Today I had a mammogram that had originally been scheduled for May, when nonessential medical procedures were postponed. It was the first time I’d ventured into a medical building since before the pandemic, and like every other aspect of life in the age of Corona, the old routines are distinctly different now.
There were three burly security guards at the entrance of the medical facility, all masked. Immediately inside was a screening station where you had to answer medical questions before picking up a disposable mask and a bright green GUEST decal that indicated you’d passed the health screening.
I didn’t feel comfortable taking an elevator even though signs indicated only one or two passengers were allowed at a time; instead, I took the stairs to my appointment on the fifth floor. In the hallways, drinking fountains were barricaded “out of an abundance of caution,” and decals on the floor indicated where to stand and wait for the receptionist to check you in.
In the waiting room, three chairs were spaced with wide empty space between them. There were no magazines or tables: nothing that could be touched and need to be disinfected. After my name was called, the mammographer took me directly into the exam room: gone was the extra step of disrobing in a partitioned changing room where you could leave your clothes in a locker. Again, having a separate changing room created too many surfaces to disinfect.
Instead, the mammographer left me alone in the exam room–just me, the massive mammography machine, and a lone chair–to disrobe and change into a gown she’d left for me: just one gown instead of the piles of small, medium, and large ones you’d normally choose from in the changing room.
Mammography is a high-touch procedure: it simply cannot be done while observing social distance. There is a lot of manipulating as the mammographer positions your breast on the glass plates of the mammography machine, and the two of you are in close contact–like dance partners, intertwined–for the minute or two it takes for her to arrange your arms and shoulders out of the imaging plane: turn your face this way, turn your torso that way, lean your shoulder here, point your feet and backside there.
The mammographer steps behind a plexiglass shield when she takes the actual images, telling you when to breathe and when to hold your breath, and during the procedure you are literally hugging the imaging equipment, your hands gripping the same hand-holds as every other woman who has gone before you. For this reason, the mammographer wiped down the machine before my procedure, explaining that she cleans the equipment after each patient leaves and again within sight of the next patient, a redundancy I appreciated.
When the procedure was done, I waited briefly for the results in case the radiologist wanted more images. Again, I waited in the exam room itself–one less space to sanitize–trying not to think about how many other women before me had sat and exhaled in the same chair in the same enclosed room.
I would never say that mammography is a tender procedure: mammographers manipulate your body in ways that would be manhandling in any other context, and the machine itself smashes and irradiates tissue that is particularly sensitive to pressure. But as my mammographer twisted my body into place, telling me to turn my face directly toward hers, I found myself holding my breath to save her from the tender intimacy of my (masked) exhalation.
This time last year, I took myself to an author talk with Elizabeth Gilbert in Harvard Square. This year, all author talks are virtual, and I can’t remember the last time I was in Harvard Square. When will it feel safe to go into a crowd again–to mingle with strangers? The rush of community–the thrill you feel walking down a crowded street or congregating with other readers, sports fans, or theater-goers–is something the virus has stolen from us, at least for now.
Today J and I went walking at Minute Man National Historic Park. J had never walked down the Battle Road there, and it has been a long time since I’ve been walking there: a year or so, or more? This time, I was mindful of the space between us and other walkers, joggers, and cyclists, and I carefully noted whether each passerby was or wasn’t wearing a mask. Strangers in the time of COVID-19 have become something dangerous or at least suspect: a new form of stranger danger.
On our way back to our car, J and I saw a large family posing for a group photo, one of the family members taking a photo of all the rest. In the Before Time, we might have stopped and offered to take a picture of all of them, together: the kind of thing Friendly Strangers used to do. Instead, I quickly calculated the potential risk in my head: the risk of stopping, the risk of drawing near enough to offer help, and the risk of touching and taking a photo with someone else’s phone.
The risk was too great, so we walked on. It will be a while, I think, before being a friendly stranger feels safe again.
This weekend, J and I watched CNN coverage of the protests in Minneapolis, Atlanta, and elsewhere over the death of George Floyd. It was a mistake to watch: cable news is an addictive drug that does more to fuel rage than to illuminate or change minds. But we watched the same story we’ve seen play out before, with angry protestors facing off against officers in riot gear until someone blinked, blood was shed, and everybody lost.
After every senseless killing of unarmed black men, there is the same hand-wringing. White folks like me insist we aren’t racist while wondering how racism nevertheless endures. Can’t we all just get along, we ask, then we insist that some of our best friends are black. I always go out of my way to be nice to everyone, we insist, arguing that we don’t even see color.
But if white folks like me don’t see color, how can we see racism? “Not seeing color” is an excuse well-meaning but complacent white folks use to avoid the difficult and messy work of dismantling a system we didn’t design but that shields us in a protective cocoon. If I’m not racist, then racism is someone else’s problem, and I have no responsibility to fix it.
But racism is an ideology, not “just” an individual worldview, and ideologies are inherited. It isn’t your fault if you were born with a genetic predisposition toward addiction, heart disease, or cancer, but if you are aware of your congenital risk, you can make conscious choices to mitigate those circumstances. Just because you didn’t cause a problem doesn’t mean you have no responsibility for responding to it.
If you were born and raised in America, you inherited the problem of white supremacy. You didn’t cause or create it, but you were born into the consequences. Picture yourself being born atop someone else’s shitheap, and you’ve grown up your whole life breathing in that stench.
Proclaiming that this isn’t your shitheap–you didn’t build it, you don’t add to it, and you neither approve of or condone it–doesn’t make the pile and its smell disappear, and neither does trying to hide, cover, or distract from it. The only way to get rid of a massive, centuries-old pile of shit is to grab a shovel and start digging.
This is what anti-racists mean when they talk about doing the work. Yes, you can march; yes, you can wave a sign, post on social media, and vow to be a nicer, kinder, and more equitable person. But the shitpile of racism is higher and deeper than that. It’s a problem that’s bigger than a few shitty cops; it’s an entire social system that rests on the flawed, deeply rooted, and often unconscious assumption that there is something wrong, innately criminal, or just plain deficient about nonwhite folks.
American history rests on this premise. It’s how generations of slaveholders justified keeping humans as property, and it’s how generations of settlers justified taking land from Native people. It’s how countless capitalists up to and including the present day have justified policies such as redlining, segregation, and mass incarceration. The opportunity gap between white and black isn’t accidental; it’s intentionally designed.
The ideology of white supremacy explains why jogging while black is an executable offence and why a white dog-walker felt justified in calling the cops on a black birdwatcher who dared ask her to leash her dog. These individual actions are heinous, but they are not anomalous. People do shitty things to people of color not in isolation but within the context of a system that stands on a shitty foundation.
So what should we do? White people like me ask this question again and again after each upsetting incident, then we quickly return to our comfortable complacency, noseblind to the shitheap we’ve inherited.
White folks like me need to do the work of dismantling white supremacy, and that work varies from person to person: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. Wherever you are, what row do you have to hoe? We each have implicit biases to understand, acknowledge, and uproot, and we each are stakeholders in social systems we can work to change from within.
If you are a teacher, how can you teach for justice? If you are a parent, how can you raise children who are more aware and self-aware? If you are a business owner, banker, or insurance adjuster, how can you do your job more justly and intentionally, with an eye toward greater equity, and how can you urge your colleagues and organizations to do the same?
The scenes from this past week prove that white folks like me are not doing enough: whatever our current comfort zone is, we each need to inch further outside of it. March if you can, but make that marching your first step, not your last. Individual action and collective change work together like two hands. Do your part, insist that your elected officials do theirs, and hold both yourself and your leaders accountable.
Since I am a reader, I start with books: if you’re white like me, educating yourself is essential. Some books I wish were required reading include Carol Anderson’s White Rage, Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, Crystal Fleming’s How to Be Less Stupid About Race, Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning, and Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race.
If you’re white like me, these books will challenge you; they aren’t comfortable reading, and that discomfort is the first step toward change. Cleaning up a shitheap is difficult, messy, and unpleasant work, but ignoring that shitheap is even worse.
Hoarded Ordinaries 