Sunday, January 23, 2011

Paging Dr. Patel?

For the past 3 weeks, any spare moment that my roomie and I share, we spend it watching Grey's Anatomy.

We just finished season 5 last night, and started season 6 a couple hours ago. We were talking about the cast, and how diverse it is, when I thought, where is the Indian doctor?

According to Wikipedia there are over 35,000 Indian doctors in the United States. Sure, there are a lot of other doctors that represent a lot of other ethnic groups, but 64% of Indian Americans have a Bachelor's degree (compared to national average of only 28%) and 40% of all Indian Americas have a Master's, Doctorate, or other professional degree! (Compared to the 5% national average!)

So why Shonda Rhimes, why is there not an Indian doctor on Grey's or Private Practice for that matter.

If America believes that total knock outs like Ellen Pompeo (Dr. Meredith Grey), Sandra Oh (Dr. Christina Yang), Chyler Leigh (Dr. Lexie Grey), and Sara Ramirez (Dr. Callie Torres) chose to be a doctor rather than marry one, I think its beyond realistic to see at least one Indian doctor.

And not all of my beloved medical dramas have chosen to ignore such a significant ethnic group.

Flastback to 2003, or 1994 if we really want to go back to the beginning of it all, to television's ER. It ran for 15 seasons, and over that time the cast has some variety. One of my favorites on the show (I use to sit at the top of the steps while my mom watched back in the 90s, and I caught a few episodes on my own once my tv viewing developed out of the cartoon era) was Dr. Neela Rasgotra, portrayed by Parminder Nagra. Totally beautiful, and Indian.


So can we count on a little curry flavor to spice up medical dramas this season!? I sure hope so!

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