The Pitt, the medical drama on HBO, lives up to the hype. It is worth, as was The Wire, your time and attention, for the questions it raises about how we live (or don’t live) now.

The two shows are both about, well, people of good intent (the metrics may vary) doing the best they can in hopelessly underfunded and corrupted systems.  No heroes, a certain amount of hugging and learning, but also the relentless grind of late capitalism (a phrase I think not used in either explicitly, but it’s not exactly far below the surface.)

In one of the episodes we watched last night (we’re bingeing – of course we’re bingeing) there was a nice (but over-didactic to some tastes) sub-plot of an elderly black male patient with chest pain who seemed to know more medical terminology and procedure than someone who’d worked as a post-man for forty years should have.  All was revealed when it turned out he’d been a Freedom House paramedic.

The whole story is extraordinary and enraging.

To quote myself

Post by @did:plc:6ffmydg2uch4buzckgetfl5i — Bluesky 

Thank goodness this is the *only time ever* that People Of Colour built up something, only for jealous brittle white supremacists to steal it from them and write the POC out of history.  

It would be awful if that happened, like, all the time.

And yes, via The Pitt Season 1. 

You can read more about the Freedom House thing thanks to two excellent articles (short and long) by a guy who has written a book on it all. 

Hazzard, Kevin (2022). American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics. Grand Central–Hachette. ISBN 9780306926075.

Short – How a Black neighborhood association in Pittsburgh helped shape emergency medicine : NPR 

Long (but seriously worth your time) –  The First Responders – The Atavist Magazine 

What conclusions we can draw.

So, things that white people like me, especially ones with “elite” (cough, cough) educations need to get their heads around.

1. White rhetoric about ‘civilising missions’, the ‘white man’s burden’, ‘democracy’ and transparency’ is fantastic PR and self-soothing mythology.  But that’s pretty much it.

2. People of colour (and women, and poor people) will be worked to death. A few might be allowed to thrive (or cannot be prevented from thriving) and their ‘success’ can be used as an explanation that ‘the System’ is ultimately a meritocracy (1), albeit an imperfect one.

Basically though, if they get too successful (“You loved me as a loser, now you’re worried that I just might win”) then out will come the violence. Unabashed and largely unrestrained. And usually effective.

The ferocious attacks on African Americans in the immediate aftermath of World War One is a moment that isn’t taught (or wasn’t), but is instructive.

Tulsa (among many other places) got bombed from the air (I don’t know if anyone has ever done a comparison with Glasgow at the same time, but it would be instructive).

Basically, if you got too rich, too self-sufficient, you would attract the jealousy and ire of brutal fragile white people (#NotAllWhitePeople, obvs, but #EnoughOfThem).They would steal your work, your land and write you out of the history books.  Same in Australia, same, well, everywhere. That’s how settler colonialism and apartheid works.

Any signs of trying to strike out on another path, with the dangerous message that ‘another world is possible’ will be expunged (Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, MOVE in Philadelphia etc etc).

3. This is NOT to say that freedom of speech, freedom of information and freedom of assembly are “bourgeois” concepts that can be ignored by the Glorious Party (we know how that turns out).  It is to say though, that building and defending movements from assholes with guns and control of the curriculum is an uphill battle.

Further reading

Wilmington massacre – Wikipedia

And We Are Not Saved by Debbie Louis (an extraordinary book)

Edwards, M. 2021. Race, Policing, and History — Remembering the Freedom House Ambulance Service. N Engl J Med 2021;384:1386-1389 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2035467

Footnotes

1. The guy who invented the term meant it not as a straight description, but as a satirical warning. Oh well.