Wisconsin News Roundup, Black Women In Medicine, How Tax Cuts Have Changed Wisconsin, UW-Stout Reeling Following The Killing Of Saudi Arabian Student

Featured in this Show

• State News Roundup For November 4, 2016

  Download

  A University of Wisconsin-Stout student from Saudi Arabia died this week after being assaulted on a street in downtown Menomonie. A state news editor joins us to talk about this and other top stories from the past week.

• Film Looks At Experiences Of African-American Women In Medicine

  Download

  We talk to the filmmaker behind a new documentary called Black Women in Medicine. It follows the trials – and the triumphs – of African American women who decide to become physicians in this country.

• New Film Looks At Experiences Of African-American Women In Medicine

  Download

  Last month on Delta Flight 945, flight attendants scrambled to find a doctor onboard to help a man who suddenly became unresponsive. Dr. Tamika Cross was just two rows over and volunteered to provide aid, but flight attendants refused her help doubting that a black woman could actually be the doctor they needed.

  “I raise my hand to grab (the attendant’s) attention. She says to me, ‘Oh no sweetie, put your hand down, we are looking for actual physicians or nurses or some type of medical personnel; we don’t have time to talk to you.’ I try to inform her that I am a physician, but I’m continually cut off by condescending remarks,” Cross recalled in a post about the incident on her personal Facebook page.

  African-American doctors across the country have reported similar incidents. When they step inside a medical office or into an operating room, it’s not uncommon for their patients to greet them as nurses and to ask what’s keeping the doctor. It’s as if being black and a doctor were mutually exclusive in the eyes of many Americans.

  A new documentary is hoping to change that by looking at the progress made by black women in medical fields and the challenges they still face. The film, Black Women in Medicine, is part of a broader initiative called Changing the Face of Medicine, which aims to significantly increase the number of African-American women in medicine by the year 2030.

  Crystal Emery, the film’s director, said she made the film to help people think differently about how they perceive people of color, particularly black women.

  “I made this film for young people to encourage them to think outside the box, to dream big. And then to demonstrate that dreams do come true,” Emery said.

  “But I also made this for policy makers,” she added. “You know we are at a time in America, we’re at a crossroads. And so we need to put into media more positive images of people of color that say not only are we capable, these are our contributions to the fabric of our quilt that we call America.”

  Emery said while African-Americans make up about 13 percent of the population, only about 4.5 percent of physicians in the United States are black. Studies show patients are much more likely to respond to someone who has a similar cultural background.

  So what explains the trend? Emery said the medical field is an exclusive/elite club and it’s not always presented as a pathway for American minorities. As one doctor says in the film, “I had never seen a doctor before I went to college. And you can’t be what you can’t see.”

  “You don’t wake up at 18 and decide, ‘Oh, today I’m going to go to medical school.’ A lot of the white American medical students’ parents started very early in grooming them with the sciences and also the culture of medicine,” Emery said.

  And once American minority students do enter medical school, Emery said they’re constantly working against a set of preconceived notions about who they are and their limitations.

  In making the film, Emery hopes to provide images of African-Americans wearing scrubs and asking for operating tools – an image, she said, is seriously lacking in popular culture. And she hopes those who watch the film walk away with an understanding that persistence and determination does pay off.

• Wisconsin's Tax Cuts: What's Gotten Better And Worse In The State

  Download

  We’ll speak with Simon Montlake, Reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, about his new piece looking at the ways slashed taxes have affected Wisconsin.

• UW-Stout Campus Reeling After The Killing Of Saudi Arabian Student

  Download

  The killing of 24-year-old UW-Stout student Hussain Saeed Alnahdi has shocked the campus and left the town of Menomonie reeling. While police have yet to find the suspect, many people are worried that the Saudi Arabian’s student death could be a hate crime. We’ll speak with Karen Herzog–Higher Education Reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel–about the case.