BLACK LIVES MATTER

The United States government has controlled the reproductive lives of women throughout American history. As recently as 2010, California prisons coerced some 150 female inmates into being sterilized (Johnson, 2013, 2014). Nearly 150 years earlier, not long after the Civil War, policies restricting Black women’s reproductive rights were set in place, policies which pervaded “through the eugenics era...into the 1960s and ‘70s” (Johnson, 2017). According to Dorothy Roberts, legal expert and author of the acclaimed book, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, these policies controlled Black women in an effort to limit Black reproduction to what was most useful to policymakers (Roberts, 1997). Prior to the Civil War, US law not only sanctioned the enslavement of Black women but protected and encouraged the use of their bodies to drive the institution of American slavery forward (Roberts, 1997). This centuries-long human rights violation cannot continue.

In the days of slavery, slave owners turned the Black female body into a reproduction machine. Dorothy Roberts describes how slave owners had an “economic incentive to govern Black women's reproductive lives” because Black reproduction kept slavery alive by providing new African Americans to replenish the workforce (Roberts, 1997, p. 22). It served the slave owners’ economic interests to control the reproductive lives of enslaved women in this way, but it also served as a means by which to control and subjugate the Black race as a whole. Through reproductive control, slave owners enforced racist notions of Black inferiority. Racism also “created...the possibility of unrestrained reproductive control” for slave owners (Roberts, 1997, p. 23). The result was a cycle of subjugation that both kept African Americans at the bottom of society and helped perpetuate the institution of slavery. This cycle of subjugation was sanctioned by law at the time. Roberts points to a 1662 English royal colonies statute which made the offspring of white men and enslaved women by law enslaved themselves—a doctrine which would inform the legislation of the United States over a hundred years later (Roberts, 1997).

Once overt slavery was outlawed following the Civil War, lawmakers changed tact in the pursuit of new goals. Roberts characterizes this difference: “While slave masters forced Black women to bear children for profit, more recent policies have sought to reduce Black women's fertility. Both share a common theme—that Black women's childbearing should be regulated to achieve social objectives” (Roberts, 1997, p. 56). Those social objectives simply shifted from using African Americans for free labor to containing an “inferior” race from infiltrating white society. Efforts to reduce Black women’s fertility were particularly rampant in the eugenics era, beginning in the early twentieth century and lasting as late as the 1990s. According to a PBS article on the subject, over thirty-two states carried out federally funded sterilization programs in the twentieth century, disproportionately targeting “undesirable” populations such as people of color (Ko, 2016).

The control of female bodies has continued into the twenty-first century. As mentioned, in 2013, the Center for Investigative Reporting released reports of the coerced sterilization of female inmates in California prisons in 2010 (Johnson, 2013, 2014). This was not an isolated incident. According to an article from TalkPoverty.org, a project from the Center for American Progress, there was an incident of court-required sterilization in West Virginia in 2009 and in Virginia in 2014 (Hunter, 2017). The repetitive nature of these incidents suggests a trend in today’s legal system.

Activists and lawmakers have acted to oppose these human rights violations, for example by passing a 2014 bill in California that made coerced and non-consensual sterilization of inmates explicitly illegal (Schwarz, 2014). Other states, many of which continue to restrict family planning services (State Family Planning Funding Restrictions, 2020), must follow suit.

These recent incidents of sterilization occur in the shadow of a long history of violent and coercive reproductive control. A cycle of racism and infringement on the reproductive rights of Black and other vulnerable women continues to fester in this country, perpetuating itself. Given the persistence of powerful people throughout US history to control women’s bodies, we must continue to investigate and protect the freedoms of groups most susceptible to reproductive control. ■

Thomas Blum is an undergraduate student from Newton, Massachusetts, USA, currently studying at Yale University. He is taking a leave of absence for the 2020-21 academic year to work at a biotechnology company on a COVID-19 related project.

References

Hunter, L. (2017). The U.S. Is Still Forcibly Sterilizing Prisoners. Center for American Progress.

Retrieved from https://talkpoverty.org/2017/08/23/u-s-still-forcibly-sterilizing-prisoners/

Johnson, C. G. (2013). Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval.

Retrieved from https://www.revealnews.org/article/female-inmates-sterilized-in-california-prisons-without-approval/

Johnson, C. G. (2014). Female prison inmates sterilized illegally, California audit confirms.

Retrieved from https://www.revealnews.org/article/female-prison-inmates-sterilized-illegally-california-audit-confirms/

Johnson, G. (2017). Revisiting 'Killing the Black Body,' 20 Years Later. University of

Pennsylvania. Retrieved from https://penntoday.upenn.edu/research/revisiting-killing-the-black-body-20-years-later

Ko, L. (2016). Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States. Public

Broadcasting Service. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/

Roberts, D. E. (1997). Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty.

Pantheon Books. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=TPCRAAAAIAAJ

Schwarz, H. (2014). Following Reports of Forced Sterilization of Female Prison Inmates,

California Passes Ban. WP Company. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/09/26/following-reports-of-forced-sterilization-of-female-prison-inmates-california-passes-ban/?utm_term=.7519809872a7

State Family Planning Funding Restrictions. (2020, June 1, 2020). The Guttmacher Institute.

Retrieved from https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-family-planning-funding-restrictions

The Black Lives Matter movement and events surrounding it have brought to light how ingrained racism, specifically anti-Blackness, is within American society. Although systemic racism manifests itself in many forms, it is particularly rooted in the damage of Black bodies and the deaths of Black people. As Black women and aspiring physicians, we are affected by medical racism on both a personal and professional level. The term “medical racism” is the embodiment of this destruction and encompasses the ways in which Black people have been exploited, overlooked in terms of their scholarship and contributions to the medical field, and altogether disregarded. This historical abuse, coupled with recent protests, prompted several pre-health students to write an open letter and create a resource document to guide future health professionals in addressing the problematic origins of medicine that continue to affect Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) patients today.

The use of Black people for experimentation has existed since the early days of slavery. John Brown, an enslaved man, endured several experiments at the hands of a white doctor. He was exposed to extreme temperatures—sometimes using fire—as the doctor attempted to find remedies for sunstroke (Mithcell, 1997). Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy, three of twelve enslaved women, underwent various painful operations carried out by James Marion Sims. His procedures became the foundation for modern gynecology. Though slavery ended before the turn of the 20th century, the experiments and exploitation did not. From 1932 to 1972, six hundred black sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama were enrolled in the US Public Health Service’s Tuskegee syphilis study (“Tuskegee Study”, 2020). The men endured unnecessary procedures, and those with syphilis were never formally diagnosed nor treated, resulting in blindness, dementia, and death (“Tuskegee Study”, 2020). Undoubtedly, the need for medical “innovation” has consistently been used as an excuse for white doctors and researchers to justify harm done to Black people.

Beyond the experimentation and exploitation endured by Black people, the contributions of Black physicians and researchers within the field of medicine continue to be underappreciated. Dr. Charles R. Drew developed techniques for blood preservation, saving the lives of millions of patients in need of blood transfusions today (“Charles R. Drew, MD”, n.d.; “Celebrating 10”, 2019). Dr. Marilyn H. Gaston’s 1968 study on oral penicillin in children with sickle cell anemia led to the development of a national sickle cell anemia screening program, which has become a staple of newborn screenings in the US (“Celebrating 10”, 2019). Dr. Patricia E. Bath founded the discipline of community ophthalmology, a community health-based approach to vision care, to address the inequities she observed during her residency (“Celebrating 10”, 2019). Although the groundbreaking work of these Black doctors has positively contributed to the health outcomes of patients across the country, few people can associate these scholars with their work.

Today, medical racism manifests itself in the disproportionately high rates of mortality and morbidity experienced by Black patients in America. Black people are less likely to receive pain medication when compared to their white counterparts (Goyal et al., 2015; Meghani et al., 2012). Among Black women, roughly forty per one hundred thousand live births result in pregnancy-related deaths, over three times the rate among white women (Petersen, 2019; Hoyert & Miniño, 2020). What is worse is that many of the deaths are preventable, mainly attributable to systemic issues including lack of access to quality treatment or physician bias (Petersen, 2019; Hoyert & Miniño, 2020). The recent pandemic has failed to break the cycle. As of June 2020, Black people have made up twenty-three percent of COVID-19 deaths despite making up less than thirteen percent of the US population (“COVID-19 Provisional”, 2020). Thus, healthcare facilities are more often than not a line between life and death for the Black community.

Medical racism also involves the perpetuation of harm done to Black bodies within medical education. Most often cited is a 2016 study that surveyed first- and second-year medical students. Forty percent of these students believed that “Black people’s skin is thicker than white people’s,”(Hoffman et al., 2016) and with this belief comes the assumption that Black patients feel less pain and are inherently biologically different from their white counterparts. Students like those in the study eventually become doctors, allowing their biases and false beliefs to permeate the healthcare system— causing even more harm to Black patients. Unfortunately, this issue is not isolated to the Black community but extends to the BIPOC community at large. In 2018, 56.2 percent of active physicians were white, 17.1 percent were Asian, and only 11.1 percent were under-represented minorities (URMs) (“Figure 18”, 2019). This lack of diversity among physicians compounds the damage done by inadequate medical school curricula, leading to increased distrust between BIPOC patients and their physicians. As stated in the open letter, “[H]istory always manifests itself in the present,” and as the medical system stands now, this pattern of bias and misinformation paired with distrust is guaranteed to continue.

So how do we fix this? How can we make things better for patients of color?

Part of the solution is to increase the number of URMs in medicine. Although increased minority representation in the medical field should not be viewed as the cure-all-end-all solution to this problem, URMs often share lived experiences that are very useful in combating physician biases. However, with this goal realistically being achieved far in the future, it is important to set and achieve smaller goals that more immediately improve the quality of care for minority patients. One option is to educate all pre-medical and pre-health students on topics ranging from the history of racism in medicine to inequalities in access and quality of healthcare to BIPOC patients. Such education would compel doctors to face their implicit biases, even ones they may not even realize exist. Because doctors are entrusted with the lives of others, they must have a profound understanding of how the history of medicine and race impacts their patient's access to and ability to receive care.

Medical school prerequisites are excellent at ensuring that medical students are competent in the sciences, but do very little to ensure that doctors, with all of their scientific knowledge, can properly care for their patients. Though many schools recommend that students take a social science course (typically introductory psychology or sociology), choosing which courses satisfy this requirement are largely left up to the applicant. Additionally, these introductory courses rarely, if ever, adequately cover a topic like medical racism. Consequently, many medical school students matriculate without ever having learned about the disparities of medicine and why they exist. These doctors will continue to put the lives of BIPOC at risk by belittling their pain and not comprehending how such patients’ experiences outside of the doctor’s office directly impact their state of health. Hence, without knowledge of these disparities and this history, doctors are doomed to perpetuate them.

Medical racism exists two-fold, within the prejudices that doctors hold and within the structural biases that make healthcare disparities an institutional problem that will ultimately require institutional support to fix. As aspiring doctors, we have learned about these disparities. And as black women in America, we have experienced the results of continued racism within healthcare. We know that as well-intentioned as we are, certain systems—as they stand today—will continue to deter us and others from finally bridging the gaps in the quality of medical care between white patients and BIPOC patients. Checking biases is, at the very least, a very productive place to start doing the necessary work.

The open letter is intended to raise awareness about medical racism and provide resources for education against it, but it is just a small start to the anti-racist work that needs to be done at medical institutions. Medical schools should follow suit and require pre-med students to take courses on racism in medicine and health disparities among BIPOC patients. This revised pre-med curriculum would reflect the value of understanding both patients and the science within medicine. Both are inextricably important to cultivating properly trained doctors. ■

Celia Cacho from Bronx, New York, USA and Ngozi Okoli from Glenview, Illinois, USA are both undergraduate students currently studying at Yale University.

References

Celebrating 10 African-American medical pioneers. (2019). Retrieved June 27, 2020, from https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/celebrating-10-african-american-medical-pioneers

Charles R. Drew, MD | Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. (n.d.). Retrieved June 27, 2020, from https://www.cdrewu.edu/about-cdu/about-dr-charles-r-drew

COVID-19 Provisional Counts - Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics. (2020). Retrieved June 27, 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

Figure 18. Percentage of all active physicians by race/ethnicity, 2018. (2019). Retrieved June 27, 2020, from https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/workforce/interactive-data/figure-18-percentage-all-active-physicians-race/ethnicity-2018

Goyal, M. K., Kuppermann, N., Cleary, S. D., Teach, S. J., & Chamberlain, J. M. (2015). Racial Disparities in Pain Management of Children With Appendicitis in Emergency Departments. JAMA Pediatrics, 169(11), 996–1002. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.1915

Hoffman, K. M., Trawalter, S., Axt, J. R., & Oliver, M. N. (2016). Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(16), 4296–4301. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1516047113

Hoyert, D. L., & Miniño, A. M. (2020). Maternal Mortality in the United States: Changes in Coding, Publication, and Data Release, 2018. National Vital Statistics Reports, 69(2), 18.

Meghani, S. H., Byun, E., & Gallagher, R. M. (2012). Time to take stock: a meta-analysis and systematic review of analgesic treatment disparities for pain in the United States. Pain Medicine (Malden, Mass.), 13(2), 150–174. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1526-4637.2011.01310.x

Mitchell, S. (1997). Bodies of Knowledge: The Influence of Slaves on the Antebellum Medical Community (Thesis). Virginia Tech. Retrieved from https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/36885

Petersen, E. E. (2019). Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Pregnancy-Related Deaths — United States, 2007–2016. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 68. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6835a3

Tuskegee Study - Timeline - CDC - NCHHSTP. (2020). Retrieved June 27, 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm

“Should Africans be concerned about social justice?” This was the headline of a flyer that my church sent out about a Zoom panel they were hosting on Sunday, June 28, 2020. Two thoughts immediately jumped to my mind: why is this even a question, and further, why are we just now having these conversations? Even in my own home, I have seen my family talk about racial injustice in a way that I have never witnessed before. The mass revival of the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the murder of George Floyd, has not only opened the eyes of non-Black people in America to racial injustice, but it has opened the eyes of my community of African immigrants in Columbus, Ohio. In this time of COVID-19 and racial injustice protests, my community has finally realized that their ethnic differences do not exclude them from the racial injustice that threatens every Black American.

To understand the position of Africans immigrants in the context of racial injustice, one must first understand the ethnic background of my local church community. The church I attend is predominantly Ghanaian, and the members consist of Ghanaian immigrants and their children—people like me who were born and raised in the U.S. or those who attended a significant portion of school in the U.S. One key difference between people like myself and the older generation in the church is that we do not understand our Blackness in the same way. The older generation of Ghanaians distanced themselves from the African American community and identity, while the younger generation drew closer and thus see us as more similar rather than different from African Americans.

Growing up in my Ghanaian community, the older generations always reinforced in their words and actions that we were not African Americans. Ghanaians in my community ate their jollof rice, listened to their hiplife music, wore their kente cloth, practiced their special funeral customs, and spoke their native language—Twi. While African Americans ate their cornbread and collard greens, listened to their R&B, wore their stylish clothes, practiced their funeral customs, and spoke their slang, or Black English. Ghanaian immigrants had African accents; African Americans did not. And in addition to the differences in culture and lifestyle, Ghanaians in my community unfortunately associated crime with African Americans and allowed the negative media to really shape their perception of the African American community. In America, the older Ghanaians in my community adopted the reality that African American is equivalent to Black, and thus never identified as Black—except legally. Since Ghanaians in my community did not perceive themselves as African American, growing up I never heard conversations about racial injustice or oppressions because Ghanaians saw that to be an African American issue. Ghanaians in my community saw themselves as separate from African Americans, even though as Black Americans they were still oppressed by the same racist systems and structures in America as African Americans.

Due to the separation between African and African American that my community enforced, as a child I faced internal tension about my Black identity in America, for I grew up in a Ghanaian household and was socialized into African American culture by my peers. I did not eat jollof or corn bread, but both. I listened to both Ghanaian music (not as much by choice), and African American music (I love the sound of R&B). I wore kente cloth to church and dressed in the typical trend at school. I understood Twi, yet also spoke in Black slang at school. Despite the feeling that these two Black identities were mutually exclusive, I was, am and will always be Black in both ways—African and African American. Therefore, although at home I never had conversations about racial injustice, I experienced it outside and actively discussed it with my Black friends; as a child of African immigrants, racial injustice is not new to me.

However, for the older generation of Ghanaian immigrants in my community, the recent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a light in them: the realization that the African American struggle is their struggle too. In my own home, I have heard my dad make comments about his difficulty as a Black man in American—something I have never heard him vocalize before. I have even seen my own sister, who like me grew up in both African and African American culture, express pain and passion towards racial injustice, something I have never seen her do before. Also, in my church youth group chats I have seen my leader—a Ghanaian man, a Black man—express his pain and anger towards the senseless killings of Black people in America. I believe that the senseless murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others has not only helped Africans understand that they should care about social injustice, but come to the realization that they have been and are the victims of racial violence and injustice in America too.

It is unfortunate that it has taken a global pandemic and mass protests for Africans to finally see that racial injustice plagues every Black person in America, Africans included. But although a little late to the field in the fight for racial justice, I am thankful Africans are joining. I hope that African immigrants’ support of the Black Lives Matter movement does not fade with the momentum, but that Africans stand together with African Americans in Black solidarity. My dream is that one day Black people from all over the African diaspora will stand together with and for each other, celebrating our differences that enrich the diversity of the Black community, rather than function as points of dissension between groups. Because at the end of the day, Africans and African Americans are all Black, and I hope we come to understand that we can be unified without being uniform. ■

Rebecca Amonor is an undergraduate student from Columbus, Ohio, USA, currently studying English and African American Studies at Yale University (’21).

Gates Mills, Ohio, is not the kind of place where political feathers are ruffled. Multi-generational homes sprawl across green acreage with the righteousness of money that is no longer earned but inherited. It’s idyllic in aesthetic: maintained but not cookie-cutter, sophisticated yet rural. It’s not uncommon to see equestrians take their horses out for morning trots alongside BMWs and vintage convertibles. Ninety-three percent of the village is white, one percent of residents are Black, and nearly no one falls below the poverty line.

When George Floyd gasped for air, he wasn’t breathing the air that residents of Gates Mills breathe. And even when Cleveland residents took up signs and chants, the tear gas stained air I encountered felt like it had never touched the shuttered stables and rose gardens only thirty minutes away.

I have to think that when some protesters started throwing bricks at court house windows, they imagined raging against the iron gates that have kept so many people out of places like Gates Mills. And yet, while glass shattered downtown, not a blade of grass was askew in one of the many communities in my state that effectively voted Donald Trump into office. I thought for a moment that our efforts as protesters would be better spent marching through the tree-lined streets of a community that treats tax law like a suggestion and voter suppression as folklore.

When I passed through Gates Mills days after the protest, I couldn’t help but become unhinged at the sight of a lawn jockey in blackface. My first impulse was to return to the village at night and smash or steal the statue to spite the homeowners. And yet, I found myself persuaded by better angels to take a different approach. So, I penned a placating letter:

In front of your lovely home, there is a lawn jockey dressed in red. As you will see in the second document, the lawn jockey has a complicated history. Often depicted as a caricature of the African-American male (large lips and dark skin), lawn jockeys are ornaments of servitude. In short, they present the African-American man as in service of his white homeowners for whom he lights the path and decorates the lawn he serves.

It is important to note that the lawn jockey may have been used as a tool during the Underground Railroad to signal freedom to enslaved peoples. If you display your lawn jockey to celebrate this particular history, I understand your doing so and would perhaps suggest tying a green ribbon around the statue’s wrist as a more explicit celebration of the positive history of the lawn jockey. If you display your statue for its kitsch, however, I urge you to contemplate how such a decoration perpetuates the narrative of Black folks being less than their white counterparts. It is this particular idea of racial hierarchy that contributes to disproportionate rates of police brutality and the mass incarceration of Black Americans.

Please consider the history of the lawn jockey as well as your personal ability to counter the stories our country should no longer tell.

Signed,

Your neighbor

I left the letter, along with some reading about the history of the lawn jockey, without expectation of removal. To my surprise, just days later the statue’s face was repainted in white. Was this victory? I’m not so sure.

I chose a moderate approach and, in turn, got a moderate result. The homeowners didn’t remove the statue nor did they, to my knowledge, make donations to bail funds or boycott corporations that use incarcerated labor. I doubt they cracked open Audre Lorde or W.E.B. DuBois, and they likely still belong to the local country club in which the guests are white and the employees Black. Should I be content that they made a conscious alteration even if a can of white paint means virtually nothing to anybody but the involved parties? I think the answer lies somewhere between yes and no.

I have to think that their display of Black servitude had fostered some kind of internalized legitimacy of racial superiority. The objects we surround ourselves with are the subtle forces that move us, and the spaces those objects inhabit determine how we move. One should reckon with that statue in a museum or on the cover of Paul Beatty’s Sellout, not pass it mindlessly on the way to work.

Then there’s the lie of the letter, perhaps the very reason they acted. I’m not their neighbor. I don’t belong to the Homeowners Association or sit on local boards. The owners of this statue and I, unbeknownst to them, are completely anonymous to one another. And yet, I suspect that these particular homeowners will hold themselves differently at the next neighborhood cocktail party, believing that someone in this crowd thinks them tactlessly racist. Is it wrong that I had to make myself one with the oppressor to elicit change? Maybe so, especially when it seems like people of great privilege are always the ones being met halfway.

Taking or destroying the statue would have given the homeowners a closer sense of what it is to not be rich and white. For a second, they might have known what it’s like to feel as if your property doesn’t belong to you, but likely their anger would just have affirmed anything they’ve ever wrongfully believed about anti-racist efforts. I wish that weren’t so.

I suppose, in some sense, I am their neighbor. If we let collective humanity be the only zip code that matters, then Tamir Rice, who was murdered just a few exits from Gates Mills in 2014, was their neighbor too. I wonder what the world would be like if people of privilege started referring to the too many Black deaths in our country as “my neighbor was murdered.” With perspective, our world, no matter how siloed we have designed it to feel, isn’t big. We are all neighbors, stewards of the same earth. We just happen to forget it more frequently than we remember. ■

Ella Attell is an undergraduate student from Cleveland, Ohio, USA, currently studying at Yale University (’23).

There is a privilege, I believe, of remembering and a burden of never forgetting.

When a high school friend invited me to a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Cleveland, I had reservations. While we’ve both read and agree with much of Marx, I don’t call myself a socialist or an activist by any means. She was skeptical that I’d join and thought that I didn’t have the “nerve.” I wasn’t sure what kind of “nerve” was necessary, thinking a solid understanding of my space as a non-Black protestor more of a prerequisite to the event. At the time before the protest, though, I couldn’t quite put my discomfort into words. After all, she was highly informed, passionately political, and experienced at protesting. I marched beside her for three hours but stared more dumbstruck than defiant when she, our designated driver, announced that we wouldn’t be leaving to avoid the exploding police cars or rubber bullets that had disrupted the peace.

When I begged her to drive us home, she told me something true: “They’re doing this so we leave. If gas and guns scare you off, then they get exactly what they wanted.” I knew she was right, that my darting towards her car at the first sign of rough waters wasn’t the committed display of alliance that I’d come for.

I stayed back and watched her and another girl proceed with the fearlessness of kids who know that when the cops find their weed, it’ll be their parents who get a call and not the district attorney. I questioned my decision every second they walked closer, knowing that these were girls who attended specialized programs for ethical leadership and were quick to “check” their privilege before “unpacking” injustice. But then I watched a cloud of tear gas bloom behind them as a police car exploded in flames. In that moment of perfect disharmony, the girls halted their procession, pulled out a phone, and took a selfie while parents doused their children’s eyes with water. They smiled as if they were on a Disney ride: no genuine fear of danger, enjoying the sensation of the fall.

Weeks later, and that selfie is one of the only artifacts of the protest. It’s nestled somewhere on their camera roll, evidence of the kind of people they claim to be. I’m not sure if what they did was patently wrong, but I do know that it was a unique privilege. Needing to remember police brutality, to summon images of yourself amongst violence, is the difference between being Black and being privileged. There’s no forgetting when something is your reality but there is necessary remembrance in mythmaking. This photo, like so many others I’ve seen on Instagram these past few weeks, is part of the story many unoppressed peoples have inserted themselves into. It’s key to remember that protests were not designed to be a visual aid on one’s individual quest for white righteousness. These exercises are moments of solidarity and, at their best, empathetic transcendence. Because when things turned violent and we started to get scared, maybe the right thing was not to turn a horrible reality into a cheap souvenir, but rather to hold the fear in our hearts, if only for a moment, to begin to know the ache Black Americans never chose to feel.

Our generation has grown up on a strict diet of text and image. If we do, in fact, become what we eat, then selfies and pithy captions will be who we are. To avoid becoming as one-dimensional as our photos, we need to get in the habit of interrogating every image we take in proximity with violence to appreciate that it’s an experience we’re actively choosing to remember. We non-Black Americans have had the enormous privilege of defining our remembrance. For others, there was never a choice.

As non-Black folks proceed in the fight against systematic racism, I think we should avoid selfies in times of protest. Real activism has nothing to do with the self and everything to do with the selfless. ■

Ella Attell is an undergraduate student from Cleveland, Ohio, USA, currently studying at Yale University (’23).

My "Blackness" was given to me by society.

I remember the day I was made Black.

In third grade, I was filling out a form for what I believe was the Connecticut Mastery Test. My parents, to their credit, never defined me by race. So, when given the option to select "Race," I chose "Other." After all, based on my knowledge of crayons, my skin was neither black nor white. When I had to choose "Ethnicity," I also chose "Other." Based on everything I was taught up to that moment, I was an American. That was the only way I thought to define myself. But, this was not an option.

My teacher was checking to see if everyone was done filling out the form. When she saw mine, she said that I had filled it out wrong. She told me to select "Black" for "Race" and "African American" for "Ethnicity." I was very confused because these were not the ways that I thought of myself. But, I did not argue because my parents taught me to respect my teachers, and I didn't think it was a big deal either way.

That was the day I was made Black.

It is almost thirty years later, and I have had a lot of time to learn what it means to be Black in this country. One of the consequences is that people still feel the need to remind me of my Blackness with their questions and their jokes. So, forgive me if I am Black and I am angry. Because after all, society chose this role for me. I would have been happy with just being an American. ■

Daniel Cardoso is a community member from New Haven, Connecticut, USA, and a graduate of Southern Connecticut State University.

I want to learn the colors and to solve the Rubik's cube at the same time. That is what it feels like to process the death of George Floyd by a white police officer on the streets where I grew up and all of the events that have unfolded since. My heart wants to cry, my head wants to know how to “fix” it, and my feet want to realize that solution—as if there is a solution to crime against humanity. As if there could ever be a solution that would bring George Floyd back to life.

I did not know George Floyd. I am not mourning his death like his family is. I am mourning how deeply ingrained racism is within the American justice system, still. What does that actually mean? It means that in the South, where confederate flags still cling to the doorsteps of rural homes, a Black person is 11 times more likely to end up on death row than a white person if the victim is white—22 times more likely if the person is Black and the defendant is Black, too (Stevenson, 2012). It means that although Minnesota has the second highest graduation rate of public schools in the United States (Table 228, 2006), it also has a high achievement gap between white and non-white students. It means that I can live my life as a white person without knowing the statistics, but my Black friends cannot.

Growing up, I shifted between “white suburbia” and “urban city kid” with relative ease. The loss of my parents’ business and an ugly divorce set my family back financially, but for the first memorable decade of my life, I lived without having to confront, at least in any chronic fashion, unwarranted prejudice. Instead of adding to the racial inequity that my friends of color faced, setbacks created a commonality between me and other kids at school who were on scholarship or came from single-parent households, many of whom were also Black. I often sat at the “Black lunch table,” the only one my college preparatory school tolerated. We got along, those classmates and I. None of us could keep up with the lives of our classmates, especially when it came to birthdays and vacations.

I distinctly remember one of those vacation periods at home, spring break of eighth grade. I was crafting a banner that would decorate our school entrance for a special campaign that a friend, Jaila, and I were planning for the day we all returned to class. Jaila was African American, later my co-captain of the volleyball team, Homecoming Queen, and my best friend. She and I had planned a project to fight bullying. We were calling it REACH: Raising Expectations And Changing Hearts. We wrote a proposal, pitched in to the dean, and convinced teachers to cancel an entire day of class for students to engage in “team-building” exercises that would build relationships without ever mentioning the word “bullying.” We even made t-shirts, complete with an emblem of a water droplet falling into a pool to reflect that our campaign would inspire a “ripple effect” of kindness.

That was nine years ago. Today, I live nine thousand miles away in Singapore under strict lockdown measures to contain the spread of coronavirus, whittling away at a book project that involves deciphering a twentieth-century scroll of Chinese calligraphy. Jaila works at a sports entertainment agency in Charlotte, soon to be Atlanta. I called Jaila on the fourth day of protesting in Minneapolis. We both treaded lightly: how are you? It was a simple question, but we both knew the answer was loaded with emotions words could not describe.

“I am…I am—”

“You are.”

“I am.”

In Just Mercy, a book about the injustices of the American criminal justice system, defense attorney Bryan Stevenson draws upon the European leader Vaclav Havel for inspiration on his especially tough days in prison: “When we were in Eastern Europe,” he quotes Havel saying, “we were dealing with all kinds of things, but mostly what we needed then was hope, an orientation of the spirit, a willingness to sometimes be in hopeless places and be a witness” (Stevenson, 2015).

When Jaila and I settled on our mere existence as our then-condition, we testified to a single polarizing fact: that we existed—the most basic of truths that George Floyd and too many others can no longer claim. Our existence now gives us the opportunity to be witnesses. It also gives us the opportunity to be more than witnesses; it grants us the opportunity to act.

Medaria Arradondo, the Chief of Minneapolis Police, responded to questioning on the pending punishment of the three police officers present alongside Derek Chauvin, the white police officer responsible for George Floyd’s death, in an interview last week by saying that those who are complicit in injustice take the side of the oppressor (“Floyd’s Family Asks Police,” 2020). Knowingly or unknowingly, he was quoting the cleric and activist, Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

I agree. Still, my fingers hesitate to shift the Rubik's cube. Just because I see some colors, wouldn’t it be better to learn them all first? At what point in uncertainty, in other words, do we act? I am struggling with this particularly in the context of social media. While I recognize that posting stories can build awareness, I also question whom those stories reach. Take it from the Bible or just common sense: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” (Luke 6:32, New International Version). It is harder to love those with whom you disagree. Social media enables us to feign activism by advocating our beliefs to like-minded followers without confronting those who hold opposing beliefs. Would not that uncomfortable conversation with your white, veteran uncle who occasionally makes racist comments be more effective than double taps on Instagram from people who already like you?

This is not to say we should not speak up when injustice prevails. Rather, I have settled on three thoughts to consider as a starting point when doing so. First, the medium through which we choose to voice our opinions itself is an implicit statement about how we want people to engage and what types of responses we wish to receive. Are we—am I—willing to risk a family feud by talking politics at our next gathering? I still believe that a face-to-face conversation can be the most intense, but also the most powerful, method of productive change.

Second, when we do post digital stories on our social media, let them truly be that: stories. Seeing the destruction of my home city this week, I cannot help but think of the lives of people impacted by fires caused intentionally or not during the riots. In part, this is because I joined the American Red Cross in 2016 as a responder on the Minneapolis Disaster Action Team (DAT). My main responsibility in the four years since has been to guide families displaced by house fires through immediate next-steps after their house has burned down. I am often the first point of contact after firefighters and see firsthand how devastated some families are, sometimes losing pets. I have even met people at the hospital, although thank God, no lives have been lost on any of my cases thus far. When fires broke out at the protests last week, the flames displaced thirty residents in an affordable housing complex, many of whom were struggling within the same fallible systems rioters set out to expose. How do these residents feel? Hearing their stories may shed light bright enough to change our perspective on how and when protesting becomes counterproductive.

Third, we have a choice whether or not we compound polarization. When we use rhetoric like, “we have no leadership” and “shoot the white folk” (heard at a rally in Minneapolis on Thursday, May 28, 2020), we blanket complex situations that exacerbate (or excuse) political polarization (Carlson, 2020). Indeed, some of the loudest voices with the widest audience (e.g., Trump, Limbaugh) have done more to separate than to unite our country (“Rush Limbaugh Denies White Privilege,” 2020). At the same time, however, there are leaders, many of whom are local, who have demonstrated tenacity and compassion: Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota (whatever your views on his coronavirus policies, he condemned looting as a distraction from real racial problems with little-disputed clairvoyance) (“Governor Tim Walz”, 2020); Phil Hansen, CEO of the American Red Cross Minnesotan Region; Justin Simmons, free safety for the Colorado Broncos; Frederique Schmidt and Mauri Friestleben of Minneapolis schools... I am grateful to these people for their “Vaclav Havel” type hope during this time.

Jaila and I disagreed on something when we talked about the riots. “If they would just do what we asked and convict the four policemen,” she said on the phone, using “we” to invoke either all protestors or all Black Americans, I wasn’t sure which, “then there wouldn’t need to be any more riots. No justice, no peace.”

I thought otherwise. This is bigger now than the charges of four policemen. People have usurped the peaceful protests with other agendas, however well-intentioned, that undermine the real reason people ought to protest: an innocent Black man died at the hands of the very body that was supposed to protect him. I said as much, but my mind ventured further: “No justice, no peace.”

Last night, I got on my knees, and I asked to hear God through the noise. His answer shook me: there is no “justice” for a life wrongly taken. George Floyd’s family will decide for themselves what they need to heal. For me, another’s punishment does not assuage the pain of losing a loved one, at least not completely. I am not saying that the officers should not be punished; they should be. What I am saying is that punishment alone will not solve the Rubik’s cube that is our puzzle of interconnected sociopolitics.

“Many seek an audience with a ruler, but it is from the Lord that one gets justice” (Proverbs 29:26, New International Version).

Besides, who am I to judge? Christianity tells me that my sin murdered an innocent man named Jesus. And how did he repay me? He granted me eternal life. It is my responsibility to realize justice only insofar as I vote for representatives who ensure a legal system neither favors nor discriminates. The rest is up to local authorities, and spiritually, up to God, if you choose to believe. It is my responsibility whole-heartedly, however, to build a society in which people of all colors can have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is my responsibility to learn the Rubik’s cube. And it is my responsibility to turn and to twist to see all its colors, even if I make mistakes in the process.

When Jaila and I were about to hang up, she told me about the end of a saga in Finland, her transition to North Carolina, how Mom and Grandma were.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

Those three words were enough to give me the courage I will need for all the mistakes I will make in twisting and turning our Rubik’s cube. ■

Madi Lommen is an undergraduate student from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, now studying at Yale-NUS College (‘20) in Singapore.

References

Carlson, T. (2020, May 29). Media fan racial flames. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-inconvenient-facts-threaten-the-racism-scams-our-leaders-and-media-are-working

Floyd’s family asks police chief questions on live TV. [Video]. (2020, May 31). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV9GTx7t1j0

Governor Tim Walz says majority of protestors are from out of state. [Video]. (2020, May 30). https://www.cbsnews.com/video/minnesota-governor-tim-walz-says-majority-of-protesters-are-outsiders/

Grunewald, R. & Nath, A. (2019, October 11). Minnesota’s education achievement gaps. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Rush Limbaugh denies the existence of white privilege. [Video]. (2020, June 1). https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/06/01/rush-limbaugh-the-breakfast-club-white-privilege-orig.cnn-business

Stevenson, B. (2015). Just mercy. Spiegel and Grau.

Stevenson, B. (2012). We need to talk about injustice. Ted.

Table 228: Educational Attainment by State, U.S. Bureau of the Census. Minnesota shows 91% high school graduation rate in 2006.

Breaking news: An eighteen-year-old, African-American male has just been shot and killed by a police officer. It is believed that the suspect was unarmed at the time. Officials say that the police officer who fired the shots has been placed on administrative leave.

Many of you have heard this story. Many of you have cried over this story. But what if I told you this story isn’t real? What if I told you that the eighteen-year-old, unarmed, African-American male was me? What if I told you that my death sparked riots across America; my face printed on thousands of t-shirts saying one phrase: Black Lives Matter. What if you saw images of my body, lying still in the street, three bullet wounds: two in my back, one fatal shot in my head. You see me bleed out, handcuffs pressing against my wrist. I take my last breath and close my eyes.

That isn’t who I am. I am not dead. I am right here. I am alive. I am not just another hashtag. I am EJ Jarvis. I am a son, an older brother. I am loved by both my mother and my father, equally. I have dozens of positive role models who are not just present but involved. I am an exceptional student and graphic designer; and I love to play basketball. I am not just another eighteen-year-old, unarmed, African-American male. I am a unique individual. I am me.

As I grow older, I begin to understand that my skin color comes with a price. Many want to observe it, some desire to kill it, and few are bold enough to replicate it, market it, and profit from it.

People who don’t look like me or you will dance like us, talk like us, and even try and look like us. They want to be Black but keep their white privilege. They simply want to be us, that is until things get serious.

When innocent people are killed, when drugs destroy neighborhoods and families, when fathers go to jail, when siblings are split apart. When an eighteen-year-old, African-American male is pulled over for no good reason, except for the fact that he looks suspicious. Except for the fact he is Black.

Outsiders will adore our culture but ignore our struggle. They will love our features but dehumanize the people who own them. They want to be just like us, but make fun of us when we “act Black.” We are no longer looked at as people. But as statistics and data. My skin color is what is in style. Our culture is the new trend. We are Black by popular demand. ■

EJ Jarvis is an undergraduate student from Washington, DC, USA, currently studying at Yale University.

Black

The color of excellence, inventiveness, eloquence and poise, heroism and valor, athleticism and

intelligence, historic feats and immeasurable impact

MLK, Ali, Shabazz, the OG Baldwin, Huey/Fred,

Harriet, Sojourner, Rosa, Shirley, Angela/Assata,

Stevie, Ray, Louis, Marvin, Prince, James, Tupac/Biggie,

Aretha, Billie, Ella, Marian, Whitney, Lauryn, MJ-B, Beyonce

Kareem, Satchel, Hank, Arthur, MJ-squared,

Serena, Althea, Flo-Jo, Lisa, Debi, Simone,

Jackies 42 and 88

Never enough

They’re still: marginalized, crippled, sneered at, vilified, demonized, and criminalized

by the system, the establishment, hierarchy

designed and built

to weigh them down, to make them feel less than,

and force them to push, stand up, wrestle

for parity and equal opportunity

for their: basic rights, equality and dignity, liberation and emancipation, affirmation

at the expense of their adolescence, adulthood, and life expectancy

Breonna Taylor, Eric/a Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, George Floyd, Emmett Till

lives taken and robbed,

gunned down, strangled, and disfigured

by the system, white-empowered and Black-enchained,

that continues its ruthlessness and pitilessness unabated

But the streets, from all corners and angles, continental or pocket-sized,

never forget, relent, nor yield

to change the tables, the imbalance, disproportion, discrimination, racism, and marginalization

in the face of hails of bullets, tear gas, and beatdowns

They’ve done it once, twice, thrice, countless and incalculable amount of times

And they’ll do it again, hopefully for the final time ■

Omar Almasri is a master’s student from Amman, Jordan, currently studying at Arkansas State University.

Part 1:

What am I supposed to think right now?

My knees hurt.

Thoughts and prayers are too weak to be tinder.

The hashtags kindle no more than performance.

Nothing is working.

I may not be violent,

But I’m angry

And I’m not alone

Even if my anger burns with a different hue.

His anger burned so bright it took down buildings with it.

Her anger scorched statues and roasted strangers.

My anger blackened the streets and said enough is enough.

And now they say we are too angry.

They don’t know the heat in my core

That’s boiling me from within,

Filling my lungs with smoke until

I can’t breathe.

I feel so powerless.

Like the world is resting on my neck,

Holding me back

While I lay on my chest.

I burn through my bank account,

donating here and now there,

but I still feel hidden in the shadow.

What shall I do instead?

I can read,

I can write,

I can share the word,

donate more—

But what can I do, in the here and now

that will mean something?

God, I hope this is a simulation

because this was a failed attempt.

Part 2:

Shall I give up on this world?

Be done with it?

Let the sun’s rays do as it will

As I watch and burn as well.

Shall I stay, but not fight?

Be in the world, but not of it

Because charred flesh doesn’t smell as good now

as it did when it was the flesh of a Black body?

Can I still love these people?

Even the ones that make me lose hope,

Make me want to see this world smolder

And all of the peace ablaze with it.

Because it doesn’t deserve

to be safe

and privileged

and secure

While so many fear for their bodies every day,

Fearing the boys in blue and the boys in ICE.

Fearful because they have names cauterized into their minds,

Names others have forgotten.

We are in the season of upgrade

Tasked with creating

Something new

From something broken.

But how will we do it better?

What glitch will we fix in the simulation

So that when we face trial and tribulation

We aren’t forced to restart? ■

Chika Ogbejesi is an undergraduate student at Yale University ('21) from Madison, Connecticut, USA.

I am so tired.

Weighed down

By the constant throbbing beneath my dark brow.

The close pang that

I must put on numb in order to function.

In order to survive.

Everyday

I feel the cackle of metal chains

Pounding against my bones,

Gifting me with an endless brokenness that

I am required to fill.

So I mend myself

With amendments to myself,

Molding into something

More or less like a self.

Drowning out the throbbing of my brow

With discussions.

Disregarding the sweat in my eyes

With understanding.

Ignoring the pain of the color of my skin

With forgiveness.

But I am so tired.

Tired of the “have you heard?”’s and the stories and the numbers and the rants and the retweets and the likes and the statements and the videos that were once my brothers and sisters.

When?

When?

When! ■

Megan Ruoro is an undergraduate student from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA, who will matriculate at Yale University (‘24).

We are all part of a song: it is complex and ever-changing.

The youth of the world nurture it with their diversity and individuality. It is a music that we all have within, no one can hear anyone else’s, and the world remains objectively the same.

The motifs repeat themselves, and then, following the dissonant chords of struggle, are resolved.

The resolution of one motif is the start of a new one, a different progression of changes.

The patterns can overlap, intertwine, and contradict one another.

The song has parts that are horrible, that we can hardly stand to hear. Do we skip through them, do we forget them? No, we reflect on their harsh tones as we write the melodies of the future!

The voices of our ancestors fade into the background, begging us not to repeat their mistakes.

The song now surges with the cries for equality, long coming, a sound that has been overshadowed, when in fact it should be heard the loudest.

The current melody is not new, new but has been amplified by the minds of a new generation. It is at its climax and will stay loud until we reach the resolution. We look to a day when the sun shines on us all, and the world is louder, bolder, and more brilliant with our beautiful diversity and dazzling individuality. ■

Hailey Neff is an undergraduate student from San Juan Capistrano, California, USA.

Being Black in America is living in a world in which you were designed to fail before you were even born. Being Black in America is being held to a standard higher than any white person. Being Black in America is spending years proving the case for your intelligence and taking only one jury to knock it down. Being Black in America is reaching farther than they ever imagined you to—no, farther than they ever intended you to—only for them to diminish the attribution to the color of your skin. Being Black in America is being told countless times that you can’t, only for them to search for answers in pursuit of how you did.

Being Black in America is showing up to non-Black spaces in armor, equipping yourself for the routine battles to come. Being Black is being hyperaware of every action and movement while your white counterparts move freely through the world. Being Black in America is thinking twice before expressing anger. Being Black in America is re-membering Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” while the rest of America rejoices in mock independence. ■

Destiny Nwafor is an undergraduate student from East Orange, New Jersey, USA, currently studying at Cornell University (’21).

To encourage all the young people standing up in the streets, using their voices to force change—keep on going! Thank you for what you are doing and for giving hope to the generations coming up behind you. ■

Laura Bao is a designer from Los Angeles, California, USA.

Taking quotes from the overwhelming media, this piece is a visual representation of the undeniable oppression being brought to light in the United States. Words of anger, disappointment, and painful empathy surround a black woman who is just trying to protect herself in the face of America. This piece is not only a symbol but an exhortation to listen to and understand the emotions and experiences of the Black community. ■

Samantha Trimboli is an undergraduate student from Staten Island, New York, USA, currently studying at Yale University (‘23).

It has been tough to explain to my nieces what is happening to their people and why. I wanted them to feel empowered and part of the movement. This piece is inspired by a photoshoot that we had and by the ones who have passed away. This piece uses mixed media paper maché, acrylic paint, sharpie, and braided yarn. ■

Houyee Chow is a community member from San Jose, California, USA.

Breathe was drawn in response to the overwhelmingly inhumane history of law enforcement brutality against the Black community. How many times have Black individuals lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement while pleading "I can't breathe"? Far too many. ■

Sonia Lai is a community member from San Francisco, California, USA.