The Curious Case of Dr. Head

You know...and I've said this before... I wanted to believe that after this country elected it's first African-American President in 2008 that maybe we had turned a corner...a racial corner, that maybe this was the beginning of Post Racial America as people were beginning to say.. How could I have been so naive? How could I have been so blind and deaf.

It seems since President Barack Obama's election in 2008, Racists have gotten bolder, the disrespect , not just for the President , but for African-Americans in general has risen to a seeming fever pitch as with the story of this man...Dr. Christian Head.

Is it no surprise, no surprise at all that Dr. Christian Head's account of being depicted as a gorilla sodomized by his white supervisor in a slideshow shown at a UCLA School of Medicine graduation "roast" has  NOT been the subject of national attention and outrage as it should be?

Wait...there's more...

The African-American head-and-neck surgeon's tale of over-the-top racism by the university went viral, thanks to a YouTube video chronicling the allegations and a Change.org petition calling on the UCLA Board of Regents to "end the racial discrimination and deplorable mistreatment" against Head.
But the worst part of the "gorilla slide," as it's described in an April 17 discrimination action filed on Head's behalf against his supervisors and the Regents, is that, according to the 49-year-old doctor, it was merely one moment in a pattern of discrimination, harassment and humiliation by the UCLA School of Medicine that he says has lasted for years.

 According to the April 17 complaint, the physician, who was once named "Most Innovative Surgeon" by Black Enterprise and who launched UCLA's Johnson Cancer Center Tumor lab, faced retaliation by the institution when he asked for the wrongs against him to be righted.

As the only African-American tenured professor at UCLA's department of head and neck surgery, Head says it all started when his supervisor, Marilene Wang, labeled him an "affirmative action hire" and "affirmative action project" and proclaimed that black doctors like him were the reason for failed hospitals. Things got worse, according to the complaint, when he cooperated with an investigation against Wang. He says the retaliation escalated until, at a 2006 event for graduating students, it became public. Head tells his version of the events in the video (shown above) created by NAACP executive Willis Edwards to spread the word about the case, saying:
[A] series of 20 slides, describing me as a poor doctor ... then the final slide was a photo of a gorilla on all fours with my head photoshopped onto the gorilla, with a smile on my face, and a Caucasian man, completely naked, sodimizing me from behind, and my boss' head photoshopped on the person, smiling. I could feel the pressure in my chest, listening to them laugh. I waited until the laughter subsided, and then I approached the podium, and I pulled my boss aside, Dr. Gerald Berke, and I said to him, "How could you let this happen? How could you do this?" And he just smiled and chuckled, you know ... "What's the problem?"

What's The problem?   Did that actually come out of his mouth? The pure insensitivity of this galls me to the point that I can barely contain myself as I write this...

Dr. Christian Head says the school ignored his repeated requests to address the incident and convinced him that pushing to have his allegations of racism addressed would put his career on the line.
Heeding that warning, he let the issue go until after he was tenured, but when he did readdress it, he reports that things only got worse: His complaint details receiving paychecks for amounts less than a dollar, teaching opportunities denied, deliberate attempts to sabotage his medical career, plus discrimination, harassment and retaliation that all continue, he and his attorneys claim, to this day.



At the UCLA Head and Neck Clinic, where defendants Gerald Berke and Marilene Wang work alongside Dr. Christian Head as physicians specializing in otolaryngology, as well as the university's media-relations office and chancellor's office there was naturally, no comment.

All offices contacted declined to comment beyond the university's official statement on the case, condemning the behavior described in the complaint but saying, "UCLA has formal grievance and disciplinary procedures that afford appropriate due process review of any complaints of discrimination or mistreatment. Dr. Christian Head and his attorney were repeatedly advised of these procedures and encouraged to utilize them. They chose not to do so."

Sounds like the typical cover up to me...Also sounds like UCLA "officially" plans to do nothing about it. Business as usual.  So many whites write in to news websites and ask why can't Black people just move on...Slavery and the Civil rights era is over...Why can't African Americans just be Americans they say,like everybody else?  We would love to move on...We would love to be judged by the content of our charactor and not the color of our skin...But incidents like this are not just isolated....They happen everyday...And it doesn't matter if your name is Trayvonn Martin or Dr. Christian Head or Michael Vick...You still get marginalized and profiled....

See, I'm not angry about slavery...You're right...that was over 400 years ago...I don't personally know any slaves... I can't be angry about the segregation my parents and grandparents had to endure..(Well actually, I could..)  I'm angry about stuff like this that continues to go on , right here and right now!

Okay...I'll get off my soapbox for today!