Race vs. Work

In the TV show Grey’s Anatomy, there’s a specific episode which addresses racial issues and the idea of white supremacy, and discourages these racist ideas and common ideologies. In the episode, there was an accident in which a paramedic was severely injured. He was a young, white man and at first refused the help of Dr. Bailey, a black woman surgeon. He then refused help from any doctor that tried to help him because they weren’t white. So Dr. Bailey went and got Dr. Yang who is Asian-American to examine him. The man was still not thrilled at this, responding by, “Oh c’mon! Seriously?” but he stubbornly accepted. Yang found a tattoo of a swastika on his stomach, and was disgusted.

The man had severe internal bleeding and had to undergo surgery, but he didn’t want Dr. Bailey or the the Chief to do it because he didn’t trust them and thought they weren’t skilled enough to save his life, just because they were black. He made another doctor, white of course, to accompany them into surgery and “make sure they didn’t kill him”. Although Bailey didn’t necessarily want to save the life of a white supremacist and it was very challenging, it was the right thing to do and in the end he ended up living, miraculously, because of the extreme extent of his injuries. Dr. Bailey also re-stitched his body so that the tattoo was unrecognizable on purpose.

This episode not only breaks the racial stereotypes that black people are never surgeons, but encourages the idea that how well you do your job is not related to race at all. Dr. O’Malley, the white doctor that the injured man demanded be in the OR during his surgery, admitted that he would’ve probably killed the man, that he’s not as skilled as Dr. Bailey and the Chief, and the white supremacist man was very surprised. By portraying this man as the villain, and a man with no morals or ethics, the audience is convinced that racism and the idea of white supremacy is frowned upon and not at all true. Also, this episode convinces the audience that minorities commonly have agency in the workplace, because Dr. Bailey is a very respected woman who is high up on the “food chain” at the hospital and is very skilled and passionate with her work. The Chief is also obviously important and respected because he’s the boss of all the surgeons in the hospital.