#white people still treat them like black women the experience is only slightly altered by colorism which is

[afro-elf]

the 'biracial black people (women, because this mostly affects women) aren't black but a secret third thing' discourse has gone so far that i'm seeing people get surprised that biracial black women face anti-black racism and misogynoir........

[multipleservicelisting]

Biden Picks Dr. Nunez-Smith to Lead Health Equity Task Force

Growing up in the United States Virgin Islands, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith saw firsthand what can happen in a community with limited access to health care. Her father, Moleto “Bishop” Smith Sr., was only in his 40s when he suffered a debilitating stroke that left him partly paralyzed and with slurred speech.

The cause was high blood pressure, which could have been treated but had never been diagnosed. Without prompt access to advanced treatments, “the stroke was allowed to run its course,” Dr. Nunez-Smith, 45, recalled in a recent interview. Her father never fully recovered.

“He was a champion and a fighter,” she said. “But my memories are of a father who had to live life with this daily reminder of how we had failed in terms of our health care. I don’t want another little girl out there to have her father suffer a stroke that is debilitating and life-altering in that way.”

Now, tapped by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to lead a new federal task force, Dr. Nunez-Smith, an associate professor of internal medicine, public health and management at Yale University, will address a terrible reality of American medicine: persistent racial and ethnic disparities in access and care, the sort that contributed to her father’s disability.

Dr. Nunez-Smith has an expansive vision for the job, with plans to target medical resources and relief funds to vulnerable communities but also to tackle the underlying social and economic inequalities that put them at risk.

Her goals are ambitious, experts noted.

“For so long, we’ve been setting our sights on the more achievable goals and attempted to say, ‘We probably can’t have totally equitable care, so let’s at least make sure minority patients get insurance, or at least make sure there’s a health clinic in their community,’” said Dr. Utibe R. Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who studies racial disparities in cardiovascular disease.

“This is a great opportunity to stretch and reach for what’s been imagined for decades, if not centuries,” he said.

Racial health disparities represent a vast, structural challenge in this country, made all the more stark by the raging pandemic. Black, Latino and Native Americans are infected with the coronavirus and hospitalized with Covid-19 at higher rates than white Americans, and they have died of the illness at nearly three times the rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Making sure communities hardest hit by the pandemic have access to safe, effective vaccines remains a priority,” Dr. Nunez-Smith said. But “what’s needed to ensure equity in the recovery is not limited to health and health care. We have to have conversations about housing stability and food security and educational equity, and pathways to economic opportunities and promise.”

Many factors have contributed to higher rates of infection and severe disease in minority communities. Black, Latino and Native Americans are more likely to live in crowded households than white people, and less likely to be able to work from home. Minority Americans have higher rates of underlying health problems that increase their risk for severe Covid-19, and they often have limited access to medical care. Asian-Americans have been infected at a lower rate than white Americans, yet have had a slightly higher rate of both hospitalizations and deaths.

While almost every American now knows someone who has been affected by Covid-19, in communities of color at least one third of people have lost someone close to them. “Think about the individual toll that takes,” Dr. Nunez-Smith said. “These are people’s parents, friends and loved ones. We cannot overstate the disproportionate impact.”

Dr. Nunez-Smith currently serves as one of three co-chairs on an advisory board advising the Biden transition team on management of the pandemic. Colleagues describe her as a brilliant scientist with a gift for building consensus, a sharp contrast to the politically driven administration officials who guided the response during the Trump era.

“She is a national gem,” said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine. “This is a person who spends her days thinking about how we can make health care more equitable, and what interventions can address these disparities.”

At Yale, Dr. Nunez-Smith wears many hats — practicing internist, scientist, teacher, mentor and the director of several research centers. She directs Yale’s Equity Research and Innovation Center, which she founded, as well as a research collaborative funded by the National Institutes of Health to study chronic disease in Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and the United States Virgin Islands.

Covid-19 Vaccines ›

Answers to Your Vaccine Questions

If I live in the U.S., when can I get the vaccine?

While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is getting made, this article will help.

When can I return to normal life after being vaccinated?

Life will return to normal only when society as a whole gains enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they’ll only be able to vaccinate a few percent of their citizens at most in the first couple months. The unvaccinated majority will still remain vulnerable to getting infected. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines are showing robust protection against becoming sick. But it’s also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they’re infected because they experience only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists don’t yet know if the vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for the time being, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid indoor crowds, and so on. Once enough people get vaccinated, it will become very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve that goal, life might start approaching something like normal by the fall 2021.

If I’ve been vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask?

Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that will potentially get authorized this month clearly protect people from getting sick with Covid-19. But the clinical trials that delivered these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. That remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected by the coronavirus can spread it while they��re not experiencing any cough or other symptoms. Researchers will be intensely studying this question as the vaccines roll out. In the meantime, even vaccinated people will need to think of themselves as possible spreaders.

Will it hurt? What are the side effects?

The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered as a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection won’t be any different from ones you’ve gotten before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported any serious health problems. But some of them have felt short-lived discomfort, including aches and flu-like symptoms that typically last a day. It’s possible that people may need to plan to take a day off work or school after the second shot. While these experiences aren’t pleasant, they are a good sign: they are the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and mounting a potent response that will provide long-lasting immunity.

Will mRNA vaccines change my genes?

No. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse to a cell, allowing the molecule to slip in. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any moment, each of our cells may contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce in order to make proteins of their own. Once those proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules our cells make can only survive a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a bit longer, so that the cells can make extra virus proteins and prompt a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only last for a few days at most before they are destroyed.

But she also is involved in community organizations like the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and Connecticut Voices for Children. “She’s not sitting in her ivory tower,” said Christina Ciociola, senior vice president for grant-making and strategy at the foundation.

“She is out on the front lines,” Ms. Ciociola said. “She sees patients, and she’s seen friends and colleagues suffer with this illness. She’s lost people to the pandemic.”

Dr. Nunez-Smith’s early interest in medicine was encouraged by her mother, a retired nursing professor, who instilled her commitment to community or, as she puts it, “the village.” Her grandmother played a pivotal role in her life, as did her godfather, a surgeon who still practices in St. Thomas.

Her mother filled the home with medical books. “She said I could read anything I could reach,” Dr. Nunez-Smith recalled. “I started early on learning medicine and nursing texts, and became fascinated with the human body and biology.”

Over time, she came to understand the importance of health policy and its repercussions in places like the U.S. territories, where lower federal payments for services affect access to care and high quality medical care is limited. (A recent study she co-wrote found that older women in the U.S. territories with breast cancer waited longer for surgery and radiation, and were less likely to get state-of-the-art care, than their counterparts in other regions of the United States.)

After graduating from high school at age 16, Dr. Nunez-Smith attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, majoring in biological anthropology and psychology, and went on to earn a medical degree at Jefferson Medical College, now called the Sidney Kimmel Medical College.

She completed a residency and internship at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and then a fellowship at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, where she also received a master’s degree in health sciences.

Some of her research has been informed by her own experiences as a Black female physician, she said. She still encounters hospital patients who assume she has come into the room to collect their meal tray or empty their trash, even though she introduces herself as a doctor and has a stethoscope hanging around her neck.

In studies of attitudes toward the health care system among Black patients, she has found that distrust is rampant. A survey of 604 Black Americans, carried out in May jointly by Dr. Nunez-Smith’s Equity and Research Innovation Center and the N.A.A.C.P., found that more than half believed Black people were less likely than white people to get access to coronavirus tests when testing was scarce, and that they were less likely to be admitted to the hospital when needed. More than half thought that hospitalized Black patients were less likely to “have everything done to save their lives.”

The survey also found that over one-third of Black respondents had lost a job or seen their hours reduced. Nearly one-third said they did not have enough money to buy groceries and had trouble paying rent. Economic pressures keep them going to work even when they fall ill, Dr. Nunez-Smith said.

“People are very worried about surprise bills for seeking care, and this is very different from other countries, where cost is not a consideration,” she said. “How do we make sure there are positive incentives for coming in and getting tested and getting care?”

All of these factors must shape the response to the pandemic, she said. Testing sites must be located in or near low-income communities, for example — they cannot be only drive-through sites used by people who have cars.

Hotel rooms should be provided to people who don’t have space at home to quarantine or isolate after an exposure or positive test. Workplaces must take the steps necessary to keep essential workers safe.

“One size won’t fit everyone — you can’t just say, ‘Everybody stay home and stay safe,’” she said. “There are people whose jobs require them to leave their homes, and if we don’t have a message to them, that’s our failure.”

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

Those hesitant to take a Covid vaccine must be reassured that the vaccines are safe and effective — and that they won’t get a surprise bill later. They need to be told in advance about the predictable side effects.

Scientists who study health equity acknowledged the task force’s goals will be difficult to accomplish, but welcomed the incoming administration’s ambitious focus.

“Yes, it will be hard and we will need to take iterative steps,” said Dr. Clyde W. Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “But begin is exactly what we should do, and considering the link between poor health, poor education, poor housing and poverty, a case can be made to target economic development in the most vulnerable communities as an important first step.”

Like many Americans, Dr. Nunez-Smith is juggling work and community responsibilities while raising school-aged children amid a pandemic. She knows the pressures are bound to increase as she takes up difficult new responsibilities.

“Everyone needs a village,” she said. “I feel grateful to have a great supportive spouse, family members. I had a friend drop off several meals yesterday, and someone else is going shopping for us. It’s our village we’re trying to keep safe.”

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/35FNMFD

[talesofdelta]

Sorry I’d neglected this space for so long. I did come across a few stories I thought I’d posted from a few years back. Here’s the first one.

Warning for language.

*************************************************************************************

Every superhero needs a shrink. Mine came in a form of a rock star who was just hitting her stride. Her office? Just happened to look like a booth in a diner. Because it was one.

At 2:40 in the morning, hardly a soul stirred in Benny’s diner besides the cook. It was a dive which became my home turf during my time here in Delta. At about the middle of my beat I made a habit to come by here and . . . well, before long I had the menu memorized. Tonight I’d already gotten my first burger, fries, shake, a few donuts and a slice of cherry pie to help fill my girlish figure. Three eggs and corn beef hash were on the way as soon as they’re off the griddle. It was my usual mid-shift snack.

One of the perks of being a bona-fide super soldier was an outrageous metabolism. Besides that . . . well, I was bullet proof, could run all day and was the best markswoman by far in the world. Really, I pretty much didn’t miss with a firearm. That’s not just because I’m obsessed with them, either. I even healed in sunlight so come 7:00 AM there wasn’t a scar on my body no matter what happened during my time on the streets. I wasn’t born this way. It wasn’t magic. I was the best science had to offer a strange world.

The experiment which gave me these powers also gave me looks that . . . well, made me look like a curvy porn star. So, lots of attention. Especially from men. Not always wanted. Oh, and some women too. One time a person said I had this huge personality. Not that way, she meant my presence. The way I looked at people, the sound of my voice, my “mojo” or something. She said it was superhuman. The woman who told me that had a Ph.D. in something . . . psychology I think. But I guess I came across as some goddess both physically and spiritually to most people.

My life wasn’t all gravy and gumbo. I had to fight crime wherever I found it, and in Delta that often meant fighting something you would not file under “normal.” The proper term was “paranormals” but it covered armored robots, humans who were altered genetically or hooked up with cybernetics. Pretty sure there was as much sorcery as super-science out there in the world, but I hadn’t met it yet. And of course there were those born with paranormal abilities, and most people treated them like a plague.

There were more of these beings per capita in the Delta metro region than any other city in the world, which made this a special place. Humans, the normal ones, stopped griping about ethnicity or religion around here. Cultures which wouldn’t dare mix in other parts of the country became happy neighbors. There wasn’t some breakthrough of understanding. People here just felt they had a common enemy. If you had normal genes, they liked you. If you didn’t . . . well, that’s true racism for you.

My ever-present sunglasses came off while I stalked my way over to our booth. There were two young men over in the corner talking and rolling dice. Benny the cook tried hard not to drink in my skin tight royal blue ReSPONSE uniform, even if I have a black ballistic weave jacket on top. Dark blue boots clacked across the linoleum tile floor; matching gloves held my tray of food as I approached our seats. My weapon was in the holster as I slid my food onto the table. I unzipped my jacket, the shades went into their case and I settled in the booth across from my friend.

Susan Lake was in one of her trademark poses. Her platinum blonde hair was slightly spiked. She had a snakeskin boot parked on the edge of the table. For some reason she took to wearing some acid-wash denim jacket and a white turtleneck; she looked like she stepped right out of 1987. Some bedazzled belt buckle and dark blue jeans completed her “queen of doomsday disco” look. A quick smile and I knew she saw my fries.

“Belinda babe.” She gave me the once over. “Why so glum?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Glum? What are you getting at, Sue babe?”

“Something’s on your mind. I can tell.” Something crunched in her mouth. “You only take your shades off when you’re serious. Do you wear them in the shower?”

Susan was always there to bust my chops. “And a good morning to you, too.”

“Fries are piping hot,” she said as she shook her fingers.

Jezz, her traditional assault on my French fries had begun. “Well, they are pretty fresh. What did you expect?” My jacket came off and settled in the corner of the booth.

Susan’s eyes narrowed. “Skip the preamble. Something is driving in your head, and it isn’t how you’re gonna kick some super bad guy’s ass. It’s one of those philosophical things, isn’t it? The difference between right and wrong. Some new perspective that threatens to change the way you go about your job, keeping us all safe from things that go bump in the night?”

The cook brought over my eggs, hash and a second shake and went back to his counter. “Quite a mouthful, Susan.”

“I didn’t feel like sitting here chit-chatting until 4:00 to get to the good stuff.” She bit into a doughnut. “Besides, you’re only taking a break. We can’t stay here too long.”

“And you got all that from my shades coming off?” Shake number one had met its maker. “Are you psychic, or just psychotic?”

Susan looked right into my eyes for a moment. “We both have crap to do and life is full of shitty conflicts. Give.”

I didn’t realize I was smiling until my face softened into a serious scowl. “Susan, humans . . . people are insanely cruel, and I think they . . . we like it that way. I have a big problem with that.”

Immediately she sat properly in her booth, sharp as a hawk. “Now we’re cooking. I’m kind of disappointed you didn’t realize this sooner.” The rock star was gone.

A dollop of catsup fell from my burger like blood. Why did I think that? “I was talking to someone who gave me a different perspective. It’s one I needed to hear and . . . well, it’s given me something to think about.”

Susan had a soda stashed somewhere and chose now to slurp whatever was left of it. “Conversation with whom?” Still looking like a bird of prey.

“Sirocco.” He was new to the right side of the law and I’d taken him under my wing.

Her face broke into gentle laughter. “Oh? Mister ‘Jamaican-me-crazy’ had a point to make? And how long did it take him to stop talking to your massive, and rather perfect, cleavage?” Shaking her head she munched on another fry.

Someday I’d figure out how she got those from me without my noticing. “Rocco is a good guy. And it took him five minutes.” I shook my head with a smirk.

She popped her collar and leaned on one side. “We should take him to Vegas. The ladies would love him. Bet he’s a real horn dog.” She decided to help herself to some corned beef hash.

My smirk faded. “Seriously, Susan. This isn’t about him, it’s about what he said and how I realized some things.”

“Go on.” Susan’s face became soft, but determined. “You need to get this out. I’m your girl.”

A memory of the scent of gunpowder soothed my thoughts for a moment. “Sirocco . . . well, Peter told me about something his mother used to talk about. She pointed to movements in the social structure, for lack of a better word? The point was about what people think and how they react to suffering. To anger. Danger. Exploitation.”

“Not terribly well.” She looked out the window. “Being the Goddess with the gun out in those streets, you know that better than most. What was different about how his mother saw it?”

“She taught him about perspective.” I glanced toward the two men in the corner who were oblivious to my presence. “Not that of the victims or their attackers, the perspective of the people in between.”

“In my experience there really aren’t too many of those,” Susan replied. “Eventually almost everyone is one or the other.”

“Her point,” I continued. “Let me give you a couple of examples. There was a time when a single man shot about a dozen people – killing some – because he couldn’t get a date. The internet was flooded with women pointing out the dangers we face every day.”

She sat up, still relaxed. “Not news, but I’m listening.”

“Of course there was the chorus of ‘not all men’ because . . . well, it’s true. Not all men are like that.” It was then I noticed we were the only two women around.

She shook her head. “Her point was not all men are killers? Profound.”

I leaned forward and stared right a hole through her forehead. “Susan, pay attention. Did I sound like I was finished?”

Sheepishly she slinked backwards in her booth. “Sorry.” Her eyes met mine for a second and I could tell I needed to turn down the intensity.

“There was something else that started a few years later, and this hits closer to home for me.” I took a moment; this had been at me all day. “Police brutality.”

She snapped her head towards me. “What the hell does that have to do with how predatory men can be?” Those blue eyes were white hot with fury.

“Follow. Back then, police shot yet another black man in the United States and a movement comes about with the slogan ‘black lives matter’ protesting police brutality. The core is the feeling cops have it out for black men in particular.” I took a glance to the corner to see if there was a reaction from either man.

I saw Susan think for a moment, deciding what she was going to say. “Belinda, all lives matter. Black. White, Latino, Asian . . . all lives. Every. Single. One.” She stared at me unflinchingly.

“This is where perspective comes in.” I motioned to the counter for my third shake. “People reacted back then too. There was a chorus of ‘all lives matter’ from lots of people. Most of them White.”

“Neither ethnicity nor race should matter,” she stated. “The fact all lives matter is a simple truth that should be self-evident . . . but isn’t.”

“But Susan that’s the –“

She cut me off like a hatchet. “No, Belinda. There is nothing. No compromise. I’m an officer of the Navy. I know what it means to serve our country and defend her interests. I do it willingly. I do what I can to defend life, liberty and the constitution within the union. And I don’t believe that because I went to the finest military academy. I wasn’t made to feel that way because my family has served for generations. It’s the way I am because every citizen of the United States of America is whom I fight to protect. It’s how I was raised. It is a God given right of freedom too many take for granted . . . and too many more want to steal from the people of our nation.”

Told you she was a conservative hawk. Or did I leave that part out? “Do tell, Sue babe.”

She actually glared at me. “This is not a laughing matter, Belinda.”

“I’m sorry, Susan.” So this was what it was like. “Shouldn’t have needled you like that.”

She sighed, leaning back in her seat. “It’s okay. We love our country so much. I love Old Glory and all she represents. Hope, opportunity and the diversity of our nation which sets us apart.” I could hear underneath the glitz and glamour was the blue collar woman from Jersey.

“I’m not trying to rib you,” I said, “but you sound like a super-patriot.”

Running her fingers through her hair, she bore a wide grin. “Guilty as charged.”

I pulled a few fries off the plate. “But is there room for a dissenting voice? For those who see things differently than you?”

“Always will be. And I’ll defend them just like you do.” Two shakes and another plate of fries materialized at our table. “I just hate it when people try to pull us apart from within.”

“How is pointing out the tendency of the law enforcement, conventional like most or paranormal like me, to crack down on those who are at a disadvantage pulling us apart?” I took a breath and waited for her reply.

“Singling out a faction for special treatment is, in my view at least, very wrong.” She picked up a handful of fries and scooped them into her mouth one at a time. “I agree that black lives matter. Paranormal lives matter. Every life matters.”

Peter’s mother was right. “So do you think they should have stayed quiet? Instead of calling out police, or men for that matter, they should have done what? Be quiet?”

Susan relaxed, which made me nervous. “Help make things better by working in the community. Join the force and help make sure your neighborhoods are represented, if you think the police aren’t representative of your neighborhood. Teach girls and young women how to defend themselves, but also look at what can be done to help teach men not to be predators.”

“Not the reply I expected, Sue babe.” Honesty was the best policy.

“So much of what we see, the conflicts within America and among her people, is based on standards that have been held for hundreds . . . thousands of years,” she said. “I’ve always been a fan of one thing.”

Burger number whatever had arrived. “What’s that?”

“Choice, babe.” Susan waived for a soda. “I believe everyone should have the opportunity for a choice in life. I want beauty standards replaced with nothing. I want women to have every choice that are available to men, and have that be ok. I want every God-fearing soul in this country . . . hell. I want every person on this planet to have the chance to follow their dreams. To choose life or home or family. To feel doors opened. No glass ceilings or floors. To have the knowledge they are different and unique, but not better or worse than anyone else simply because the color of their skin or the Y-ness of their chromosome.”

I did not expect that. Maybe I should have. “You believe in freedom.”

“You bet I do,” she beamed. “I am a feminist. And proud. I am a conservative. And proud. This country needs to wrap its mind around the fact that these are not competing ideals. I am all of both.”

“Do tell.” Setting down my burger I let out a soft belch. So ladylike. “How do you balance all that, anyhow?”

“I have always been as conservative as I am White. State rights are important to me. Fiscal matters . . . matter.” She snickered. “I believe in God and country first, and I feel there are stringent definitions on how our nation should be governed within our constitution. The United States needs to have a strong military to defend her interests and her allies. I believe in choosing life over abortion.”

Just in case she was thinking about getting a reaction from me, I closed that door shut. “I’m not going there, Susan.”

“Not asking you right now, but sometime you have to tell me where you stand.” Her face was relaxed; there was even a light smile on her lips. “I’m a conservative, through and through.”

Sometimes the stupid in my brain just has to have a word. “So how can you be a feminist?”

“You have no clue how to be a woman, do you?” She looked only half-angry. “You missed the point. All of these positions – and dozens more – are a choice. I believe every woman should have the choice to be what she wants to be. To choose to be an attorney and have it be alright. Be a housewife and have it be alright. A boardroom executive shouldn’t be a ‘feminazi bitch’ and a home maker shouldn’t be a ‘sell out.’ That’s the part you don’t get.”

She was right. “Thank you. I never thought of it that way.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “And this country gives the best chance for anyone to be whatever they want to be. That’s why I hate it when groups start picking apart at each other. One nation. Under God. Indivisible. With liberty and justice for all. Every. Single. Life. Matters.”

“You say that,” I began. “And I’m sure you believe it. But Peter’s mother pointed out a few things about the ‘silent majority’ or whatever it was she called it.”

“Really?” Susan took a sip of soda. “This I want to hear.”

“If all lives matter,” I said. “Tell me why the ‘all lives matter’ movement only started after the ‘black lives matter?’ Why did it take the outrage of black families to spur the conversation of ‘all lives matter’ then?”

“Try making sense, if you can?” Susan was genuinely confused.

I was mad, partially at myself. “People didn’t react to shootings with ‘all lives matter.’ Most people, and let’s be honest as we’re both white, the majority of white America didn’t seem invested in making sure that all lives . . . well, mattered.”

“Whatever you’ve been reading, please get some facts and numbers to get you back on course.” Yes, she was actually a rock star on the rise. “Just because someone thinks they are being singled out for special persecution doesn’t make it true, Belinda.”

“Just because you,” I shot back, “or I . . . don’t experience that first hand? Doesn’t mean profiling of African-Americans doesn’t exist. And it’s that willingness to be blind to someone else’s plight? That was Peter’s mother’s point.”

“What?” She waived to the counter. “I never said African-Americans don’t face challenges in the United States. More fries!”

She had her wall up. “There was a counter movement in favor of law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line every day. It was called Blue Lives Matter and it got quite the push.”

Susan tilted her head slightly. “I’m glad.”

“Peter’s mom said . . . I want to get this quote right.” I thought about a .44 caliber cartridge and how I loved the form. “If you have a problem with black lives matter, because all lives matter . . .”

“And they do,” Susan quipped.

“But don’t have a problem with Blue Lives Matter,” I shot back. “Then the operative word is ‘Black.’”

She blinked. I’ve known her for a while; it’s one of her surprised looks. “I see.”

“When a group gets victimized,” I started. “And they call out? Lots of good people take up the cause. And many of them come from outside of the people getting shafted. But they aren’t the problem. It’s the silent majority that seems to react to . . . well, almost counter-protest. Or they say nothing. I’m not sure which is worse.”

“You’re concentrating on the few bad apples. To hear you, it’s like most people don’t care.” Fries and a couple cups of coffee arrived.

“They don’t.” Honesty. Remember? “If you put together all the bad apples with the protesters and activists? You might equal about five percent of the ‘silent majority’ that just doesn’t care.”

“Hmm.” She ran a finger through her hair. “I guess this has been eating at you.”

I thought about the two men in the corner, rolling dice. “And who are they supposed to turn to? The very police that they think are the problem?”

“Work within the community.” She put a hand on the table.

I aggressively put my cup down. “Is it any wonder why some take the law into their own hands?”

Her eyes popped wide. “Jezz. Take it down a notch.” She shrank down a bit.

“I’ve taken a look at a case file.” I relaxed my grip on the cup. “It’s out in Indiana, so it’s out of my jurisdiction. There’s a perp that shot up a whole town. Pretty much leveled the place.”

“What’s the city?” Her eyes narrowed. “Carmine?”

“Yup.” I sipped some coffee.

She shook her head. “Some kid goes ‘Rambo’ over a small town? Killing like that? They should be put down like the animal they are.”

I gave her a square look “You don’t know the case, but he thinks he’s a man at war. Life is easy to take away. Impossible to give back. He’s a killer so if I get the case? I’ll take him down as quickly as I can.”

“O-okay,” She glanced at my body. “At war with who?”

It was now I realized I was leaning towards her. “White supremacy activists. And those who help them.”

She checked her nails. “So? Murder is murder.”

“Coming from a soldier.” I met her gaze.

She raised a hand. “Different. Not comparable, babe.” She looked out the window and slouched slightly.

I knew I got through. “What makes him different? What do you think makes him tick?” I said softly.

“Pretty clear,” she shot back. “Race.”

I waved a finger. “Wrong.”

Her eyes were the size of plates. “What?”

“Injustice.” I put my finger on the table. “From slavery, to Jim Crow laws, to the Klan and institutional racism, at each step there were innocents mowed down. Crushed. Worse. And not a single body that was supposed to protect blacks . . . well, did anything. Churches. Police. Teachers. Government. Any of them could have done something, but most of them . . . well, didn’t. It’s the story of lots of groups in this country.”

She leaned forward. “Civil rights act?”

“Should not have been necessary,” I said. “But it didn’t happen until protests and riots. Why? Not because these practices aren’t wrong. Because most people couldn’t be bothered. They didn’t care, Susan, until buildings were burning and cars were flipped over.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What is it you said about Apathy?”

“The bunny slope of evil, babe.” I said. “That’s the story of race relations in this country.”

A cold French fry found her mouth, and she nodded. “Ok, I’ll give you that one.”

“And it’s not just that, let’s go to the violence against women by men.” I saw her demeanor change.

“There was a ‘He for She’ movement to support some wave of feminism, sorry Sue-babe I can’t keep them straight, in the wake of the ‘not all men’ fiasco. Men came out in support of women. Not most, but a fair number.”

“And you also had the Men’s rights activists.” There was a dark look that crossed her face.

“Yeah, kind of like the first guy I started telling you about. They never proved a link to Men’s Rights activists, though. But there is a trend. He for she. All lives matter. These didn’t happen until the victims started screaming.” I gulped down some coffee and it hurt. “All lives didn’t matter until . . . well, never.”

Susan cocked her head to the side. “Keep going.”

I took a deep breath. “From the trail of tears to the internment camps of world war two, this country has been pretty clear that some lives just weren’t important to the masses. I read about a place . . . Rosewood? It was like clearing brush for cows. And remember the open hostility against Muslims in the U.S. and the hundreds killed because of it?”

“One of our darkest moments, Belinda babe.” She was serious as a funeral. “One that should never be repeated.”

“It’s always repeated. Just . . . I don’t know. The names change but you always have the same three sides.” I glanced outside at the streets. “Victims, killers and the people who don’t give two clips of ammo about what happened.”

“That’s not true,” she said as she fixed her posture. “There are always people who care.”

“Just not enough.” I didn’t realize I had a scowl on my face until I saw my reflection in the window.

Susan failed to put on a smile. “Or not the right ones.”

The table’s quiet for about a minute. Susan picked up the torch. “So this has been eating at you all day?”

“A bit longer than that,” I confessed. “Mostly because I’m a federal officer. A government super-cop. The police brutality sat close to me.”

“You don’t do that,” she said softly. “I know you better than you think.”

“I know I don’t,” I replied while checking my watch. “Most of the men and women in blue keep us safe. They are the first line of defense and they . . . we . . . do our best to serve and protect everyone. Especially those who hate us.”

“But there are always bad apples,” She said, kicking a boot back onto the table. “One racist cop spoils it for everyone else.”

“What gets me,” I said, “is how right they are.”

“Come again?” Her boot slipped off the table loudly. “Who’s right?”

“The counter protesters. Not all men are predators. Not all law enforcement officers target minorities unfairly.” My plate was clean so I had nothing to hide behind. “Most of the time, people are good to each other.”

“Just remember that, Belinda.” She offered a bite of her doughnut.

“Pete’s mother said she knew the ‘not all men’ meme when she was a girl,” I said. “Except she said it was called ‘not all white people.’ And she had a reply.”

She dropped her peace offering. “What was it?”

“His mother said ‘not all, but enough to where it’s a problem I have to think of every second of every day. That is a toll taken on my life that you don’t pay’ she told them.” And it was a price I’d yet to pay myself.

“I won’t argue,” she nodded with agreement. “We each have our crosses to bear, Belinda. But what makes us succeed, what makes us the nation we are, is how we bear that burden. What we do with it. That is what separates man from beast.”

“I’m feeling pretty aware of my part in this all right now,” I stated as Benny dropped off the bill. “I’m a cop and a woman and a superhero . . . well, they call me one anyway.”

She got up. “Yes, you are.”

“Look at this place,” I said while I circled my finger. “We have people – citizens of Delta – protesting discrimination every day. They organize demonstrations in the hope someone will realize their plight and help them out.”

“Which ones, Belinda? We have people claiming discrimination every week.” I swear she did have her sensitive moments but this wasn’t one. “Kind of hard to keep them all straight.”

I wasn’t going to tell her the rest. “The more we hold onto the status quo, the more we fuel the next cataclysm. Here in Delta all the normal humans have learned to play together, but not for the right reasons, Susan.”

“But they are playing together, and nicely.” She tried to grab the check.

I’m still faster. “They’re only at peace because they all have a class to look down on. Paranormals. Mutants. Cyborgs. They are the lowest class in Delta only because they were born or made different.” I glanced at the bill before tossing cash down on the table.

“Don’t forget, you’re one of those freaks.” She put on a fedora she found from God knew where.

“I treat every life as one that matters. I take the ones I have to.” I zipped up my jacket and pulled out my shades. “But so many won’t see things that way. They’ll only see a trillion dollar weapon slaying someone or something who was a victim of circumstance. It’s a tough road to haul.”

“I’m not going to preach to you,” she said. “I’m a Christian woman and I could point to a book with a role model that I use. Find your own way and do your best. Like I told you before . . . “

“I can only do what I can do.” It’s the truth for every single one of us. “And I will.”

I thanked her for letting me get that off my chest and went off into Delta city, where nothing’s normal but the music.

[katebutlerwrites]

Giacometti: Drawing Astonishment

Published on The Drawing Center Blog, The Bottom Line, August 2018

At age seventeen, Alberto Giacometti could draw anything. The son of a post-impressionist painter in Italian Switzerland, he had a happy childhood, provided with the resources and education that make a talented boy a prodigy. A self-portrait he made in 1918 portrays a confident young man, posture straight, pen in hand. His penetrating gaze meets the gaze of the viewer. His brows are alert and almost symmetrical, lips parsed, and his hairline is delineated sharply against a broad forehead. Clear and tight are the contour lines he has drawn along the edge of his jacket, hair, and cheek. Between the angular fold of his collar and the elevated turn of his head, he has drawn himself as a master.

Decades later, he would recount to Andre Parinaud that at that age, the world appeared to him whole. In his youth, he experienced no separation between himself and what he saw, which he rendered with ease.

Then something happened. By Giacometti’s account, 1920 was the year the world began to appear stranger, more complex. He was in Rome, and a female friend had agreed to pose for him all winter as he sculpted a bust. At the end of those six months,19-year-old Alberto threw what he’d made in the trash. He could not grasp the head in its unity. He felt incapable of rendering what he saw. The contour lines had cracked open.

For young Giacometti, the collapse of what he thought he knew marked the beginning of an artistic career defined by astonishment. The visible world ceased to be a pretext for him to exercise his mastery and increasingly became a great mystery that eluded his understanding. In interviews, the complexity of the visible world is a source of frustration to Giacometti, who would bemoan his failure to render a head or a figure as it literally appeared to him. Yet his expressions of failure are tempered by an equal dose of hope, provided by the adventure of observing human beings, whose visible existence he never ceased to marvel at.

My own astonishment at Giacometti’s sculptures and paintings was renewed at his retrospective at the Guggenheim, curated by Megan Fontanella and Catherine Grenier, on view through September 12. Winding up the museum rotunda are seemingly endless variations on what would become, after around 1940, his mature themes. There are portraits of wide-eyed figures, their upper bodies foregrounded by swaths of gray in front of skeletal rooms. There are sculptures of walking men and standing women reduced to symbols of themselves, their figures shrouded in emptiness. The gazes in many of these sculptures, each two steadfast eyes looking at the the viewer, is still present as it was in the early self-portrait. But the figures themselves appear less substantive. As in his mature drawings where each stroke gives form to the white of the page, the surface of each figure is reduced in such a way to draw attention to the emptiness that surrounds them. Some of the most delicious moments of the sculptures I found to be at the edges of the jagged bronze or plaster bodies; the light between an arm and a torso like a resistant wax pushing away ink.

By the time Giacometti committed for good to work from life in 1945, France was coming to terms with the loss of life and a shifting national identity in the wake of World War II. The grounds of existence felt unstable. While Giacometti’s mature work is not explicitly a response to the ravages of war, he acknowledged its role in shifting his perception of human beings.

There was, on one hand, the “danger of disappearance.” Some of the earliest figurative sculptures that he created, just after the start of World War II, depict minuscule figures secured to heavy plinths. In one on view at the Guggenheim, titled “City Square,” spindly male figures walk around –  one female figure stands – upon a wide platform which, owing to its width, creates distance between them. Giacometti recounted that during this time the only way he could conceivably portray people as he saw them would be to make them small, as if he was seeing them from afar.

The positive condition of that “danger of disappearance” was, as Giacometti expressed often and with gusto, an expansion of the unknown, which rendered his vision of the reality all the more astonishing. Speaking to Parinaud in the 1960s, Giacometti recounted: “Before the war, I had the impression that things were stable. Today, not at all. The world amazes me more and more each day.”

This amazement is reflected with particular force in the wide-eyed looks of his portrait busts of and paintings – of his frequent sitters, his brother Diego and his partner Annette, as well as the numerous friends, lovers, and academics who could spare several days of being exhaustively observed in his studio off the Boulevard Montparnasse. A 1953 oil portrait of Diego at the exhibition portrays a seated man of dark gray color in front of a network of black lines delineating the space of a room. His figure brought forward by an aura of lighter charcoal scribbles around him.  The volume of his chest, head and hands is denoted by glints of white. Vertical movements—in the length of his head, a central line between his clasped hands, and elongated tic marks for eyes, ground him in place. Diego’s form pulsates with the activity of intersecting lines, yet he appears very still. What “danger of disappearance” is suggested by Giacometti’s hollow rendering of the room behind Diego is abated by his arresting stare. That stare seems to mirror Giacometti’s own.

In Giacometti’s variations on “Standing Woman” the gaze appears as solid and fixed as the triangular weights for feet that secure them to the earth. Analogously to the seclusion of the sitters in Giacometti’s portraits, “Standing Woman” appears devoid of a context except that of the expanse of empty space evoked in proportion to the narrow figure.

The isolation of the figure in space is just one of the ways in which Giacometti’s nearly ten-year experiments in surrealist sculpture reverberate in his later work. Rewind to 1930, and Giacometti was working in the same studio on the Boulevard Montparnasse. Still perhaps reeling from that episode with the bust, he was convinced of the impossibility of rendering appearances. Instead, he committed himself to producing objects which, he said, “appeared to my mind in a finished state.” The goal was minimal interference of the structure as it had first appeared as a mental image, and so Giacometti avoided any trace of his own hand in each piece’s construction. Andre Breton introduced himself to Giacometti after noticing “Suspended Ball” in an exhibition in 1930, thus inviting him, if for a brief period, into his Surrealist tribe.

On view at the Guggenheim, “Suspended Ball,” consists of a marble ball that hangs from a cubic iron frame above a crescent-moon shaped sliver which is seated on a slightly elevated plane. At the base of the ball is a slit into which the crescent shape just barely grazes from the 45-degree angle at which it rests.  Ambiguously sexual, the shapes appear frozen in a continuum of movement, hovering in a state of impotent potential.

In reference to Breton, Rosalind Krauss defined the surreal as a projection in real space that is “like a waking dream – a fragment of real space altered, because it is created by the desire of the dreamer” yet, she continues, “appears to him simultaneously as something independent of his own will, something he merely happened upon by chance.” It’s an appropriate description of “Suspended Ball” which consists of actual objects in real space arrested in space according to some unnamable, unconscious desire.

The correspondence of Krauss’s description to Giacometti’s later, figurative work is also revealing. Giacometti’s portraits and figures are the products of vision, not mental projection, yet the subjects of his sculptures and paintings were like his surrealist works in as much as they reveal something essential in how they were constructed in his mind. Like a surrealist “fragment of real space altered” Giacometti isolates that which, in his vision of reality, was capable of revealing  forces and patterns that undergird the realm of appearances. Strolling through Paris many years after his surrealist heyday, Giacometti came upon a dog, in whose sullen appearance he saw himself. In his sculpture of the animal – a final treat of the Guggenheim show – it strides like one of the walking men on a flat plinth, alone as if in a dream.

In one of the last self-portrait drawings that he completed, in 1965, Giacometti depicts himself with open eyes and a mouth slightly agape. The straight-angled self-assurance of his youth is long gone. Instead are arched, inward-leaning shoulders which rise into a head. Curved dashes accumulate into darker crevices denoting the volume of a face that stares intently back.

The edges of the figure’s upper body are denoted in faint strokes that open to the light of the page. The top of his head is indicated by gestural touches and his chest is a criss-cross of angled dashes. Giacometti depicts himself as less substantial than he did in the drawing he made at seventeen. Instead, he has given weight to the space that encases his figure. His pencil strokes illuminate the empty whites.

Jean Genet put it well, calling Giacometti’s mature drawings “infinitely precious objects.” He writes, “The strokes are there only to give form and solidity to the whites. Look closely: it is not the stroke which is elegant, it’s the white space contained by it. It is not the stroke which is full, it is the white.”

In a 1963 interview with Andre Parinaud, Giacometti remarked upon the positive condition of his assumed failures to represent appearances. The unknown had expanded, and with it his astonishment at the visible world:

“The more I work, the more I see differently, that is to say, everything grows greater day by day, it becomes more and more unknown, more and more beautiful.”