A White city official refused to address this Black professor as ‘doctor.’ He got fired.

A White city official refused to address this Black professor as ‘doctor.’ He got fired.

Rosario, 38, sees her title as an essential tool. As a Black woman who says she looks young for her age, people are predisposed to dismiss her opinion and expertise, she said. “It adds legitimacy to what I’m saying,” Rosario said, especially when she’s discussing a matter relevant to public health, as she was on Monday night.

Collins made a deliberate choice to ignore her title, she said. He had heard her correct the other official — and she provided multiple opportunities for him to adjust his language. She felt compelled to say something.

“This is a title I earned," Rosario said. "It’s not one that someone handed to me.”

Rosario started working on her doctorate in 2011, with a full-time job and a 3-year-old son. A few years into her program, she had her second son. Rosario would wake up as early as 3 a.m. to breastfeed and pump breast milk for the day, she said, sometimes staying up until midnight to finish her doctoral work.

“I put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it,” Rosario said. “There were so many times when I thought, ‘Am I making the right decision?’” She would consider all the other things she could have been doing with her time instead, she said — all the moments she was missing with her sons.

Her mom, Janet Kennedy, kept her going. Kennedy earned a master’s degree in education and always wanted to get her doctorate. She tried, Rosario said, but with three kids and limited financial resources, she never got all the way there. When Rosario started working toward her own doctoral degree, she said, her mom would post about her good grades on Facebook and listen to her read her papers out loud.

Janet Kennedy and Carrie Rosario at Rosario's graduation. (Family Photo)

Janet Kennedy and Carrie Rosario at Rosario's graduation. (Family Photo)

At her graduation in 2016, Rosario found Kennedy in the crowd as she walked across the stage. Her mom was crying. Later, when she watched her family’s graduation video, Rosario heard her mom whisper to Rosario’s two sons.

“There she goes,” she told them, pointing to Rosario. “There she goes.”

By now, Rosario is used to defending her professional credentials. Academic colleagues are sometimes dismissive of people — particularly women — who call themselves “doctors” when they hold doctoral degrees other than PhDs, she said. Outside of academia, she said, plenty of people make offhand remarks about her title, saying “You don’t look like a doctor” or “You’re too young to be a doctor.”

Women of color “face lots of judgments on their value and what they are capable of doing,” Rosario said. After they achieve something big, she said, the question becomes, “Did they actually do it? Is it legitimate?” As a Black woman, Rosario said, these kinds of comments can wear on your health. Sometimes she wonders why people can’t just celebrate her success. To Rosario, the “Dr.” title is a celebration of her accomplishments — and the people who helped her achieve them.

Kennedy passed away in February. And while Rosario can’t talk to her mom about her decision to stand up to Collins, she said, she is pretty sure she knows exactly what she would say.

“She would have wanted me to advocate for myself and the use of my title,” she said.

On Monday’s Zoom call, Collins told Rosario that her title “didn’t matter.”

It mattered to Rosario, she said — and it would have mattered to her mom.

Caroline Kitchener

Caroline Kitchener

Caroline Kitchener is a staff reporter at The Lily. Prior to joining The Washington Post in 2019, she was an associate editor at The Atlantic. She is the author of "Post Grad: Five Women and Their First Year Out of College."