#227. Donating Blood

Black people are a charitable lot, when it comes to philanthropic endeavors within their own community. Though it is difficult to qualify how well these donations are impacting the Black community, Black people do give money at an extremely generous rate:

A 2003 study reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that African Americans who give to charity donate 25% more of their discretionary income than whites. And a study of affluent people of color making donations in the New York region, released in October, found that African Americans gave more money annually than either Latino or Asian Americans, according to the Coalition for New Philanthropy.  

Coincidentally, numerous Fortune 100 companies pay homage to Black Run America (BRA) and annually tithe to this secular institution with a passion once devoted to theological pursuits.

$9 out of $10 dollars that Black people donate goes to the church, and as everyone knows Sunday is the most segregated hour in the week.

For all the good intentions of living a pious life and having blessings bestowed upon them for placing money in the collection plate on Sunday, Black people refrain from a much more important type of donating that could save mortal lives instead of souls:

Blood that closely matches a patient’s is less likely to be rejected by the patient and can mean fewer complications after a transfusion.
 

Genetically-similar blood is superior for people who need repeated blood transfusions, for conditions like sickle cell anemia.

Increasing African-American donations is vital because blood types O and B, the blood types of about 70 percent of African-Americans, are the blood types most in demand.

The reasons for not donating blood are simply described as a lack of trust Black people have for the medical field:

Disparities in healthcare between races exist in the United States. A new study published in the journal Transfusion explores why African Americans donate blood at lower rates than whites. The findings reveal that there is a significant distrust in the healthcare system among the African American community, and African Americans who distrust hospitals are less likely to donate.

Led by Beth H. Shaz, MD, Chief Medical Officer of the New York Blood Center in New York, New York, researchers created a survey to explore reasons for low likelihood of blood donation in African Americans.

Some studies have shown that only 1 in 10 Black people donate blood, which correlates to big problems in the Black community when a Black person is in need of a transfusion:

African-Americans are less likely to donate blood because of a general distrust of the health care system, according to research conducted at African-American churches in Atlanta and published online Sept. 14 in Transfusion.
Adelbert B. James, Ph.D., of Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues surveyed parishioners at 15 African-American churches in Atlanta on their knowledge and beliefs about blood donation and the barriers to and motivators for their giving blood.

Some 930 parishioners responded to the survey, with 3 percent reporting being current blood donors, 46 percent being lapsed donors, and 40 percent being non-donors. Compared with those who distrusted hospitals, the researchers found that those who trusted hospitals had less fear of donation and more knowledge of the blood supply, and they were more likely to respond to the community's blood needs. Donors were more likely than non-donors to have participated in research and to trust hospitals.

Black people just don't donate blood. Not even Dr. Hibbert could get Black people to donate blood at this point. Read the NAACP of Detroit here to understand the differences in Black blood and white blood, and why Black blood donors must be found:

While the need for all types of blood donations is ongoing, the need for minority donations is the greatest. Of the 5 percent of the general population who donate blood, only 1 out of 10 are African American or Hispanic. Every day of the year, thousands of African Americans and Hispanics face an alarming fact. There can be a limited amount of blood available for minorities when they need it.

While they experience the same life-threatening emergencies that require blood transfusions as other people in the United States, there are a large number of minorities with rare blood diseases unique to their race, such as sickle cell anemia. As with every individual, the most compatible blood transfusion is likely to come from someone of the same ethnic, racial and genetic background as the patient.

Combined with the fact that African American and Hispanic populations are growing – thirty percent of the population in South Carolina is now comprised of African-Americans while Hispanics have tripled in recent years – there is an urgent need for minority blood donations.

Wait: isn't race just a social construct? Worse, when one listens to the CDC and understands what was publicized at Boise State, Black people could one day be banned from giving blood. With Black people having HIV/AIDS rates at eight times the white average, and STD's at rates that dwarf their white counterparts, Black people might soon have their blood disqualified from the ranks of safe donors:

In 1983, the FDA ruled out donations from anyone who had lived in Haiti after 1977. Then it extended this prohibition to sub-Saharan Africa. Today, the Red Cross informs prospective donors that under FDA rules, "Persons who were born in or lived in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Niger and Nigeria since 1977 cannot be blood donors."


This isn't racial animus. It's just blunt math, based on the increased risk of a particular HIV type in these populations. The FDA has a similarly coarse rule against blood from anyone who has spent half a year in the United Kingdom, based on the threat of mad-cow disease. The problem isn't racism; it's the crudity of treating individuals according to group membership. Where does it end? When the FDA barred Haitian blood, Haitian groups asked why black Americans, whose HIV rate was higher than that of Haitians, weren't similarly excluded. It was a good question, and it was never answered. (For an excellent analysis of similarities between the Haitian blood ban and the MSM blood ban, see Charlene Galarneau's article, "Blood Donation, Deferral, and Discrimination," in the American Journal of Bioethics.)

Not only do Black people refrain from donating blood, they also fail to check off the box on their drivers license that would make them organ donors:

Organ donor rates among African Americans hover around 10 or 15 percent – well below the national average. Meanwhile about 35 percent of patients waiting for a kidney are black...

Network president Howard Nathan says matching and transplantation are colorblind: A donor of any race could be a match for a recipient of any race. But he adds …

Nathan: There are some matching factors that do matter that are linked to race.

So, if most of the potential donors are white, blacks on the transplant list are at a disadvantage. It’s less likely that when a kidney becomes available – it will be a good match for an African American patient.

The above sentence makes absolutely no sense. Why would a doctor say a donor's race doesn't matter, but then stress the importance of increasing Black donors so that "good matches" for Black people would be present? Though it has long been argued race is merely a "social construct", Black people lack the white privilege of being able to enjoy their higher rates of organ donations:

LaKeisha Coleman, education coordinator with Mid-America Transplant Services, works with Bonds and others to tell black people about organ donation.

Blacks need more donors for certain organs such as kidneys and lungs because they’re harder to match outside of ethnic groups, she said.

Statistics from Mid-America Transplant Services, based in St. Louis, say that this year in the St. Louis region, 61 percent of black people eligible to sign donor permissions, have done so, compared to 93 percent of white people.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes donating blood, an act of volunteering that could save additional Black lives, yet is one that Black people participate in infrequently.

But if race is a social construct, why can't Black people just receive an infusion from a white person or an organ from them?

Black people are charitable, they just don't give blood. 

An Inconvenient Truth: Waiting for “Superman” to Save Education is akin to Waiting for Godot

Time magazine asked an important question last week: “What makes a school great?”

Devoting many pages of deadwood to bemoaning the current state of K-12 education in America, Time reports:

Waiting for "Superman" is a new film about America's malfunctioning education system by Davis Guggenheim, the Academy Award-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth, a movie that took on another mind-numbingly complex issue and, confounding all logic, grossed $50 million worldwide — and changed the way many Americans think about climate change.

Scheduled to be released on Sept. 24, Waiting for "Superman" is a documentary that follows five kids and their parents as they try to escape their neighborhood public schools for higher-performing public charter schools. The movie explains how it could be that the U.S. since 1971 has more than doubled the money it spends per pupil, yet still trails most rich nations in science and math scores. 

 SBPDL picked up the book companion to the movie Waiting for “Superman” while traveling and realized that regardless of the money, time and effort exerted,  a majority of students will always look up at the sky awaiting the arrival of an academic Superman to impart knowledge upon them.

Not even the Justice League of America could provide positive intervention at this point to uplift failing students, and yet the continued allocation of available educational resources (both public and private) are spent and dispensed trying to close the proverbial Grand Canyon, er, racial gap in scholastic achievement. 

After finishing Waiting for “Superman” it became apparent that the ultimate inconvenient truth that few wish to acknowledge is the pattern of failure that accompanies one group wherever they reside in the United States. 

It’s not bad schools that create, by osmosis, bad students; its bad students performing poorly on standardized tests, disrupting classes repeatedly requiring expulsion; and a lack of parental involvement that ensures the maintenance of bad schools.

No matter how many Ivy League graduates enter the ranks of Teach for America and attempt to impart knowledge on would-be professional athletes, Superman from his Fortress of Solitude will refuse to intervene on behalf of those who are cognitively disinclined into perpetuity.  

Many children would have better luck Waiting for Godot than Waiting for “Superman” as no amount of money, praying or divine intervention by highly educated Crusading White Pedagogues will bring about an academic revolution where it is biologically impossible to transpire.  The racial gap will remain, while intellectuals and education specialists masquerading as Vladimir and Estragon debate the next breakthrough in teaching that will finally level the playing field, ushering an era of scholastic equality.

Whenever such an innovation appears that threatens to remove the inequities - the source of such difference is anything but nature – the odds are overwhelming that fraud is a close-associate. Well, either fraud or a colossal dumbing-down of the test to ensure everyone passes.

You see, in Black Run America (BRA) the pursuit of life and liberty is superseded by the ceaseless quest of enhancing Black happiness. Every amount of energy must be expended to close the racial gap in learning, since education is a barometer of success. After all, why must Black people continue to suffer the indignity of working as barbers and postal employees in such high numbers?

 An inconvenient truth confronting those who made Waiting for “Superman” is simply this: Waiting on “Lex Luthor” makes more sense. The arch-nemesis of Superman, it would take a man of Luthor’s integrity to admit the truth that not everyone is capable of producing grades worthy of admittance to college; learning advanced trigonometry or understanding quantum physics; and that some people will be left behind, no matter the effort exerted.

Not everyone has the scholastic aptitude or intelligence to learn at the same rate and many of those left behind become a general nuisance to the overall learning environment and distract those who yearn for education.

It’s time to realize that no amount of nurture can supplant the injustices of nature, regardless of the amount of private and public money provided or time and tutelage volunteered. However, a recent book by Stuart Buck argues that desegregation spawned a culture that finds the malady of acting white synonymous with excelling at school:

But suppose integration doesn't change the culture of underperformance? What if integration inadvertently created that culture in the first place? This is the startling hypothesis of Stuart Buck's Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation. Buck argues that the culture of academic underachievement among black students was unknown before the late 1960s.

It was desegregation that destroyed thriving black schools where black faculty were role models and nurtured excellence among black students. In the most compelling chapter of Acting White, Buck describes that process and the anguished reactions of the black students, teachers, and communities that had come to depend on the rich educational and social resource in their midst.

Buck draws on empirical studies that suggest a correlation between integrated schools and social disapproval of academic success among black students. He also cites the history of desegregation's effect on black communities and interviews with black students to back up a largely compelling—and thoroughly disturbing—story.

 If this hypothesis is correct, then we have spent perhaps more than a quadrillion dollars for naught. Then again, Black people in North Carolina regard any attempt of the ending of forced busing a harbinger of the reinstitution of academic segregation, which a Black intellectual argues was a net positive for Black education:

Protesters and police scuffled Tuesday at a school board meeting in North Carolina over claims that a new busing system would resegregate schools, roiling racial tensions reminiscent of the 1960s.

Nineteen people were arrested, including the head of state NAACP chapter who was banned from the meeting after a trespassing arrest at a June school board gathering.
"We know that our cause is right," the Rev. William Barber said shortly before police put plastic handcuffs on his wrists before the meeting started.

Inside, more than a dozen demonstrators disrupted the meeting by gathering around a podium, chanting and singing against the board's policies.

After several minutes, Raleigh police intervened and asked them to leave. When they refused, the officers grabbed arms and tried to arrest the protesters. One child was caught in the pushing and shoving, as was school board member Keith Sutton, who was nearly arrested before authorities realized who he was.

"Hey, hey, ho, ho, resegregation has got to go," some protesters chanted.

SBPDL proposes we no longer practice Waiting for “Superman,” for this is as absurd an action as Waiting for Godot. We should instead practice Waiting for Meteor Man, an authentically Black protagonist who has amazing superpowers that would help bridge the racial gap:

Jefferson Reed is a mild mannered school teacher in Washington D.C.. His neighborhood is terrorized by a local gang called the Golden Lords. One night, Jeff steps in to rescue a woman from the gang, only to end up running from them himself. Hiding in a garbage dumpster, he manages to escape, and as he climbs out of it, he is struck down by a glowing green meteorite which crashes down from the sky. His spine is crushed and he receives severe burns. A small fragment of the meteor was left over and was taken by a silent vagrant (Bill Cosby). Reed awakens several days later in the hospital, but when his bandages are taken off, he is miraculously healed from all his injuries.


Jeff soon discovers the meteorite has left him with other abilities too, such as flight, x-ray vision, superhuman strength, invulnerability, healing powers, absorb a book's content by touch, freezing breath, telepathy with dogs and telekinesis. Confiding this to his parents (Robert Guillaume and Marla Gibbs), he is convinced by them to use his powers to try and help the community. His mother designs a costume for him, and as The Meteor Man, he takes on the Golden Lords and their leader Simon Caine (Roy Fegan). He shuts down a crack house, stops a robbery, and unites the Crips, Bloods and the police.

Perhaps it’s Meteor Man that Washington DC Black voters want to run their city schools, instead of that Asian lady. Problem: Meteor Man can only remember a book's content for 30-seconds after touching it, so his tutelage on matters concerning the SAT/ACT/LSAT/MCAT/GMAT wouldn’t be exactly prodigious.

Getting back to the question posed by Time, we can only provide the following answer: schools in these areas.

What do you think?

We’ll keep Waiting for Meteor Man while Disingenuous White Liberals, Crusading White Pedagogues and the entire education establishment keeps looking out for Godot.

We understand he provides the key to finally eradicating the racial gap in education.

Black History Month Heroes - Dr. Julius Hibbert in "The Simpsons"

For more than 20 years the exploits of that yellow family from Springfield - Homer, Lisa, Marge, Bart and Maggie - have brought joy to the hundreds of millions of people across the globe. The Simpsons, a cartoon comedic masterpiece that has been on the cutting edge of pop culture for more than a score, is a beloved look at the trials and tribulations of a working-class family.

Homer Simpson and his brood are so well known and recognizable that people in the United States have a greater knowledge of this fictitious family than they do the Constitution that governs their nation:

CHICAGO - Americans apparently know more about “The Simpsons” than they do about the First Amendment.

Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.

But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey...

The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just one in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms.

Civic lessons are of trivial significance when compared to the importance of being on an intimate, first name basis with The Simpsons. Remember, they invite you into their home seven days a week (through the power of syndication) and new episodes air every Sunday night, so it is important to be more cognizant of The Simpsons than say the basic rights delineated in the Bill of Rights.

Fictional Black History Month has covered a number of the great Black people that have existed through the medium of cinema and help give us positive images of Black people to love, cherish and respect, where they aren't necessarily found in real-life.

The Simpsons has more than 400 episodes to its credit, countless video games and DVD releases, a feature movie and product tie-ins that would make even George Lucas blush.

The ratings for The Simpsons continue to remain steady and new fans of the show are found daily thanks to the constant reruns found on any number of stations throughout cable, and the influence of the show can be found in words that have entered the vernacular, such as "Doh":

The Simpsons' influence may continue to grow. TV consultant Ted Farone says the show is strong enough to run for a long time to come. He compares it to The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, a 1960s cartoon that served as a satire on the Cold War. That show is still discussed 40 years later. "The Simpsons is one of the all-time great shows," he says.

Of course, whether high school students will be studying the episode "Much Apu About Nothing" in 400 years remains to be seen.

The question remains: What does The Simpsons have to do with fictional Black History Month? One name comes to mind, accompanied with calming chuckle, as Dr. Julius Hibbert has been the family practitioner for most of the shows glorious run:

Dr. Hibbert is the Simpsons' (usually) kind-hearted family doctor, a near-genius (with an IQ of 155), a Mensa member, a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a member of the Thayer firm at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Hibbert is noticeably less dysfunctional than just about everyone else on the show, though he does have a bizarre tendency to chuckle at inappropriate moments. It is mentioned in Make Room for Lisa, that "Before I learned to chuckle mindlessly, I was headed to an early grave."

Dr. Hibbert is married; he and his wife Bernice have at least three children, two boys and a girl. When his entire family is seen together, they appear to be a spoof of The Cosby Show. Bernice is known to be something of a heavy drinker; this has been joked about on at least one occasion (in "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment," she faints, along with other imbibers of renown, upon reading the news that Prohibition has been introduced in Springfield)...When Fox moved The Simpsons to prime time on Thursdays against NBC's top-rated The Cosby Show, the writing staff decided to make Hibbert a parody of Bill Cosby's character Dr. Cliff Huxtable. Hibbert is usually shown wearing sweaters, a reference to Huxtable.

Dr. Hibbert is a Black doctor of unquestionable intelligence, charisma and skill, who has remained an integral part of The Simpsons universe for almost the entire shows run. He has saved numerous lives and provided outstanding service to the citizens of Springfield. He truly is a fictional Black History Month, for even though provides an exemplary role-model to the citizens of Springfield and the viewers of The Simpsons, in the real-world he is put a statistical anomaly:

African-Americans have long been underrepresented among health care professionals. As of 2005, blacks made up slightly more than 8 percent of first-year medical students in the United States – roughly half of their share of the U.S. population (15.4 percent in 2007), and just 1 percent more than their share of first-year medical students in 1975.

This study, the first to examine the educational pipeline for black health care professionals, is based upon the National Longitudinal Study class of 1972, a comprehensive longitudinal survey of more than 13,000 Americans who graduated from high school in 1972, including about 1,450 African-Americans.

The cohort was tracked into their 30s, long enough to collect data on college attendance and graduation, post-collegiate schooling and career choices, Howell said. The representation of blacks in the 1972 cohort declined from 11 percent at the point of high school graduation, to 9 percent at college entry, to 7.2 percent at college graduation, and to 4.1 percent at the stage of entry to the health professions (which, for this study, included physicians, therapists, dentists, registered nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, optometrists, dietitians and veterinarians, among others.)

These statistics used in this study don't reflect the actual level of Black doctors practicing, for that number is less than four percent of all medical doctors are Black:

Despite the long-term contributions of Howard Universityand Meharry Medical School and, more recently,Morehouse School of Medicine and Charles Drew University, African Americans comprise only 3.5% of physicians7 and fewer than 1.5% of professor-level faculty positions at US medical school faculty (including professor-level faculty at minority-serving institutions).

Every effort has been put in place to get more Black people into medical school and have them become real-life Dr. Hibbert's. Yet, these efforts have failed, as a backward drift is occurring among Black enrollment at medical schools across the land:

In a concerted effort to increase minority inclusion in the early 1970's, entering minority students rose to almost 1,500 in 1974, or 10 percent of the entering class in the nation's medical schools. A goal of 12 percent set for 1976 was not met, and the figure has stayed around 10 percent.

The percentage of minority students in this country is increasing, while the pool of medical students remains relatively low. The 64,986 medical students admitted to medical schools in the 1990-91 academic year was the lowest total enrollment of the last 10 years. Meanwhile, the representation of minorities appears increasingly bleak.

The most striking racial trend for new medical students has been the decline of black men entering the profession, with 23 percent fewer black men enrolled in medical schools in 1990 than there were in 1971.

Those statistics are of course from 1990, when The Simpsons tidal wave over popular culture was just forming. How are the numbers today? Why don't we consult California?:

A new study on physicians in California shows a glaring gap between the number of doctors of color compared with the state's ethnically diverse population, especially among African Americans and Latinos.

At the same time, the state has a disproportionate number of Asian and white doctors, according to the UCSF study, which focuses on doctor ethnicity and language fluency.

It found that out of nearly 62,000 practicing doctors in California, only 5 percent are Latino even though Latinos comprise a third of the state's total population. Only 3 percent of doctors in California are black, compared with 7 percent of the state's overall black population. While Latinos and African Americans make up about 40 percent of the state's residents, fewer than 10 percent of California's doctors are black or Latino.

"This is a critical public health issue," said Dr. Kevin Grumbach, director of the UCSF Center for California Health Workforce Studies, which released the report Wednesday. "These patterns are real. The problem is even worse than we thought."

Black History Month has long celebrated the accomplishments of Black doctors, such as Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, never deciding to celebrate medical doctors who find watches left on dying men a tragic sin.

Dr. Julius Hibbert has been a mainstay on The Simpsons, a television show that has been viewed by millions. He is a Black doctor on that show, which in real-life doctors of his ilk register as a statistical anomaly. Stuff Black People Don't Like welcomes him to the fictional Black History Month celebration, for he offers a figure so undeniably rare in his profession that he might be the most celebrated Black doctor currently practicing medicine.

And he's a cartoon.

#754. Watches Left on Dying Men in the ER

"I might not be a doctor, but I play one one TV."

Who doesn't remember that famous commercial? Everyone loves doctors, yet few care to invest the time and effort into the proper education to be certified to take the Hippocratic Oath. In fact, doctors record some of the highest trust levels from the general public (amid a number of different vocations).

How many TV shows have centered around the hospital and the various eccentricities and nuisances of life in the ER?

Face it: we are a nation that loves watching life in the ER on television and also in trusting doctors to constantly give us the best advice for our health.

We love doctors, for they might give us unpleasant news occasionally, but it usually comes with a lollipop at the end of visit. Everyone loves lollipops.

However, SBPDL will be focusing on the ER and the entire medical profession the next few days, and we recently came across a most fascinating story concerning a member of the medical fraternity that tarnished the halo around the M.D. title a few degrees:

"Dr. Cleveland Enmon is an emergency room physician at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Stockton . Dr. Enmon is accused of abandoning attempts to resuscitate a patient from cardiac arrest to instead pocket the dead man’s valuable Rolex wristwatch. The suit, filed by the adult children of Jerry Keith Kubena, Sr., alleges that Dr. Cleveland James Enmon on June 1 “formed the intent” to swipe the Rolex from Kubena’s wrist while treating the man at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Stockton."

The nursing staff assisting Enmon soon noticed that Kubena’s flashy timepiece was missing; “Where is the wristwatch?” the suit quotes one as uttering. Two more nurses allegedly noticed a wristwatch-shaped bulge in the doctor’s pocket. Security was called to investigate the disappearance. Defying security’s orders, the lawsuit notes Enmon walked out of the operating room and into the parking lot, a move caught on hospital security cameras. A nurse claims she saw Enmon toss a small object into the grass and she subsequently led security personnel to that exact area and recovered the watch."

This story is a shocking reminder that life in the ER isn't always glamorous and one can't be to careful with who they entrust their Rolex too guard, especially when they struggle to cling to each breath.

Enmon was the former chief resident of Emergency Medicine in King-Drew Emergency Medicine, one of the nations worst hospitals ( you won't see any TV shows glorifying this ER ):

"King-Harbor found itself under public criticism once again after different stories ran in both the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly in late May 2007 citing serious lapses in care, one fatal, at the renamed hospital.

The case of patient Edith Isabel Rodriguez, who bled to death on the emergency room floor after being ignored for 45 minutes, in particular became a cause célèbre about the failures and bureaucratic indifference of both King-Harbor as well as political and health leaders in the Los Angeles area; creating or reinforcing fears that the health care system will not take care of people in a time of dire need."

Black people in the Los Angeles were horrified at the prospect of losing the hospital, especially one named after one of the patron saints of the new America, Martin Luther King Jr.:

"Let's be honest," said Dr. Dennis S. O'Leary, president of The Joint Commission, a hospital accrediting group, "if this were a hospital different from King/Drew, this would have been over a long time ago."

He and other experts interviewed by The Times said the government would have moved much faster and more aggressively if King-Harbor, formerly known as King/Drew, didn't have a unique history and special standing in the community.

The hospital was one of the few gains from the 1965 Watts riots and still is one of the few places poor people in South Los Angeles can turn to for acute care. African American politicians, in particular, have embraced its salvation.

...The most recent problems began in January 2004, when inspectors found that nurses lied in charts about patients' conditions, failed to give crucial medications prescribed by doctors and left seriously ill patients unattended for hours -- including three who died."

So Dr. Enmon was a product of this hospital, that was universal decried as perhaps the most ineffectively run ER in the country, where patients were routinely left to rot? Any Rolex watches reported stolen at that prestigious hospital, before its doors were shuttered?

Dr. Enmon was a by-product of Morehouse College, a school which recently adopted new rules in a move to try and deter negative stereotypes about Black people. Something tells us this recent display of petty larceny, coupled with systematic indifference to the patients well-being is a shining example of the caliber of graduates Morehouse educates, as Dr. Enmon represents the Morehouse man with gusto!

Worse, another event recently transpired - this time in Philadelphia - where homeless, cracked out bums (obviously encouraged by Dr. Enmon's example) robbed a dying man of his watch!:

"A school counselor suffering an apparent heart attack died in a Philadelphia emergency room after waiting nearly 80 minutes for help — and a trio of homeless drug addicts nearby stole his watch instead of seeking aid, police said.

Joaquin Rivera, 63, died before seeing a triage nurse at Atria Health's Frankford Campus over the weekend, police said.

Rivera, a musician and activist in the city's Latino community, had spent more than 30 years working as a bilingual counselor at an inner-city high school.

"We're all destroyed. A guy like that, for him to leave us the way that he did — and with what happened to him — everybody's destroyed," said Jesse Bermudez, a friend and fellow musician."

The problem with this case though, is the trio of homeless drug addicts were multi-racial, which means Dr. Enmon and his alleged crime of stealing a Rolex has become something of an urban legend within the drug-addicted community, for he has so much in common with petty criminals.

A Morehouse educated doctor, who was the FORMER CHIEF OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE at a hospital that was routinely blasted for being an embarrassment to the medical profession (but was allowed to stay open due to racial politics) has more in common with homeless drug addicts, then with these M.D.'s.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes watches left on dying men in the Emergency Room/ ER, for Dr. Enmon seems to have more in common with drug addicts in Philadelphia then in being an upstanding representative of one of the finest medical schools for prospective Black M.D.'s ( or was ):

"While talking with four of his friends in Morehouse College’s Frederick Douglass Learning Resource Center, their conversation quickly turned to the September 2006 issue of Black Enterprise magazine, which included its biannual list of the “Top 50 Colleges for African Americans.” After four consecutive years of being the top ranked school, Morehouse’s placement on the most recent list dropped forty-four spots from number one to number forty-five."

If you are sick in a major city, it might be more conducive trying to find an actor who plays a doctor on TV then going to a hospital run by Morehouse graduates.