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I’m classy but a cuss a little. Sometimes a lot. And it often spills over into my writing. The kind of shit that gets censored on my professional Facebook page.
So when I co-authored this profanity-free piece about equity with my friend and badass-hijab wearing-mama of 6-trauma surgeon colleague Dr. Qaali Hussein in July, I seized the opportunity to amplify it on Facebook.
“My pending exodus from academic medicine after 15 years…” This is how I started my piece recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. I wrote my thoughts on what academia needs to do to right the wrongs that centuries of racism and anti-Blackness have created, but not on the experience that served as my final straw. A story in the news since then makes me want to share it now…
Today is my 50th birthday.
A couple of weeks ago, I was lamenting my birthday’s approach because of its promise of middle-aged woman invisibility as punishment for graying hair and slowing metabolism. I managed to climb out of self-pitying funk long enough to eke out a “happy 50th birthday old man” wish to a Latino friend. His response: “Lol…Thank you. Crazy. Never thought I’d live past my 20s yet here I am.” And the next day George Floyd was murdered, just days after we learned about Breonna Taylor’s and Ahmaud Arbery’s murders. George was 46. Breonna was 26. Ahmaud was 25.
