RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 What Are You? A Biracial Physician on Nuanced Racism
JF The Annals of Family Medicine
JO Ann Fam Med
FD American Academy of Family Physicians
SP 72
OP 74
DO 10.1370/afm.2637
VO 19
IS 1
A1 Lo, Emma
YR 2021
UL http://www.annfammed.org/content/19/1/72.abstract
AB A patient shouts what he suspects is my racial background at my face. A colleague repeats a patient’s racist remarks against me; I lurk in my whiteness to cope. A compliment about my Asianness lands as a racist devaluation of both sides of my heritage. The medical licensing board does not include my race on its registration form. Straddling the boundary of Asian and White as a biracial female psychiatrist, I struggle to handle exoticization, discriminatory assumptions, and subtle marginalization by patients and colleagues. I grapple with the privilege of light-skinned ethnic ambiguity vs the disrespect for having features deviating from the imagined physician appearance. In this piece, I introduce a nuanced dialog about race and advocate for recognition and inclusion of biracial and multiracial minority medical practitioners who defy oversimplified racial categories.