"He said Seattle Children’s would gladly place Odessa Brown, which serves mostly low-income and people of color, on a pedestal to raise money, but would not show that same level of interest when it came to daily care.
Amid a national reckoning with racism, the hospital’s executives would offer symbolic overtures to equity, but take little action toward righting its own wrongs and those of the broader medical system, he said — particularly around a lack of translation services and the frequency with which security was being called on patients of color. He added that staff, himself included, feel scared to speak out about racism for fear of retaliation by upper management.
Danielson began to seriously consider quitting last summer. A colleague was fired without explanation and another felt pushed into resigning from her leadership post. Both are people of color. At the same time, a member of the Seattle Children’s Hospital administration, who Danielson said had used the n-word several years earlier in reference to him and referred to people of Asian descent as “japs,” remains a front-facing member of the team. (Danielson declined to name the person.)
...What it came down to, he said, was “examining my own complicity as a representative of a hospital that does not treat people of color as it should.”
And so, in November, Danielson abruptly resigned in protest, ending his tenure atop an establishment that’s been revered in Black and brown communities since 1970. For Danielson, it was “the most painful sacrifice” to leave behind a clinic he loves to this day. But treating the individual must go alongside treating the system, he said."
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