NHS Discrimination – Are UK Eskimos Being Treated Fairly?
The NHS Pass Degree in Tact
The long suffering Mrs Gobshot and I were recently taken aback by a line of questioning undertaken by NHS hospital staff during a visit to our local maternity unit.
‘Booking In’
The first anti-natal appointment for any new pregnancy, known as ‘booking in’ (a bit like taking your car for an MOT), always takes longer than subsequent appointments due to the number of important questions that need to be asked in the early stages of gestation. The midwives and consultants chase you from one room to another over a period of 3 hours, filling in endless paperwork and asking numerous questions of a rather personal nature such as ‘have you used any contraception in the last 12 months?’ ( a strange question – given the circumstances).
White bun in the oven
In one of these rooms, my wife was asked ‘Do you consider yourself to be white?’. Mrs Gobshot confirmed that she did. The student midwife then turned, looked straight at me, and asked the same question. Knowing that I was white didn’t prevent me from making sure. I found myself casually examining my hands, before confirming to my interviewer that I did indeed consider myself to be white.
Still unsure as to the exact reasoning behind this line of questioning and before I had time to consider exactly what the reaction might have been had I declared myself to be black, we were escorted to yet another waiting room for further interrogation.
Twenty minutes later, it transpired that simply considering oneself to be white was not going to be good enough.
‘I see you consider yourselves to be white?’ said the second midwife.
‘Er, yes that’s right’ replied my wife, who, inexplicably, thought now was as good a time as any to expand on her family history. ‘Actually’ she said, ‘I have a very interesting background.’
With that, the midwife stiffened.
‘Go on’ she said.
‘Well, I have some Russian ancestry, and one of my paternal grandparents was Spanish.’
‘Spanish!’ echoed the midwife with surprise, salivating. ‘Let me see, it doesn’t say that here’
The midwife cast a surly eye over Mrs Gobshot before continuing to check-over the forms in front of her.
‘Right, well, you’re not white then, the first midwife’s ticked the wrong box’ she said.
Firing squad
Mrs Gobshot looked at me, and I looked at her. We both wondered if we might now be shot (although privately, I was hoping at the very least that I might be given the chance to live).
‘The wrong box?’ my wife asked nervously.
‘Yes’ said the midwife, ‘You should be under Southern European!’
Southern European sounded infinitely more inviting than the sound of the hospital firing squad. However, it would appear that unless you are one-hundred per cent British (whatever that means), one is not classed as being white, not even perhaps if you were of Greek decent and your family had spent the majority of the last century residing at Buckingham Palace.
No place for an Eskimo
Sensing that it was my turn next to play happy recipient to this now drooling mad-woman’s line of questioning, I decided to pre-empt her, and explained that it would be impossible to fully trace the paternal side of my family due to the identity of my natural paternal grandfather being completely unknown, and, that those who had the answers, had passed the point in life whereby they may have been able to let on.
‘Therefore’, I said rather inadvisedly, ‘I could be, for sake of argument, a quarter Eskimo.’
‘Mmm, now let me see’. The midwife then proceeded to spend five minutes checking the forms in a vain attempt to find a box for ‘Eskimo’ which, of course, didn’t exist. ‘I don’t know where I’d put Eskimo’ she said, ‘Perhaps under Iceland. No, Iceland’s not in Europe is it?’
Recognising this as a rhetorical question, neither Mrs Gobshot nor myself gave the midwife the benefit of an answer, and, seeing as we were now baffled and confused more than we were ever likely to be, we decided to cut our losses, let sleeping dogs lie and get out of the building – quickly – wherever Iceland was to be found.
Five minutes later I was sat in the car comforting a sobbing Mrs Gobshot who was recovering from the discovery of her new found ethnicity. Apparently the risk of ethnically linked medical complications for the baby could increase – however, the chances of the NHS discovering this risk was of course entirely dependent on which box the midwife ticked – which in turn was dependent on whether Mrs Gobshot considered herself to be white – and finally, this was dependent on whether the hospital’s ‘midwife of the day’ understood the geographical location of the countries of the world.
I concluded therefore that all midwives should have at the very least some sort of qualification in Geography – otherwise, it would be as useful to present prospective parents with the hospital canteen’s ‘soup of the day’ to conduct their ethnicity questionnaire.
As for my state of mind, I left the hospital elated that if it were eventually discovered that I did in fact possess Eskimo ancestry, the NHS would have no box for me – especially if my grandfather had been an Eskimo from Iceland (you know, that country near London full of geisers).
Copyright 2010 Spitting Bullets
