I don't think I can fully put into words how frustrated I have been lately.
But here I am trying.
After slouching Chad's tired body off of me, I got back up in the middle of the night to start typing this. It feels like all I can do.
I had the honor of being able to attend an event by End Youth Prisons MN which was the launch of their campaign to close youth prisons and to stop charging overwhelmingly Black and Brown youth as adults. It was heartbreaking to hear the stories of previously incarcerated youth as young as 16, 17 talking about the confusing and harrowing process of being classified as an adult and being interrogated without representation present. This is one branch of a larger tree of white supremacy and the Prison Industrial Complex.
Youth had the opportunity to say what they would do if they had $10 million for the community versus the incarceration of youth that is being done with it now. Many of the youth said they would invest in parks and opportunities for young people to hang out with one another in safe environments.
In the eyes of one young man, no older than 17 years old, you saw the childlike twinkle in his eyes when he said, "I remember I used to love sports. I know they're not for everyone but football... when I used to play, it didn't matter what was going on at home or on the streets. I wanted to be a star". Every kid deserves the opportunity to have dreams like this and have a real shot at them. He really just wanted opportunities for kids beyond the limited options that contribute to higher incarceration rates.
These issues are public health issues. They're not marginally public health issues, they are fully and centrally public health crises. Starting especially in 2020, states across the country have moved to declare racism as a public health crisis. To me, this feels like such a waste of time if it isn't coupled with an actionable change to address the way that our systems, systems that interact with the public's health, are perpetuating harm to Black and Brown bodies.
I don't want to even talk about racism but rather bodily harm.
Public health, and health generally, is much more than the state of our bodies. It connects mind, body, and spirit. If we are spiritually or mentally unwell, it impacts our overall health. We know this. So the conversation around racism being a public health crisis makes perfect sense. The only reason that I shy away from using "racism" is because it fosters this focus on interpersonal racism as the main problem. It isn't about policing as a structure, it's about racist cops. It isn't about medicine and healthcare as a whole not addressing any salient solutions to health problems attributable to social conditions, but rather racist individual doctors.
There is a quote from Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre that says, "White supremacy is not a shark; it is the water". Guante brings up something that isn't new to my writing: we are living in a society that is inundated, seeped, and gushing out white supremacist ideals and structures in every single area. I want to illuminate something in this quote, however: I don't think that racism is the same thing as white supremacy, at least not in the way it is discussed in the dominant culture.
If white supremacy is the water, then racism is the shark.
Racism is the thing that we can see and identify as the big and scary and bad person or phrase or action. The shark is the symbol of danger in the ocean. It is recognized as such. For white people, it's often a shock to the system. Their bodies have adjusted and flourished in the sea of white supremacy. For Black and Brown people-- especially those that are fat, queer, or disabled-- the shark is a reminder. They know for if they breathe too deeply, they might start to choke. The water is already killing them, the shark is just another vehicle.
So, cool, declare racism as a public health crisis. But don't think that it is absolving health disparities caused by white supremacy even in conversation. The reluctance to acknowledge that what is killing us is state-sanctioned and sponsored by Walmart and Aramark is really the most frustrating part to me.
All this being said, I really want to try and figure out how we address this. How do we treat the water we're in so we can all breathe deeply and fully and what do we do about the shark?
The thing is, I don't think we should ever focus on the bad actors prior to addressing the environment. Why? Because if we don't look upstream in our efforts to address structural issues, we're just ignoring the very thing that allowed bad actors to thrive.
Some people will never stop being racist and hateful. I wish I could say that we could convert everyone to be loving, kind humans but we really can't. People's ideologies may never change. We are wasting our time trying to say we'll get rid of all the racists in positions of varying power because honestly, we probably won't.
This isn't to say give promotions, platforms, and space to racists. Of course not. Y'all better block them because you don't need that stress. What I'm saying is with all the time we have spent trying to punish racists, has it stopped Black communities' suffering? Has it stopped the criminal justice system from putting people in cages and severing families?
I was ranting about how I wanted to do more than just settle at a county-level job, make no real impact, and collect my pension. I want to spend my life making the case for funding our communities. We hear from community members what they need in their communities: better housing, access to safe spaces for youth, an ability to affordably provide for themselves, mental health services, spaces for the community to connect with one another, support for people struggling... THESE are the things that will lead to better overall health in communities of color and marginalized communities. It's not that hard! I'm convinced that we have done enough research studies with marginalized folks without giving them what we promised-- change. We build things and invest in expensive structures that have little potential in transforming health inequities for whole neighborhoods so why don't we take that same money and instead do something about it??
I'm sick of public health, social work, and all these other fields that are full of people trying to do meaningful work to support clients and communities being gatekept by politicians and self-interested researchers who don't care about radically changing the systems in which people continue to suffer.
I talked about this in my funding structures post, but I don't even want to have this be something that is funded as a one-off intervention by a grant. I know we have to do research and try stuff out and it doesn't benefit anyone to implement something that has little to no basis in evidence, but communities consistently know more than researchers give them credit for. They have been able to see the impact of defunding and divestment in their communities and this work needs to start and end with structural level changes not only in the research and political space but also in the way we talk about investing in marginalized communities.
It's going to take more than a harpoon to take this beast down.
Cover image: art by Unknown, quote by Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre
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