Kiese, Thank You

I just read Kiese Laymon’s essay My Head is a Part of My Body and Other Notes on Crazy from the anthology edited by Tarana Burke and Brene Brown — You Are Your Best Thing.

Every time I read something from Laymon, I feel like I’m punched in the gut and I can barely breathe. And then when I realize I’ve been holding my breath I take a few deep sighs and normalize my breathing again. The feeling morphs to intense gratitude for the vulnerability of his stories. Gratitude that this country, bathed in the stew of a doctrine of white body supremacy, has not killed him yet.

A few years ago I read and re-read his memoir, Heavy, after reading Roxanne Gay’s book, Hunger. He writes it as a letter to his mother, and uses “I wanted to write a lie.” Though I am a white-presenting Mexican-American woman, I empathized deeply with the crimes that had been enacted upon his body. I wondered when this country will wake up to it’s origin story, own up to the cruelty enacted upon so many “bodies of culture” (thank you Resmaa Menakem for the term).

The recent essay uses “That’s crazy” as its refrain. And it recounts the ways in which the white medical establishment has discounted the Black body and the Black psyche. Every time I am tempted to consider how things may have changed since George Floyd’s dying image burned its way into our consciousness, I am humbled by the ways things stay the same.

Kiese interrogates how his experience with white doctors is different from Black doctors, and shows us where the crazy truly resides. It is not in his head, or if it is, it was implanted there by a culture that still devalues Black bodies in brutal ways. Dr. Imani Walker opens a window of insight into his relationship to “crazy” by helping him realize “everything [he] thought was wrong with [him] was everything the nation engineered to ail Black folk in this country.”

During the early days of this pandemic two years ago I was struck by the class inequalities of essential workers. While most knowledge workers were able to stay home and shelter in place, those who were doing tasks deemed essential were not accorded the same respect.

The week before the pandemic I had been let go from my university job, something I suspected might happen, but was still shocked to absorb. I recalled a Black colleague who had told me to be careful, and to be patient with the changes I wanted to make. He believed in what I was doing, and knew that the place we worked would need to slowly absorb my plan. I confessed that I wasn’t sure I was patient enough. It felt odd, coming from a corporate role where I’d spent 11 plus years developing my expertise, to suddenly be put in the starting gate again.

I was no longer a clinical research expert with a successful record. This was a white world and hierarchy I hadn’t experienced in the same way in the medical device sector. I’d been used to navigating the obvious patriarchy that existed in a male-dominated leadership, and hadn’t imagined a university could be worse.

The light bulb went on when one day we discussed a protocol that aimed to measure pain interventions using new technology. I had read the protocol in advance, and had wondered how they would recruit a proportional number of Latino and Black individuals, given the proposed study design. I’d discussed my feedback with a colleague in advance, knowing that there is a bias against delivering proper pain medicine to those who are fat, or are people of color. I had my mother as an example. And I had a lifelong database of stories about what I consider medical malpractice.

Yet when I asked the question, “What are you doing to recruit non-English speakers, and other people who might benefit from your research?” I was met with a dismissive answer that pointed to their commitment to white fragility. “Oh, we are often told by our foreign colleagues that Americans are the worst at tolerating pain.” They give people a lot less pain medicine than we do.

It was an odd answer to me, and I tried to ask it again in a way that reflected the bias that I was aware was already in the research.

Again dismissed.

Crazy?

Yes, Kiese. It was completely crazy. Sitting there in the room with a group of visibly white researchers, I started to understand what he meant by Americans. He wasn’t talking about me, a bi-cultural Mexicana, and he wasn’t concerned about the ableism and racism of his study design. That review upset me initially. Nobody on the research team seemed to hear me when it came to my input. This was clearly a researcher who brought in more than his share of grant money for the university.

And yet, this design was set up to perpetuate the stereotypes that are already baked into the medical establishment, under-representing women, cultural minorities, and those with disabilities.

At first I was enraged, and at least one or two other colleagues empathized with me. Then I went numb, lulled into the complacency that so many others have developed through a kind of learned helplessness that develops especially at large, hierarchical institutions.

I’d seen many staff exhibit this complacency as I had begun my “first 6 months” tour of the university, when I wasn’t expected to deliver much in my new role. I was traversing the “lay of the land” and learning how things work.

Crazy.

I noticed the ways in which staff of color were placed in certain meetings, cluttering their calendars with activities which required them to slice their time more thinly than their white colleagues. I became aware of how my own space, located next to a busy conference room, was not conducive to focused work for me. My manager and director had offices with doors, and they were able to close out interruptions when necessary.

A person with ADHD is told not to disclose. And though I wanted to, I wanted to “write a lie” to avoid exposure.

Crazy.

When Mr. Laymon explains the practice of “Ode and Apology” at the end of his essay, it helps pull me into my own relationship of violence with my own body. The mean things I’ve said to myself after gorging on a half bag of chocolate chips, or a sleeve of Thin Mints. The ways in which I have run so many miles as punishment to atone for the perceived sins of my body. A body that wanted protection, not pain.

“It’s crazy what this nation does to our heads. It’s crazier than many of us who have the means still think our heads are undeserving of help.”

I’m grateful you have not (yet) died at the hands of a white doctor in America, Mr. Laymon. Clearly, it’s not for their lack of trying.