[IMAGE: two dark skinned women holding a sign above their heads that shows a black fist and says #Justice for Philando] source: Wikipedia

Surviving and Thriving as a URM in Astro|Physics 4: Endless Death Seems Endlessly Endless

For the Black students especially.

This isn’t the next installment (I, II, III, playlist) I meant to write. But here it is. With ❤

We have just ended the third summer in a row of not vacationing properly ever because even if we could afford a vacation, there was death everywhere. It was on our social media, it was on the news, it was in our neighborhoods. It was in our hearts and our heads.

I spent a lot of time crying. I am more afraid of police than ever. I wonder more than I used to whether any given conversation with a Black friend or family member is our last one. I beat myself up for having that thought. I argue with myself about statistical improbabilities. I try not to think about how I saw myself in Korryn Gaines. I worry about the Black children my friends are raising and how scarred they will be by all of this — if they survive. What if their parents don’t? What if I don’t?

Because of how I look, I know that I am more likely to survive. I don’t like that sentence. I don’t like the mathematics of how my skin color, hair texture, Arabic tattoo, and nose shape are convolving with any given police officer’s perceptions on any given day.

I am not going to tell you I know it gets better. Even if I believe it will, that doesn’t salve our fears.

We all know it is too late for Mike Brown. It is too late for Aiyana Stanley-Jones. It is too late for Terence and Korryn and Sandra. It will never get better for them. It will never get better for Trayvon.

Those of us who are Black understand that if we die tomorrow, it will never get better for us.

I think about the ancestors who survived the Middle Passage and slavery and how they must have believed an array of things but so many of them stayed alive anyway.

And really, there is no magic trick, just that:

I will myself to stay alive.

I read poetry and repeat to myself Lynne Procope’s words

I love you.
Stay alive.

I stay alive. I remember to check in with people. We instant message and text message, and I don’t tell you that I am crying through our conversations, furious at myself because I cannot think of a magic trick that makes this better for you.

I don’t have any. I just have what I am doing. So I give this to you:

1. I listen to Saul Williams’s MartyrLoserKing on repeat and relish his science references. I listen to Janelle Monáe’s “Sally Ride” and hear my story. I listen to Lupe Fiasco’s “The End of the World” on repeat when necessary.
2. I do physics brain teasers from books I found on Amazon to remind myself that the universe is a thing that can be thought of independently of the exclusionary whiteness that looms so large in the physics community.
3. I read anthropological studies of the scientific community which remind me that it is normal to see science as a social process, to be critical of how it works. I remember that white people didn’t invent science and my presence in the community is a statement of reclamation.
4. I allow myself days off that probably other (white) postdocs aren’t taking but I am trying to stay alive in ways that they aren’t, and I accept that this is both unfair, but real, and I forgive myself because it is not my fault.
5. I text my friends.
6. I watch Star Trek.
7. I read novels. I have about 20 new novels by mostly women of color that I am plowing through.
8. I seek out good pieces on Black Lives Matter for the literary journal I run, The Offing.
9. I write out, over and over, my answer to the question, “What is a physicist?”
10. I tell the Black people around me how much I value them. I remind them that they deserve peace, rest, joy.
11. I read and share Shannon Barber’s writing.
12. I celebrate NK Jemisin’s Hugo Award and cajole my friends into buying her books.
13. I work with white members of my professional societies to bring about change.
14. I cry. A lot.
15. As I can afford to, I buy skin care products to help my skin recover from the crying.
16. I don’t get into internet fights with white people who don’t care about me and mine.
17. I do anything I need to do to get through the next 5 minutes. By. Any. Means. Necessary. I forgive myself for not being able to do more.
18. I remember to say thank you to the people who are helping me hold it together.
19. I make agreements with myself about working for 15–30 minutes and if at the end I’m not feeling good, I take a break. Often I end up exceeding that.

But it can be hard to make room for physics when your department seems oblivious to your trauma. This has been expressed to me over and over. How can I love a thing that doesn’t love me back?

I put a version of this question to University of Amsterdam Professor Anna Watts who told me to look for the problem I want to solve and to be patient with myself as I looked.* It was exactly what I needed to hear when she said it, even though I think she was guessing a little about what might be useful. What I will add is that this is another way we keep our eyes on the prize. That does not mean forgetting who you are or where you are or what is happening.

It is okay to feel terrorized. What is happening to us is terrorism.

But. Whenever I am advising a student, I always keep in mind that what barrier I could not break down, this student may be the one who can. Remember that: you may be the one who can. You don’t know until you try. So I urge you to try.

A lot of people out there want to steal your life from you because they can’t believe in your humanity, and they may yet succeed, but don’t let them do it while you’re alive. ❤

*Note for faculty: what I appreciated about her response was that she didn’t seem frightened by how I was feeling. So many of us are dealing with allies who are frightened by our fear. And with white people who are frightened by our existence out on the street. You need to contain yourself, not center yourself by acting like you find the whole situation weird and uncomfortable. Stop telling us we are okay or that if we just focus on our work that will help.