Just a day after Bravo revealed they would be airing a new reality show, “Married to Medicine,” Howard Medical students are up in arms and ready to protest because they don’t like what the new show would do to the public’s perception of African American doctors.
It’s one thing to have a reality program filled with drama starting housewives or ex-wives, but to make a show that’s all about the drama with a cast of doctors and doctors’ wives is definitely taking things a bit too far.
Looks like we really know how to call it huh? While many media outlets were raving about the new show, we couldn’t ignore the fact that the show would basically be teaching it’s viewers that all African American women, even doctors, are just ratchet immature women who are ready to start a cat fight.
In the words of one of the protesting medical students, the show will “leave the stain of unprofessionalism and cattiness on the image of Black female doctors for years to come.”
Let’s face it. All over American citizens are trying to avoid black doctors because it is believed they don’t’ know what they’re doing, they are rude and unprofessional, or they just aren’t up to par with the white doctors in the same hospital.
Even an episode of “Family Guy” showed baby Stewie begging his mother not to take him to a black doctor. While you’re probably thinking “Well ‘Family Guy’ makes fun of everybody,” recent studies revealed that the only reason “Family Guy” hasn’t been pulled of the air for it’s controversial jokes is because the jokes usually reflect genuine opinions of a large portion of the American population. That put things in perspective huh?
In other words, America is already a nation filled with people who don’t have faith in black doctors (or blacks at all for that matter), so the idea of a show portraying African American doctors as ignorant fools is a huge slap in the face.
“For the sake of integrity and character of black female physicians, we must ask that Bravo immediately remove and cancel ‘Married to Medicine’ from its channel, website, and any other media,” the online petition at Change.org read. “Black female physicians only compose 1% of the American workforce of physicians. Due to our small numbers, the depiction of Black female doctors in media, on any scale, highly affects the public’s view on the character of all future and current African American female doctors.”
We couldn’t help but hope that maybe Bravo’s new reality show wouldn’t even be showing a lot of drama and catfights but the recently released trailer proved us wrong already. The ladies still shared the same petty, immature, ready to fight, ready to party, ready to drink and ‘ask about it all tomorrow’ attitudes that the “Bad Girls Club” and “Real Housewives” have.
With the medical field already being incredibly competitive and nearly impossible for many African Americans, the last thing black women need is to be stereotyped as ghetto doctors who will focus more on their social drinking than they will the welfare of their patients.
To add a little more insult to injury, when it came to Bravo’s search for black doctors the hunt was a tough one that only resulted in two actual doctors. While the show is indeed called “Married to Medicine” sources are saying that producers did intend on having more actual doctors on the show rather than just the wives of doctors. Well things apparently didn’t work out because the cast of six women only includes two doctors.
“In a time when doctors are being held to very high standards by the public and each other, it is unfathomable for such a depiction of medicine and black women to be broadcast on TV where it will be inevitably available for years to come, on the internet and through media outlets.” the petition continued.
The petition has already reached over 1,000 supporters and has been earning more and more signatures with every passing minute.
Bravo is yet to respond to the petition or the accusations about how the new show may impact the way people view black female doctors. If the petition is unsuccessful the controversial reality show will air on March 24.
