‘That’s Unacceptable!’: Black Woman Confronts Medical Assistant After Seeing ‘King Kong’ on Her Test Kit—Staff Puts the Blame on Her, Video Shows
A Southern California woman hopes lessons will be learned after her disturbing experience at a medical office. Kierra King visited Perlman Clinic in San Diego, seeking the standard professional health care expected from any doctor’s office or urgent care clinic when getting a test.
However, a recent video shows that the patient was shocked to see what was on the label of a vial that presumably was part of a test kit she got at the clinic.
Her name had been changed from Kierra King to King Kong, she said. When King noticed the hurtful words on her vial, she began recording her interaction with the unseen medical assistant and posted the video to TikTok, which quickly went viral. If the alleged racist action wasn’t enough, the confusing response from the staff member added insult to injury.
“Can you understand why I, as a Black woman, would have a problem with that?” she politely asked the unidentified employee, who assured Kierra that she would “double-check” who wrote “King Kong” instead of her actual name.
“That’s unacceptable. Even if it is a typo, which if they want to pull that and say what it is, how?! Seriously?!”
When the assistant returned, her response about the racial epithet created more confusion. She admitted to changing the name but claimed “King Kong” was not written with any cruel or unkind intent. She claimed it was simply a mistake.
“It was not my intention to put that on there,” she can be heard saying off-camera. The employee then changed tactics and blamed Kierra for not catching the mistake and speaking up when they supposedly checked the name on the bottle together — something Kierra claimed never happened.
“What I have a problem with now is that you’re straight up fabricating that we checked the name of the bottle when we did not,” Kierra stated. The staff member then floated yet another explanation for the so-called “error,” telling her patient that she typed fast and the name must have autocorrected from Kierra to Kong.
The outlandish autocorrect excuse did not sway Kierra, however, and she warned the employee that she planned to report the clinic.
After the video blew up online, Perlman Clinic quickly issued an apology on social media saying they “sincerely regret the harm caused and are actively addressing it to ensure accountability and meaningful change.”
But this post has since been taken down and replaced with a more generic statement on March 31 that read, “diversity is at the heart of who we are.”
Black women are more likely than any other group to report unfair treatment by a health care provider due to race and ethnicity, regardless of income level, according to a study by KFF, a non-profit that researches health policy. At least one in six Black women have reported disrespectful treatment in a medical setting, so it’s no surprise the video stuck a nerve.
“My story is just one instance of blatant racism. things like this are happening every single day. I am making the decision to use my personal social media as a platform to continue to bring awareness to the gravity of how out of control things have gotten in the United States and in the world,” Kierra wrote in her post.
She continued, “This action is incomprehensibly bad. It’s the kind of action that leaves one without words. Do better humans. Do better.”