Tweedy Part 2

In part two of "Black Man In A White Coat," Tweedy talks about the racist encounters that he has come across. Yet, Tweedy admits his own prejudices against Chester's family, "He had a crew cut and thin forearms covered with menacing tattoos. His shirt pocket flaunted a smaller Confederate flag. To my sensitized eyes,  he looked the part of a virulent racist. Instantly, my own racial prejudice arose as my imagination put him in an old pickup truck, heading to the roadside bar where he would get drunk and get in a fight over a girl who wore too much makeup" (page 118). I believe that Tweedy is just as guilty about having this assumption come from a place of race the same way that the other doctor was fired for telling the African-American woman he was treating for a broken arm to hold her arm "like she usually holds a beer on a Saturday night." Though, it is important that Tweedy acknowledges his error, and I'm glad that this chapter concludes with the family respecting Tweedy as a doctor and being appreciative. Although, I see this learned behavior as generally problematic, I wonder where it is taught. It is a double edged sword, if Tweedy were to speak up because he does not want to be the racially sensitive doctor and classified as a "troublemaker." We see this especially in the instance of wanting to correct the racial bias of his peer in the psychological diagnosis of a patient with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. He struggles with deciding to sign off on this conclusion and support his peers in this problematic judgment. It is problematic because Tweedy, and myself included, fail to see that they would have reached this conclusion if the man were white. It is important to try to correct this learned behavior. For example this can be done by maintaining the case despite the prejudgment, unlike Audrey wanting to quit the case and hand it off to one of the teams of all white men. I see this as an issue that would just sweep the problem under the rug. Where as it is important to acknowledge that even though Chester dies in the end, which could fuel their hatred for African-Americans in the sense that he failed to keep their father alive, they did not go that route. They were impressed that Tweedy took such great care of Chester and gave him the best medical care possible.
There are biases within races, as seen with the sickle-cell patient on page 125. The African-American man feels the need to question the intelligence of Tweedy, until he proves it. Meanwhile, I do not believe a white doctor would have needed to do so for this man. In the end the man says, "Forget what I said about changing doctors."