Doing Good: Racial Tensions and Workplace Inequalities at a Community Clinic in El Nuevo South

7. Moral Identity Construction and New Ethnic Relations

126 7 Moral Identity Construction and New Ethnic Relations This book expands upon our understanding of moral identity and how it intersects with race, class, and gender, especially in the workplace. I have illustrated how the health practitioners of Care Inc. construct and maintain a moral identity in concert with how they categorize themselves and others along racial and class lines, in addition to gender and nationality. The staffers crafted their moral identity by drawing on the cultural resources (Einwohner, Hollander, and Olson 2000; Williams 1995) available to them. For instance, the lower-status African American staffers constructed a moral identity by defining themselves in opposition to what they perceived Latinas/os to be. The African American staff labeled Latina staff as “lazy” and incompetent workers who lowered the clinic’s status and respectability. They criticized Latina clients for being bad mothers, blamed Latina/o clients for “working the system,” and considered them irresponsible care-seekers who were undeserving of subsidized health care in the United States. As a result, African Americans perceived their work as important: they had to prompt Latinas to be better workers and to protect Care Inc. from potential abuse by Latina/o clients. The lower-status Latina health-care providers also viewed their work as important, but for different reasons. Latina staff told me that they needed to protect Latina/o clients from suffering indignities at the hands of the African American staff and needed to make sure 127 Moral Identity and New Ethnic Relations African American staffers did not take advantage of them nor deny them health care. The mid-level staffers—the maternity care coordinators—constructed a moral identity by defining themselves as “sisterly” and “feminist” health-care providers caring for “sweet” and “needy” Latinas, who had to deal with “difficult” and “privileged” African American women. The higher-status staff, all of them white except one, constructed a positive self-image by defining health-care work as heroic, explaining problems in the clinic as inevitable and a consequence of structural constraints that presumably affected everyone in the same way, and assuming that conflicts resulted from the prejudices of “a few bad apples.” This analysis suggests that moral-identity construction is an active process. The health-care practitioners’ moral-identity construction is shaped by demographic changes in the clinic’s clientele as the result of immigration, as well as the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts in which they are working and subsequently fashioning their identities. They collectively interpret their difficult work conditions, which vary by race and class of the health-care practitioner, as evidence that they are “heroic” workers (Joffe 1978). The difficult conditions of their work, as well as the status of their positions, only add to their challenges and give their moral identity (being healthcare providers who helped the underserved of North Carolina) added importance. However, the workers’ construction of the “moral self” and “moral client” identities had unintended consequences. Constructing Moral Identity: Shaping Ethnic Relations and Social Membership Sabotage One potential consequence of the way staffers constructed their moral identity is sabotage. At the clinic, as mentioned before, administrators asked African American staff to train Latina staff. If the African American staff sabotaged that training, the Latina’s job might have been in jeopardy. The racist and sexist images of Latinas as “lazy” would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. doing good 128 This happened to Barbara. After working for six months at Care Inc., she had not been trained to do all the procedures required of a medical assistant. She was supposed to be trained by Desiree, the African American lead nurse, and Eva, an African American medical assistant. Barbara explained: Well, I guess you can say Desiree has trained me, but there is a lot that is missing. She still has to show me how to check a child’s vision, how to take blood to check sugar or hemoglobin levels—many things are missing. But at least they let me do something, and time goes by. But I still do not do everything. And I am on probation! Eva and Genesis do not collaborate with me, and if I have any doubts or questions they ignore me. They only criticize, get mad when I ask them to do something when I can’t, and they constantly tell me I am slow. Also, I feel ashamed, especially with the doctors. Because many times, most of the...