ATTENTION:
If you are black in America right now, you’re probably feeling pretty unsafe, especially if you’re in the south. If you are black in America right now with Schizophrenia, you’re probably feeling pretty unsafe, especially if you don’t have a lot of support. Chances are you don’t have a lot of support.
We know racism has been around. This ain’t nothing new to us. Some places you see it more than others. For example, the South tends to be a prime example of blatant, flamboyant displays of hatred. Here in California, in Santa Cruz, things are more subtle. You’ll have the skinhead clerk ring up your groceries, toss them aside, not ask you if you want a bag, never look you in the eyes, whereas he’ll greet the white woman in front of you and the white man behind you with a pearly smile.
(He works at The Dollar Store on Portola, if you’re reading this and from Santa Cruz. At least, he was. I haven’t seen him in a while.)
If you are biracial or light skinned, you might experience a lesser racism here in Santa Cruz if you keep quiet. If they assume you’re hispanic, you won’t be treated as equal but you’ll be offered more opportunities than your black friends, especially in school. If they are confused of who you are, if they see your brown skin, your curly hair, but don’t hear a thick accent industries have coined as “black”, they will treat you as an unknown. An unknown is just as dangerous. I’ve had four cop cars (a total of eight cops) called on me for a license plate light that wasn’t out. They kept my boyfriend and I sitting in the car for a total of thirty minutes while they ran my license, my insurance, huddled in a group behind my car, flooded us with white light from two SUVs. Had I let my anger or fear show, the night may have ended very differently.
Feeling hunted is a prime experience of paranoia. I think the reason this has not exacerbated my paranoia is because there is valid reason to fear existence right now.
It’s different now. The racists are coming out to play.
A local black woman (catch her page: @bellagmo on IG), someone who has been integral in bringing the community together during this time, was chased down the street on Fourth of July by a white person screaming “I”ll be racist if I want, black bitch!”. She continued her rant, saying she was downtown every day, hunting her–people like her. Black women, men, people. She made active, verbal threats caught on camera, things like, “I will fuck you up!” The police gave her a stern finger wag. A rope tied as a noose was seen hanging on a sign up by our University campus: UCSC.
There is so much hate against us in this county, in the world. And where do we get to go to express this pain?
Our white therapist?
Our white psychiatrist?
Our white Primary Care?
The nearest black therapist accepting patients is over 4 hours away.
There is an inherent feeling of being bonded with people of the same ethnicity. This does not mean other ethnicities can’t be helpful, supporting, or amazingly kind. It just means it’s not the same. My white therapist isn’t going to understand when I say watching people with my skin color and darker, people with my culture, people who talk the same as me, eat the same foods as me, like the same music, the same stories, have the same BLOODLINE as me, getting slaughtered on film makes me feel hunted. They won’t understand when I say it brings up a sadness generations deep. They won’t understand when I say I just want to stay inside, and not just because of COVID. They won’t understand when I say I feel like I’m doing all I can to be involved with my community but that I still don’t feel like it’s enough. They won’t understand when I talk about how invisible I felt growing up in a school system that labeled me hispanic and refused to acknowledge my own culture, who refused to teach the reality of my ancestors. They won’t understand the damage done by people who told me I wasn’t black, that I was Oreo, without even knowing my history.
You know what they’ll tell me?
Maybe it’s time to stay away from the news.
Because they don’t understand that when one of us gets shot, hanged, threatened, I will still know. The news doesn’t need to tell me. I feel it in my heart.
If you think this is just another person whining about inequality, you damn right.
I’m not whining, I’m putting the truth in your face.
I grew up unable to talk, terrified to do so, Selectively Mute. My voice was never encouraged and so I never developed one. And that, my friends, is the definition of genocide: to silence a people until their screams are just as invisible as their being. They’ve done it to Native Americans and indigenous people across the globe. They’ve taken their names, their language, tried to warp their culture, shame them as alcoholics, drug addicts, shove them in the corner of the classroom and forget about them after the bell rings.
I’m tired of walking around with this fucking weight on my chest. It feels like I can’t breathe, and it’s not because of COVID. It’s anxiety. It’s all this anger and confusion and sadness that I’m carrying with my ancestors who marched from their native area of what is now called Tennessee down to the western part of what is now called Mississippi. It’s all this anger and confusion and sadness that I’m carrying with my ancestors who were tossed, chained, onto a boat by pale men who didn’t speak their language, who didn’t respect our pleads for our children, for our lives, for our existence as a culture.
And now you expect me to respect yours?
My mother’s family is Polish. They fled Poland to escape World War 2.
No matter what ancestral part of me you rip into, I’ve been running, fighting, fearful, crying. My first instinct, whenever confronted with a problem, even the smallest thing, is to escape, hide, retreat, survive. A white therapist interprets this as chemical imbalance. Do you see the problem here?
I have been carrying this anger and fear since I can remember forming memories. It’s not just coming out because the racists are. It’s always been here and I’ve never talked about it because I’m supposed to keep my composure. I’m supposed to “let the past be the past.” I’m suppose to “just live in the now.” It’s not something therapists bring up because they have no idea it exists. Now I have voices in my head telling me to kill myself, and I attempted it in 2018. I also have voices that protect me, that feel with me, that make me laugh. I have voices I consider my ancestors and that, to me, isn’t a disorder.
I have anxiety that alerts me when I need to run, which is all the time. I’m constantly running. I’m constantly breathing hard. Just as all my brothers and sisters today, I’m having to carry 400 years of agony.
I remember growing up learning how we are apart of the animals, the Earth, the plants, the air, the sun, way before I learned the physics and math that say the same. I remember learning about both The Christian God and The Creator. I grew up with the last name Dauterive, the name of a man I am not biologically related to; my father’s biological father’s last name is Ware. My family is scattered. My grandmother grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. My father grew up in Sacramento. He moved to Santa Cruz, and we didn’t stay in contact with his family very much. I don’t know much about them other than bits of native history, food recipes, and cultural things my dad passed down. His dad grew up in Louisiana. I will never know what boat his ancestors came off of. I will never know what my name really is.
Dauterive is the last name of four different slave owners in Louisiana.
Who knows what Ware is attached to.
If you are black and have struggled with psychosis, anxiety, depression, bipolar, or any other label, understand that the medications you take (I have taken them in the past as well) are tested on white people for less than four months. If you’ve struggled finding one that works well with your body, or one that has strange side effects no one else seems to get, this may be a reason why. Understand that if you are a black woman, most of the med trials are done with white, middle-aged men. The trainings therapists receive are not culturally aware, they are based on white culture. Understand that it is up to you and I to break down the stigma in our own family and help our older parents understand that our mental health is not just some “defect” or “disorder” or “chemical imbalance”, it’s also the result of our genes being bombarded with environmental, traumatic triggers for 400 years.
This trauma is in our nervous system. We aren’t getting anxious for no reason. There is a reason: never having been safe. Never having been free. Being labeled dangerous, disgusting, dirty, less than human.
To my black, native, and biracial brothers and sisters: we no longer need to keep it in. We no longer need to keep our composure. We have a right to be angry. We have a right to demand change. We have a right to rest when we need to. We have a right to make racists uncomfortable.
We have a right to use our voice.
It’s taken me 25 years to learn this, and I’m not ashamed. I’m angry.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the kind of passion that can come from an angry person. But let me tell you. It’s somethin.
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