Trauma, Race, and Growth.

I wrote recently on the idea of post traumatic growth and how that concept may be helpful to keep in mind as we slowly begin moving towards normalcy while COVID-19 remains active. I started working on that post prior to the murder of George Floyd, but it became pretty clear that PTG was relevant for both topics. I thought about altering that post as I was writing it to include the recent protests, but that just wasn’t right. To shoehorn this topic into that one would be counter to one of the points I want to convey.

Honestly, I’m not entirely clear on what my points are, and that is a deliberate decision. If you know me, and even if you don’t you can easily tell from my website, I am a white male, working in a very white neighborhood, in a predominately white city. I wouldn’t say I grew up in an affluent town, but the middle class dream was alive and thriving there (still is), and it was also very white. Needless to say there is a lot I don’t know about race. I am an opinionated guy, always have been. Something else that has become obvious to me recently is that this is a time for me to put my own opinions aside and just listen.

If I’m being honest I don’t think I’ve ever been pulled over when I didn’t deserve it (one time was pretty questionable). I know the current protests are about much, much more than being pulled over for “driving while black”. Of course getting pulled over doesn’t even register on the same continuum as the brutality that George Floyd endured in the last moments of his life. But it is the only frame of reference I have, which is also part of the point that I will never really understand what it is like to go through life as a black American (or, of course, and other person of color).

What I do know is that of the times I’ve been pulled over roughly half of them resulted in nothing more than a warning, and the worst that came of any of them was a speeding ticket. One of them really sticks out in times like these. I was in college, home for the summer between my sophomore and junior year. I was driving my girlfriend and her friend home, and I was most definitely speeding. I also had a small, but not insignificant, bag of weed in my center console along with a glass pipe. They hadn’t seen any use that particular night (I was stone sober), but they were in no way legal in that place and time. The officer was polite when he pulled my over, I explained I had to work early in the morning and was just trying to get my passengers home and get to bed. He was sympathetic to my explanation, cautioned me to slow down, and that was the end of it. No ticket, no request to step out of the vehicle, and definitely nowhere close to a search of my car with dubious probable cause. In fact I wasn’t even anxious during the conversation (which says something for a guy that tends towards anxiety), and didn’t even think of the possible implications for the contents of my center console until much later.

Who knows how things would have unfolded differently if I were black. Who knows how differently things would have gone if I were black and instead of being pulled over by one of the good guys I was actually pulled over by someone more cut from the cloth of a guy like Derek Chauvin. What I do know is I never even pondered those questions until years after the fact. What I do know is there is a very real chance things could have gone differently. I dropped off my passengers, went to bed, went to work the next morning and went about my life with hardly a second thought about getting pulled over that night. If I were black my life could have been changed that night. I’m not overly familiar with drug laws, but I’m pretty confident the weed and paraphernalia I had wasn’t enough to warrant a felony and all that entails, but at the very least any charge for possession would have made my life much more difficult than it was at the time. Passing a counterfeit twenty dollar bill isn’t a felony either…

Elliot Marshall, former UFC fighter and co-owner of the martial arts gym I train at, spoke on his podcast recently of the juxtaposition of growing up with a white mother and a black father. Specifically he remembered his father getting pulled over all the time. For nothing. I remember my father getting pulled over exactly once, and he was speeding. He was also let off with a warning.

I wrote last time about the collective trauma of COVID-19 and quarantine, and I think it is a safe assumption much of that also applies to the current protests. As a therapist I have tried to eliminate the phrase “I understand” from my vocabulary, and when I worked with adolescents I encouraged their parents to do the same. It is a phrase that is often intended to express empathy, but unintentionally creates distance. We have all heard it, and have all said to ourselves “no you don’t”. The reality is that despite all of my knowledge and experience I can never truly understand the experience of someone else. No one really can. We can empathize and relate, but never truly understand. I’ll never truly understand what the black community feels right now, but I can listen.

Last time I also wrote about post traumatic growth and what the effort might look like to achieve it. The context is much different, but the relevance is the same as this is a time for growth. We can’t assume growth though. The LA riots after the beating of Rodney King took place almost thirty years ago. I guess some things are different now, but it at the same time it feels like things aren’t all that different. The more things change the more they stay the same, as they say.

It would seem change is already happening, but I worry it won’t last. Posttraumatic growth can bring changed priorities and perspectives, and new recognition of possibilities in life. There is plenty of that right now, but the science also shows those changes will fade if we don’t foster them.

I worry that many will shout into their social media echo chambers until the protests end, and then they will go on with their lives. There are uncomfortable conversations that need to keep happening and I fear they will stop. Really, truly, listening is hard, but change doesn’t happen if we don’t listen. We can’t do our own work without the perspective of others, without perspectives we may not have.

In my humble opinion, real change and growth is actually pretty simple. Make a commitment, now, to continuously followup on the uncomfortable thoughts, and conversations that have come up in the past month. That’s it. Now, the actual execution may not be so simple, but the commitment is an important (and more impactful that it looks) step. Without the commitment, we might just end up back in this same place in another decade or two.