(Photo credit: twitter)
We’ve heard of “Driving While Black” and even “picnic-ing while Black” as Black folks are racially profiled just while doing regular, everyday things.
Well, now it seems there is “Doctor-ing” or “Doing Medicine While Black” as seen by the handcuffing and detaining of Dr. Armen Henderson in Miami.
Police have launched an investigation after Dr. Henderson, who is known for testing homeless people for coronavirus in Miami was handcuffed and detained as he unloaded his van outside his home.
Video shows him being approached by a police officer as he takes items out, while loading what he said were tents into his vehicle.
Dr. Henderson, who goes by DrDoItAll305 on Instagram, works at the University of Miami Health System, said he was on his way to distribute the tents – along with masks, and toiletries – to homeless people in the city he is renowned for supporting amid the COVID-19 crisis.
So not only is he a medical doctor on the front lines of the pandemic taking care of patients, but he’s also helping flatten the curve on his own time by working with the homeless. That’s what we like to call “doing it all.”
Dr. Henderson said the officer told him he had received reports of people dumping waste and that he responded that he was simply unloading his van.
He added that he was detained after he did not produce identification.
“He said, ‘You should refer to me as sir or sergeant when talking to me.’ I never said I was a doctor. But I didn’t cuss. He just grabbed my arms and cuffed me,” Dr. Henderson told the Miami Herald.
He said the officer then “yelled in my face”, but the video shows him eventually being released after his wife is seen emerging from their home and presenting his ID.
But this is not the first time a doctor has been profiled. If you remember, back in 2018, Delta Airlines got in some trouble a few times with the Black doctor community.
A doctor said she was racially profiled by two flight attendants as she aided a fellow passenger on the Delta Air Lines flight.
Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, a physician and expert in obesity medicine, told CNN she was on a flight from Indianapolis to Boston on Tuesday when a woman sitting next to her started shaking and hyperventilating.
Stanford said she was already aiding the passenger when a flight attendant came by to check the situation.
According to Stanford, the flight attendant asked if she was a doctor, to which Stanford replied yes.
Stanford said she continued to stabilize the passenger when a second flight attendant came to ask for her medical license. Stanford showed the flight attendant her license.
Stanford said that shortly afterward both flight attendants came back and questioned her credentials and asked if the medical license she was carrying belonged to her.
“The validity of me as a physician is being called into question,” Stanford said of the experience.
The police department is currently launching an independent investigation into the cuffing of Dr. Henderson. In the meantime, we applaud him for all his efforts and support him in every way. Thank you doc!
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