{"id":5717,"date":"2015-01-23T13:38:44","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T18:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=5717"},"modified":"2015-07-08T16:36:57","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T20:36:57","slug":"busm-and-bmcs-dr-kermit-crawford-invokes-mlks-legacy-for-action-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2015\/01\/23\/busm-and-bmcs-dr-kermit-crawford-invokes-mlks-legacy-for-action-today\/","title":{"rendered":"BUSM’s Dr. Kermit Crawford Invokes MLK\u2019s Legacy for Action Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kermit<\/a><\/p>\n

Boston University School of Medicine, the location of the first medical college to graduate an African-American female physician and the first African-American psychiatrist, holds diversity close to its heart\u2014especially at this time of year.<\/p>\n

In memory of BU School of Theology alumnus Martin Luther King, Jr., Kermit Crawford, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at BUSM and clinical psychologist at Boston Medical Center, shared his thoughts on the significance of Dr. King\u2019s legacy in today\u2019s society.<\/p>\n

To a crowded Keefer auditorium Jan. 22, Crawford said he came to talk about one very specific aspect of diversity: race.<\/p>\n

\u201cRace is a social construction. Race is something we give meaning to. But that social construct has real world consequences,\u201d Crawford said referencing the recent events in Ferguson, New York, Florida and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Crawford recalled his youth as an African-American boy growing up in North Carolina and the pronounced distinction between black and white. Back then there still were separate bathrooms for blacks and whites, sections in the rear of restaurants for blacks and KKK rallies.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Crawford has the luxury of not thinking about that\u2014Kermit did not have that luxury,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Interspersing his presentation with audio clips from Dr. King\u2019s speeches from the 1960s, Crawford made the point that though we\u2019ve come a long way as a society from the days when black persons counted as three-fourths of a person, there is still a long way to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can start here, but we\u2019re not able to stay here,\u201d he said citing issues of education, homeownership rates and police brutality.<\/p>\n

Crawford called out the names of young black men who were killed by police brutality, including Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, as their pictures appeared on the screen with text that read, \u201cUnintended but not a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calling on the doctors, nurses, deans and students in the room to use their privileges to do something about the injustices in the world, he said, \u201cBlack lives matter, but you know every life matters and we have to assert that reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BMC
BMC patient Dina Jerome singing “Motherless Child” as Moises Fernandez Via accompanies her on piano.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An audio clip of Dr. King played aloud, \u201cThere comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u201cThat\u2019s a proper sense of priorities,\u201d Crawford said.<\/p>\n

To end the event, Mois\u00e8s Fern\u00e1ndez Via, <\/b>from the BUSM Diversity and Multicultural Affairs office and BU Arts Outreach Initiative, accompanied BMC patient Dina Jerome on piano as she sang \u201cMotherless Child,\u201d a song dating back to the time of slavery, which still has significance for injustices in our society today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boston University School of Medicine, the location of the first medical college to graduate an African-American female physician and the first African-American psychiatrist, holds diversity close to its heart\u2014especially at this time of year. In memory of BU School of Theology alumnus Martin Luther King, Jr., Kermit Crawford, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at BUSM […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[136],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20475,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5717\/revisions\/20475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}