My Whitewashed Understanding of the World
I remember the early days of treatment post-diagnosis vividly at times, and very vaguely at others. The one feeling that permeates through the entire experience is a sense of shock at how much I didn’t know about mental health. As a fairly educated person, I guess I always saw my view of the world as ‘accurate and informed’. But as the saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” and that’s the best way I can describe it.
There were some things I felt I should have known and those things definitely upset me. Family history, for example, felt like something that I could have been privy to, even in my teenage years when I first started to experience and understand the concept of stress. There were other things that seemed like general health and wellness facts that I was surprised I didn’t know more about. As the months passed after my diagnosis, and I wrestled with my own identity, I realized why every family story hadn’t been shared. It started to make more sense as I got historical context around mental health and how mental health disorders were understood and stigmatized in the world, long before my time. But I was still confused as to why the “adults” in my life hadn’t at least shared or talked about their own struggles and the ups and downs that life presents.
These same feelings have been rolling around in the pit of my stomach for the past seven months. An unsettling feeling that my previous understanding of the world and how things work is completely false. Based on misinformation and a whitewashed representation of history. My eyes were not fully open to the systemic issues and oppressive systems we put in place in this country to keep Black people and people of color down. I did not understand that even just one generation ago there were systems in place to prevent Black families from living in suburban areas, and this year, in 2020, there are people in the suburb I grew up in putting letters from “Whites of Wauwatosa” in people’s mailboxes filled with racism, hate and a statement that Black people are not welcome in Tosa.
My heart has been so heavy since this summer, and it’s due to a new understanding of the world around me. A new understanding that has entirely shifted my view of the world we live in and made me think about the type of world I want to live in. Since the death of George Floyd, I’ve been doing a lot of self-education through books, documentaries, advocates, and activists. I wanted to better understand systemic racism, and I’ve been working to identify my own biases. It’s been hard, but the first step was acknowledging the fact that my understanding of history and the “why” behind racial wealth gaps, for example, were all presented to me through a white lens. A lens where people don’t want to see their race’s wrongdoings in their history, so they were omitted.
This summer was obviously not the first time that police brutality, racial injustice, and systemic issues were screaming for attention and honesty in this country, but for me, it was the first time that I was not only shocked by what was happening but enraged when I thought of everything my black friends and colleagues need to endure in a single day just to get through. The daily slights and slashes this America inflicts on them both systemically and on a personal human to human level. One of my colleagues shared a lengthy post just days after May 25th, about their experience growing up in the Minneapolis area. They wrote about their experience as a person of color in that area, and how his father was stopped and harassed by cops weekly. Sometimes multiple times a week. Threatened, belittled, and made to feel like nothing by the men who are supposed to be protecting us. Serving us. Finally, my colleague’s family left. I say finally because I couldn’t bear to think that someone would have to live like that because of the color of their skin. But it wasn’t ‘finally’ to them. It was having to uproot from a community. Having to leave school. Having to financially make a move! All because the local police got enjoyment out of harassing his father for being from a different country. For not speaking English, their way. This story will never leave me. I knew immediately that if I was going to be passionate about this topic and begin to have meaningful dialogues, I needed to be educated.
I started with a book called The Color of Law. As I consumed page by page of this history and fact-stuffed book, I was shocked to learn about the story of our country’s governmental housing, how it actually came to be, and how it worked to elevate and lift up white Americans and chain down people of color. To put it in simple terms, government housing was created as a response to our war veterans needing a place to live when they returned home from war. Government housing was built—and segregated. Residences for white veterans included amenities like parks and governmental resources. They were also set up in a way that allowed their white tenants to acquire ownership (and wealth) as they paid their monthly rent.
Black veterans were given leases with unfair contractual clauses that could make them homeless, left with nothing, should something like a late payment occur. Their housing also came with less resources such as libraries, and parks, and was segregated to its own area away from white housing. In many cases upon returning home from war, Black veterans had trouble finding work, and when they did find factories that would employ them, their commutes were always longer due to blocking of them being able to live, rent, or own in the neighborhoods surrounding their job. Redlining. The Color of Law shares examples from many cities - most notably the Bay Area in California and also where I live in Milwaukee, WI. One of the most segregated cities in America.
These constant uphill battles are just part of the greater picture that Richard Rothstein paints when he states it is our duty as a nation to help support and recover these people that we so wrongfully held back. This was when my mindset started to shift and I opened my eyes to learn more about the oppressions and systems, from the people they were imposed upon. I can’t do an entire history lesson in one blog post, and there’s no way to distill the past seven months of what I’ve read and watched into a few paragraphs here, but what I can tell you is that our systems are broken. The way we treat Black people in this country needs to change. From the mass incarceration and unfair sentencing of things like marijuana, or in the 80s the difference between coke and crack cocaine or the gaps in health care and access to unbiased treatment in hospitals and doctors’ offices.
When we’re able to understand that being racist isn’t just when someone is mean or discriminatory to a person of different ethnicity, but the simple act of a woman crossing to the other side of the street because there’s a black man walking towards her, then we’ll be able to begin working towards a place of understanding and appreciation for those who are different from us. Not a fear. That behavior, for example, is a reaction to the systemic racism and negative, fear based images of the Black race that our media has portrayed and perpetuated.
The reason this is so important to me, and the reason that I want to share my shift in perspective with you all, is because I know so many of you want the same thing as me. To live in a world where people are valued based on who they are as a person and not what they look like. That they are judged by the quality of their character and not a diagnosis or color of their skin. To get there we need to address, face, and point out broken systems and the oppression of marginalized people wherever we see it. We need to use our privilege, and for some of us our whiteness, to call attention to and action around these issues.
As I first wrote this piece, the grand jury’s decision in the case of Breonna Taylor’s death was announced. I was angry, saddened, hurt, but more than anything I was worried about my friends. About my Black friends and friends of color who continue to be told by the systems and the people of power in this country, their lives don’t matter.
A friend of mine told me in late October that she had to drive through some rural parts of Wisconsin in the past few weeks for work and was thankful her white business partner was with her because the jumbo Trump signs and the painted garages with hate messages are enough to make you hope and pray your car doesn’t break down when you’re Black. And that’s why I’m going to keep talking about these issues and calling attention to your understanding of how the world works. Is it mainly rooted in a white perspective? Have you considered how you can make an impact on someone else’s life in a more meaningful way than what you stand to lose should you choose the other option?
My understanding of mental health and mental health disorders or diagnoses in 2017 is worlds different than my understanding today. Just over 2 years balanced, post-hospitalization. I not only now know bipolar disorder from my own perspective and experiences, but I also understand mental health as someone who spent nearly 2 months in daily therapy from 8 am to 5 pm. As I’ve learned, lived, and listened to topics surrounding mental health and wellness these past 2 years, I’ve developed my thinking on many things. I’ve changed my lifestyle in many ways. Even my friends and family have a new understanding of bipolar disorder. The way it presents itself. And that is because of their love for me and their interest in what they can do to support me.
I can draw no better parallel than what has happened to me this year, with my understanding of systemic racism in this country, and my hope to help move us in a direction of change. Whether you have all the time in the world or no time at all, I challenge you to think about racism in this country and the systemic ways you fit in. It’s hard. It hurts. It’s scary. But it’s so important if we really want to make this place better for everyone living in it. Whether it’s watching a documentary, listening to a podcast, reading a book, or checking out an activist IGTV, expose yourself to the truths and opinions of others, and work to get better - even if it’s just one step every day.
