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The Four-letter Word People Don’t Want To Hear Or Talk About

By Dr. Peter Sealy
Pride Columnist

There is a word that many people don’t want to hear or even talk about. Both Black and White people feel uncomfortable when you use it. The country of Sweden wants to eliminate the word. Some people think that you are just stirring up trouble when you mention it. But he who feels it knows it. I am talking about that social construct that is punitive on identification called race. We don’t need the shooting of a Black male by police to confirm the realities of race for us. The way Black people are treated globally as a result of race, is bigger than police brutality and starts from birth. Race affects every single aspect of our lives. When a person falls asleep, race sleeps right beside them. Sometimes race snores so loudly, that it wakes the entire house up. People in the house become so angry that they protest. The problem though, is that race never sleeps without snoring. It is just that people use “earplugs of denial” to try to get a restful sleep. But hide our heads under the pillow all we like, race will never stop snoring unless we talk about it. So if you don’t want to talk about it I will. Do you want to know my reasons? I don’t like sticking things in my ears and I don’t like people who keep snoring.

I was awake with my ears opened, when I heard a parent saying the following to a child:  “look, who you running a race with child? If ya choke on one of those dumplings, don’t ask me to take you to the hospital, because nobody aint running no race with you.” I felt like saying to the parent, if you don’t want the child to choke, stop making the cornmeal dumplings so big and tough. But if you knew that parent’s mouth, you would probably not say anything. It is the same with the other type of race, people would rather you not say anything either.

In today’s society when you mention race, people say you are too sensitive, you are playing the race card, that’s reverse racism and you have a chip on your shoulder. Come to think of it, I always thought about that one having a chip on the shoulder. Maybe it started as a chip at birth, but now as a man, it has become a large rock like a yoke.

There is also the tired old mantra of ‘opportunity for all’ when you talk about race. But opportunity for all doesn’t equal access for all. Living as a raced-individual, can sometimes feel like being in a boxing ring. You get a left in the ribs that numb your entire left side. Then you get a right and you are told that now you are alright.

When we develop a mental illness, the mainstream health care system does not acknowledge our alternative healing practices. The pain that we continue to suffer, that can be considered our socio-historical pathologies, are never taken up in a diagnosis, and our health issues are viewed as “strange”.  The problem with race is that you are beaten into submission so that you cannot talk about it anymore. But when you “throw in the towel,” structural inequality and racism is allowed a clear path to persist.

The life experiences of Black people are not given any consideration in the education system. Racist speculations continue to afflict, categorize and portray a false picture of us. How do we get a system of education to be understanding of our race related realities? What about our shared and intrapsychic realities and intergenerational trauma? Is society going to continue to close their ears to our stories on race?  Why do we tiptoe through the tulips when it comes to race?  Why all the song and dance around our pain due to race? As a society we value the huge profits made from the cultural dance but not the dancers.

About six months ago, there was a woman who would pass me every morning with her child of about three years old. When she was getting close to me on the sidewalk, she would grab her child hands tightly and give me a lot of space to pass. After about one month of this behaviour the child blurted out, “I don’t like Black people right mom”? The mother was mortified and turned red like a cherry. She started to apologize profusely to me. However the next day onwards the mother would now say hello to me. Another White woman noticed the interaction between me and the mother and child on one occasion. She was very annoyed and said to me that I should have told the woman that my Blackness would not rub off on her or the child. I told her that a comment like that from a Black man to a White woman could open up a big can of worms for me. She thought for a bit and then said, “Yes, I know what you mean. In any event, I never cared much for worms. As a society, we need to teach people not to be racist.”

A Black woman, attending University in the greater Toronto area, said to me that she did a group presentation with two White female students. A few days later, one of the students sent her an email saying that we all got an A grade for our presentation. When the Black woman checked her results she got a B grade. She noted to me that she did most of the work for the presentation. The African Canadian woman spoke to the White professor who refused to change her grade. She told me that it doesn’t matter how hard she works, she always get a B grade. In order for her to survive in University and not lose her sanity, she tells herself that the B stands for Black.

Maybe we should start looking at race as educational. Every time a professor gives us a bad mark or we get treated unfairly due to race we read a book. Dammit, I don’t know I give up. Probably I should never give up and you shouldn’t either. We could ask parents to tell their youngsters, faced with the same or similar situations, to read Pride News weekly. It would surely boost their cultural pride and self-esteem. If those youngsters tell you no because their brains are full; tell them you are not cooking for two weeks.

When you have been victimized due to your race, it is important to pinpoint and understand how  your body responds. Identify your reaction and try to be aware of the warning signs. Try not to internalize the negativity said or done to you. Don’t engage in self-blame, self-doubt or criticism of yourself. Find someone to whom you can talk and share your feelings. Hold your head up in the face of trials and tribulations and never let anyone or anything ever break your spirit. Love yourself and stay away from negative people. Remember to keep positive thoughts.  Focus on your breathing and breathe from the lowest part of your stomach and not from your chest.

Many years ago, I did a project called colours of the rainbow with grade four children, to show them that all children matter regardless of culture. I asked them to paint the colours of the rainbow. We used colours like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. For each colour of the rainbow, I assigned a child from a different cultural background. I explained the importance of each colour to the project and in the same context the child. The rule of the project was that you couldn’t use any colour crayon, without the child representing that cultural group assisting you. Excluding a child would mean leaving out a colour, which would also mean that you could not correctly colour the rainbow.  We proved that every child mattered to the completion of the project and every child irrespective of culture mattered period.  Children who formerly worked by themselves were now eager to work with children from other cultural backgrounds.  So add a little colour to your life and it may change the way you look at the world.

I wanted to investigate the effects of race. My experiment involved one group of participants who listened to my presentation on race, watched a film on race realities, talked about their experiences with race and did skits and other activities. Another group wasn’t exposed to anything to do with race. Rather they played dominoes, card games, listened to music, wrote poetry and other fun stuff. At the end of the session, I observed aggression, anxiety, expressions of low self-esteem and signs of withdrawal from the group exposed to the session on race. I had to conduct a very intense debriefing session with these participants. I also had to check in with them for the next two weeks after the experiment to make sure that they were okay. During the debriefing after the experiment, participants were encouraged to express, process and problem solve their feelings. We also practiced a new concept called “letting go”.

I followed up with the participants that were exposed to the race treatment six months later. They were now able to better problem solve life challenges, handle aggression and had higher self-esteem. Participants who weren’t exposed to the race-related treatment were happy after their fun games.

The daily beatings due to race, keep our minds in an overworked and pent-up state.  Yet we hear the same old thing, like “pork a pork no beef”.  Your pain has nothing to do with race. The mind becomes abnormal, yet the overseer says, to keep on working it is normal. We listen to the overseer and put back in the earplugs to shut out the sound of race snoring. Our lives are finely carved and policed for us by race.

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