“This does not fix racism,” Dr. Benjamin Danielson said. “These are wounds we’ll carry the rest of our lives, in some ways.”
A Washington jury has found that Seattle Children’s Hospital discriminated against Dr. Benjamin Danielson, the former director of the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic.
According to The Seattle Times, the jury awarded $21 million in damages, concluding that Danielson was a victim of systemic racism in the workplace. The jury also found that Seattle Children’s Hospital failed to address Danielson’s complaints.
Danielson has since indicated that he is both surprised by, and pleased with, the jury’s verdict.
“I’m in shock,” he said in an interview with the Seattle Times. “I’m full of gratitude to the jury. There have been so many amazing people from the community, from this journey, willing to show up.”
Danielson, who is African-American, was the director of the Seattle Children’s Hospital’s Odessa Children’s Clinic for more than 20 years.
The clinic, notes the Times, primarily serves low-income families in marginalized communities.
However, Danielson said that management at Seattle Children’s Hospital was largely indifferent to the conditions at the clinic. Administrators purportedly permitted “the use of racial slurs” and failed “to remedy known incidents of systemic racism, fostering an environment of conformity to the status quo of racial inequity, and subjecting its Black and Brown employees to a double standard of conduct.”
Rebecca Roe, an attorney who represented Danielson in the claim, said that her client often had a hard time fulfilling his obligations.
“He had to show up at an institution every day for work where racial issues were so pervasive and so predominant that […] it made it difficult for him as a Black man to go into a white space,” Roe said.
In response, the hospital recognized that Danielson is a talented and charismatic pediatrician—albeit one who refused to accept constructive criticism and was frustrated by the hospital’s attempts at oversight.
“He didn’t quit because he needed to do so in order to force change, in order to compel a reckoning,” said Portia Moore, a lawyer who represented Seattle Children’s Hospital. “He quit because he realized that he would no longer be able to unilaterally dictate how OBCC, including OBCC Othello, would be run.”
The hospital’s legal team also attacked apparent “gaps” in Danielson’s argument, saying that neither he nor his attorneys established that Danielson was personally subjected to racism outside of an “isolated” incident involving a slur.
Danielson has since said that, while he is grateful for the jury’s award, there are “a lot of other people who suffer more in situations like this.”
“This does not fix racism,” Danielson said. “These are wounds we’ll carry the rest of our lives, in some ways.”
Sources
Former Seattle Children’s doctor wins $21M in discrimination lawsuit
Jury awards $21M to former Seattle Children’s doctor in racial discrimination case
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