When I started working in primary care, I expected my daily working life to consist of a lot of ear infections and talks about weight loss. What I didn’t expect was to be hit by a daily onslaught of depression and anxiety, but after about 2 years in, it’s pretty much become routine. However, last year I collided with anxiety in an entirely different form, rooted deeply in a controversial social issue:
Black Lives Matter
I first met P (not his real initial) when he moved into the area to establish care. At that time P was having difficulty transitioning to moving to the Pacific Northwest from Texas, in the middle of high school no less. Fortunately, after a few months in he had finally come into his own and last summer, P came to the clinic for his football sports physical with his mom.
He was just as I remembered him from our first encounter – soft spoken with a faint Texan drawl, shy but lively when talking about his plans for college and that day, he was excited about turning 16 and finally driving on his own.
I started to go into my spiel of all the driving safety highlights: Wear your seat belt all the time, no texting and driving, no distracted driving with friends in the car, don’t drink/get high and drive, don’t get into a car with a friend who is under the influence, etc.
I was on such auto-pilot that I was taken aback when about three words in to my monologue, P interrupted, “Oh yeah.. my mom’s already given me the talk.” “Oh yeah? Tell me about the talk then,” I replied as I glanced at his mom.
“Well, if I get pulled over, I need to immediately get my wallet, insurance and registration papers out on the dash and then put my hands on the steering wheel so the police can see them at all times.”
“Yes, and remember what I said about putting the papers in the console and not the glove compartment?”, mom cut in.
He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Yes, mom. It’s faster to get them out of there so it doesn’t look like I’m searching for a gun.”
“Don’t give me any sass! This is serious stuff! And you better not give the cops any sass either! You say, ‘yes sir’ or ‘yes ma’am’ and ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ even if there was no reason for them to pull you over,” she insisted.
And just like that, Black Lives Matter and I collided.
It’s one thing to see everything unfold on TV and social media, and entirely another when it smacks you in the face on such a personal level. Online and on TV you see images of angry black men and women rallying with angry white men and women yelling them down. It’s Black Lives Matter versus Blue Lives Matter along with emotions running high and screaming matches galore. In this office visit though, it was a scared woman talking to her teenage son.
It’s really easy to meet anger with anger. It’s harder to meet fear with empathy.
What do I say in this situation? What can I say when African American males are 3 times more likely than their Caucasian peers to be pulled over and searched[1]? When African American males can experience 4 times the use of force compared to Caucasians when encountering the police[2]? When African American males can perform the same exact crime as their white cohorts, like felon drug possession, with the same exact backgrounds but still somehow get harsher sentencing with double the incarceration time[3]? People can go back and forth with the why’s and the reasons these numbers came to be, but during this office visit, this mom only cared about one thing – her son.
In front of me, I saw a typical teenager excited about the future – the freedom that comes along with driving, making the varsity football team and the prospect of moving on to college. His bright charismatic smile behind his cautious voice was anything but threatening. But, looking through the lens of an anxious mother, her fear was palpable as she thought to herself, “How can I protect my son when he’s driving while black?”
Living in the Portland, OR metro area means living in one of the whitest cities in America. Her son was unmistakably different than the rest of his peers. It didn’t matter that he was a 4.0 student, taking college classes already during his junior year, an integral part of the football team or polite and well-mannered. As soon as he got behind the wheel in a neighbourhood that he “didn’t belong” which was essentially everywhere in this town, in his mom’s mind, anything could happen.
“What do you think about everything that’s been happening?” I asked.
He paused, almost as if he was afraid he’d say the wrong thing.
“Well… you know, I’ve got to be careful. I’m a big guy but I just need to show people I’m also a nice guy. It’s hard though. I was talking to a girl for a bit, but when I hung out at her house once, you could just tell her parents weren’t comfortable with me…” he trailed off.
Then, a torrent of words started to flow.
“I don’t know. Whatever. It’s like they’re fine with me playing on their football team, but it’s too much for me to date their daughter. And then their neighbour had the Confederate flag hanging on their garage. Like what is this place anyway? And I have to be the one that’s nice?!? That’s stupid, man. I just need to keep my head down and keep doing my thing. I just need to prove them wrong and be better than them.
And I can’t be better if I get killed, so I guess I have to do what my mom says.”
For that brief moment in time, I was able to peek beyond the veil of my privilege. As a petite Asian woman, there is never any danger of being perceived as a threat. I will never know what it would be like to be thought of as inherently dangerous because of the colour of my skin. In fact, the studies have shown that Asians are the least likely group in the US to have police force used against them[2] unless of course, you’re Indian/Pakistani/darker skinned.
I was also given permission to see the fear and micro-aggressions this family carried with them daily. This was not a shouting match about which lives mattered more. It was about listening to someone else’s experience and trying to imagine what it would be like to navigate different situations that I haven’t had to encounter.
I have no great pearls of wisdom or solutions to fix the current social climate between Black Lives Matter and their opposition.
But I do know it starts with a conversation.
One based in empathy and with the intent to actually hear someone else’s story, not to convince them of yours.