Flashback: Obama Mistaken For Waiter, Asked To Fetch Drink At 2003 Party

[Rozlee]

6. As a retired RN, I've received some of that kind of treatment in the past.

Whenever I went to hospitals as a contract nurse, other RN's or staff would assume that I was an aide or other kind of tech assistant. Hey, not to knock aides; they're the backbone of the medical industry and I was one before I became an RN. But, I never saw anyone else get that kind of assumption on first acquaintance with me when they hadn't first been introduced given my credentials. They'd see a short, scrawny Hispanic woman with wiry hair and a Rosie Perez demeanor and thick accent and Bingo! I certainly couldn't have gone through four years of college to have earned a BSN, let alone challenged many of my non-nursing prerequisite courses. Not to brag, but hey, bragging. It only got worse when I "married up" (i.e. got hitched to a well-to-do white dude) and moved to the tony Texas Hill Country where most of the medical staff in the hospitals were predominantly white. It rankles, but it is what it is.