Blame Obama Button: Hospital Honors ‘No African-American Nurses’ Request

COMMENTARY | I call it the “Obama Button,” the all-encompassing explanation for why people who may have previously, been borderline racist or racist-adjacent seem to have, in recent years, lost their minds. Why would a stranger allegedly use a racist epithet and slap a baby in the face on a plane?

Obama Button, as one of my friends pragmatically reminded me.

Well, it looks like the Obama Button is on autoplay, given the allegations that a father of a newborn at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., requested that no African-American nurses take care of his baby. You know, his baby who needed to be in a hospital. Receiving medical attention.

Reports the Detroit Free Press, the father even allegedly rolled up his sleeve to show some kind of swastika-like tattoo. I’m guessing that was just in case anyone might miss his point.

Now that’s Obama Button-worthy all on its own, but apparently in this case it takes a village to react to the Obama Button. Reportedly, instead of politely explaining that hospital staffing isn’t dictated by permanent doodles, apparently the hospital honored his request.

And put a note in the chart that said “No African-American nurse to take care of baby.” Now that’s what I call a whole command center of Obama Buttons.

Tonya Battle, a nurse with 25 years’ experience and, it seems, the wrong amount of melanin in her skin, is suing her employer. As someone who has watched the care and skill and heart offered daily by nurses in incredible circumstances, all I can add to that is good for her.

I’ve run out of adjectives to describe the unapologetic racism seeping through every facet of our society, casting its moldy, slimy trail. It’s infuriating. It’s nonsensical. And it rests entirely upon a picture of one’s self so distorted that people who think that worth is measured by skin color also somehow manage to convince themselves that they are better than someone else because of it.

Think about the lack of intelligence it requires to believe, fervently enough to get a permanent reminder on your skin, that skin tone alone makes you “better” or “inferior.” Skin tone, which is nature’s equivalent to packaging, and has just about as much bearing on the contents.

Battle is clearly a very experienced nurse. This father may have jeopardized the health of his infant son in order to satisfy some ridiculous notion of who would give this baby the best care. What is far, far worse is that the hospital apparently allowed him to do so, assigning his medical coverage by color rather than competence.

Even Mississippi, who just ratified the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery, 148 years after the fact, seems to have noticed we’ve hit the 21st century. It seems Hurley Medical Center did not get that particular memorandum.

No doubt we will see a soul-sandpapering number of instances of the Obama Button triggering irrationality for years to come. But when they come at the possible expense of an ill newborn, we can no longer shake our heads, bemused.