It’s Black Mental Health Week

This week is all about acknowledging and raising awareness of the impacts of anti-Black racism on Black people's mental health.

If I am honest, I did not start to understand the impacts of anti-Black racism on my own mental health until my mid to late twenties. I am still unpacking and working through the harm it creates everyday.

Phase 1: To be White is to be Right

I was born in Montreal but raised in Hamilton until my mid twenties. I grew up in a predominately white and francophone community. There were a dozen Black students in my elementary school, so whiteness was my reality outside of home as I did not know or see many Black professionals (i.e. teachers, police officers, piano teachers, etc) or even kids. My family didn’t speak about racism or sexism per se but growing up my mom would tell me that I would have to work twice as hard to make it, let alone excel. I didn’t understand what she meant back then.

Senior Kindergarten in Hamilton

I excelled in elementary school and had lots of friends. Despite being popular, multiple experiences made me feel different, inferior to be exact. I now recognize that I regularly experienced microaggressions and overt racism without knowing what those were - comments about my hair texture being ‘different’, my nose being big, the smelly foods my family ate, and my English sounding white, for example. These experiences made me feel like an outsider and I wished I could be white so I could fit in more easily.

I remember how visibly upset and bewildered my older brother was after being racially profiled, accused of an offense he did not commit, forced off the bus, and taken into custody after resisting. I didn’t know what to make of the experience and believed my brother most likely was in the wrong.

I can conjure up my fear, sadness, and later shame as a young girl for my father and family when the police stopped and berated him while we were driving through the States. He couldn’t get a word in with his heavy English accent and I honestly felt like we didn’t matter to the police.

My mom regularly shared her work experiences of racism as a nurse to my aunts over the phone and I saw how it impacted her health and sense of peace. I watched her reach her limit and file a complaint with the nursing union. The instances were investigated and deemed racial harassment. She stood up for herself and was vindicated but things at work didn’t seem to really improve.  

Phase 2: To be Black is to be a Threat

By the time I entered university, I had a lot of internalized racism and shame that I was unaware of. Case and point,  I joined McMaster’s African, Carribean and Black student club at 19 and I clearly remember a discussion we were having about racism holding us back as students. I chose to be the “devil’s advocate”, asking the group of female students to provide concrete examples of how racism held them back as it wasn’t my experience.

I slowly became aware of my internalized racism in University. I travelled to Haiti on numerous occasions as part of a collaborative project between McMaster’s and Haiti’s state school of Medicine, Nursing and Midwifery. At first, I was surprised to see so many brilliant and passionate Black Haitian doctors, nurses and midwives that looked like me. It seems obvious now that Haitian professionals exist but it was contrary to everything I had been told and seen growing up. The world (including my family) seems to only speak about Haiti as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, needing rescuing and global aid to survive.

I was drawn to further explore the social and structural determinants of health (specifically racism) during my Master’s degree because so many of the racist concepts and stereotypes I was taught and believed were shattered. I began to really see and understand how embedded racism is in our everyday life, from how we are brought up at home, what we are taught in schools, who is represented in the media, and at work.

Maui, Hawai’i

Like many others, the death of George was my breaking point. Although I had worked through a lot of my internalized racism and could see racism around me, I navigated work and life since graduating by being the ‘model’ employee and citizen. I thought if I just follow the rules, work hard and do good work, I could thrive like everyone else and my Blackness would not matter. George’s death shattered this lie for me.

I remember going to work after his death feeling vulnerable. People were talking about the Blue Jay’s game like if the the recording of his execution as he cried out for his mother was not viewed globally. No one mentioned his death, it was just another day. I thought I was living in an alternate reality. I locked myself into my office and cried, recognizing my Blackness was either invisible or a threat to the world, despite my efforts to insulate myself and do all the right things to prove the contrary.

Phase 3: To be me - Unapologetically Black & Beautiful

I am more than twice the age I was when I first challenged other Black students that anti-Black racism didn’t impact me. In my role as a Health Equity Specialist, I explore, teach and talk about the health impacts of anti-Black racism daily. I see the impacts that decades of negative messaging, historical erasure, and microaggressions have wreaked on my physical and mental health. I am on a never ending unpacking and healing journey in my attempts to reverse the damage that anti-Black racism has and continues to do.

For me, this looks like learning and reclaiming my Black history and identity, exposing the lies and stereotypes I embraced about my Blackness once I recognize them, allowing myself to cry and even weep when the need arises to release the harm I have held onto. I do this unpacking and healing at times alone, other times with family and friends when things come in conversation.

This has also led me to a path of self love that was always within me. I love and embrace all of myself, the healed and unhealed parts of me, the pieces that are thriving and broken. I celebrate Black culture and identity through dance (alone and with others…Ladies Dance Night, lol), through food, in my travels of Black lands in the Caribbean and I plan to explore Africa in the near future.

Escalier Tête Chien

Commonwealth of Dominica - Kalinago Territory

This week for me is a reminder to prioritize my own well being and rest as a form of self love and resistance. Thank you @thenapministry for teaching me this. It is also reminds me that we need community as some of our healing and growth cannot be done on our own. QueensConnected’s main purpose is to create collective spaces where we can be our authentic selves, celebrate, and unpack the harms we face so we can be more unapologetic.

Join QueensConnected’s Navigating Harmful Workplaces: Black and Racialized Women’s Networking Event, an evening designed for Black & racialized women, and non-binary individuals to connect, share experiences, build relationships as well as learn from industry leaders during a panel discussion.