Three Stories of How I Became An Anti-racist Spiritual Activist
I’m a 54-year- old woman, unambiguously and unapologetically Black. I recognized injustice early. I was 8 years old, when my mother and her three children (myself included) walked into a private doctor’s office. It was around 8 o’clock. My father had dropped us in front of the small medical building, before proceeding to his office job. My mother called the doctor from the lobby, and moments later we walked, past a dozen waiting patients, into his examination room.
They looked tired even before the business day had begun. They had left their small rural villages on the island of Dominica, long before daybreak and traveled for hours in open-back trucks on dusty dirt roads.
The visit for my brother, who had a worrisome growth in his temple, was brief. The doctor eyed the lesion, told my mother it was not serious, and handed her a prescription. Minutes after leaving his office, we returned. ‘Doctor, I am so sorry. I forgot to pay you.’ What looked like a lot of money changed hands. It felt wrong. When we were outside, I asked a question that I knew the answer to. ‘Mammie, what was that money for?’ My mother confirmed that it was for the care that my brother had received. ‘You have to pay that much money? How are those people going to afford that?’ I demanded. My mother ignored me. I declared, “When I grow up I’m going to be a doctor and provide free care.” I sensed that they received poor treatment because they were poor.
This incident changed me. I had already begun to question my mother and the world around me. We walked past these people four times in under 30 minutes.
I attributed the injustice to the doctor. I detested him, a very light-skinned Dominican. He was a bad apple. He was unjust. I didn’t yet see the social structures that enabled the interaction between my family and him. I didn’t yet understand how racism, colorism, and poverty interacted to trap us in our various roles. They were not poor by chance.
I have kept a version of that little girl’s promise. What I saw that day continues to shape my life. This promise was made out of an inner drive towards justice. My understanding of justice was basic, limited, and yet profound. Even as a young child, I saw with my own eyes and not the eyes of my family. I challenged what my mother considered acceptable. I also committed to working for the world that I wanted.
I moved through medical school, health care institutions, government bureaucracy, and philanthropy always keeping my focus on the health and well-being of those populations with marginalized social status When I made that childhood vow, I did not yet understand that anti-Black racism would follow me, and I too would be its victim.
I was nineteen years old the first time someone diminished me because of my race. It happened one beautiful day in 1986 in south Florida. I had completed my freshman year at a small community college with excellent grades. I wanted to learn about the requirements for transferring to a four-year college. I entered a large room full of white women sitting at different desk stations. I spotted the woman who I had been told would help me. Ann was the college counselor.
As I approached her, her smile stiffened, her eyes grew cold, and she transferred the handbag that was sitting at her right foot to her left side opposite me. Unfazed, I introduced myself, shared that my ambition was to go to medical school, and asked my question. She dismissed me with the bare facts. In that brief interaction, I felt humiliated, my ambitions squashed.
There was no one to complain to. I did what I had done earlier; I took a stand for myself. I buckled down to work, to work harder, and with more determination and focus. In short, I became more tunnel-visioned. Over the years, I experienced the customary white store clerk following me in the store or ignoring me when I needed attention. This was just the way things were. Work harder. Dress better. Speak more slowly. Compartmentalize.
I began to see the structural dimensions of anti-Black racism in 1994. I was a second-year medical student on the upper east side of Manhattan. It was summertime, and I was on one of the few outings that I allowed myself. I was walking on the sidewalk when I spotted a young Black man at the far end of the block. He wore a white tee shirt and dark pants hung low on his hips. We were the only pedestrians on that sidewalk. My stomach tensed, and I darted to the opposite sidewalk.
Once there, I paused. The abruptness and intensity of my reaction startled me. I later felt disappointment, regret, and shame. Why did I react with fear towards him? Before coming to the United States all the men I knew were Black. So when did I become fearful of them? My father was Black. My brothers were Black. My boyfriends too were all Black. I realized that I had been primed for that specific fear response by my daily consumption of the nighttime news. The mainstream media depicted Black men as violent criminals and predators. I stopped watching the news on tv from that day on. But it would take another twenty plus years for me to fully experience and understand the brutality of anti-Black racism.
Anti-Black racism is not confined to the United States nor is it a contemporary problem. It is a centuries-old, pervasive global social reality that disadvantages Black people in almost every domain of life. It cannot be separated from white supremacy, which puts white people at the top and Black people at the bottom of a social pyramid that dictates almost every domain of life. It is interwoven with economic and political disenfranchisement, poverty, and public violence.
The long-standing materials costs on Black lives have been well documented in the United States. The pandemic, however, showed the wider public how long-standing violence, disinvestment, and oppression affect Black lives. It also illustrated how anti-Black racism disproportionately exposes Black people to harm. And it also deprives them of their full humanity and the opportunity to nurture and express their full capabilities and flourish. In short, the pandemic unmasked and publicly discredited the systems that support anti-Black racism.
International demonstrations of support for the value of Black life reflected not just solidarity for Black people in the United States but also the parallel worldwide struggle.
But the United States has a unique role in overcoming anti-Black racism. First, its founders forged it within the crucible of white supremacy and anti-Black racism. Second, these related ideologies and structures are enmeshed within its identity. Third, it has the second largest population of Black people outside the African continent — the largest is Brazil — who have always engaged in this struggle. And fourth, it is the epicenter of this global struggle. We should not be surprised then at the brutality or swiftness of the backlash to this public unmasking.
There has never been, however, a more potent period to constructively engage anti-Black racism and to lay the groundwork for what comes next. Contrary to what some would have us believe, this healing, re-imagining work is just getting started. There is no nobler, purer time to return to. Justice Herself is calling us forward. The resources for constructive engagement have not been spent. Actually, the resources are abundant if we know where to look.
In my next article I explore my own relationship with spiritual activism. Stay tuned.
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