They never said it outright. Not at first.
They didn’t have to.
I was a physician at the edge of the Republic, serving those the system had long since forgotten. When the last doctors left, I remained. I healed. I endured. I became necessary.
And for that, the system turned.
Not with conviction, but suspicion.
Not with verdict, but process.
Not for action—but for what I represented.
In a frosty room on an island where brown skin walks every street and fills every waiting room, I sat alone. A tribunal of pallid judgment arrayed before me. Imported robes, foreign eyes. Even the silence spoke of exile. Across from my trammeled figure, the polished emblem of progressivism: Speaking for justice, serving power. Yet even the appearance of progress could not conceal the truth: The room did not serve justice—it served power.
And then came the filing.
Not about conduct.
About culture. That “my culture” made me unfit.
No outrage.
No gavel.
Just the quiet hiss of a record accepting it all.
This was never a hearing. It was a gauntlet.
A performance of power.
A reminder of my place.
And I am not the only one. Every minority physician has seen the edge of this room. Some have stood in its doorway. Some have been dragged inside.
But I am not here to tell just my story. Mine is only unusual because the system whispered the quiet part aloud.
This is not about me.
It’s about you.
You—the Black physician: “You’re not the doctor.”
You—the Indian resident mistaken for custodial staff.
You—the Hawaiian, the Puerto Rican, the Arab, the Other—whose truth is second-guessed, whose skin and stance and silence are welcomed as a threat.
The system rarely hunts us in daylight. It bleeds us in bureaucracy.
No arrest. No headline. Just erosion.
But now and then, it slips. It names the unspoken.
It happened to me.
It will happen again.
So don’t just survive. Don’t just endure. Let us fight back—strategically, deliberately, and without becoming their next casualty.
1. The chameleon principle
The system protects only what it needs. Become essential. Build quiet functions no one else can replicate. Let your name appear in every key process. Do not draw attention. Draw necessity.
When they try to remove you, the structure should limp.
When they doubt your value, their operations should flinch.
A chameleon doesn’t vanish. It becomes the thing the predator can’t afford to eat.
2. Weaponized absence
If they dismiss you, disappear—but leave behind a crater.
Let the department falter. Let the inbox flood. Let the wounds go untreated. And do not speak. Silence makes the hole louder.
When patients ask where you went, let the answer humiliate.
When systems break in your absence, do not return.
Let them crawl back on broken glass.
3. Reputation obfuscation
If they cannot define you, they cannot destroy you.
Stop being a title. Start being a shape. Operate across domains—medicine, teaching, strategy, leadership. Use different names if needed. Do not lie; just don’t let them see your whole silhouette.
Be two steps ahead of the smear. If they erase one version of you, three others remain.
4. Narrative supremacy
If you don’t control your story, they will weaponize it. Do not wait for vindication. Build your legend in real time. Write. Publish. Teach. Document. Let their attack become your archive.
A smear campaign is just a biography with the names rearranged.
Make it yours. Own the ink. And when they try to shame you, let the receipts speak louder than the slander.
5. Yamdoot doctrine
When they capture you? Detonate—strategically.
Keep records. Track injustice. Build a dossier.
And when the moment comes, release it all. Not as a tantrum. As judgment.
Let the damage be permanent.
Let the blowback burn upward, not outward.
This is not about vengeance.
It’s about rendering their targeting mechanisms obsolete.
So don’t just survive. Don’t just endure.
Fight—strategically.
Live—deliberately.
And remain—undefeated.
Atharva Joshi is a board-certified U.S. family physician, educator, and writer with a career dedicated to underserved and rural communities across the United States. He has served in both clinical leadership and frontline roles, participated in rural public health initiatives for Indigenous and medically marginalized populations, and mentored pre-medical students from marginalized backgrounds.
Dr. Joshi is also an advocate for physicians and other health care professionals facing institutional abuse, narrative erasure, and retaliatory legal tactics. His writing explores the intersection of medicine, identity, and power.
He is a graduate of the University of Texas McGovern Medical School and holds additional distinction as a Diplomate of the American Academy of Family Physicians. His work combines the precision of clinical medicine with the strategic clarity of systems-level analysis.
