[Lace Watkins]

https://www.sonofbaldwin.com/2022/01/06/unfinished/

I am crying deep internal tears.

Might some of us read this; give impressions; pull out themes?

It is long and searing. Worth it.

I have impressions of my own, but want to glean yours first.

I want to put some commentary on top, but the arrogance of trying to add commentary to anything of his strikes me as the height of arrogance. Still, this article needs to be shared.

Do be sure to read the comments:

http://facebook.com/100044286196710/posts/501501754669360/

Discussion

[Vicki van den Eikhof]

As a WW, who also has some background in medicine, I would not have made any connection between his racial trauma and his MS. My first response is to doubt that connection he makes. But then my thinking brain kicks in and I can acknowledge how his experience as a Black man in America could have implications for his physical health (beyond the obvious ones of being shot or beat up, etc.). I’m embarrassed that my first response is to doubt.

Also, I do believe there is hell on earth, as well as heaven. His description of the ER is vivid and riveting. I might be tempted to focus my energy on explaining why it’s so bad right now (COVID, political failures, etc.) and miss the point that he is making about it being the way it is because of America functioning like a corporation. And we are just little minions. If I were in the ER listening to the Black woman scream for help, I would have reacted much like the white man, just in my head. “Be quiet! We’re all in pain here and you’re not helping anyone by screaming about it.” Rather than seeing it through the lens of a Black person’s experience: never having your pain truly acknowledged.

[Laura Berwick]

I feel like, if I were in an emergency room in pain myself, bearing it in silence, I also would get upset and want to yell at someone who wasn’t being as silent/strong/considerate/good as me. It makes me think of how we’re so steeped in the pressures to bear silently, or we’re weak, and if we’re weak, we must be morally weak as well as physically? And I’m not even a man. And I’m not a Black man or woman, whose pain is likely to be ignored. I can have both worlds. I will have my pain seen when I’m silent. I will have my silence valorized. But if I’m not silent, as a white woman of a certain affluence, my cries and tears will be respected. I feel like it’s really unlikely anyone would suspect me of drug seeking if I began wailing in pain. And that doesn’t even get into the racialization and suspicion and stereotyping if it were a Black person crying out. White supremacist fighting for a place in a hierarchy makes me judgmental as my baseline. Add the racist soup and it’s pretty awful what I know I’m capable of if I’m not actively working on myself.

[Christina Sonas]

His agony cries out to me that we must not comment and analyze the article, his experience, the black experience, but instead inspect and dissect ourselves. The call is not to Think, but to feel. And to believe.

[Lace Watkins]

I agree with the thrust of that, Christina. And certainly I agree with the idea of taking care to ensure that any sort of commentary or analysis is not to dissect and God help us certainly not to delegitimize

[Christina Sonas]

not a criticism of Vicki’s comment or your share of the article. As a white person, a white person working for racial justice, working to deconstruct my White supremacy, it is very easy to fall into the analytical mindset. I need to remember that facing each article as a growth opportunity is insidious racism, Delegitimzing and dehumanizing. “The lesson of the day.“ You, lace, present from the legitimacy of your own place. I need to be careful how I receive into my own place.To hold both things at once.

[Rebecca McClinton]

In reading the son of Baldwin article I’m reminded how there is no space between the body and mind, inextricably linked. When I cause Trauma to the mind, to the relationship, I harm the body and visa verse. Can’t have one without the other.

It also really stands out to me the part focusing on treatment (or another way of saying that is focused on outcome). If I can mask the pain with a treatment I don’t have to focus on changing what caused it. If I only focus on how to fix instead of digging underneath to work on what precipitated my causing that harm I’ll only do it again and to greater depths.

[Kelsi Watters]

I know I’m late to the game, but that truly was a heart wrenching article and as others have already said, I can hear his agony in every word. As a chaplain I take a holistic approach, so I believe that whatever impacts one’s physical body, also has an impact on the mind and spirit, and vice versa. There is a theme rampant throughout this article, not only of the chaos that our medical field has become due to the pandemic, but especially of Black and brown people not being seen, heard or believed in their experience of physical pain. They don’t even expect validation anymore usually at this point, but when it gets bad enough they are forced to turn to our healthcare system with it’s ongoing history of racial violence and discrimination, even if in vain. Unseen, unheard, looked at suspiciously or judged harshly or expected to be strong, or all of the above, in their experience of pain, deepening the emotional and spiritual wounds. Sometimes it seems like the heart of America shrinks even more, in a society that believes we are no longer racist.

[Shara Cody]

Kelsi, you and Rebecca both mentioned how the physical impacts the mind and vice versa and I’m connecting for the first time how racial health disparities aren’t only caused by racism in the medical system but also from enduring racism on a daily basis.

[Dee (Dalina) Weinfurtner]

As a healthcare worker in this system it’s imperative that i internalize these stories and make sure I am analyzing what I’m learning from within the system. I do think it’s easier to take things more seriously when you can visually see the problem. As a nurse, part of what sets us apart from medicine is that we should approach every patient holistically and part of our assessment must always include patient interviews and what they say is going on with them. If I’ve learned anything since early on in my nursing journey it’s to really listen to patients and really everyone seriously even/especially when they are saying something that is different that what I think I know. Stories like these are important for me to read to keep pushing back on healthcare trends that aren’t in alignment with the North Star and to better serve my patients in general and really make an impact. It’s hard because you have to retrain and learn when to push back from what you were originally trained to do. It’s actually interesting because at the beginning when he’s talking about the hospital environment being drab it made me think of the newest trends of nursing scrubs to seem more “professional” by wearing grey, black and blue and just generally subdued colors. It used to be a trend to wear colorful, fun patterns. I do feel out of place and a bit pressured to toss my old patterned scrubs and join in the newest trends but I was already deciding to be a different kind of nurse that still brings a little variety to the patient experience but after reading that first part, it reinforces that instinct for me.

[Catherine Seaver]

I’m catching up on things . Just finished reading the Son of Baldwin article and feel the weight of his words and pain and terror. I’ll write more, but at this moment I’m just deeply feeling the horror he recounts – not just the ER visit but the reality of his body turning against him… and humbled by his drive to finish another novel, to use his life. His words feel searing. I notice how he consistently sees people’s humanity and wonders about their complexity, how he meets their eyes in the pain… I strive to emulate him I’m going to read the comments next but will say from a first glance they all feel so hollow. My response feels like it needs to have action and accountability behind it. Your words Lace – deeply heard are in my head right now…. and I’m thinking that my response to this account must be lived out each day. In my relationships, as I seek to lessen and mitigate harm of Black and brown folks.

[Laura Berwick]

In a bit I’m going to go through the Facebook comments and the Chef’s Table comments here. But first I want to nail down my first impressions on themes. To start with, there are themes we’ve discussed here before: Racism in medicine, that Black people are considered as less sensitive to pain, in spite of there being no scientific evidence, and in spite of the self(white)-serving origins of that stereotype, back when we white people were busy justifying our horrendous exploitation of Black people for our economic benefit. Assuming criminality: it must not be pain, but a desire for drugs to abuse. And then, assuming that, such a desire making a person immoral, sub-human, and not worthy of compassion. Son of Baldwin lays bare the ways he has internalized that racism, and the ways he in turn may be causing harm to himself because of the harmful expectations placed on him by white supremacy, and to some extent patriarchalism.

But something out stands out to me, in the title and in his closing words. It’s horrendous enough that he has to face these challenges going through a life of whatever span he’s allotted. But the knowledge that the challenges will erode that allotted span, and eat away at the work he has to do.

I know that your legacy is important to you, Lace. I see the importance of Son of Baldwin’s legacy to him, in his contemplation of “one last”, and the different meanings of that. The one last work he GETS to do, or the one last work he may have in him that he may not get to do.

I don’t have a solid handle on how this might be racialized, but… I know that I do not concern myself with my legacy. Is legacy one of those things I just presume I’ll have among my family, my nieces and nephews and first cousins n-times removed? Is that something I take for granted since my family owns land and there’s generational wealth at my back, even when it isn’t in my bank account?

Or is it something about… me, being satisfied with being mediocre, because I don’t HAVE to be exceptional to be considered of value to my society?

Whatever it is, I lack the drive to stake out a legacy, but having my own anxieties around other things, I can use my fictive imagination and relate with that deep anxiety I read. The need to prove something in a lasting way. The need to accomplish something better. The fear that one’s own body, under the weight of what the bodies and souls of Black folk are forced to bear, that one’s own body may give out and betray one’s vocation at some point.

I don’t think that’s something we’ve talked specifically about at Lace on Race.

[Rebecca McClinton]

I especially appreciate the legacy bit you point out here, Laura. Every last ounce of energy, every moment with intention and integrity is spent towards moving the stone in legacies like Lace and Baldwin. That’s a whole other level of legacy that I have much to learn about and work to emulate.

[Shara Cody]

The legacy piece has been nagging at me because there’s a distinction between the legacies that Son of Baldwin and Lace are working to leave and the types of legacy that white people typically consider ‘if’ we white people even think of legacy at all. I could feel the difference from the article and thinking of Lace as I read it, but I couldn’t describe it. Now I think it’s something to do with white people focusing on material wealth as legacy while Son of Baldwin and Lace focus on changing the world through other people and not just with their own family members in mind. I’m reminded again of the question Lace asked, “how do people leave your presence?” and how that can be applied to legacy. I might only think of the material I leave behind as legacy while Lace knows that every conversation, every moment with another person, is a chance to deeply relate and to leave the other person better than they were before. Add all those moments up and you get the stories like the ones Lace lovingly tells about Catherine DeBose and you get people she’s touched like Lace, who bring that forward to create new conditions for others and to create change. Legacy based on capitalism (which is always rooted in racism) might provide comfort to a few who benefit directly but doesn’t create humans and community filled with Hesed heart and certainly does not support the North Star.

[Shara Cody]

The pain and suffering both physical and emotional for him and those around him is heart rendering and disturbing. I’m thinking about how that amount of emotion and pain make me feel uncomfortable and in person, it would be hard for me to stay in the car with him. How can I stay eye to eye with him and avoid, as Christina said, becoming analytical?

Pulling out themes, the broken system is a clear one. I think it would be easy to focus on the system but do it in the wrong ways sort of like centering when I’m supposed to be personalizing. For example using COVID to explain/excuse the situation in the hospital. The US health care system doesn’t appear to have an output of health or care and instead its output seems to be owing and profit, neither of which are for the benefit of patient/people the system is supposed to serve. All systems built on capitalism will actively harm BIPOC and other marginalized people exponentially.

The way that pretending you’re not in pain and acting a certain way is important feels like an important theme. Etiquette to avoid truth and seeing eye to eye, etiquette for the comfort of everyone but the person suffering. And then it’s weaponized against BIPOC and especially Black people.

I’m uncomfortable with how many of the comments are celebrations of his writing although I can locate myself in not knowing what to say to be eye to eye with him and my initial response being about his writing as well. If he didn’t convey his story with powerful writing who would listen? Who would believe him?

[Laura Berwick]

There’s a really telling juxtaposition there, of how his beautiful writing guarantees him some level of being heard and seen with respect, even if it doesn’t actually effect progress on what we’re seeing, whereas the woman crying out in pain is not eloquent and rational and all of those things, and so… she didn’t get heard… not until he made us hear her.

[Shara Cody]

I’m glad you pointed out that he was heard and seen on some level but without any resulting action/effect as I have to remind myself that listening is only the first step. The contrast to the woman crying out to be heard is stark and it’s probably safe to assume that that didn’t result in any great actions for her and certainly not without also perpetuating harm to her at the same time.

[Rhonda Freeman]

I’m not confident she was crying out in any hope of getting heard. Whether she sat there politely or screamed her head off, it is kind of a crap shoot if you are going to get seen or heard within our medical system as far as I can tell. She may have simply wanted to express herself and I applaud her for it. Seeing myself in the story, I know I have gotten extra help for my ex-husband in ER situations by playing up my WW sad eye thing. Maybe shed a few tears, or look scared, but definitely be super deferential and look my whitest and nicest. Sadly, it often worked.

[Shara Cody]

You’re right Rhonda that she may not have been crying out to be heard but simply because of the pain. That was me putting etiquette before the person and their pain which is a way of discrediting them and assuming that others would only express themselves in order to get something because that’s what white supremacy would have me do. I need to dig deeper around that root of white supremacy and pull harder.

[Jessie Lee]

The part of his testimony that seared me most was his commentary on how his MS came to be through racial trauma. Everything about his ER experience demonstrates the role of white supremacy in causing his body to attack itself and blocking him from experiencing the relief that’s accessible to white people. I play a role in causing his MS and other sufferings of Black people by upholding supremacist systems that target and kill them as a norm. Those who survive must endure so much trauma that their bodies physically can’t bear it and begin to break down.

I’m thinking about how my behavior supports that system, and I cling to the privileges it affords me even as I critique it. Two things are true: I am actively working on myself, and I still retreat into the space of complacent comfort instead of continuing to fight like hell for the world I say I want, where Son of Baldwin and the Black woman wailing in pain don’t get cast aside over and over in an ER and everywhere else because they’re Black and white people don’t see their humanity, or see it but deny it.

I want to live in a world where all are free to retreat to comfort when the world becomes too much for reasons other than white supremacy.

I’m reminded of conversations we’ve been having lately about praxis and reliability, about how it doesn’t help to show up only when there’s a lot of action and the evils of white supremacy are impossible to ignore, but also and especially when there *seems* to be a lull. There’s never a lull. Son of Baldwin is not unique in his experience; Black people endure the same daily, hourly. There’s always work to be done, and it’s much harder and more demanding and far more necessary than having sympathy for him and his situation.

[Rebecca McClinton]

I was thinking in reading your comment the extent to which all of white supremacy treads on Black and Brown bodies themselves, and the sophisticated and round about ways we try to make it not look like that through renaming, rephrasing, rediagnosing. Just like you were saying, part of calling a thing a thing is acknowledging that impact…the calluses formed, bones made weary, the immune system compromised, are all a part of my creating when I contribute to it even in small ways.

[Rhonda Freeman]

I have spent many a night in an ER with my ex-husband. The white supremacy outside the ER exists within it as well. It is not egalitarian by any means. He gives me the opportunity to remember, and to consider the part I have played, and reconsider the part I might play in the future.

1. “the white woman across from me begins to cough for two minutes straight. You would think they would isolate her in case it is COVID. They do not. You think she would isolate herself. She does not. She walks around coughing as though she hopes that we will start coughing, too. It seems to me that she does not want an end to her pain as much as she wants to share it.” WW privilege. Yes, she is walking around because she believes – or knows – she will be seen. He does not mention if she takes his more comfortable chair. Would I have the courage to suggest that she isolate herself, or to get her a mask, or cough drops, or whatever to mitigate harm to the black and brown people around me? I hope so, based on what I have learned and practiced here.

2. “Psychosomatic, they said. You just saw us last week. You are fine. Meditate. Rest.” I went to a doctor’s appointment with a black neighbor of mine and heard almost these exact words. I saw her skin that day. There were open wounds. Psychosomatic?!? The doctors never looked at me. I didn’t know how to help. My friend just cried.

3. “A white man and his toddler child come in after me. The child has a scar on the side of his head. The doctor sees them immediately. I think, They either have really good insurance, pay in full in cash, or that wound is potentially more dangerous that it looks. I do not want to believe that whiteness is a passport.” Privilege is a passport. When I called ahead to the doctor when my husband was at the end of his ulcerative colitis needing his colon removed, she told me to meet her at the ER, and we we were whisked in ahead of everyone else. It was white, wealthy, corporate insurance privilege. It kept him from dying. No, it wasn’t fair. I have no idea if someone else died that morning because he got treated first.

4. “Our country’s response to the COVID pandemic has been capitalist, not humane”. At this point, our response to everything seems to be capitalist and not humane. We enslaved other human beings, black human beings because of capitalism. We wrote laws that kept that slavery going through the prison system and then made that prison system private and capitalist. I am not seeing the humanity in capitalism. I am questioning how much harm to brown and black people can be mitigated under our current system and I am not sure what the alternative is. Maybe that is why relational ethics appeals to me.

5. “Americans are sadists by nature. We want to see your pain to believe it. We want to see your pain to ignore it.” I think this is the nature of white supremacy as well. The racism can be pointed out so that it is believable. People do believe. Then, we simply ignore it. I know I have. Yesterday, I heard about a prison in Texas with 200 death row inmates that are kept in solitary confinement for years. 1 five minute phone call every three months. I don’t know the number of black and brown people on that death row, but I can guess there are plenty. That’s torture. I see that pain. I believe it. And, while I am not ‘exactly’ going to ignore it, I sure as heck don’t have any idea what to do about it.

6. “My pain cannot be seen because I have what is called an invisible disability. But even if it was bright and shining, it would still be discounted because I am Black.” I know he is right and I hate it. I hope that at least this one, I am practicing ‘ok’. Not denying anyone’s experience that they are willing to share with me – especially if a black or brown person is willing to share their experience with me.

This is getting long… I may add more..

[Shara Cody]

I really appreciate your personalizations, Rhonda. When I tried to personalize I found myself lost in centering and unable to relate it to somethin actionable I could do to mitigate harm to Black and brown people. I’m going to think about it some more now that I’ve seen your examples.

[Author]

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