Dooley Noted: 8/2/2016
We are in troubled times of race wars.
As an Indiana girl, I had a purely Caucasian elementary and high school, sans one adopted African-American girl.
Confederate flags were flown in trucks – even though Indiana was part of the North. That made most of us laugh at the irony.
Racial tensions didn’t seem high, though, because there wasn’t much race diversity.
Only the prejudice was flowing, without many upon whom to direct it.
As I went to college, I met people of many designated races. I saw no differences in our humanity.
And as I started dissecting the human body, I saw no differences in the anatomy past the skin.
In fact, it wasn’t easy at all to determine race with the skin intact.
That’s when I fully realized that racism is learned.
I’ve participated in the dissection of over 1,000 bodies at this point.
My colleagues have dissected many more.
And once the skin is dissected, we have to check the record to see what race is listed.
Fifty instructors can’t tell the difference, even with centuries of collective dissection experience.
I’d love to take the opportunity to bring every racist individual into the lab and challenge them to determine race, religion, or sexual orientation once the skin is removed.
I’d bet my bank account that every single one of them would fail abysmally.
No matter the race, the religious, the sexual preference, the profession, nor the accumulation of goods, everyone ends up at the end of life on a similar slab.
And I won’t be able to guess much about their differences in the aforementioned categories.
I just see the anatomy of a human.
Racism is created by the mind.
Consider changing your mind.
A trip to the cadaver lab may help.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley
