Dear Minority SPT
Dear Minority SPT,
You are not alone. I am writing to you about some of the challenges I have faced as a minority student physical therapist (SPT). I have a feeling you might be able to relate. Perhaps you can assist me in shedding some light on our experiences -- here it goes!
I got accepted to the University of Miami within just a few weeks after I interviewed. I was so impressed by my interview experience that I denied my acceptance to my other top 3 programs and began making plans to move from Atlanta to Miami. After all of the trouble of researching schools and the PTCAS headaches, I was confident that I had chosen a program in a culture filled city that championed diversity and service.
As a black student, diversity among my peers is a feature of community that I am naturally drawn to. It's always more comfortable if no one is the "only one". My University of Miami interview was the most diverse interview out of the four I attended; even more so than my beloved alma mater, Georgia State University, one of the most diverse historical PWI's (predominantly white institution) in the United States[1]. Yet, as diverse as it was, there were only 3 black students at my interview -- including myself. So you can imagine how the other interviews must have been, where I was most definitely the "only one".
Well that was in November of 2015. December came around and I was finally added to the University of Miami Class of 2019 Facebook group! Time to look for new roomies. Naturally, the first thing I did was look to see if there were any other black students. In the black community, we are fully aware that the higher we achieve, whether that be in education or in a certain profession, the less of us there will be. Your parents might ask you after the first day "Did you connect with the other black students/professionals?" , as a gentle reminder to look out for one another. I was following my natural instincts, looking for my other "brothas and sistas" in the program - and there were none. I wasn't worried. It was early, students were still interviewing, and there was plenty more time for students to be added to the group! So after checking the Facebook group faithfully at least once a week, just a few weeks before school began I was shocked to see only two other black women in this cohort with me, and not a single black male.
The weekend before class started, our brotha finally got added to the Facebook group! By this time I had already connected with one of the black women in my class and I immediately messaged her the fantastic news. Both of us were in committed relationships, so we weren't excited for any type of prospective dating opportunities, but just for the simple fact that one of our strong black men was here at this top 10 physical therapy program with us. It's kind of a big deal, considering only 3% of accepted applicants through PTCAS were black males for the 2015-2016 cycle[2]. We were so excited to meet him. It's a hectic process to find out you are accepted to your first pick PT program just days before class starts. Naturally, I kept an eye out to see if he would need any help. It wasn't long before I realized he wasn't having much luck finding a fellow student to crash with for orientation on Monday. My "it takes a village" instincts kicked in, and I immediately cleared it with my new roommates for him to stay with us that night. I wasn't going to leave him out there like that. In reality he was a stranger, but that day he became a brother. Without knowing him, I still knew I had to have his back. It felt like my responsibility. Can anybody relate?
So then there were four! Four outstanding black young professionals ready to trail blaze in the physical therapy profession. We had a
group message set up which we cleverly named the "Complexion Connection" . Although it is a funny and cute name for a friend group, it’s also a ground breaking truth. We were four individuals, knowing nothing about each other prior to physical therapy school. However, the one thing we have in common, our melanin, united us in a special way. Even in all of our unity, I couldn't help but to notice that all of us had some inherent fear about our classmates misinterpreting our unity as negative, as danger, or as some sort of threat? There were many times where we would discuss among each other, or ponder to ourselves about what our classmates and faculty might think about us always taking pictures together. How should we pose? Will they think we are ratchet? Should we post them? Is it ok to take a picture with the black guest speaker? Are they going to think we are trying to start trouble?
I honestly don't know the answer to the latter -- I hope the answer is no. But that thought, that hesitation, had to have come from somewhere? Perhaps from all of the black leaders who came before us and dared to stand together in unity and were persecuted and criminalized. Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Rosa Parks - all black intellectual individuals who had a knack for bringing black people together in confidence, peace, and unity, who found themselves labeled as a threat to society and public peace. Is it possible that through their examples we learned that coming together in the skin we are in sends some type of threatening message to the society we live in? Even in PT school? I could be reaching far for a connection there, but why were we always hesitating to show our togetherness?
We were a little worried about being judged for taking a nice chocolate group photo, but I don't think it compares to the feeling I would get after hearing all of the black statistics slide after slide during 75% of the lectures we have in physical therapy school. What are the black statistics, you ask? You know the ones: "BLACKS have the lowest life expectancy compared to all other racial ethnic groups." "BLACKS have higher rates than whites in heart failure, hypertension, and stroke." "BLACK WOMEN are 4x more likely than white women to contract HIV." And the list goes on… you get what I'm saying. Now I can't be mad at the statistics, they are what they are. Many developing black students and young black professionals, including myself, have probably experienced the unspoken psychological stress that accompanies the feeling that YOU represent the entire black community for your non-black peers. This thought process usually results in the pressure to over-achieve, the avoidance of normal black cultural behaviors, language or even hair styles, and the feeling that you are masking your true self.
I noticed that I experienced a similar thought process every time the black statistics were read aloud through the nervous crackling voice of the professor. It always seemed like the word "BLACK" would ring extra long in my ear. My heart rate would rise, because I wanted so badly to stand up and defend my culture's "health crisis". I would wonder to myself: I hope my classmates don't see all black people like this. Yes I am black a woman - NO I DO NOT HAVE HIV. I often wondered when the lecture would ever highlight WHY black people seem to be so afflicted when it comes to health. Are we going to bother talking about the history of this country and why it seems black people are living such a sad story?
Well the day came earlier this semester, the summer of my 3rd year in PT school during a lecture on health disparities. The professor was describing some of the reasons black people are not accessing health care, with one of the reasons being distrust of the system. She briefly mentioned the "Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment" with no further explanation and started to move on in the lecture -- my heart sank. Maybe she didn't know, but we knew how unaware many of our classmates were to this one, powerful example of the injustice black people have experienced in health care. We needed them to hear and understand this too - because ALL OF US can be a part of the solution, but only if we are fully aware of the true reality and impact of our country's past.
This lecture was already alive for us the black students, because we live it - our families live it. I wanted this lecture to come alive for my classmates too. I wanted them to know that health disparity isn't just some theory you have to know about in lecture. It is a very real phenomenon, a side-effect of a deliberate and purposeful racial system established by this country that has afflicted black people for DECADES. Just before it was too late, one of my fellow sistas bravely raised her hand and politely asked the professor to elaborate on the topic for "those who may not be aware". I was screaming THANK YOU! inside of my heart to her. And when the professor wasn’t able to fully explain the impact of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to our peers, my sista courageously assisted her and took on the task to explain in detail and with conviction what the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was and how it affected those individuals and their families. (To learn more about the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment click here.)
It takes guts to do what she did. It's in those moments where you muster up everything you have, risk whatever stereotypes or comments that might be floating in the room, and just say what needs be said in hopes that it resonates with at least one person. You swallow the inhibition and the temptation to just "let it go", in hopes that allowing your classmates to hear and learn about a small piece of the black experience from your perspective opens up a new perspective for them. You hope that it resonates in the clinic, and that some black patient has a more positive experience because of it. You hope that their concerns are truly heard, that they are fully acknowledged as a whole human being, and that they are respected - and not just by the BLACK health care professionals, but by every health care professional in their plan of care. Yes - all of that is going through my mind in those moments. I wonder if it's just me?
I would like to conclude this summary of my experiences with a public service announcement to all about the term 'black excellence'. I discovered for the first time in PT school that this term has the potential to be controversial. However, I believe there is no need for anyone, black or non-black, to draw any offense from it. In a nut shell, the word combo "black excellence" when seen on Instagram captions or Facebook posts, is simply a positive expression of the progress black people have made in this country.
You see, this United States of America never intended for black people to be successful or excellent at anything. We were simply viewed as a means to an end, equal to or perhaps even more valuable than a
dollar. We were brought here to be labor tools, used to propel the success of white men and women - nothing more. We were deprived of education, family structure, self-identity, and any other component of what makes "successful" people today. So when we do things like, get accepted into PT school or medical school, when we make straight A's, when we find ourselves in leadership positions in our community and we caption the moments with "black excellence", it doesn't mean that we are more excellent, or better than anyone who isn't black. It just means that we are, and always have been capable of being excellent and achieving excellence in spite of being brought up in a society that was determined (and still is determined in some ways) to convince us and everyone else otherwise. So if you see it, don't hate it, remember this blog post, and celebrate it with us. It is a good thing!
As you may have noticed through this public letter, I have finally released the fear of expressing my experiences as a black student. I fully understand the consequences of writing something like this. I don't expect this to be my most popular or successful blog post. But I have learned that there isn't a whole lot of benefit to suffering in silence alone all of the time. After all, I am black. That is a fact. My experiences in this United States of America and all of its institutions and organizations will be remarkably different than my non-black peers. So if I truly desire to be understood, if I wish to no longer have our unity and melanin skin viewed as an immediate threat to society, then why not get comfortable with discussing our experiences with our peers rather than hiding in fear about what they might think - pretending that they don't exist.
Signed,
Your Fellow Minority SPT
I would love to hear any thoughts or feedback about this topic. Especially from other minority students from other cultures who may have similar experiences! Please share if you thought this was impactful, if you could relate in any way, or if you know of a classmate or colleague who could benefit from a different perspective! Thanks for reading and God Bless!
References 1. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/georgia-state-university/student-life/diversity/ 2. https://www.jmu.edu/pph/prept/_files/PTCASApplicantDataRpt%2015-16.pdf