I’ve been putting off writing this entry for a long time, because it’s a incredibly vulnerable topic to write about. But I think it’s important. My whole life, I’ve just desperately wanted to be a good person. And I’m doing my absolute best! But sometimes, trauma makes it harder to be who I want to be.
For background, I was fascinated by other cultures growing up. I spent a lot of time looking at world maps as a kid. In college, I studied Spanish and tried to learn as much about Hispanic culture as I could. Meanwhile, most of the other students in my college had lived locally before enrolling in the university, but I was from 1,000 miles away from my parents. My family weirdly forgot about me completely when I moved away, so I was often alone. Fortunately, the International Office informally adopted me, and I got to go on their retreats with them and join their monthly “First Friday” parties. I befriended people from all over the world, including one very good friend from Zimbabwe. I had absolutely no fear of other cultures.
I later studied how to teach ESL, and poured myself into “being the change I wished to see in the world.” I wanted to bridge the gap, to empower students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I remember noticing that I didn’t know much about Africa (as compared to other continents) so I did a lot of research on it and got a big map that I hung on my wall. I even tried to cook a meal based on recipes from every individual country on the continent, although I didn’t have much time in grad school so I didn’t finish the project. But I definitely remember studying everything from geography to cuisine, still totally unafraid.
Years passed, and I went through major traumas that deeply impacted my mental health. One time, I was in a psychiatric hospital, and my roommate kept complaining that some of the staff were from Africa. One shift, she walked around and noticed that every staff member working at the time was an immigrant from Africa, and she was stressing out. When I tell you, I was horrified! How could she be so prejudiced? I smiled and urged her to see that as a positive. After all, why would anyone be afraid of immigrants in positions of power, unless they were just uneducated on the benefits of diversity?
Time went by, and I found myself briefly staying in a “Respite House” run by the Department of Mental Health. Where I live, these are staffed by nearly 100% people from various countries in Africa, who are given work visas to take hard-to-fill jobs. One time, I was in the kitchen and had put some food in the microwave. A staff member rebuked me for putting it in without a lid. However, he wasn’t concerned about spillage; he explained, “You have to cover things before you put them in the microwave, because otherwise radiation will get into your food.” Based on my understanding of how the microwave works, radiation isn’t a by-product; it’s the mechanism of action. The radiation gets through any sort of lid you put on the food. If somehow you found something that radiation couldn’t penetrate, the food wouldn’t heat. So, I handled the situation exactly the way I would have if one of my friends or college roommates had said such a silly thing.
“That’s not true!” I exclaimed with a broad smile and a laugh.
The staff member completely freaked out. Apparently, his grandmother back in Africa had told him that, and I had just insulted all African grandmas. This felt completely unfair, because I was literally just interacting with him the way I would have interacted with anyone. But from his perspective, I was a racist. This was the first time I’d had anything like this happen, so I tried to blow it off. But even during that stay, it started to become clear that most of the staff entered every conversation with me with the presupposition that I was a racist, and whatever I said, it was because I was racist. And as much as I recognized that they had probably faced a lot of discrimination, that was when I realized that I couldn’t just interact with staff there, the same way I would interact with anyone else.
It turns out that the DMH Respite House wasn’t alone. I went to the Respite House more than once, as well as several hospitals and a lot of treatment facilities where jobs are hard to fill. The same exact sorts of things kept happening. Without wanting to, my brain isolated a specific demographic: people who move here from sub-Saharan Africa and get work visas via jobs in mental healthcare. Over and over, whatever I did, people interpreted me as racist. Note that admission to these facilities obviously happens when I’m below baseline, so while I’m not actually racist, I’m not exactly a UN diplomat either when I’m falling apart. One time, I had just come from the emergency room and was being admitted into a facility. During the intake, a staff member asked what my diagnosis was. I quietly replied that I had PTSD. He got really angry and yelled at me because I had no right to say I had PTSD when I was from America. He said he was from “Africa” (he didn’t give me the dignity of specifying a country) “…and we were poor!” He continued angrily berating me for a while and said, “You are from America… the greatest country on earth!”
Now, I’m sure he had PTSD as well. But it’s problematic when part of cultural sensitivity is that I can’t honestly tell staff during the intake into a hospital what my diagnosis is without risking their going ballistic on me. I tried to gently push back that trauma can be caused by lots of different things and poverty is only one of them, but frankly I don’t do well when I’m alone in a room with a large, raging man. Furthermore, it was obvious that the conversation was going nowhere, so I waited for him to finish and tried to avoid him for the rest of the admission.
After years of this kind of interaction, I got beat down. I still tried so hard not to be racist, but I approached people who move here from sub-Saharan Africa and get work visas via jobs in mental healthcare with apprehension. When I was inpatient and found out that I would be going to a group home, I was nervous that the staff would mostly be from that demographic. The social worker tried to encourage me, reminding me that just because that had been my experience in the past, didn’t mean that the people in the group home would follow the same pattern.
Unfortunately, the pattern continued. There were a few staff members who saw me as a human and recognized that I meant them no harm. But with most of the staff, everything was a race issue. I was required to go through them for a lot of basic things such as medication, but I hated asking them for anything. It was not lost on them that everyone working in “the house” was black and everyone living there was white. This was neo-slavery. They weren’t exactly wrong. Like the man in the hospital who got angry with me for having PTSD, many of the people working in the group home had a ton of trauma. From my perspective, people with severe, pervasive, and totally untreated mental health disorders of their own probably aren’t exactly the people who necessarily should be working in mental healthcare. But if we don’t give them those jobs, they can’t get work visas. Many people never wanted to have to leave their homes and their families in the first place, but due to colonization and systemic exploitation, they had to move to the USA and get horrible jobs that nobody wants. The ESL teacher in me says that maybe when people move here, they should have access to the same sorts of psychotherapy and community supports that are available to everyone else. At least one person working in “the house” would have 100% qualified to be living in a group home. But he had to work, or he’d lose his work visa. So the fact that I was receiving treatment and he was responsible for providing it, wasn’t because he was any higher functioning than me… it was simply because of systemic racism. Some staff were more direct about this than others. The topic of colonization came up frequently. I don’t remember if they brought it up or if I did, but it was constantly lingering so close to the surface that it didn’t really matter. Most staff didn’t want to tell me what countries they came from but they did want me to know, so I stealthily memorized the designs on their beaded wristbands, googled them, and worked it into conversations later. My objective was only one thing: to show that I wasn’t their enemy. I didn’t look down on them for being immigrants. I wasn’t entitled, and I only asked them for things because I had to, not because I saw them as slaves.
As I said, a few staff were understanding. Many were not. Some tried their best, but hadn’t had the privilege of getting an education in how multiculturalism even works. One time, I was walking with a staff member outside and remarked that I was glad the weather had cooled off a bit.
“What? But I thought, people of your complexion like the sun!” exclaimed the staff member. I was taken aback and asked for clarification. “Don’t you go tanning?” he asked.
“People of my complexion get cancer from the sun and from tanning,” I replied, dryly. I was too exhausted to point out that I had absolutely no money to go tanning and he should know that since staff at the group home had ample opportunity to assess my finances.
“Nobody cares about that!” he replied, regarding cancer.
As per my usual, I dropped the issue. But in my culture, stereotyping is considered to be bad. Maybe other cultures don’t see it that way? To me, staff in this conversation had implied that I and all other Caucasian North Americans were basically the same. And while not all of the staff stereotyped like that, most of them did.
I slowly adjusted. I learned that if staff said something I didn’t understand, the only effective response was to look at them blankly as though I were deeply cognitively deficient. I had started out using techniques I had learned in grad school, trying to get them to say what they were saying in a different way. I learned which staff this worked with. With most of them, any reminder that their native English and my native English were from different (equally valid!) dialects that were not easily mutually intelligible, was racist. So while I wanted to know what they were saying, I had learned that there was no way to do this without offending them. I remember sitting on the floor where I had been loading the dryer, looking up into the eyes of an angry man raging at me, with absolutely no clue what he was angry about. I just had to remain silent and wait it out.
So, by the time I left the group home, I was really struggling. I haven’t even gone into detail about everything from microaggressions, to situations in which I felt it was extremely safe to conclude that many staff didn’t think my life carried any value whatsoever. And it’s like, I want my life to matter.
But it got so, so much worse when I was hospitalized at “Hospital for Behavioral Medicine” (HBM) in Worcester. I’ve written about that hospitalization in several entries, but I haven’t specifically addressed the racial side of it. The reason the hospitalization was traumatic was because I didn’t know whether I was going to make it out without losing my home and my turtle and cat. Everything I had worked for my entire life was being put under threat. Several of the patients on the unit had been there for months, and if that happened to me, I would lose everything. When I asked what my treatment plan was and explained how deeply they were hurting me, they got angry and shut it down.
But what I didn’t say, was that least 75% of staff on any given shift was from Africa. Not only that, but they specifically invoked their immigrant status as an issue. The nurse practitioner holding me there told me so many times, “I’m from Kenya!” As though that justified her treatment of me. And if I had any issue with losing my home and my family, I was just another filthy racist. I had gone my whole life trying, trying! so hard to be a good person, and here she saw my whiteness as an excuse to take away everything that mattered to me.
And that’s when a tiny part of me gave up. It was ironic that I had to stay longer because Juneteenth had recently been made a federal holiday. So I was spending my time trapped, in constant and sheer terror, by the very people who I had devoted my career to trying to empower. This was their payback. And absolutely nothing of who I was or what I had done with my life mattered. I was still white; I was still the enemy. And if I begged for mercy, the NP reminded me, “I’m from Kenya.” The CIA couldn’t have ordered a more effective brainwashing camp if their goal had been to make me absolutely terrified of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa.
Trying to Heal
So, where does this leave me? My fascination with other cultures had been one of the most important components of my identity, and something that had brought me so much joy. I felt like that had been stolen from me.
I’m still really trying to figure it out. I can definitely tell you that I’ve explored different people’s perspectives at extreme length. I understand that people are affected by systemic racism. But that doesn’t justify the absolute cruelty that’s been done to me individually, by other individuals.
I was so much better at trying to be woke when I thought there was a possibility that I could succeed. And if I really really tried, I could be an okay person. My life could matter. But I feel like I can’t win. On the one hand, obviously it’s unhealthy to surround myself mainly with other white people. Cultural diversity is important. But trying to explore other cultures can easily be misinterpreted as “cultural appropriation” (a term that I’ll admit I don’t fully understand, but it seems to have to do with white people not staying in our lane). On the one hand, if we ignore injustice, we’re complicit in systemic racism. On the other hand, trying to bridge the gap and use my priviledge to empower the marginalized, leads to accusations of trying to be a “white savior.” Truly, was it wrong for me to be teaching groups of primarily black and brown children? Surely they deserved teachers who looked like them. Without trying, I probably instilled some of my cultural values into them. But what am I supposed to do? Ignoring systemic racism and trying to dismantle it are both equally racist.
And what do I do with the fact that people who have moved here from sub-Saharan Africa and have work visas via jobs in mental healthcare, have gravely endangered my life on numerous occasions, either for their own convenience, or out of pure spite? If “All Lives Matter” is a racist statement, did my life not matter when Justina the NP at HBM did everything in her power to kill me?
So, there have been times when I’ve been tempted to totally give up. When I come close to doing that, I’ve found an unlikely motivator in Larry the Cable Guy, who has absolutely no interest whatsoever in being “woke.” I present the perfect example of what happens when we embrace hate:
Jeremy Ramos. (2008, April 14). Blue Collar TV – Snow Caucasian and 7 handy capable little people [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/TPSVLfUazxE
I appreciate Larry the Cable Guy for showing me that even if I’m scared, I still am not ready to accept his hateful and dystopic agenda.
Now, although I haven’t gone into this kind of depth before, I actually did touch on racism a little bit in a previous blog entry in which I quoted a video about The Great Replacement Theory, in which the creator shares that he also went down a dangerous path but managed to avoid it:
Mr. Beat. (2022, July 8).The Great Replacement Theory Explained [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/pyUQP-R48yg
But what else can I do besides watching Larry the Cable Guy and contrasting it with “woke” YouTube content? Well, I actually came across a really good TV show. I don’t have cable or subscribe to streaming, but fortunately it was available on DVD:
The show immediately requires a willing suspension of disbelief from the viewer, because Bob falls in love with his Nigerian nurse after having a heart attack, which you can’t do in real life. But, the show depicts a really positive example of a kind person from Africa working in healthcare. And, while it hasn’t been necessarily the majority of people I’ve interacted with, I have had some positive theapeutic alliances with providers from sub-Saharan Africa. So, I’m trying to watch the show to encourage myself to remember the good. And I will say that, while I approach some demographics of people with apprehension, I have a very low threshold for letting go of that apprehension around individuals who are good. And while I’m confused, and I’m scared, and I’m traumatized, I want to be a positive presence in the world. I don’t entirely know how to get there, but I’m pretty sure the key is going to be in exposing myself to people from sub-Saharan Africa who do think my life matters. I can’t think my way out of this. The only solution is experience, exposure, and relationships. So I’m starting with DVDs and hopefully I can progress from there.
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