Antisemitism by Erasure Part Duex:
Microaggressions, full-blown aggression and race-related ignorance in NYS Office of Mental Health and Civil Service.
In the electronic-communications era, hospitals share documents and sensitive patients’ information electronically. These kind of data, of course, is very sensitive and therefore highly secured and HIPPA regulated, to ensure it is secured between two HIPPA regulated facilities and no one else. So far, so good. Therefore, instead of naming those e-files with the patient’s full names, initials are often used. This is a common practice, not a required HIPPA-defined practice. It could be first initial and last name or anything that is not the full name. I am boring you with this because one of those days, a patient was admitted to the hospital and the one incharge of naming the files used his initials: “SS”. As a Jew, for a quick moment my heart sank to ground. Even more so, when I opened the files and discovered the patient is Jewish. Let me be clear, I know this was made without malice, but rather absentmindedly, ignorantly and with lack of sensitivity to this specific abbreviation. Imagine a patient’s file named KKK, or even “just” KK.
Did you ever ask yourself why there is no a NYS license plate [three letters, 4 digits, for those outside NY] that starts with these specific three letters? Exactly! DMV has specific regulations for that, too. For those very reasons, its offensive. I emailed back to the group asking to be sensitive about it and asked the documents’ name will be changed. Instead, I received an angry email directly and only to me, not to the group, (she knew she was wrong!): “Keep your sensitivity issues to yourself”. That was definitely a display of micro-aggression against me and definitely against the subject matter. Sensitivity to certain issues in my workplace, OMH, antisemitism in particular, is nil. It was palpable with this email.
I emailed her email to GOER, Governor Office Employee Relations , recently was renames OER, Office of Employee Relations (I suppose, signaling Gov. Hochul distancing herself from it). This is a body which was established to deal exactly with this as their slogan on the website homepage says: “fighting discrimination in the workplace”. Jews are not considered minority in GOER, apparently. To this day I did not get a response to my email. So much for “employee relations” and “fighting discrimination”.
Recently, and for an unknown reason my previous article? Or maybe my previous email to Gov. Hochul’s office? That will be too good to be true. I will never know. Regardless, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, emailed all employees asking to fill in the Civil Service (CS) demographic survey. We were asked to voluntarily partake in the survey, so this office could “better represent us”. Bravo, you might think. Not so fast, Sparky. This survey is just exposing how institutionally ignorant is OMH and CS. Before I expand on that, I would like to explain first why this survey is a lip service: In NYS, many people are CS employees but not all of us are in OMH. Many NY City employees are, too. For that reason I asked how could they know from the CS survey data who is an OMH employee and who is not. The bulls*** answer I received just sealed my suspicion: You “need to enter your EIN” (Employee ID Number). NYS employees have their EIN provided by the state upon employment and it is a sensitive data as your Social Security number. This made me question even more:“This is a personal ID number and makes it no longer anonymous”. I answered the survey. It does not require any self-identifiers. Therefore, I hold on to my suspicion, now a conclusion, that this is a lip service and a brushoff answer. Also, many employees don’t have access to a computer at work, simply because their position does not require one, like housekeepers and MHTA (Mental Health Teaching Aid) or food service employees. How do they participate? That by itself makes this survey unreliable and misrepresenting of the OMH employees population. On the other hand, how do they know no one responded more than once?
Furthermore, as I asked for the survey results to be shared with me, I was provided with the 2022 CS survey, according to them. Again, since I never received this survey in my several years of employment there. Obviously, those “results” don’t include me. Here are the result of the facility I work at: About 59% of the employees are- Black. Hispanics and Asian- approximately 10% each; white- roughly 13%, “American Indian” (CS language, not mine. I guess the term Indigenous People didn't arrive at CS and NYS yet, that, my friend will happen in the next century) — 0.2% and unknown- roughly 7.5%. Is it “unknown” because they didn't respond, or because they chose “unknown”? No data regarding how many people were surveyed and what percentage of OMH/MPC responded to the survey.
As for CS survey itself, let’s examine the ignorance evidence as it represents itself in the survey, for a starter, this self-identifying survey, they define it for you where you belong, not you. Forget self-determienation:
Under ethnicity, for Hispanic (again, not Latinos?Latinas)- they have a list to choose from “people who have ancestry in Central American and also for Salvadorian”. That’s the essence of Latinos/Latinas, Vs. Hispanic, according to Duke University. As for “Salvadorian” — let’s just say geography lessons are needed back in NYS classrooms, pronto!
Under “Race” — they decided for you where you belong, after all, this self-Identifying form is about THEIR definition of you and your origin, not yours.
White — “A person having origin…. from Europe, Middle East or North Africa” (MENA). Really, so all African people are considered Black or African American, but north-Africans are white…? Did you ever meet people from MENA?
“Black and African American”- defined for all those who came from Africa, but somehow they forgot to mention “except for northern Africa”. What about a south-African born American? Are they “African Americans”? Are they “African-American-White?
And what about mixed races? There is no such option, after all, Hitler and McCarthy told us purity of the race is “essential”. Dated at best, but really is appalling!
Asian- my “favorite” section of the survey. The racism here is palpable. Ignorance is screaming from the list under this dated CS definition: Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Asian Indians, Bangladeshi, just to name a few from the long list of country-origins they included. But here is the twist: They also included Hmong. I have to admit, I had to look it up myself. It is an ethnic group, not a national/country-origin like the rest of the list. If they include Hmong, CS should have also included Assyrian, Uyghurs, Romani just to name a few. They don't seems to know the difference between countries or nationality and ethnicity. Also, they don’t leave an option for mixed ethnicities, and you cannot choose more than one. It’s like it is inconceivable for CS to consider mixed races, religions and ethnicities. Are we in the USA, in NYS of the 21st century? Maybe 2022BC.
Even under language; in the state of New York, the home of the most diverse county in the world, Queens (where I live), we have households speaking more than one language! The city of immigrants, in a state of immigrants, where Lady Liberty is, they accept only one language per household.
And while they are on it- why not asking for religion identity? Isn’t it part of who we are? Or the fact that some of us are not religiously affiliated at all. Oh right, G-d forbid you’d be asked for religion identity on an anonymous, voluntary, demographic survey, where its sole purpose is to “better represent us”. After all, this is the NYS in USA, we can ask about your sexual orientation, but not for your religion or none-religion. This is where they draw the line. This is why Jews are WRONGFULLY considered as white (more in that on “our” next episode of Ignorance and antisemitism). A questionnaire like that cannot show that you can be Jewish, black and gay, or African American Jews like Lisa Bonet, Lenny Kravitz and Rashida Jones. I guess they are afraid to open this “pandora” box.
This is how you maintain ignorance, cementing it, institutionalizing it. More so when the result are not shared with everybody, unless you ask for it.
Ignorance is our society’s cancer- it is painful [mostly to those who are not] and deadly, as it leaves room for hate to grow. The Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers. It started with an idea, #ItStartsWithWords, with misinformation, avoiding facts, re-writing history and lack of education.
My place of work, the OMH office of Diversity and Inclusion, OMH and Civil Service are all showing severe signs of avoidance, ignorance and therefore, feeding the antisemitic fire that keeps spreading in NYC and NYS. Even someone like me, who is an Orthodox Jew, feels it. No wonder antisemitic incidences are at all-time high, as ADL reports.
Madam Governor, it is time for an overall in your organization, your state, top to bottom. We need actions, not words, and we need it NOW!
