I am tired of having my white guilt played on. I have this unit at university at the moment, Diversity and Health, or something. Basically, its goal is to create a cohort of nurses capable of holistic care, but the way it is trying to achieve this is perplexing, to say the least. I have sat through many lectures that were 2 hours of 'why the white man sucks', essentially, and I recently sat through a 2 hour lecture of why science and scientifically-based medicine is wrong. I mean, I get that science isn't the only answer and it isn't even always the answer at all. But I don't agree that I'm going to be made a more competent nurse by having some 20 year old sociologist tell me that everything I've ever believed in is completely wrong, and that I somehow am to blame for the state of Aboriginal health because I 'carry the heritage of cultural imperialism'.
Ugh.
Apparently, science is biased. Apparently, by being white and heading towards a career in medicine, I am perpetuating colonisation. Apparently, I'm not culturally safe with my mindset of treating everyone equally, because apparently we can't do that. Apparently, I shouldn't go bush and attempt to treat people with my biased science-based medicine, because, despite the presence of LEPROSY, to do so would be to press my culture onto another, and we can't have that.
I like science. I like logic and algar plates and microscopes. I like medications.
I don't like the idea of watching a woman die because she insulted her Elders, and I don't want to be the privileged imperialist playing domination.
So you'll have to excuse me while I go back to my biased cytology.
I like how science (and maths) are set. There isn't any option of 'maybe' or exceptions. Not really, anyway. I like rules. Despite what teenagers say, rules create order. And we need that today.
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