Category Archives: communication

Why Identity Matters

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“You have a Chinese face,” my mom said to me.  I was ten years old, maybe twelve.  I can’t remember how it came up.  But the message was twofold and clear:  1. What makes you different from almost everybody around you is visible.  You cannot hide it, you cannot escape it.  2. People will judge you for it, so like it or not, to them, you represent us—your family, your ethnicity, all people who look like you.

That was it—straightforward truth, unvarnished.  And I understood immediately.  There was a gravity, an importance to her expression.  It was not meant to apply pressure or expectation; Ma was simply teaching me about reality so I would be prepared to meet it when I left home, whether it was at the mall or farther out in the world.  And I felt equipped to meet the challenge.  We lived in an affluent suburb.  My parents are both educated professionals.  They are still leaders in the Chinese community, heading initiatives to liaise with “Americans” in business, government, and news media.  Growing up I was known as the ‘smart’ kid—I fit the Asian nerd stereotype.  And people were impressed that I was also bilingual, could paint classical Chinese art and perform classical Chinese dance, and also play volleyball and win at statewide speech tournaments.  I thought I represented well.

I brought my Chinese-American identity with me to college, where I estimate about 20% of my fellow undergrads were Asian.  In medical school, residency, and now in practice, there are still proportionally more Asians than in the general population—we are an overrepresented minority group among physicians.  But we are still a minority, occupying proportionally few seats in medical and academic leadership. 

Once again I find myself in this strange, middle, white-adjacent space, considering how I can and should use my unique identity for the greater good.  How does an anti-racist message land differently/better/worse when I express it?  How do my white colleagues hear me differently/better/worse from/than my Black and other underrepresented minority colleagues?  Do I have a bridge role to play here?  Or should I keep my head down and my mouth shut (this is unlikely)?

Someone told me recently that our racial (and other) identities do not matter at work.  We should just think of ourselves as doctors, teachers, engineers, CEOs.  I respectfully and vehemently disagree.  If I were ‘just a doctor’ I would not be the only one fluent enough in Mandarin to care for non-English speaking Chinese patients without a translator.  If my Black colleagues were ‘just doctors,’ they would not inspire young Black kids to become doctors themselves.  If women physicians and surgeons were ‘just doctors,’ there would not be so many women physician groups all over social media, where countless of us seek reassurance that we are not insane, weak, and otherwise broken for all of the horrible, unbelievable-yet-totally-believable discriminatory experiences we endure at work in 2020.  And so many of us would not have our own stories of women in medicine who went in front and inspired us, encouraged us, and gave us the wherewithal to follow. 

Medical culture slowly evolves to see and treat patients as whole people, not just sets of diagnoses.  When will we come around to seeing ourselves and our colleagues also as whole people, interconnected, inseparable, and in need of full integration, inside and out?

* * * * *

The two articles below describe well how our ‘identity blind,’ assimilation-centered work cultures harm our Black colleagues, especially now.  Please take a few minutes to read each, and really try to put yourself in the writers’ shoes.  For us, taking this perspective is a choice; not so for them.

Maintaining Professionalism In The Age of Black Death Is… A Lot  by Shenequa Golding

I just witnessed the lynching of a black man, but don’t worry Ted, I’ll have those deliverables to you end of day.

…If I am to perform my duties for 40 hours a week, it’s asinine to assume that the life I live outside of those 40 hours won’t rear its head. Whether I’m a sleep deprived single mother of two or a struggling college student who really needs this internship to graduate, the belief that only the part of me that fattens your bottom line is allowed in the workplace, is stifling.

This is magnified for young black professionals who are recruited for their culture, but told, in so many words, that their blackness and the struggles that come with it are to be left at the door.

 …Forgive us if our work isn’t up to par, we just saw a lynching. Pardon us if we’re quiet in the Zoom meetings, we’re wondering if we’ll be the next hashtag. Spare some grace if we’re not at the company happy hour, because the hour of joy that most adults look forward to has been stolen from us due to the recent string of black death.

We’re biting our tongues, swallowing our rage and fighting back tears to remain professional because expressing that hurt caused by witnessing black death is considered more unprofessional, than black men and women actually being killed.

So if you can, please, be mindful. Your black employees are dealing with a lot.

7 Things That Need To Be Said About Black Trauma In Predominantly White Workplaces  by Samantha E. Willams

You know what’s worse than America treating racism like a new album that just came out? People moving on like nothing ever happened.

Over the last few weeks, you’ve probably noticed most of your white colleagues have abandoned their outrage over George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, trading it in to enjoy summer’s finest things — sailing, bonfires and lake house getaways. But not us. Those tough and uncomfortable conversations everyone boasted about having have slowed (maybe even stopped), and once again Black trauma in the workplace has been placed back in the hands of Black employees. While I wish I could say everything about this is new or shocking, the truth is we’ve been here before.

…The day was July 7, 2016…  That morning I did all the things one does to “maintain professionalism” because let’s be real, as Black professionals we often feel like we can’t be caught slipping (aka displaying feelings). But when putting my best face forward failed, my colleague asked what was wrong? I explained my stoicism was due to Sterling’s and Castile’s death, which was ultimately the result of the racism and systemic oppression that plagues our country, constantly making Black people a target.

What came next was disappointing but not surprising. Her response was, “Well, did you know him?” In that moment, just as it had in others, it became clear that Black trauma had no place, no weight of relevance in white workplaces. This wouldn’t be the last time Black trauma was ignored, displaced or misunderstood.

 

Love Letters for My Soul

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Taking a break from COVID, racism, equity and other heavy things this week, my friends.  It’s too much, what with RBG’s recurrent metastatic cancer and John Lewis’s death.  I’ve been glued to my phone and computers all week, reading, digesting, observing, integrating, posting, connecting and conversing.  I had at least three important ideas for the blog, and they all need to marinate longer.

But I still had to write!  I owe letters to three friends, and they can wait.  What needed doing tonight were five love letters to strangers. 

Sometime this spring, while sheltering at home, I discovered More Love Letters.  Their mission is simple:

Deliver hand written letters to people who could use some extra love via snail mail.

People submit nominations for letter recipients, and every month the MLL team selects five to post.  Each recipient’s nominator writes a heartfelt request, and supplies an address.  Letters are requested to be postmarked by the last day of the month (but I bet they’d take some tardy ones, because they are sent with love?).  Tonight I wrote my second ever set of love letters, on washi tape stationery, of course.  I may have more cards and tape than I will use in my lifetime, so I’m more than happy to share!  Maybe next month I will include a blank card and envelope as a gift for the recipient to pass along—I’ll even put a stamp on it!

In this time of tumult and conflict, of heaviness and stress, reaching out to offer some light to others heals me.  They will not know who I am (well, unless they happen to read this post, I guess), and I will not get a card back in reply.  I get to write some encouraging words that might brighten someone’s day.  But I do it for myself as much as for them.

Maybe you could use a mutual pick-me-up, too?  Each one took less than five minutes.  The words came easily, organically, and happily.  “Holding you in light,” “Sending love and support,” “Wishing you everything you need in this crazy time.” Easy peasy, written sincerely–it feels so good.  You don’t have to write to all five nominees—do what moves you.  Maybe you’ll be inspired to also drop a note to your best friend, your colleague who’s challenged, or someone who recently crossed your mind, who’d probably love to know you were thinking of them.

Now is exactly the time to connect, don’t you think?

Oh and I have no financial or other interests in this organization. I just love that they encourage connection and snail mail, two of my favorite things.

Even the ‘Oppressor’ Deserves Safety and Support

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This weekend I reflected in gratitude at my LOH experience in the past year. After resonating with Dr. Suchman’s moving keynote at a physician health conference in 2018, I sought him out to express thanks. He encouraged me to apply for the program. Then he coached me twice on getting institutional support, something I had never done before. All through the program, he and Diane Rawlins, two of the best teachers I have had (and that is saying a lot), led us all through ten months of complex conceptual learning and skills practice. Even better, they helped us synthesize and integrate learning between sessions, applying concepts through practice in our natural habitats, knowing we could report back to the group to debrief and trouble shoot before heading back into ‘the trenches.’ LOH runs annual reunions, refreshers and mixers during which attendees from different cohorts can meet, bond, and both expand and tighten our community of lifelong learners. In the time of COVID, alum meetings have occurred about every two weeks over Zoom, from the comfort of our homes all across the country. The more I think about it, the more I wish everybody had this kind of safety and support—this loving learning lab and community—to acquire scary new skills that, when practiced, benefit many more people than just us learners.

I imagine this may be what participants in the White Men’s Caucus feel. Read all about it in Four Days to Change, which I started and finished in about three sittings. –No really, read this book. It provides a unique and profoundly important perspective on the true meaning of inclusion, that is, white men absolutely need to be included in leading and benefiting from systemic change for equity, not just passively doing the changing for others’ sake. During the Caucus retreat, white men are both challenged and supported to dig deep into their own privilege. Inescapable mirrors of truth and profound discomfort, and also of love and compassion, surround them for four days. They are expected to feel tremendous guilt and shame, both natural emotions that occur on the path of self-discovery and humility. But rather than weaponizing these feelings, facilitators love the attendees through them, shepherding them through the emotional (shit)storm to a place of self-compassion and forgiveness. This is where their outward humility, openness, and sincere advocacy for inclusion and diversity take root—because they experience it first hand from their teachers and peer learners. Leadership is hard enough, but leading initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion is a whole other dimension of complexity. How can we expect any leader, white male or otherwise (but white males especially), to do it well alone, without a core peer group willing to hold their feet to the fire with both love and conviction?

I wrote earlier this year, “Practicing inclusion INCLUDES the OWG (Old White Guy) ‘oppressor’!  If we talk only about him needing to include others, while we make him feel excluded himself, how can we ever expect to enroll him in our cause or even behave in the way we ask? We do how we feel. And when we feel threatened and marginalized, especially from a place of loss, we act accordingly.” 

Michael Welp writes in Four Days, “(My mentor) inspired me when he (said), ‘The only way to touch other white men is through love.’  His words have always stayed with me.  However, the overall pattern observed in my dissertation was that white male diversity advocates disconnected from other white men and drew most of their support from white women and people of color.  They were frustrated and angry toward other white men.” 

Imagine people of your own tribe, a tribe you may lead in good faith, suddenly confronting you about biases and prejudices that you never knew you had, telling you how you’re harming people all around the tribe, and that you have to change it all now, adopt a new set of beliefs and initiatives today, and they will accept nothing less than your complete and unquestioning compliance because you are simply in the wrong.  Would you respond better if they came at you with such accusations and demands, or came alongside you with a grave and critical invitation to curiosity and learning together, for the good of the whole tribe, yourself included?  Which approach is more likely to yield tangible results in the near term?  Which one is more likely to still engage you in the long term?

We can learn important lessons from addiction medicine.  Patients succeed in rehab with a lot of grit and commitment.  They also benefit from the unyielding support and dedication of treatment staff and various environmental safety precautions.  But relapse rates are high (40-80%) in no small part because the safety and support so crucial to getting sober in rehab too often simply do not exist in an addict’s natural habitat.  

The converse was found to be true among American servicemen who fought in the Vietnam War.  Up to 20% of them were found to be addicted to heroin while overseas.  But upon return, only 5% of those who recovered relapsed.  After rigorous study (by a well-respected woman researcher, whose results and report were initially questioned and even derided—but that’s for another post), it is now widely accepted that the environment plays a key role in our behaviors, habits, and ability to change.  Soldiers in Vietnam, as James Clear writes, “spent all day surrounded by cues triggering heroin use: it was easy to access, they were engulfed by the constant stress of war, they built friendships with fellow soldiers who were also heroin users, and they were thousands of miles from home. Once a soldier returned to the United States, though, he found himself in an environment devoid of those triggers. When the context changed, so did the habit.”

The system often dictates, or at least strongly influences, how we perceive, think, behave, and relate. And we are the system, every one of us. By assimilating to the dominant white male culture, even as we see ourselves as resistors, we perpetuate it. But when we resist by only opposing our white male counterparts, without also enrolling them in the resistance movement as equals, we also undermine our own progress. Everybody deserves the safety and support to do their own personal Reckoning, Rumbling, and Revolution, as Brené Brown describes in her book Rising Strong. Real positive change is grounded in vulnerability, humility, and courage. If we really expect our white male leaders to change in ways fundamental and profound enough to advance equity in any meaningful way, they need the safety and support to reckon and rumble with their resistance, their rage, their fear, culture, identity, relationships, memories, realizations—all of it—with people they can relate to and who can hold them up fully, who will not turn away from or against them. As I wrote last week, more and more I see that perhaps only other white men can truly do this.

To be clear, this post is not an apology for white male supremacy and the vast suffering this mentality has wreaked all throughout history.  I just think it’s important, and too seldom attended to, that white men also suffer in and from the culture they dominate.  And in order to really change this culture for the better, we all need to support one another, white men included.