by I Bismuth

August 27: Today I made a discovery: the tooth is racist.

I was on time and I had the waiting room to myself, so there was no doubt that I was next. The expensive muffled whining, rasping, and sucking, the box of toys in the corner, and the coffee table strewn with celebrity glossies all served to put me in the right mood for the needle.

The plastic buses and helicopters with sound effects seemed at least as interesting as the glossies without them, but I preserved my dignity by seating myself near the coffee table and, like a grown up with a carious upper right second molar, turning over the pages of piffle and marvelling at the interior designs lived in by famous smile-wearers.

Although all of them were unknown to me and did not seem worth getting to know, as the sneers welled up within me, I felt churlish in dismissing these publications and their abysmal accounts of the doings of significant nonentities, given the example worthless lives set to the target population. How better to ruin the ruins of normality?

The covers alone were a joy. With one exception they showed unenriched females being enriched. Defiant embraces of de-Aryanization proclaimed, “Watch our thick and thin lips kiss goodbye to your proud pedigree. The faces of our offspring will humble your Euro-uppishness. We thumb our noses at the Beast of Berchtesgaden. Tomorrow belongs to us.” The one exception was a wedding day photograph of two premier league goalkeepers in morning dress, radiant on their happy day.

The indulging of my new appetite for popular pap was suspended by the opening of the surgery door and the emergence of the patient who preceded me, a dreadlocked fellow British citizen. To my ingratiating grin, which I hoped he would instinctively recognize as that of a benefactor, he responded by scowling right through me and leaving without a hint of gratitude. I felt hurt and made a mental note to smile in the mirror when I got home to see whether I was subject to involuntary twitches of White resistance.

“We’re ready for you now, Mr. Bismuth,” said the nurse.

“Professor Bismuth,” I corrected her, inveterate maleness insisting I try to impress every lady within range, even one about to vacuum my mouth.

Once my prostrate form had been pumped towards the ceiling and I had, as I always do on these occasions, resolved to reduce my sugar intake, I became a half-hour hero.

My dentist’s usual technique for putting me at my ease is to regale me with anecdotes of blood and pain from his long career inside the mouths of strangers, but this time, as he did his worst to my martyred molar, he confined himself to murmured instructions to the nurse, and now that there was only the filling to go in, it seemed I might be spared any dental garrulity. My bib on, my gums numb, the drilling done, and a matrix band secured, I was almost relaxed, and certainly unprepared for the torrent of obscenity that began thundering behind my head.

“Human variation is endlessly fascinating,” I heard him say. “Not merely the differences between individuals, but the differences between groups.”

The oxygen was stripped from the air and I was fighting for breath. My whole life flashed before me. I felt I was dying in a terrible place.

“Yes,” my evil dentist continued, “the mouth is the mirror to the racial soul.”

I inhaled deeply three times and returned from the brink.

“E carehull,” I said.

“Do you know, Mr. Bismuth ...”

“Hohessor,” I said, remembering the nurse was there too.

“Sorry, Professor Bismuth. You are the first White patient I’ve seen today.”

“Ohnt shay engy nore.”

“You’ll have to wait until the band comes off, I’m afraid. One of the perquisites of dentistry is that it offers a succession of captive audiences for the frustrated monologist. Not as many as you have at the university, I’ll be bound. Amalgam, please, Sarah. Yes, in Negroes’ mouths it’s much more common than in those of other races to find a tooth-count over thirty-two. And also in Negroes, the third molars, the wisdom teeth, are never impacted.”

“Artsy scung! Artsy scung!”

“Well, I’ve never seen a case. Next amalgam, please, Sarah. And there’s a developmental abnormality, often of the premolars, known as dens evaginatus - look it up - which is found almost exclusively among Orientals. In addition to the Chinese and Japanese, it’s found among Eskimos and Red Indians. This is a particularly diverse practice.”

“Artsy scung! Artsy scung!”

“Not too uncomfortable, is it? Well, won’t be long now. Last one, please, Sarah. But you, Professor Bismuth, you have a typically Anglo-Saxon mouth. You, like 94% of your race ...”

“Artsy scung! Artsy scung!”

“Well, your sub-race ... you have second molars with four cusps, five being present in over half of the Chinese, for instance. And, looking at your X-rays, I see your molars have bent roots, a malformation that’s also more common among the Englishry.”

“Artsy scung! Artsy scung!”

“I can see you are fairly bursting to join in, but you will be a helpless listener for another minute or so. Open wide.”

“Artsy scung! Artsy scung!”

“The largest molars I have ever seen were those of an Australian aborigine. He had a dental arch as broad as an amphitheatre, and disproportionately small incisors that did not fill the available space, leaving a wide gap between his two front teeth, a condition known as midline diastema. Look that one up too.”

“Artsy scung! Artsy scung! Artsy scung! Artsy scung! Artsy scung!”

“There now, we can unscrew the instrument of audience capture. Don’t have any hard toast or sticky toffee for the next couple of hours or you’ll be prematurely back here for further monologues.”

When my mouth was returned to me, I ripped off my bib like a petulant toddler and threw it at his feet. I accused him of practicing hate-dentistry. How dare he know these extremist facts? As patients, we put our trust in caring professionals, and when we are at our most vulnerable we do not expect to find ourselves the playthings of drill-wielders with unsavoury data at their finger tips. Let’s be clear: there is no place in a decent society for the disturbing details of comparative oral anatomy. Any teeth that could be saved by an understanding of racial differences should be lost as a matter of principle. I told him I would be putting my complaint in writing to the General Dental Council and I had every hope that it would do its duty and declare him unfit to practice, thus protecting the public from being relieved of suffering by the practical application of racism.