3 UMDNJ paramedics fired in KKK hazing incident

[Michael]

Racist expressions, hazing, and bullying should be excluded from any social setting in which a human being would want to associate, any setting offering relief from suffering, and any setting that serves the public.

That said, I wonder whether one angle has been overlooked in this discussion, not to excuse but rather to understand the outlook of the perpetrators (whose response I haven't yet seen, and I was trained to hear both sides of a story before passing judgment).

Shortly before the Sunday incident, several EMS workers on break in a conference room were talking about a video downloaded from the web-site You Tube called "The Amazing Racist" - meant to be a racist parody of the CBS show "The Amazing Race."

The video shows a young white man in Klan robes carrying a cross into the store of an African-American shopkeeper in a successful effort to incite a confrontation, and then later bringing the robe into another store for dry-cleaning.

"Sometime after that conversation, they made the cross, took sheets from the EMS service and 'robed' the students," Owen said.

Again, without attempting to excuse the obvious stupidity, appearance of viciousness, and lack of judgment on display here, or anyone's inhumane treatment of anyone, I suspect, among the ingredients, the possibility of intended satire, admittedly in extremely poor taste, lamely executed, and directed at the wrong audience.

If you look at the video referenced, and the others in the series that the comedian Ari Shaffir has made, you may detect a vulgar send-up of racism itself, attempting comically to employ the painful idioms of ignorant hatred in order to attack hatred itself by showing its absurdity - along the lines of Borat, in the tradition of George Carlin and Lenny Bruce, and going back thousands of years through social critics who were often misunderstood to be sincere when they were in fact lampooning injustice by taking on its appearance.

I don't know Ari Shaffir, the apparent inspiration for this prank, but I see from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZD4TMIkrLQ, here, here, and

that he has a broad and conventionally respectable repertoire of pretty funny stuff. Youtube is full of middle-schoolers' imitations of Borat and the like, which will no doubt embarrass their creators in a few years if not months. This prank may just have been meant to fall into that category, though with more unfortunate unintended results.

Get rid of the hazing and bullying. Wise up to the sensitivities of your audience. Recognize your responsibility to the public by displaying at all times only your trustworthiness, compassionate interest in relieving suffering, and undeviatingly clear judgment.

But the rest of us should also make an effort to distinguish between heavy-handedly ridiculing foolishness (such as presenting the ludicrous image of a [fairly obviously Jewish] man impersonating a KKK member and asking a black-owned dry-cleaning establishment to spiff up his robe and hood) vs. true racist hatred. [The idea of a KKK hood winding up in any dry-cleaning service is enough to make me laugh out loud each time I envision it.] Yes, his joke is also at the expense of the innocent store-owner, since the target is also how easy it is to get people angry; no, it's not in good taste; no, I don't approve, and no, I wouldn't do it, even if I weren't worried about the immediate consequences. But his mockery is taking very wide aim, the way Borat simultaneously insults the narrowness of unindustrialized societies and the narrowness of our own. Not my cup of O2, but also not quite the thuggery it pretends, for shock-value, to be.

I fear that in the UMDNJ episode we may have an instance of "kids" watching Superman and then jumping out their window expecting to fly. They may -- I don't know, since I haven't heard their side -- but just may, have actually gotten Ari Shaffir's joke but grievously misjudged the company in which to repeat it. Inexcusable, without doubt. But different from intending to terrorize anyone.

[latinaemt1300]

hey.... i was in orientation with only two other people and one of them got fired in his first week... lol so i know who you are =).. how is everything going for ya? send me a private message if ya don't want to make it a public convo =)

[mediccjh]

Well, besides this drama, all is well......

[CBEMT]

I work with two of the Northeastern students on rotations, but they're in the group that went to FDNY. Luckily for them their clinical experience wasn't interrupted by these three idiots.

On a larger note: what IS it with people taking pictures and video of stuff they know they shouldn't be doing in the first place? Every one of them has turned out to be their own worst evidence. It's like the advent of the digital camera has made people stupider.

[paramedicmike]

Follow up story.

[mediccjh]

Damn Mike, you beat me to it.

[dougd]

I fear that in the UMDNJ episode we may have an instance of "kids" watching Superman and then jumping out their window expecting to fly.

Or it could just be that minimum wage buys minimum employees - which simply means we'll continue to see such utter stupidity displayed throughout the EMS ranks until something changes.

[spenac]

Or it could just be that minimum wage buys minimum employees - which simply means we'll continue to see such utter stupidity displayed throughout the EMS ranks until something changes.

But to demand better pay demands us to get better education. Or does pay need to go up first for motivation for us to get better educated?

[letmesleep]

Yea, maybe I do have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the childish attitude in this field in regards to racism. Someone here wrote something along the lines of 1 step forward 4 steps back (about a totally different thread and topic), but how fitting. I am all for blowing off steam, and playing pranks, cracking jokes here and there, but to drop to such a level of UNprofessionalism is damaging to all of us. We have been talking the past few days about reporters viewing our forums and taking sarcasm out of context, and such, and the fact that the general public doesn't understand US like we would like them too. There is NO second guessing these acts of racism that have no place in EMS let alone any emergency services. This situation is going to put a negative spin on the EMS system (at the very minimum, in that community) for a long time to come. It's sad as hell that providers working in that system are in a situation where they feel they HAVE to get body armor to go to work. A chip? damn right I have a chip!

I also want to share my opinion about the hazing, like I said jokes and pranks for blowing off steam is one thing, but taking it to a level of hurting someone is totally different, and I believe if this "prank" had gone through the way it was supposed to it could have had a horrible ending.

[firedoc5]

This is something I'm still trying to comprehend. It's unbelievable. When I worked for a private ambulance service we could be somewhat "outrageous". But this... We wouldn't have dreamed of doing something like that. And we never "hazed". The rookies may have been given somewhat of a hard time, but they were hired as professionals and treated as such. It's not right to put them into an unprofessional situation.

I think these guys should lose their state and national certifications. I don't think they'd be able to use them anyway since no service is going to hire them as medics. Maybe as janitors, and that's a big maybe. They'll be lucky not to be prosecuted under any kind of anti-hazing laws.

Did the video that was turned in done by someone who was not agreeing to the activities and wanted to report it? Or was it one of the three idiots? I may have missed that in the articles.