TheLoop21.com

By: Nsenga K. Burton
Wed, 07/29/2009 - 00:00

President Obama with his nominee.

America wants a smoking hot surgeon general. Who knew?

Apparently (based on reports from media outlets like FOX News and ABC News), the new surgeon general nominee — Dr. Regina Benjamin — is not a good candidate for the job because she is slightly overweight. Really. It's a good thing that people weren't thinking about that when her not-so-hot predecessors were in office.

Benjamin, a 52-year-old family practice doctor who has dedicated her life to the poor by working in rural and impoverished areas, is seemingly not fit to be surgeon general because she is supposedly "unfit."

Dr. Benjamin founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in 1990 in the fishing village of Bayou La Batre, Ala., where she also serves as CEO. Many of the patients lack health insurance, and about a third are immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

In 2005, the clinic was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina, just as it had been by Hurriance Georges in 1998. It also burned to the ground several years ago. Benjamin rebuilt the clinic after each setback and has continued to offer medical care to the village's 2,500 residents. This is a woman who still makes house calls. This is a woman who mortgaged her house twice to rebuild clinics and drove around in a pickup truck treating patients. She's not qualified to be surgeon general?

Benjamin received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant for treating patients in the Gulf Coast region regardless of their ability to pay. She is the first African-American woman to serve on the board of the American Medical Association, former associate dean for rural health at the University of South Alabama's College of Medicine and former president of the State of Alabama Medical Association. She was tapped because of her focus on prevention in her treatment of patients.

In her acceptance of the nomination, according to a CNN report this month, Benjamin spoke about the toll of preventable illness as the reason why her family was not with her at the announcement. "Her father died with diabetes and high blood pressure; her older brother and only sibling died at age 44 of an HIV-related illness; her mother died of lung cancer after taking up smoking as a girl; her mother's twin brother could not attend because he is at home 'struggling for each breath' after a lifetime of smoking."

This is a woman who is going it alone, tending to the needs of everyone, except herself, which is something that many women face in general and black women face specifically. Maybe this is why she's "slightly overweight"?

Why do we care about Dr. Benjamin's health now? Is it because she’s black and female?

In spite of all of her accomplishments and service to the community, at the end of the day, she is not supposed to have a position like this. As a black woman, she can take care of the world, but she cannot be the chief caretaker of the world. How ironic.

Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D. is managing editor of TheLoop21.com. She serves as pop cultural critic for Creative Loafing and is an assistant professor of communication and media studies at Goucher College. Check out her blog, Tune N, which examines popular culture through the lens of race, class, gender and sexuality.

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What controversy?

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