What exactly did he say, and why?
By Meliqueica Meadows
Of the St. Louis American
The recent resignation of city Health Director Dr. William Kincaid amidst public outcry at his use of the N-word during a December 18, 2006 staff meeting left many puzzled, given his fight against health disparities, which had earned him many friends in the black medical community.
The context in which Kincaid used the N-word has been reported as “a joke” regarding black people’s taste for Kool-Aid (or lack thereof), which left people struggling to complete the blanks on what exactly he said.
As Kincaid relates the incident, he was not telling a joke – he was relating a personal story about race relations. He actually was quoting a black man (the father of a friend from medical school) when he used the N-word.
Several staff members present at the Dec. 18 meeting declined to share their versions of the incident, on or off the record. This is Kincaid’s version.
As staff members began filing into a Health Department conference room for a morning meeting, Kincaid said he overheard two African-American staffers joking about serving Kool-Aid at a holiday party and how black guests would receive the drink. This sparked Kincaid to relate an anecdote about his personal experience with racial stereotyping pertaining to Kool-Aid.
It was 1975, just before Kincaid and his classmates dispersed from Saint Louis University School of Medine to settle into their internships. Kincaid was visiting at the house of a black friend and classmate, Dr. Gordon Johnson.
“We knew this would be the last time we would see each other, because everyone would be splitting up to do internships across the country,” Kincaid said.
Johnson’s parents were at the gathering, visiting from Oklahoma. Johnson worked the room, serving drinks. When he got to his father, he said, “How about you, Dad? Would you like a glass of Kool-Aid?”
Kincaid said, “And his father replied, ‘No’ and said that drink was for (N-words) and poor white trash.”
Relating the incident to the American, Kincaid left the N-word blank. To his staff, he used the word the elder Johnson had said: “niggers.”
Dr. Gordon Johnson, contacted in Florida where he works as a pathologist, remembered the incident. He said his father often made this disparaging remark about Kool-Aid, “and we would just sit around and laugh. It wasn’t meant in a hurtful way.”
The elder Johnson, contacted at home in Oklahoma, also remembered the incident.
“I’m 85-years-old. When I was a kid growing up, the only thing poor people could afford was Kool-Aid,” Thad Johnson told the American.
“And I made the statement then that the only people who drank Kool-Aid were poor people, and that was a fact. People can make a joke out of that.”
Kincaid said, at the time, the statement shocked him. Thad Johnson sensed his consternation about the family joke and took the time to explain the meaning behind it. It was an important moment in Dr. Kincaid’s understanding of race relations and the way black folks talk about racism among themselves, and this was what he wanted to share with his staff at that fateful meeting.
“I told the story very poorly,” Kincaid said, adding that the racial epithet “never should have passed my lips” in any context. He said he apologized to the staff, both individually and collectively.
“There’s a lot of speculation that I just plopped down and told a ridiculous story,” Kincaid said.
“That’s not how I want to be remembered, but I’m certainly willing to take responsibility. I’m still willing to say I was stupid.”
Kincaid said the city of St. Louis was in the process of resolving the matter internally when the incident was leaked to talk radio, which sealed his fate.
He said before the story broke on talk radio he had told Health Commissioner Melba Moore that they should submit the incident to personnel “to get some help with counseling and cultural sensitivity. The next thing I knew I was being suspended for a week.”
But 27th Ward Alderman Gregory Carter, who chairs the aldermanic Health Committee, said that one-week suspension “was not the right thing to do.” He said his committee and other African-American aldermen “started asking the city what they were going to do” about the situation.
Carter said his committee is now “working with the acting director (Pamela Rice Walker) to move the city forward.”
“I offered to resign, and I think the city treated me fairly,” Kincaid said.
“But being dragged through talk radio by people who weren’t in the room, that I was disappointed with.”
Though Kincaid said he had no choice but to resign – “clearly, I wasn’t going to be useful anymore” – he finds it sadly ironic that in trying to relate a story that gave him insight into racism, he left a stain on his record that will make many remember him as racist.
“When Mr. Johnson said the word, I was shocked. I felt uneasy, but we talked about it. We figured it out,” Kincaid said.
“One of the disheartening things about this town is that it is very difficult to have a meaningful conversation about race.”
I’ve met Dr. Kincaid as part of my work consulting with St. Louis ConnectCare. ConnectCare was a facility funded by the city of St. Louis where people in the area about a mile north of the Delmar loop could get free, high-quality medical care. The management, caregivers, and patients were almost all Black. This was a phenomenal facility where Dr. Kincaid’s influence was highly regarded. He led it a successful effort to equip and train the staff to do endoscopy which included much needed colonoscopy services. For many poor people, services like colonoscopy are out of their reach, Dr. Kincaid committed to fixing that. If I remember right, he volunteered to be the first patient to show how safe and useful the procedure was. I fully trust and believe that Dr. Kincaid use the N-word in relating what someone else said was speaking from the perspective of a committed ally of BIPOC. He is the exact opposite of a racist.