Strongly Worded

Prejudice ... with a side of carmelized-onion-and-goat cheese bruschetta

So I attended what will probably be my last medical-professional function on Saturday night. The Chief of Some Department hosted an elaborate dinner for the medical residents and their significant others. The party was held in the garden of the Chief's suburban mansion. The guests swilled around tables set with white linens and centerpieces, sidestepping the tiled pool and hot tub. I was among two other non-medical guests, swimming in a sea of talk about adrenocortical carcinoma, medulloblastoma, and other stimulating topics.

Whenever I was introduced to a new person, his/her first question was whether I was in medicine (those of us not in medicine, apparently, are called "civilians"). When explaining my work to Henry, a very friendly, very chatty guy, he asked whether I know anything about Section 8.

In case you don't know about it, Section 8 is one of the most effective housing subsidies we've got (although it doesn't address the supply-side aspect of the issue). In a nutshell, (per the New York Times), through Section 8, "the government guarantees subsidies for rents in the private market. Families, most of them at or below the poverty level, pay 30 percent of their incomes toward rent, and Section 8 vouchers pay the rest. At the moment, the program covers about two million people, a majority of them elderly or in families with children."

I said to Henry: yes, of course, I'm familiar with Section 8.

"And have you heard Ellen's story about it?" he asked. No, I hadn't.

"Well, Ellen [a colleague in the Department] just moved into this really nice apartment with her husband and her two little kids. They ordered a flat-screen TV from Best Buy, and it arrived while they were out. Apparently the neighbors signed for it, but then by the time they got home it had just vanished--and they eventually had to get UPS to reimburse them. Ellen talked to the landlord and it turned out the neighbors who signed were Section 8 tenants. Is there some law that they have to live there, is that why they were there in that nice building? And isn't the landlord obligated to tell the other tenants that they have a Section 8 neighbor?"

I was horrified. "Landlords have no obligation to rent to Section 8 tenants, but they may choose to just as they would choose to rent to anyone else. And families with Section 8 vouchers aren't fucking sex offenders, they're just low-income. So nobody has any obligation (or reason) to disclose their financial situation to their neighbors. The concept of poor people living in an upscale apartment complex is actually called integration. And it sounds like a plasma TV left on a doorstep could have been stolen by someone other than the neighbor who signed for it."

Henry was a little taken aback. "Well, yeah, I guess so. Ellen ended up moving, you know? She had two little kids and after that happened ..."

I'm pretty sure Henry is not a bigot, and I'm pretty sure he's a good and smart person (curing cancer all day, you know). And he's also a person of color, so potentially, he might be slightly more aware of prejudice in its different forms than your average white guy.

So I was reminded that "public education" isn't just about trying to make progressive policy palatable to conservative rednecks. Sometimes (maybe oftentimes!) it needs to happen at upscale gatherings where liberal, well-educated people are passing shrimp cocktails and tuna steak kebobs and bemoaning the current political administration.

Posted by Dori at 1:55 PM