Tag: antiracism

Surprise Party?

I love a good surprise. Who doesn’t from time to time? Perhaps I like them because, as the oldest member of my household, the younger members (14, 11, and 5) are hard-pressed to keep a secret long enough to pull off a surprise. So experiencing the rare “good” surprise is always a welcome treat, whether it be a party with cake or some jewelry. Just kidding about that last part…my children are broke. Anyway, you will note I specified I like “good” surprises. Covid has been one ugly “surprise” after another…and I think we can all agree that it was an unwelcome one. However, Covid is not the only uninvited “surprise,” plaguing us as a society (and no, I didn’t initially intend the pun…but I guess it can stay). 

I feel the need to give a little PSA, and I am well aware that I am about to offend some folks. However, I have never been known for my sugar-coating skills, and this week/month/year don’t really seem a fitting time in which to cultivate those particular skills anyway. And it is perfectly acceptable to be mad at me for what I am about to say. You, like anyone, are entitled to your feelings. Sometimes in life we just have to figure out how to take accountability for our own feelings, process them, and either use them to progress and/or move on from them. As such, I will own my feelings as well; in this case they are feelings of anger and frustration. 

Why am I angry and frustrated, you might ask (bracing slightly for my answer)? Well here goes. Apparently there was a surprise party, and a number of us were not invited. Now, this could intuitively seem like the set up for my general disdain regarding the stupid number of parties still going on, despite the fact COVID is literally killing one person every eight minutes in my area. But nope. That’s not the type of party from which I, and millions of others, were excluded. Rather, it is a “surprise party,” that I see a number of people throwing lately that does not involve cake, balloons, or even a clever ruse. Rather this particular soiree includes only the “surprise” that white supremacy is alive and far too well in this country, such that it led to an actual terrorist attack on the Capitol. 

While no one likes to be excluded, though some people would thankfully sit out a pandemic party, I’m not remotely offended that I was not invited to these various venues, decorated with shock and awe, bordering more on pity parties than actual surprise parties. But what does offend me is the sheer number of people who do, in fact, seem surprised at the events of last week. 

To me, there was very little that was shocking about 01/06/2021–not the fact that it happened, not the involved parties, not the police response or lack-there-of (on the part of some), not the incoherent word salad that incited it, nor the tweets that followed, and not the response of politicians to it. None of it. And I know I am not alone in this sentiment. Furthermore, I’m somewhat sure that the social contract into which we inherently entered, as both social beings, and as members of the human race, obligates us to be at least reasonably educated. And that education should encompass not merely a smattering of current events, but also a touch of our country’s history (the real history, not the white-washed version we were fed in school). Thus, if we have been paying any attention at all in the last four years, let alone for however many decades each of us has been alive, we really all should have seen some approximation of this coming. 

All that said, knowing that something is inevitable, does not necessarily take away from the pain of experiencing it in real time. So I am not trying to dismiss the grief felt by everyone who watched this play out. However, we must all acknowledge that for those Americans for whom last Wednesday represented “more of the same,” that their grieving process skips the denial phase of grief and moves right along to the re-traumatization phase. 

The denial phase of grief is nearly always related to self-protection. So when your grief is personal, this phase can offer some temporary benefit. But when you grieve collectively, the denial phase is incredibly dangerous for a number of reasons. 1. It re-traumatizes others, particularly in this case, those in the BiPOC community, who do not have the luxury of 400 years of denial 2. It causes stagnation and does not allow you to progress personally, let alone at a larger societal level 3. It causes further strain on those in the BiPOC community (and to a lesser extent allies) who should not have to expend precious bandwidth comforting you or coaxing you out of denial 4. It is insulting to deny the lived experience of millions of people to serve either ego or personal narrative.

Now I am a big proponent of self-care and of turning to others, such as a trusted loved one or a counselor, while working through the stages of any grieving process. I even support being open and de-stigmatizing the experience of grief and loss. And from time to time, I have even been known to dabble in some denial myself (most notably regarding my ability to successfully achieve a certain number of tasks in a given day and still get to bed early). However, when your surprise, denial, and shock, paralyze you or prevent you from making the necessary decisions to progress as a person and advocate for equity, then this phase of grief is best experienced with a counselor, consenting friend, or perhaps internally. Not with pearl-clutching and hand-wringing on social media and not at the expense of the wellbeing of those in the BiPOC community. 

So while many of us love a good surprise, this is not it. Please stick to cake and (virtual) parties. Or jewelry…we like that too.

SPF

The last time my youngest son was hospitalized, nearly two years ago, I lay in his hospital bed with him in my arms. We had recently returned from the recovery room after a successful surgery, and I admit I was both physically and emotionally drained. As a single mom of three, some days are certainly harder and more exhausting than others. However, the combination of having been on call that weekend, grieving the loss of a close friendship, a late night involving multiple attempts to obtain vascular access (place an IV) in my son, and an early morning transport to pre-op to discuss intraoperative management of my son’s medical devices, had left me feeling extra depleted that day.

Perhaps if I had been more awake, I might have had a more thoughtful response. And by “awake,” I do not simply mean more well-rested or caffeinated.

In my partial stupor I lay there intermittently making small talk with my son’s nurse. She looked at him, smiled, and cheerily said “I love his tan!”

My identity as a pediatrician/safety-guru is apparently so enmeshed that my first instinct was to be reflexively defensive. I neurotically and meticulously discuss sunscreen at every single well child check, day in and day out, five days per week. How dare she think I would fail to use adequate sunscreen on my child? 

And then it hit me.

My first instinct was to become defensive…but for the wrong reason entirely.

She wasn’t failing to recognize my adherence to sunscreen and skin cancer prevention guidelines. Her comment was not a couched dig at my clinical acumen as a pediatrician.

Before a single word could exit my lips, I let her comment sink in fully. She saw my son as “tan”….not as biracial. 

I quietly wondered how many more times he would hear similar comments in his life. 

By the time I processed those thoughts, she had fixed his IV fluids and left the room. Having paused too long, the moment was gone. And I had left all the words unsaid.

Looking back, I wish that I would have responded more quickly and with empowering, strong, educational comments. And as a pediatrician, let alone a pediatrician raising biracial children, I am ashamed that my reaction time was slow and my lack of response was embarrassing.

Growing up in the Midwest I felt surrounded by racism. While it can never begin to compare to the racism experienced by BIPOC, even as a white person, I faced the teasing and slurs related to my Italian/Sicilian heritage. And before I understood the importance of using sunscreen neurotically, I would return from my summers in California to comments about how I was so dark that I looked “like a black kid.” My mother had been called the “N” word, due to the belief that Sicilians are descended from Africa, and I still remember her explaining to me what the various slurs and comments signified and how they were inherently racist.

But let me be explicitly clear. I have never had to fear for my safety based solely upon my skin color. Not then in Missouri, and not now in California. As a cis-gendered, white female, even when I did face police harassment in the past, I did not have to remind myself, in those moments, to keep my hands where they could be seen. No guns were drawn. I never called out to my mom. 

While I acknowledge my white privilege, I will further acknowledge my extreme naïveté. I believed the endemic racism of the Midwest to be largely a regional phenomenon. It is time for me to be fully accountable for the fact that sunshine and family were not my only motivations for leaving the Midwest. Having been raised by an anti-racist mother, and now raising three children of my own, two half-Asian and one half-Indian, I figured we were buffered from white supremacy, living in Los Angeles.

Yes, that was a one-dimensional, dismissive, ignorant thought process. Yes, there are very lovely, anti-racist people in the Midwest. Yes, racism is endemic here in California as well. Yes, moving 2000 miles from the place where my then 4-year-old daughter was the only biracial child in her class, to a school with more than 50% biracial children, does not grant my own children immunity from racism. 

Certainly society is cognizant that our Black Americans have never been afforded basic safety against, let alone “immunity” from racism…right? 

Apparently not. 

I became even more acutely aware of this cognitive dissonance two months ago, as I was yelling at the TV like a crazy person, while CNN was inquisitively speculating as to why black patients are disproportionately affected by COVID. 

“Really? Is this a real question?”

You would have thought I was watching football, the way I was carrying on as my annoyance mounted. 

“Social determinants of health, poor access to quality healthcare, intergenerational toxic stress, economic disparities, essential workers!!!!” 

It turns out that CNN cannot hear my frustrated pleas nor see my frantic gesticulation. But it was yet another important reminder, amongst a series of countless, painful reminders, that not everyone got the memo that racism is a public health crisis. Thankfully within a day or two, physicians and public health experts had shifted the narrative to expose the root cause, racial disparities, thereby saving my TV further verbal aggression. 

However, I sat in my apartment a few weeks ago on a Saturday night, revising a grant proposal that, somewhat ironically, pertained to adversity/resilience, toxic stress, and trauma. As I did so, tear gas was being lobbed about half a mile away, and I was forced to face a larger fear. 

At no point in time did I fear protests or tear gas….not for a second. But what I did fear, and do fear, is the legacy I am leaving as both a mother and a pediatrician.  

It is not enough for me to merely break cycles of intergenerational trauma in my own life. It is insufficient to simply teach my own three children to be anti-racist. It is not adequate to merely treat my own cohort of patients equitably and advocate individually for them. Voting in November is not an all-encompassing solution.

It is both selfish and woefully myopic to act as if I live in a protected vacuum…a microcosm of perceived safety where, as long as I love and support my circle of black and brown friends, family, and patients, we will be fine. The truth is that none of us will be fine, not friends, not family, not strangers …not until systemic racism is dismantled. There is no room for complacency or neutrality, because “inaction” is a verb that is as equally powerful as “action.”

So while I once lay holding my son in a hospital bed, lacking the proper words, I will continue to find and fortify both my words and my actions, because my children, and all of our children, need a hell of a lot more protection than mere SPF can provide.