temptation ,” he called his victims, according to authorities. When I heard the suspected Atlanta area gunman’s reported explanation for why he killed six Asian-American women and two others, I knew I was hearing stereotypes that are often used to characterize us, regardless of our professions.
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The murders of Asian-American women in the Atlanta area and the spate of brutal beatings of Asian-Americans, including elders and women, have made such hate impossible to ignore. Donald Trump’s use of cruel phrases - “Chinese Virus” and, later, “Kung Flu” - no doubt inspired some of the abuse. My awareness of this grew gradually as the pandemic went on, and all around us, anti-Asian bigotry seemed to be intensifying. My medical training encouraged me to focus on the work and deny and minimize the discrimination I faced.īut the recent rise in attention to anti-Asian hate has forced me to reckon with how we Asian-American women doctors are demeaned as a group, and how even the valor we display when we show up to work to risk our lives during a pandemic doesn’t protect us from having to endure racism and sexism. The truth is, I had experienced the same kind of hate and bigotry he expressed before, in public places and in health care settings, but until this year I didn’t fully grapple with or fully acknowledge the impact of such aggression. I focused on all this, instead of the stranger’s cruel words. I had never served in war before, but now I was enlisted. I offered extra masks to grocery store clerks and donated cleaning supplies to hospitals with shortages. I drove out to far-flung medical supply stores, finding stashes of personal protective equipment and sharing them with house staff members and other health workers. I monitored my temperature and oxygen twice a day and quarantined away from my young children. I felt needed and seen, moved by grateful strangers banging pots, by their admiration for all of us on the front line, doing our jobs without complaint. I felt intense pride about being a doctor - I’m a psychiatrist who was working in a hospital in the Boston area - when the country needed me most, and it made me feel deeply American.
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I had other things on my mind: Those of us in medicine were working extra shifts, even as the virus changed our lives. I got away quickly, washed the saliva out of my hair in a hospital bathroom and started my day. After apparently taking note of my hospital badge and mask, he announced that even though I was a doctor, I “brought the sickness.” He called me “Hindu,” along with a string of profanities.
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It was near the beginning of the pandemic, in mid-April of 2020, when a stranger spit on me.