Lessons in Race, Faith, and Love For the Pandemic and Beyond

I don't know what my race is. I mean, I know I don't identify as one race. And to feel forced to choose is a specific cruelty that I would like to uproot. My skin is brown, so I knew the road of least resistance would be to identify as Black. Any hints at suggesting otherwise would accost me as one who is trying to deny my "race." I was born in the beautiful land of Guyana, known as "the land of six peoples." I grew up there until age 12, and I think it is for this reason that I never saw myself as any one thing. Indeed, it was even strange to me to have to identify my race in America, as I found it such an odd and useless construct —useless that is, other than for racism.

Tapping Into Strength: A Life With Healthy Boundaries

As a mental heath clinician, I was fascinated by the podcast on NPR One last spring entitled "The Shrink Next Door" (produced by Wondery and Bloomberg) for several reasons. For one, it is an alarming story of betrayal and of a degraded mental judgment on the part of the patient that occurred in this day and age, this century, which is probably the main reason for most of the shock. However, I have to say that most shocking of all was the tepid response to Marty Markowitz' initial conclusive complaint and the many steps that he had to take to receive an appropriate interest into his remarkable story of psychological mistreatment and betrayal. His damning complaint took four whole years to review, and it was not even completed at the time of the story's broadcast. What's more, it appears that once the responding agency got wind of the media attention following the story's publication, their handling of the issue changed for the better — which is even more discerning and telling of American culture and its feckless systems.