How Can I Help: When My Internal Self Intersects With the External World
When tragic killings of Black folk by police officers came to light through captured videos throughout last year, it had me grieving yet again, as well as praying and wondering what I could do to stand in solidarity with African Americans in their struggle for justice. Suddenly, it struck me. What if…I painted portraits of my African American friends and shared their stories on my website? And then what if I sold those paintings and donated the proceeds to organizations that supported Black communities? Was this it?
I reached out to Don and asked him what he thought and if he’d be willing to participate. His answer was a resounding positive. I started tearing up from excitement—this is what it felt like to be in the intersection of being authentically me and contributing to the external world, instead of trying to project a false me of who I thought I was “supposed” to be.
But ultimately this isn’t about me. This is about elevating the voices and stories of a group of people who have been oppressed and marginalized for a long time, about humanizing the issue of racism. This project has been a long time in the works, and I know the events that sparked all the media noise and protests occurred a long time ago, but just as conversations surrounding justice and anti-racism were needed before they happened, they continue to be needed whether they make front page news or not. In a polarized, tense climate, I am distinctly aware how much empathy is needed as an antidote, even as it is harder to give when I might deeply, viscerally disagree with someone. By sharing Don’s story, my hope is to contribute to mutual understanding, something that Don’s story also highlights, not to add to the noise or further division.
Don narrated many, many different experiences concerning being a Black man in America, and while I couldn’t hope to convey the fullness of who Don is and his experience in a single blog post, I organized some of his stories into some themes that struck me (quotes have been edited for clarity):
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1. The need for people who aren’t Black to understand that being Black in the US is truly its own unique experience that cannot help but shape one’s lens, as well as being inherently traumatic. I don’t say this to diminish anyone else’s unique experience, to say that African Americans’ experiences are superior to anyone else’s. Everyone has their own context that influences their perspective. However, by that same token, it is so important to listen to that perspective and validate the very real challenge and pain that people go through, especially when they have been historically silenced.
“The first time I was called the n-word, I was eight years old. This van would drive past my street, and these all White kids, about twelve to fifteen of them who went to a (private) Catholic school, they would point at me and call me the n-word. What freaked me out was one of them (a young lady) took a picture of me, like I was a science experiment or mystery. My mom worked for adult parole authority. When I told her about it she was angry and scared for me, so she set up a sting operation. She walked me to the bus stop the next day, they pulled over the van, they questioned them. One of the kids said, ‘I took the picture because I thought he was cute.’ The cops told them, ‘You can never drive down this street again.’ Because of her privilege, she was not realizing what it would do to others.”
“My dad thought the way he would protect me was by raising me to value education. My parents put me in Catholic school for the first three years of my [school] life. I was the only African American child in my class. There was psychological damage from my White peers, who interacted me with as less-than. If I beat them at something, they would just tell me they weren’t really trying. The class monitor would wait to see if I did something—they would not tell on any other classmate—they’d tell on me. Then the teacher would go off on me in front of all the kids. I remember I wanted to fit in so bad, I’d actually tell them that Bernie Kosar, who was a QB for the Cleveland Browns, was my uncle because I just wanted some acceptance. It was a psychological battle. And then I go back to the inner city with Black kids. At eight/nine years old, my community did not reflect what I saw in school. My parents took me out of the Catholic School after 3rd grade. Taking me out was the best thing that happened to me. They put me in a smaller school with some Black teachers, and a Black principal. The level of care was different from the Black and White teachers who worked with children in the inner city. Ms. Murray (the principal) knew all of us. You knew you were cared for. Mrs. Jackson, my 5th grade teacher, was a part of our church denomination. She told my parents, ‘If he doesn’t do his homework, I’m going to call you.’ The care at John White Elementary nurtured some of those wounds.”
“The inner city of Youngstown was getting worse. In 7th grade, the inner city school that I attended was really bad. My parents noticed my grades dropping, and my dad attended school with me for a day. After being there for one day my dad told my mom and they wanted to move me and they did. The next school year, I went to a west side junior high school that was predominantly White. The first month, any little thing I did, I got in trouble. I held up my hands and said, ‘What’s up,’ to one of my friends, a common greeting among young teens, and they said I was throwing up gang signs. I got harassed, and it had a psychological impact on me which reminded me of my Catholic elementary school. When they found out I played basketball, everything changed. I realized the power of sports: they’re not going to treat me the same because I play sports. Same little things—back then, chewing gum was an offense (laughs), but because I played basketball, it was no detention, just, ‘Go home.’ My parents moved out of the inner city because it got so bad.”
“This is what it means to be Black in America: At a young age, I got the what-do-you-do-when-a-cop-pulls-you-over talk. If you drive past a policeman/woman, try to look calm bc you don’t want to look suspicious. If you get pulled over, stay calm. It’s my job to make that cop feel comfortable.”
“I got pulled over the most in my life when I was in undergrad. It was a primarily white area. I got pulled over constantly for no reason. One time I got pulled over by a female Euro American. I was leaving the off ramp, not even an off ramp with a curve—go off to the right, nothing dramatic. I saw she was following me for a while. She pulls me over and says, ‘I see you’re driving erratic. Have you been drinking?’ I had my hands on the wheel. I said ‘I don’t drink because I’m a minister.’ I don’t even know why I said that, I think I was just so offended because I don’t drink. She said, ‘Huh, what is that?’ So I said, ‘I’m a priest,’ because maybe she’d know what that was. Shame came to her face. She said, ‘I’m so sorry, have a good night.’ To me, I thought, ‘You just said you pulled me over because you thought I was drinking. If I’m driving erratic, then I’m driving erratic.’ In that moment, I thought, ‘Wow, you pulled me over for no reason.’ I wondered had I not said that, would she have gone the whole nine yards, have me step out and do the sobriety test?”
“I’m very interested in the research of trauma and genes. There‘s some research that genetically, African Americans have this gene of trauma that goes back to slavery. One might think that’s crazy, people just making stuff up, Black people just get over it. But that legacy of trauma is passed down. A lot of us are traumatized by the police. My dad would say, ‘I’ve never committed a crime in my life, I’m considered a square.’ But even he’d be careful around the police. Why do you think we feel that way, we didn’t just make up this story that you’re the bogey man. Most of the cops I encountered in my city did not live in my city nor my community. Thus, you will look at me differently as an authority figure if you can’t understand me because you don’t live in my community.”
“So much of this country we built—the White House, monuments, our creativity—and so much has been taken from us. African Americans always have the mind frame, that trauma, even as we say we love this country, I haven’t been treated equally.”
I can’t imagine the psychological toll it must take to be constantly aware that you are viewed with suspicion first or as less-than just because of the color of your skin no matter what level of “success” one has gained in all aspects of life. At best, it’s frustrating. But against the backdrop of slavery and a long history of racial discrimination, how can all of this not add up to great pain, fear, anger, and constant hyper-vigilance? As someone who lived under the pressure of expectations, I can attest to how exhausting (and straining on mental health) it is to continually suppress your authentic self to project externally what others want or need. However, for African Americans, not only must it be exhausting, their very life could depend on how well they do so (and even then might fail to protect them through no fault of their own).
Then, this also comes along with the burden, the conviction of the absolute necessity of teaching your children to be on constant guard in order to survive. Do you make it a point to teach your kids to watch themselves carefully around police because the slightest thing might get them killed? I don’t have kids, but I was never taught this way as a child, and in all my years working with Korean American youth, it never entered my mind that such a lesson was needed. I wonder if understanding how mental health, trauma, and PTSD work would alter some people’s perspective who tell Black people to “just get over it,” or “Slavery was abolished a long time ago, and it’s over now.” It simply doesn’t work that way. I also wonder what healing would look like on a micro and macrolevel.
2. The importance of exposure to other people’s experiences/realities for growing in empathy and understanding.
“Police are like the military in the inner city. They don’t even live in the inner city, so their perception is going to be skewed. They run across three or four, now you want to basically demonize all of us.”
“When I went to war, a way to distance ourselves from the enemy was to give them a degrading name; I didn’t call them Iraqis, I called them ‘hajjis’; to make them less human, to make me okay psychologically when I go home. I was at war for a year. I’ve had things blown up by me. By the grace of God I’m still here. By the grace of God my mind is okay. I could’ve pulled the trigger on an Iraqi person, but I didn’t because I had to be sure that I was pulling the trigger on the right person. I could’ve taken their life. I could be wrong with this, but you don’t hear of the military being called up on war crimes. Cops will say they’re at war, but their job is to serve and protect their community. I was at war, and I’m cautious about pulling the trigger on the wrong person. If you pull that trigger on the wrong person, there will be an investigation into if you committed a war crime. You better be sure. In Iraq, you have to have ‘positive identification.’ This is coming from someone who was shot at several times. I can’t just pull my gun out and start shooting people I suspect to be terrorists. The best thing on my conscience: I did not pull the trigger on someone I wasn’t supposed to.”
“I’m a firm believer in community. You don’t understand people unless you spend time with them. My friend, who is Jamaican, was rebuking me. I told him, ‘I went to Jamaica on a cruise.’ He said to me, ‘No, you didn’t go to Jamaica, you were a tourist, you didn’t see the people in the city, there was no integration.’ A lot of times we’re being tourists instead of sitting down, breaking bread together, and understanding one another, talking about how we can have this inter-relational community.”
“Living in Ohio, I didn’t have a lot of interactions with Asian Americans. Going to Fuller, I understood the dynamic with Rodney King and the estranged relationships between Blacks and Asians. As I got to know friends at Fuller, and asked to speak at Korean American churches, I thought, ‘I’m helping to be relational and hopefully bridging that gap of community.’ How can we really be a godly tribe coming from different tribes? How can I be community and give my perspective of my community? I’m a big Martin Luther King, Jr. fan, who said we’re all interrelated, whatever affects me can also affect you indirectly, so how can I be that inter-relational piece?”
It’s interesting how Don’s experience of war gives him this unique perspective on protecting himself by intentionally using degrading names for the other side in order to psychologically distance himself. I wonder how many of us demean other people in our labels and judgments in order to make ourselves feel better or survive in some capacity. It also demonstrates the power of language, and why being “politically correct” isn’t just an inconvenient, overly sensitive demand by controlling liberals. Language actually shapes the way we see and understand.
But even then, Don understood the value of human life. I appreciate his humility and self-awareness, his willingness to see his own limitations and to amazingly give of himself even when he’s been on the receiving end of discrimination so often. It’s too easy to treat one another poorly or as threats (basically, as “other”) when we settle for assuming we “know” based on labels and generalizations when we don’t really know. I think this tendency needs to be actively overrode and self-awareness is a key part of this. How can we be better as a society/in the church/as individuals in taking the time to get to know people who are not like us so that we see people as people, not stereotypes? We are more than what our social media posts, political party, and tweets display.
3. The importance of environment and the presence of a support system in helping young people succeed.
“I’m fortunate that I had parents that invested in my education. My parents were ahead of the game, they were so young when they had me (21/24), but they did stuff other Black parents didn’t do. We had to take piano lessons. When I played the drums, my mom and dad were not satisfied with me playing the drums by ear, I had to take lessons. You see African American men playing drums, but can you read notes? I look at it now, I see they were trying to give us different resources, different outlets to keep us out of trouble, and also just the power of family, my extended family, extended community that helped to raise a child. My friends didn’t have that opportunity. I’ll never forget seeing my friends in high school—friends I had from elementary school—a lot of them were dying. The night and day of being in the suburbs.”
“That’s why I understand the difference between living in the inner city and the suburbs. A lot of people think the kids in the inner city are just bad; they’re not bad people, they are just in poverty. These are just problems that come with poverty; poverty just comes with problems. There’s a huge difference. Being in a different environment, it did change my perspective on education. Fueled that competition: I’ve got to get into college.”
“My dad would always tell me his job was to keep me out of the court system, to raise me in a way that I would be an outstanding individual: ‘The reason why I don’t want you in the court, Donovan, is the judge sees you as a menace and a threat to society. When he looks at a White man, he sees someone who made a mistake and can be rehabilitated. Therefore, you avoid that by not going into the court system.’ My dad would say ‘Birds of a feather flock together. In my eyes, you’re my superstar, but in society’s eyes you’re deemed as a threat.’”
At the age of thirteen/fourteen, I realized I’m going to be treated a certain way if I play sports. I didn’t have the maturity to understand my dad. My dad had these talks with me: ‘They’re fine with you entertaining them, but be careful because you can’t trust them. You have to get your education because they’ll do anything to keep you behind. If the entertainment runs out, what are they going to do with you?’ At thirteen/fourteen, I’m wondering, ‘Man is my dad over the top?’ The rumor of being an angry Black man is what a lot of kids would hear. I’m in my thirties, and realize maybe I’m the angry Black man. I get what he was saying now.”
“Liquor/corner stores in the inner city are not owned by African Americans. Hair stores and beauty supplies were often owned by Korean Americans, and corner markets by people of Middle Eastern descent. They’d complain about the African American community. It’s not the African American community; it’s people in poverty; people are going to try to steal because they don’t have the resources.”
Don raises some important issues to consider, such as how people’s decision-making out of their poverty and striving to survive is often unfortunately conflated with their Blackness. And that is what contributes to the systemic racism in our society. It becomes in people’s eyes: this is what Black people are. We jump from he stole because he is Black > Black people are threats/criminals > watching Blacks with greater suspicion/expectation of guilt > higher rates of imprisonment of Black men > and then we take away the kind of support that young Blacks need to break the cycle. Don’s father clearly had an enormous influence on Don’s life. It makes me wonder: how can we be better at focusing more on and addressing the roots of problems, rather than the symptoms and taking short cuts by making generalizations about Blacks?
4. The beauty of Don’s empathy and wisdom borne out of his unique experience.
“Youngstown, Ohio was the murder capital of America in the late eighties/nineties. I grew up in one of the worst cities of America. The only thing that separated Youngstown and Liberty was a traffic light. I’m grateful for my Liberty experience and Youngstown experience. It helps me not judge people who grow up in poverty; it’s a part of who I am, my survival skills. A lot of my friends had Starter jackets in 3rd grade as a symbol of status. It was their way to not look poor. No one wants to be poor; we all want dignity as human beings.”
As a large African American man, I used to think, ‘I can’t be the angry Black man. Being a bigger guy, I can’t be this person.’ But eventually I decided, ‘Forget it, I’m going to be who I am. When I play sports, I’m going to be as passionate and angry as I am because I shouldn’t have to change who I am. If it rubs you the wrong way, let’s dialogue about it.’”
“There is hope for change. None of that makes me bitter. The only difference between bitter and better is a letter. How do they make me better? How can I practice what I believe, which is mutual empathy? When 45 said it was the ‘Chinese virus,’ the ‘Wuhan flu,’ and I saw Asian Americans being attacked in this country, my heart went out to them. As someone who’s experienced systematic oppression, I’m not happy to see them attacked for the way they look. I don’t want to see anyone else going through that, so my heart went out to Asian Americans. My colleague, who’s Korean American, shared how she felt about that. It’s like God telling Israel, ‘Don’t forget how you felt as slaves in Egypt.’ I don’t want anyone else to go through that. It’s a constant reminder of what my ancestors went through.”
“What is Blackness? What does it mean to be Black in America, and how do you survive in America? Those in my community, we were pretty much raised to survive and overcome America. My CPE practice has taught me so much of how much I live in survival mode. I’m always aware of people who come from other countries. My brothers and sisters who come from Korea to here, they have that survival mind frame too. I’m surprised at the connectedness I have with people who immigrate. They’re kindred spirits—you have to survive.”
I’m grateful to Don (a kindred spirit indeed!) for sharing his thoughts and experiences. They sparked so many reflections and points of connection in me, especially regarding how stereotyping, labeling, and relying on false first impressions is to dehumanize others. I was reminded of the need for exposure to people who don’t look or think like me, suspending judgment before really getting to know someone, and growing in empathy in order to actively combat that impulse to reduce people into labels and categories. Hearing what Don has been through brought into sharper relief the beauty and depth of his humble and compassionate heart. I hope his portrait does some justice to his character and his story!
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Don’s portrait is on sale for $90, and all the proceeds will go to Don's organization of choice: The Ohio University’s (Don’s alma mater) minority scholarship fund.