It's no surprise that Dr. Christian Head's account of being depicted as a gorilla sodomized by his white supervisor in a slideshow shown at a UCLA School of Medicine graduation "roast" has been the subject of national attention and outrage.

The African-American head-and-neck surgeon's tale of over-the-top racism by the university went viral, thanks to a YouTube video chronicling the allegations and a Change.org petition calling on the UCLA Board of Regents to "end the racial discrimination and deplorable mistreatment" against Head.

But the worst part of the "gorilla slide," as it's described in an April 17 discrimination action filed on Head's behalf against his supervisors and the Regents, is that, according to the 49-year-old doctor, it was merely one moment in a pattern of discrimination, harassment and humiliation by the UCLA School of Medicine that he says has lasted for years.

And according to the April 17 complaint, the physician, who was once named "Most Innovative Surgeon" by Black Enterprise and who launched UCLA's Johnson Cancer Center Tumor lab, faced retaliation by the institution when he asked for the wrongs against him to be righted.

As the only African-American tenured professor at UCLA's department of head and neck surgery, Head says it all started when his supervisor, Marilene Wang, labeled him an "affirmative action hire" and "affirmative action project" and proclaimed that black doctors like him were the reason for failed hospitals. Things got worse, according to the complaint, when he cooperated with an investigation against Wang. He says the retaliation escalated until, at a 2006 event for graduating students, it became public.

Read the rest of this article at theroot.com.

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(Photo: Courtesy theroot.com)