The America He Will Learn
In the above photo, I’m holding my three-month-old nephew Titus, who I had a chance to visit in April over Easter weekend. Lots of us have children in our lives with adorable personalities and photos brimming with the same joy and happiness I feel when I see this one. However, recent events have replaced this joy with questions, concerns, doubt, and pain. I look at this photo and wonder what fears my mother had before giving birth. Did she worry about raising two Black daughters? I know my mother feared we would be Siamese twins. Our baby albums are proof, showing tabloids from 1984 with Siamese twins on the cover. I know she feared her two babies could be set for a lifetime of medical attention or even scarier fates. But here I am 35 years later, living a successful life and holding my twin’s son. We survived the initial medical uncertainty around our futures when we came into the world. Still, my mother’s fears remain about the health and wellbeing of her two Black daughters and one Black son in a supposedly post-racial world.
When I look at this picture I think about Titus’ innocence and our duty to protect him. He doesn’t know a lot of things thus far. He doesn’t know that his mom has a twin or that his name, Titus, came from the Bible and means “title of honor.” He doesn’t know that solid foods taste better than milk or that a coronavirus shut down the world for nearly five months and counting. He doesn’t know the fruity bliss of Skittles or a crisp, cold Arizona Iced Tea. He doesn’t know a kid named Trayvon Martin, who was hunted and killed after buying these things. He doesn’t know that I am an avid runner like Ahmaud Arbery or that his ancestors were enslaved. Most importantly, he doesn’t know how the world sees him.
All of these unknowns will change and become a part of his unique experience. Just last week, he enjoyed his first spoon of pears. He will slowly learn how to walk and talk. And gradually he will learn the history of this country. But he will not learn to hate people who don’t look like him, he will not learn to be a bystander of injustice, and hopefully, if we get this right, he will not learn to fear the police because he’s a Black man. If you’re hearing this last part for the first time or have heard it only from another Black person, then you should know this is a common and necessary lesson exchanged in most Black families — mine included.
Where we are today is not only because of one video of George Floyd. There are hundreds of videos. Evidence from a study published in 2016 in the American Journal of Public Health shows that Black men are nearly three times as likely than whites to die from police intervention. If you trace the history of policing, you will realize that it is deeply entangled with white supremacy. For much of U.S. history, law enforcement meant enforcing laws that were explicitly designed to subjugate Black people. Some of America’s first law enforcement units were slave patrols returning people who’d escaped from slavery. It’s worth remembering that this is the tip of a very large iceberg. And the police are just one part of a larger system of injustice. So, here we are almost 401 years from the start of slavery in 1619 and 155 years from June 19th, 1865 when enslaved Texans found out they had been free, for over two years. Can you imagine news about your freedom being deliberately withheld so someone else can maintain their profits?
We can see remnants of this right now through the blatant disregard for humanity. In a Wall Street Journal interview published recently, Donald Trump shamefully claimed that “nobody had ever heard of Juneteenth until he popularized it.” This day has always been significant in my life. On June 19, 1920, my grandmother was born, only 55 years after slavery ended. So, you might say, slavery was so long ago, but not for me and not for most Black people.
We should all ask ourselves: “Where do we go from here?” One day, my nephew will look back on this time and wonder what we were doing. I hope we will have a good report card by then. We have a number of subjects to ace, including Social Justice and Eradicating Racism. We owe my nephew and others like him our best efforts right now.
We are all caught in COVID-19, but I and other Black people are caught in a society designed to oppress us, too. Since seeing the image of George Floyd’s face beneath a cop’s knee, my joy has been tainted by the reality that racism is alive and well, ready to make sure we aren’t. Every time I hear a siren, I pray it’s not carrying someone who looks like me or my nephew. That’s systemic racism to me. And that’s the health crisis I am experiencing but not talking about. Unless you are Black you can’t begin to imagine how scared, angry, and exhausted I am, not only in recent weeks but constantly. I hope that more people who don’t look like me will begin to deeply understand this truth and work to change it.
Nicole Maddox was a 2014–2015 Global Health Corps fellow in Zambia. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy and Administration at the Bocconi University in Italy.
Global Health Corps (GHC) is a leadership development organization building the next generation of health equity leaders around the world. All GHC fellows, partners, and supporters are united in a common belief: health is a human right. There is a role for everyone in the movement for health equity. To learn more, visit our website and connect with us on Twitter/Instagram/Facebook.
