Does being African lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
This year began with a seismic shift, which meant most mornings were spent with news of rising death tolls, feelings of frustration and helplessness as I felt my freedoms were being violated, and constantly trying to stay grounded under a blanket of fear of this invisible thing. It took me a while to navigate how to “be” during this time and I am still trying to understand it.
Now, the entire globe has turned its attention to the horrific atrocities that have taken place in the USA. These events are not merely headlines with second-hand accounts of what happened but have been filmed in sound and colour for the whole world to see. The murder of Mr George Floyd sent shockwaves around the world, igniting protests and riots, and it caused the debate of institutional racism and white privilege to overshadow a global health crisis. Similarly, as with the beginning of the year, I started to feel those feelings of frustration and helplessness, and constantly felt the need to stay grounded under a blanket of fear of this invisible thing. It took me a while to navigate how to “be” during this time and I am still trying to understand it. Same feelings – different monster.
Naturally, most of the discussion in news cycles and on social platforms have focused on the American experience of racism. But like many I’m sure, it made me start to think about my own experiences of being a woman of African descent being born and raised in the UK. The more I reflected on events throughout my life, the more I started to remember, and I noticed a worrying trend. My experiences range from the covert and ignorant, to the outright offensive. I am sure for some of these examples, some people will say “but how do you know that was about your ethnicity?” And you would you be right to ask this but wrong to think this is not a collective experience.
When I used to apply for jobs, there would often be a momentary, involuntary look of surprise on the interviewer’s face when they first met me after email and phone interactions. Compounded with the fact that my name, Louise Sam, is racially ambiguous – some have assumed my surname is Chinese. On one occasion, after I got the job, someone did actually say to me, “I didn’t think you were Black”. You become aware very quickly that there is a deeply held assumption of how African people should act, talk, write, etc. and when these assumptions are not met, it seems to create a confusion. On another occasion when I was working as an administrator, a regular client would often be perplexed why I spoke the way I do and once asked me, “why don’t you speak like a rude girl?” (His words). The retort of “why wouldn’t I speak this way?” didn’t seem to register at all. In my brain, it was clear – this is how I speak, this is how my parents, siblings, aunts, uncles all speak. Why would I speak any other way?! But none of this seemed to compute and each week I would try to keep our interactions as polite and brief as possible.
I remember my mum telling me, when she was in primary school, her schoolmates would touch her skin to see if the colour would come off. I didn’t fully appreciate this until in adulthood, people would try to touch my hair. I love having my hair played with and my head massaged, but if I don’t know you, and you are approaching me like a curiosity at a fair, keep your hands to yourself. I had a strange experience once where I seemed to offend someone, I barely knew, when I asked if their hands were clean as they were reaching for my hair. For me, I don’t care if you are African, white, whatever, if I don’t know you, I am not going to put my hands in your hair if it is not a medical emergency or without permission. Feeling like a curiosity at a fair, is probably the best way I can describe it when someone manages to get their claws on your hair. I can completely appreciate why in Buddhism and many Asian traditions, the head is considered sacred and it is extremely offensive to touch someone’s head. Furthermore, in most societies, touching someone’s head is a very intimate or dominating thing to do.
I have now lost count of the number of times I have been followed around a shop. To the point where I can start to sense when it is going to happen – like when the air turns chilly just before it rains. Once I was waiting on my car to get its MOT so I went to browse in Superdrug. After a few moments, I realised a member of staff was following me around – when I moved aisles, he would pop up two seconds later, aimlessly pretending to straighten products near me, etc. So, I decided to follow him around the shop (I had an hour or two to spare) and he soon gave up. The outcome of interactions like that are: I have stopped going to several shops because they have obviously followed me around. More importantly, it makes me unconsciously quite anxious in shops and I will put my phone in my bag or pocket in an exaggerated way to show I’m not stealing anything, for example.
As I mentioned, comments can range from the ignorant to the offensive but can have a similar effect. A couple of times, in the midst of winter, someone has said to me “Oh, you’re probably not used to this weather”. I repeat, I was born and raised in the UK – namely Essex and East London – our weather is not particularly tropical. In fact, I heard someone say the same thing to my mum last year. As I said, my parents have a London accent and have been in the UK for over 40 years. They are ignorant comments to make because it categorises people as other or not belonging. Ironically, I am writing this in sunny Barbados but I was used to English winters because for over 30 years, that was all I knew, that was home.
I have been pulled over once by the police. Me and two friends were leisurely driving through a suburb just outside of London at night. I had a suspicion I was being followed, so I drove around the block and shortly after I was pulled over and a PC Savage (I kid you not), said I was swerving (I was not). He gave me a breathalyser test, I took his details and then he went on his way. I can’t say for certain that it was racial profiling because I can’t be sure that he saw our faces beforehand. What it did do is make me mindful of African men who have been pulled over by the police. Every young African man I have asked has been pulled over by the police for some bogus reason or another, regardless of the car they are driving or how they are dressed. Racial profiling is institutionally ingrained, but it also made me consider how disruptive it can be. These young men may be on their way to work, to meet their families, or just to have leisure time, and these stops can have innumerable detrimental effects.
A more overtly offensive experience happened to me two years ago in the North of England. I was driving and a man thought I cut him up (I didn’t, I had the right of way). As we got to a crossroads, he shouted out of his car “Black c**t” and turned left and I continued straight. I remember going through a range of thoughts and emotions and reflecting on it now, I think I laughed off his stupidity in shock. But these become visceral experiences – I remember the sound, the temperature that day, the colours of the trees around me, the sensation of the gravel under the car.
Although that experience happened two years ago, within moments, I can be back there with all my sensory organs. The worrying trend I noticed is that, I hadn’t forgotten about these experiences, but I had stored them neatly so I would be able to get up every day and go to work, see clients, study, go shopping, interact with people, and just survive without thinking “I wonder if I will be called a Black c**t today?” It is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or more accurately continuous-traumatic stress disorder, as has been highlighted over the last few weeks.
PTSD is categorised by several emotional, physical, and psychological things including:
Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event
Trying to avoid thinking or talking about the traumatic event
Avoiding places, activities or people that remind you of the traumatic event
Negative thoughts about yourself, other people or the world
Hopelessness about the future
Always being on guard for danger
Overwhelming guilt or shame
Intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic events
This is not me pointing fingers or asking for an apology from anyone. It is something that I needed to write and express in the wake of everything that has been going on since the start of 2020. It is me expressing concern that on one hand, I have been traumatised by seeing the murders of people who look like me, but also a level of being desensitised because, as many people have joked in the past, we are so used to seeing the Black person killed off first in films. It is the apprehension of some protests and movements that seem to be more about publicity than progress. It is about me exploring and comparing the African-British experience.
I don’t have the answers and don’t even have the questions sometimes. For the last few years, I have been trying to move, act and feel from my heart, otherwise the intention just becomes murky. This means every day waking up and asking how do I show up today, if I am in a state of being to show up at all? What is my purpose? What resources do I need today? I want to be hopeful because I don’t want this to be my nieces and nephews’ future, and as Marijata wails, ‘no condition is permanent’.
Please note, the term ‘African’ is used to denote a person of African descent. This may include people in the Caribbean, UK, America, etc. and is sometimes used interchangeably with the term ‘Black’.