By Sabrina Amani Administrator, Department of Psychiatry
OP-ED: How Are You Doing?
By Sabrina Amani Administrator, Department of Psychiatry
This piece was supposed to be about the senseless shooting and the loss of ten innocent lives in our California backyard this past Chinese Lunar New Year. The incident serves as another jarring example of the terrorizing and demonizing of Asian communities that, as of now, is growing largely unchecked. My colleagues in the Psychiatry Department wanted to check in with the CDU community and start a conversation around how we all are dealing with seeing this kind of shocking, mind-numbing, painful disregard for human life— yet again.
We wanted to discuss with you, our tribe, what remnants are lingering beyond the academic explanations in your minds and staining your hearts as we see us destroy each other. We know many of our marginalized cultures are often shrouded in habits which preach variations of: Don’ t speak. Be strong. Emotion is weakness. Hold your head up. Keep it moving. Most of these birthed out of the need for selfprotection but now decades later have morphed fully grown into obstacles to healing.
But by the time I finished typing a draft, there was Tyre Nichols. The video of his murder was released about four days after the Lunar New Year. I still haven’ t watched that video. I’ m too afraid to hear Tyre cry for his mother’ s help. I’ m still afraid that this stark example of self-hate and institutionalized racism displayed by our brothers will not let me forget how deeply we still are lodged in the vices of oppression
Her home, his sanctuary, loomed just 80 yards away.
In Amerikkka, his vulnerability was rampant anywhere and everywhere but in her home. I’ m too afraid that I will be reminded that, like every other non-cis, non-white person, when I am not home, I have no guaranteed sanctuary in this country. I’ m too afraid that his unanswered pleas for humanity will imprint indelibly in my mind and will be the pain that finally breaks me as I go about keeping on behind my mask, pretending I’ m doing ok.
This piece was supposed to be about what happened on the occasion of the Lunar New Year, but by the time I finished typing a draft, Keenan Anderson was tased to death by LAPD. Then there was the Half Moon Bay shooting. There was a mass shooting near a youth center in Allentown, PA; a Subway restaurant in Durham, NC; behind a beer hall in Oklahoma City; a strip club near Columbus, Ohio; two mass shootings at parties in Florida cities … and then at Michigan State University on February 13. Did you hear about any of those?
I’ m panicked that these shootings barely flicker on the front pages of the news sites now. Too many to be headline news. That’ s frightening. When I googled“ California shooting,” Google pretty much replied,“ which one?” How many others did I miss?
When all of this unfolds day after day after day, we cannot help but coexist with the persistent, subconscious feeling in our guts that whether by bullet or baton, any day could be our day. Or our sons or daughters, or our brothers or sisters, mothers or fathers may be the ones whose loss of life barely trickles across the front page of the news, causing
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 39