The main entrance of Grady Memorial Hospital, located at 80 Jesse Hill Jr Dr SE, Atlanta, was built in downtown Atlanta in 1892.There are three sets of stairs that are perpendicular to Jessie Hill Jr. Drive, yet I noticed that everyone seems to flow down the 1 ramp. A few feet away from the doorway is one bench.( I could remember thinking all of this vast space clearly promoting large groups of personnel to enter and only one bench outside of the main entrance.) Was this meant to discourage strangling? There were also a series of potted plants at the end of each stairway along side of a few trees there isn’t much plant life around the facility.
In addition I noticed that the pathway is paved leading towards the ramp, subconsciously choosing the direction for the pedestrian. This pathway ends at the McDonald’s which is connected to Grady’s parking deck persuading visitors to indulge in the unhealthy fast food which contradicts what doctors tell their patients they should be eating. As a whole Grady appears as this newly constructed facility that promotes healthcare and cleanliness despite the fact that it sits in the heart of Atlanta with countless homeless patients going in and out and even living/panhandling on the outskirts of the property. In my opinion this facility is designed to attract minorities and keep them in the position, health wise, that they will have to keep coming back.
Professor Megan-Jane Johnstone , an international healthcare ethicist, wrote the article “The spectrum of ‘new racism’ and discrimination in hospital contexts: A reappraisal” to bring attention to fact that, “Despite the universal right to health, people of minority racial and ethnic backgrounds experience commonplace and significant unjust inequalities in their health and health care.” Johnstone discuses this new form of racism that is unrecognizable for even those with racist intentions do to its “changing face”.
As evidence Johnstone presents three case scenarios conducted by “an Australian research study investigating cultural competency and cultural safety in health care (Johnstone & Kanitsaki, 2005).” Case one being about the staffs hospitality towards an Arabic woman who’s son required monthly treatment at a hospital due to his serious medical condition. Soon After the terrorist attack on 9/11 this woman noticed a “significant and soul-destroying change in attitude and behavior toward her by hospital staff.” She went on to say, “… they rejected, shunned and avoided her, and ultimately became inattentive and indifferent to her plight.” This type of discriminatory treatment was unfair in so many ways. Americans were so hurt with the unfortunate tragedy that happened that they just wanted to take it out on anyone with even the slightest resemblance of “the enemy”. Johnstone also included a quote from the Arabic woman’s sister about a conversation they shared with one saying, ‘Sometimes I want to say, “We’re not terrorists, we’re not liars.” I said, ‘No you don’t have to explain yourself. They can see you are a mother caring for your own son, you don’t have to say that.’ Regardless of the events people in America should be able to see that she is the same woman she was before 9/11 occurred.
Scenario two involves the experience of a health interpreter that had several years of experience with hospitals. This anonymous interpreter witnessed first hand a nurse putting “non-English speaking patients ‘at the bottom of the pile’ because of concerns they had that the patients would get ‘preferential treatment’ on account of an interpreter being booked for a specific time.” This has even led to interpreters having to leave their patients before they actually have been seen by their doctor because of other commitment.
Megan-Jane Johnstone wrote this article to bring the new form of racism and discrimination into the lime light to unmask the ugly truth and promote a change in order to make, “…hospitals safe havens where people who are ill and injured can go for care and treatment without prejudice.” When going to a hospital a patient should expect that when receiving care they should be treated in a “non-discriminatory manner” and will be treated with the same respect as that of the staffs’ own family. This article would be useful for anyone writing about discrimination or racism in society today.
The discrimination of modern architectural designed against the disabled. (Simone Becchetti via Getty Images)
Clark Miller, Claire Gordon. “Disabled by Design.” How a lack of imagination in technology keeps the world inaccessible to huge numbers of people.N.p., n.d. Web.
Clark Miller, the associate director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University teamed up with Claire Gordon, a researcher of the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education to write “Disabled by Design”, an article that is primarily focused on the concept of “technology’s patterns force people to design their own bodies to fit in—or those patterns exclude people from participation when they don’t fit.” Miller uses Regan Brashears’s film Fixed to show that in society today ” the most common response is to call for technology to fix disabled bodies– Rather than designing the world so that a diverse population can function and thrive within it.”
(U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Paul Gorman/Released)
One of the supporting arguments given is the research conducted by the Claire Gordon on the U.S. Black Hawk helicopter. In this study Gordon informs her audience on the architectural exclusion of the U.S. Black Hawk. Gordon states “while the engineers used conventional standards to construct the design of workstations and equipment in the cockpit, it only fits 90% of the users. Within these percentages there is even a smaller amount of female minorities able to use this equipment, “– in the general Army population, more than one-third of female soldiers and almost three-quarters of Hispanic female soldiers physically did not have the right size or shape body to fly a Black Hawk. ”
“Disabled by Design” was written to influence the thought of the citizens and to hopefully become “The citizens guide to the future.” This would be useful for any researcher looking for a credible source with scholarly accredited studies to support the theory of discrimination within architecture towards certain groups, specifically the disabled.
Within the Article “Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment” Sarah Schindler brings to light a method of exclusion that most people are ignorant to. Schindler explains as a society we have some what addressed and overcome forms of exclusion such as racial ordinances, segregation by businesses, and verbal threats, yet there still lies a form that most aren’t consciously aware of. This form is called Architectural Exclusion which is the exclusion of specific personnel due to the design of the architecture which can have various affects on an environment such as a regulation of behavior and subconscious racially motivated decision making.
For instance, Schindler gives an example of a low bridge that Robert Moses specifically designed so that mas transit, such as public buses, could not pass through the area. Seeing as though very few minorities actually own cars this was a very creative/legal form of segregation intended to keep the lower class citizens of NYC from easily accessing Jones Beach. Schindler noted that, “-we tend to view such bridges as innocuous features rather than as exclusionary objects.”(1954)
Guilford to Waverly- 5 minutes in 2016 (Google Maps)Waverly to Guilford- 7 minutes in 2016 (Google Maps)
Another example Schindler presented was the use of one way streets and grid patterns in order to direct traffic away from wealthier neighborhoods. Specifically Schindler concentrated on Greenmount Avenue in East Baltimore which was used to “-separate the poor, predominantly African-American neighborhood of Waverly on its east side from the wealthy, predominantly white neighborhood of Guilford on its west.” The way the two-way cross streets were designed it made it extremly difficult for Waverly residents to get to Guilford yet quite convientent for Guilford residents to access Waverly(1970).
To conclude, Sarah Schindler wrote this article to bring awareness of the unjust utilization of architectural exclusion to the general public. Within architectural plans the government has been able to get away with manipulating the spacial mode of communication without majority of the public even noticing. By law this social injustice is legal even though it is no different from hanging a whites only sign in a saloon window. Over time we as citizens have become accustom to the way our communities are structured furthermore promoting the longevity of this discriminatory tactic. After reading this article Sarah Schindler hopes to inspire her readers to promote change to this ongoing phenomenon.
In this passage it discusses how residents band together to oppose the locating of transit stops in their communities. This means that they considered that people who can not afford to live their privileged life style have to use public transit in order to travel. If those people were able to have such easy access to the suburban area it would bring an immediate threat to the security of the neighborhood. Much like my earlier response on number 10.
When discussing gated communities you have to ask yourself is it designed just to keep things out or certain things in? With that being said, this passage depicts how in the process of building these subdivisions the owner always considers property values, crime rates, even the class of the general population around the area. This is how they are able to exclude poverty stricken individuals or even entire races within an area. Although the gates appear to bring security it also brings great threat to those on the inside. For instance, my neighborhood is full of upper middle class family’s with decent sized homes smack dab in the middle of extremely low valued properties in Decatur GA. Our neighborhood was basically designed to let outsiders know that we have what you cant afford and we are afraid that you may come and take what we worked hard for.
This outside environment, located directly above Decatur Street connecting the Sports Arena and the Urban Life Building, was built to serve as a place for students to pass through GSU’s busy campus without adding onto the ongoing traffic of Decatur Street. Also this space was constructed to occupy a large number of students during the lunch rush when it isn’t 20° outside.
