COVID 19 & Racism

Chinese medicine perceives disease in terms of psyco-somatic (mind + body) understandings.  For example, the highest percentage of heart attacks occur around 9 o’clock Monday morning, the beginning of the work week.  Recurring ear infections in a child are often a coping mechanism for blocking out a toxic social environment.  What’s the body-metaphor with regards to autoimmunity?  Auto-suicide. 

I know that sounds dramatic, and I don’t mean to say someone is consciously trying to hurt themselves if they’re suffering with an autoimmune condition.  In a collection of essays titled Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde wrote “your silence will not protect you.”  If someone doesn’t feel safe enough to speak their truth, especially in the midst of a conflict, the body internalizes these emotions which become a pathogenic factor in their own right, adding to their allostatic load of stress.  It’s akin to punching oneself instead of getting out of the way, or defending the self.

And with respect to racism, if Black people don’t feel safe enough to air their grievances, this rage is internalized to the detriment of their emotional AND physical well being.  Why else would Black women suffer from the common autoimmune disease of Lupus at a rate 27 times greater than that of white men?

The freedom of assembly to air grievances is a vital part of our nation’s health.  Written into our founding documents, this right to breathe and speak freely is THE defining backbone of the American Dream.  It’s the First Amendment of our Constitution, and the essential declaration of the Declaration of Independence.  It’s a declaration to not fall ill to the oppression of a life threatening, outside force.  A force that is both slowly starving its socioeconomically oppressed people of the resources they need to live.  It’s a declaration to live, rather than survive.  What we’re seeing on the streets of America today in terms of peaceful demonstrations is self defense.  Self defense against the subtle, and not so subtle, body/mind/spirit suicide that comes from living silently in an oppressive system.  Over time, silence does indeed equal death. Read on with The Air We Breathe.