HOW HE SEES IT Cutting away at a tragic delusion

By COURTLAND MILLOY
WASHINGTON POST
Members of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons, which met in Washington last weekend, are living examples of how hard work and a good education pay off. And there was a time when such doctors as Edward E. Cromwell III, president of the society and chief of trauma surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, would have been most revered throughout the black community for demonstrating that truth.
For many of today's black youths, however, the gods of the neighborhood are the athlete and the rapper -- whose prominence in the media has led to a false belief that education isn't so important and that the chances of becoming a rap star or going pro are better than becoming a surgeon.
Of course, that doesn't mean the surgeon is completely out of their lives.
Although the surgeons were in formal clothing for the society's reception and dinner, their regular attire is often a surgical smock spattered with some wannabe playa's blood.
In his address to the society, Dr. Cromwell, 47, recalled being asked by MTV producers in November to fly to New York and give a trauma surgeon's view of a new "anti-violence" music video. Rapper 50 Cent was the featured star because a gunshot wound had given him what MTV called "credibility," Dr. Cromwell said.
"I walked into the room, and there were about 20 MTV executives, mostly women -- white and Asian -- and definitely nobody black," he recalled. "My first thought was: So this is who's making the decisions about what images of black people to broadcast?"
In the video, 50 Cent is lying on the pavement after being gunned down. "Sorry it has to end this way," goes the refrain as the rapper's glamorous life is reviewed -- complete with women showing lots of cleavage while hanging on to his well-built body, serving him champagne.
Dr. Cromwell gave the video two thumbs down.
His take
"It was just more of the same glamorization of violence," Dr. Cromwell said. "I told them that I was offended as a trauma surgeon, as a black man and as a father."
If MTV really wanted to make an anti-violence video, he suggested, let him merge their "Hollywood hype" with reality video taken inside his emergency room.
"They applauded the idea at the time," Dr. Cromwell said, "but I haven't heard from them since."
Dr. Cromwell made a computerized presentation of his video concept. The MTV video was mixed with videotape from an ABC-TV special about life inside the Johns Hopkins trauma center. As women serve champagne to 50 Cent, the scene cuts abruptly to a body lying on a gurney in the emergency room. The rap music is gone, replaced by Dr. Cromwell's voice noting a gunshot wound to the head and identifying the body as "male X, dead on arrival."
"My new passion is to put my voice up against theirs," Dr. Cromwell said. "Somehow we have to counter these images and statements about what 'black culture' is really all about. I don't see kids in my trauma center the way they are depicted in rap videos. What I do see is the impact of rap video distortions.
"In the police athletic league where I coach, I asked my kids to raise their hands if they'd ever been told that improving their minds was 'not keeping it real' or 'acting white,' and they all raised their hands," he said. "That infuriates me. So part of the reason for making a different kind of video is to show where that kind of 'keeping it real' really leads."
Reactions
Dr. Cromwell received a strong ovation from his fellow surgeons, some of whom pledged to use their financial and political connections to help get his anti-violence video produced and distributed.
But Dr. Cromwell made it clear there was no time to lose.
In Baltimore, the number of gunshot wounds was increasing after a brief decline. The city had the nation's highest rate of births to unwed teen mothers. And in a single year, about 300 children from kindergarten through fifth grade were suspended for "acting out," he said.
All were signs of serious trouble ahead.