Why We Need to Talk About Race in Medicine with Nneka Allen
Off The Charts Podcast
Hosted by Dr. Bobby Parmar
[Nneka Allen] (0:00 - 0:46)
Black people don't have the luxury of escaping race. We live in a socially constructed racialized world. And Europeans created that socially constructed racialized world.
Race originates in the White imagination. Exposing the existence of Whiteness is important because invisibility renders it innocent. Those same beliefs persist today.
And is the reason why you see our continued dehumanization in all of these different forms. Whether it be, you know, no pain medication, any of those statistics, it all boils down to the dehumanization of Black bodies.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (0:46 - 2:37)
Hi, Off the Charts, you'll notice I'm wearing headphones. It's because we have a lovely guest, Nneka Allen, with us here today, who's so graciously said yes to being on Off the Charts. It's a very important conversation for me.
And Nneka and I have had this conversation a few times before. And I don't know anybody else who has allowed for this conversation in the way that we've had it before. And so I'm so excited for you to share your experiences and your own attitudes and understanding of what it's like for race and society and race and medicine to be a part of the conversation that we should always be having, I think.
And so like, I want to talk to you about, and I want to bring up the most important question to me as a Black woman in this world, especially lately, I think, because there's all kinds of shenanigans happening in this world that affect you specifically, I think. Um, like, one of the things I like to bring up with people is the whole point of having this conversation is, we should be talking about race. And I have a lot of conflict with a lot of people who say to me, like, whenever I bring up an example of something that's happened to somebody or like to myself, or especially to a Black person, a patient even of mine, I'll say like, oh, I'm sure that the thing that happened to you, that feels like a wrong, that feels like an injustice, that feels like that wouldn't have happened to somebody else is because you're Black or because of your race. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They don't want me to say that.
They don't want you to say that. Why is that? And why do you feel like that is an important thing to talk about?
[Nneka Allen] (2:37 - 5:06)
Well, what a way to kick off the conversation with a massive question like that. I think first we have to, we have to think about, you know, who is struggling with the question around race? Because that will shape the answer.
The answer I'm going to provide is really focused on White people who don't want to talk about race. And so, you know, in order to really explore what that's about, we have to reveal the invention and the intentions of Whiteness. To understand like, well, what is it?
Why don't they want to talk about race? We live in a socially constructed racialized world. And Europeans created that socially constructed racialized world.
They created Whiteness and they created Whiteness for their exclusive benefit. They also created Blackness also for their economic gain. Okay, so I think it's really important to like, really understand that that's the genesis of this, of this question, I think.
Economic systems like slavery. All a part of the mix. And so the fundamentals of this social construct don't change or haven't changed over time as, you know, slavery was abolished or segregation was made illegal.
It persists in every area of life, even today. And there's this book I really love. It's a Canadian book.
I'm always excited when books are Canadian and they're talking about the realities of Black people. Ian Williams wrote a fantastic little book called Disorientation: Being Black in the World. And he does a really brilliant job of exploring Whiteness.
And one of the things he writes in the book is, Whiteness would have you believe that race and Whiteness are separate and that race originates in the Black body. But no, race originates in the White imagination. Exposing the existence of Whiteness is important because invisibility renders it innocent.
So, you know, we don't talk about race, the structural and interpersonal racial inequities that are manufactured by Whiteness. They won't change. They can't change.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (5:08 - 5:27)
Why don't we? Is it really like, do you think people just don't know this? It's so foreign to them?
Or is it that they've been confronted with this? They understand it. And, or I guess they don't understand.
They've just been confronted with it. And it's just not something that they're willing to take on.
[Nneka Allen] (5:29 - 7:33)
So, so first of all, let me just say, we always need to focus on race because White people made it that way. Like, you know, okay, so that's really important. They made it this way.
And then they don't want to talk about it. And when you say people again, you got which people are we talking about? So why don't they want to talk about?
Do they not know? Well, I think in Canada, we know that we've been fed a lot of misinformation about the existence of Black people here in Canada. You know, when I, when I facilitate my course at UBC, the amount of people who are unaware that there were 200 years of slavery in Canada is always baffling to me.
Then, and, and quite rightly, a lot of those students are also really upset to learn that this massive part of our history has been omitted from their education. So yes, in a lot of ways, you know, the origins of this are disguised in our Canadian context. One of the reasons for that is because in Canada, the rate or the volume or the size of slavery is overshadowed by the size of slavery in the United States.
But that's for mainly geographic reasons. I mean, environmental reasons, right? You know, we don't have a warm, a warm climate that can facilitate, you know, large crops all year round, growing things like cotton, right?
So slavery looked different in Canada and therefore we had fewer slaves in Canada. And so that history can be erased and has been erased, frankly, you know? And so I would say, yes, there is a significant part of the population that is unaware.
And it's not just White people. I mean, there's a lot of newcomers who come to this country and don't have any idea about this history either.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (7:34 - 8:18)
That's what I mean when I say people, because I'm saying, I'm basically saying non-Black people, basically like, because it's not just White people. It's just non-Black people are not having this conversation. Asians are not excused or excluded from this.
South Asians are not excused and excluded from this. We are at the mercy and influenced by the same problem. Yeah.
Do we also have our own issues with sort of the White construct of race? Absolutely. Of course.
But like where in the in-between? You know, like we're not over here where the Black experience is. We're sort of here.
[Nneka Allen] (8:19 - 9:54)
Yeah, well, I think you're referring to it as sort of a continuum. And I think it's part of the reason why Black people can't avoid race is because the impact of it on our lives is so absolutely acute. Like we can't escape it.
And quite frankly, I believe that the stories that we have told generationally through oral tradition are part of the way we have survived as well. And so the telling of our stories, both the good and the bad, the painful, is a part of our history keeping. And so I know in my family, we was made very clear who we are, what our history is, what our purpose is in this world as it relates to who we are as Black Afro-Metis people, you know, descent who escaped through Underground Railroad into Canada.
Black people don't have the luxury of escaping race. I mean, it's the first thing people see when they see us. And I know that's true for other people, but the Blackness is the complete opposite of Whiteness.
We are the polar opposite of Whiteness. And so all of the animus and rage that people have for those who are the furthest away from Whiteness often is held in the bodies, in Black bodies.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (9:55 - 12:15)
Yeah, as a person who is in medicine, I treat people and I'm confronted with this all the time. And I've said this to you before, it's like we read chapters, let's think of one, fibroids. We read a chapter in a medical textbook about fibroids.
And the chapter will all be about like the way everybody on average experiences fibroids. Women who bleed heavily, we're supposed to check in your 40s. If you start to bleed heavier and you have anemia, we're supposed to sort of do a pelvic ultrasound.
But even at best, medicine's not great there. And then they'll maybe be a little like legend in the top of page four on the chapter of fibroids where it says, don't forget about the Black women who start 20 years earlier than everybody else because they're more likely to have more fibroids, bigger fibroids, more severe fibroids and more severe symptoms and more incidence of anemia. And then more likely to get hysterectomies, more likely to get hysterectomies early, more likely to get as a result of that hysterectomy, menopause early, more likely as a result of menopause early to then need intervention because they're more likely to have heart disease, hypertension, the cardiac risk factors as a result of this whole cascade, this series of events that all happened because the Black women get fibroids earlier than other people.
And then the risks of heart attack and stroke that come with that because we don't recognize that these women need hormone therapy never mind at the same time, but earlier than other people to protect them. It's just domino of things all because all that was done, if it was done at all, was just this one little legend on page four that everybody skips because nobody emphasizes it, nobody cares to emphasize it and nobody is interested in making it the chapter. And that's like when you say the acute experience that you are confronted with this every day, acutely, it's your, it's life.
It's your literal life. It's the fact of medicine. It's a fact of life that you are then bearing the consequences of just being a footnote in this legend when you are supposed to be the first five pages.
[Nneka Allen] (12:16 - 12:18)
Yep, that's exactly right.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (12:19 - 13:37)
There's this like, and that's why this is so important for me to have this conversation with you because I just want people to stop. Stop making people not like, just be an afterthought when you can make huge differences in people's lives if you also acknowledge that we have to then learn what happens to you and why it happens to you differently than other people. And then if the why is rooted in race and racism, because it is, because it is, because like I've told you before, how could it not be?
Like your whole experience, the way you interact with this world and the way this world interacts with you is because you're Black. That's right. So if that's true, and that's a fact, and we have to 100% acknowledge that fact, which means everything that happens to you, both societally and then in medicine, also happens to you because you're Black.
That's right. And because of the racism and because of the prejudice and because of the bias and because of the inbuilt biases that we have to like check ourselves on. And that's why I want clinicians and people listening to this and to you to be like, I'm going to think of the experience of a Black person first.
[Nneka Allen] (13:38 - 13:50)
Well, you've just described like a handful of my friends, literally what their experience was with fibroids and hysterectomies in the whole nine yards. 100%, I have multiple friends I can think of right now. That was exactly their journey.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (13:52 - 15:00)
How, how do you, what do you do? Like, how do you, and this might be some like a weird question because, you know, I'm a queer person, I'm a Brown person, so I know what it means to cope with things and stresses. But like I read, I said to you, Dr. Uche Blackstock's book, Legacy, and it's all about like the Black experience as a doctor who's going through medical school. Her mother was a doctor, her sister was a doctor, and even their lives were threatened and ended because they're Black. And they're like, they're these like educated, professional women who are supposed to, like people think like, oh, it's probably different for people of color and Black people who are the same sort of learning degrees as other people. It's like, no, they actually have five times more likelihood of still getting all the improper medical treatment and lack of care than their White counterparts, even when they have higher education.
So my question is, how do you like deal with all of this? And how do you cope with these facts and like your friends and the people, you in your own life? Like, how do you, what do you do?
[Nneka Allen] (15:03 - 15:44)
So let me just come at this in two different ways. I think one, I have to say, personally, the way that I deal with it is, I mean, I come from a family of women who don't take no for an answer or if it doesn't make sense to them, they got questions. And if it's not speaking to them, they go ask somebody else.
You know what I mean? And so, and I had a mother who was very much focused on alternative medicine from young, Chinese medicine, acupuncture. What's the doctor that reads your eyes?
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (15:44 - 15:45)
An iridologist.
[Nneka Allen] (15:45 - 19:07)
Iridologist. Oh, you know, she was into all of this herbs, the whole nine yards. Right.
And so I came up with, you know, yes, we would go to the doctor. And if the doctor said something was wrong, then my mom would be like, hold up. We will find out what the natural thing is.
So we're going to do our own research. Right. And so you can't come up in an environment like that and it not influence you, you know, in a way that you just sort of orient yourself to the medical system.
So that's always been, that's always been my approach. I mean, I think you and I have spoken about the fact that I don't have very much trust for the medical system. And so, and I'm sort of unashamed about that.
Right. And so I ask questions. I don't, I'm not prepared to let you cut on my body because you think it's the fastest solution.
If I don't want to do it or if it's something that makes me feel uncomfortable, then I have to go get more information. And maybe the answer is I'm not doing that. You know, I am, I see myself as the person most responsible for my own health.
And so that also includes, you know, how I, how I care for myself, how I acknowledge my own body. Right. And what it withstands as a result of anti-Blackness.
I mean, anti-Blackness is a social determinant of health. And so I can't escape that. I don't escape that.
And so the best thing I can do is acknowledge it and confront it. You know, in 2021, I started seeing a somatic therapist so I could better understand how to engage my body around what I'm experiencing, how to release pain or tension or trauma when racist things happen. You know, when any kind of harm happens, frankly.
And so I feel a tremendous amount of autonomy around what I allow to live in my body. Right. And then there are things that, you know, I don't have control of, but I know those things I do have control of influence the things, you know, the physiological things that I may not be able to control.
So I also bring that orientation to my relationships with my friends. And I have to tell you, one of the most frustrating things for me is when I'm with my friends and they're telling me what their ridiculous doctors are saying to them about like cutting out their uterus or whatever. And I'm just saying, are you sure this is, you know, are you sure this is the way to go?
Like, don't you think you should talk to somebody else? Have you seen a naturopathic doctor? Have you inquired like beyond this doctor's thinking about this?
And even in some cases, you know, the solution doesn't even make sense in comparison to the problem. You know, like I have one friend who suffered with this debilitating pain and no one could figure out what it was. And then they finally did a partial hysterectomy, still had the pain years later.
Then it was like, well, we're going to take out, I think it was her gallbladder. Like, honestly, I was like, OK, so this is an experiment.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (19:08 - 19:38)
And you know, Black bodies are experimented on still all the time. I've just, I've been reading so much about this just for my knowledge and understanding, because the facts are just, they're studied. It's not like we don't know this.
Like the three things that stood out in just the last week of what I read is college educated Black women are five times more likely to die in labor than White women.
[Nneka Allen] (19:41 - 19:42)
Yeah.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (19:43 - 19:43)
What?
[Nneka Allen] (19:44 - 19:44)
I know.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (19:46 - 20:04)
Black, Black women are 22% less likely to receive pain medication than White women. Yep. When they're in pain, which means, and I put this in numbers so that it like makes very clear sense.
[Nneka Allen] (20:05 - 20:05)
Yeah.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (20:05 - 20:20)
300 White women in pain, 100 will be offered pain medication. For every, but only 78 Black women will be given the same... No, today. Today.
[Nneka Allen] (20:21 - 20:22)
Well, you know why, right?
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (20:23 - 20:28)
Of course. That's why it's about race. It's everything that's about race.
Everything about racism and everything.
[Nneka Allen] (20:29 - 21:22)
It's 100% about race, but it's even more nuanced than that. Because for Black people, we were chattel. So property.
Mm hmm. For centuries. And a lot of the erroneous beliefs and ideas that were developed in the medical system were developed in that very period of time when we were considered to be property.
Those same beliefs persist today and is the reason why you see our continued dehumanization in all of these different forms, whether it be, you know, no pain medication, any of those statistics, it all boils down to the dehumanization of Black bodies.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (21:23 - 21:46)
Yeah. It is. So.
Like that is everything. And like we, I try to capture it with the word racism, but racism isn't strong enough, actually, like you just described. Like the actual power, the actual pain, the actual.
It's better than racism to describe it that way, because racism is so easily just.
[Nneka Allen] (21:46 - 21:47)
Mm hmm.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (21:48 - 22:22)
It's like you can call anybody a racist these days and they'll be like, no, I'm not. And then you just move on. And you could say like something you did is racist and you're like, no, it wasn't.
And you just move. You can't deny the experience of many generations of people who then without their volition, without their consent, were forced to then have their bodies be the way we understood how the body worked and how through mutilation of those bodies, we understood how to do hysterectomies.
[Nneka Allen] (22:22 - 22:23)
That's right.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (22:23 - 23:12)
The irony of that. Mutilating Black women's bodies is how surgeons, who we revered historically. That's right.
That's how we learned how to do hysterectomies. We learned, you know, the speculum, the thing that we use to actually insert to take a look at the cervix. That was discovered and created through the torture of Black women.
To like understand how do we get a view and it was created through horrible medical practices. And then we still now benefit from that torture, but we don't know that we're benefiting from that torture. Nobody, nobody tells us when we handle our first speculum, when we're handed in our first gynecology and obstetrics class, nobody told us.
You want to know where this came from?
[Nneka Allen] (23:13 - 24:18)
Well, I think we have a crisis of curiosity. I don't think we have enough curiosity in socially these days, like real genuine curiosity about other people's lived experiences. Like why are things the way that they are?
You know, that dehumanization we're talking about, the examples that you just gave were again for the express benefit of White people, the express benefit of dominant society. Our bodies were also used to extract labor. Slavery was an economic system.
It wasn't an immoral system. It was an economic system. And here's the thing that's really important about that.
When we think about why does this continue to persist? Well, the dominant system continues to extract from Black bodies. For economic gain, it continues to extract from Black bodies so it can learn more about medicine.
The way they do it is perhaps a little bit more covert.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (24:23 - 26:04)
That's hard to take, you know, like I wonder as you're speaking this and as even though I've, I'm learning a lot of this. I wonder if the reason, if one of the reasons people will have a hard time listening to this conversation, like White people really and non-Black people, but mostly White people. And then like, let's say they're listening.
Let's say you're listening, right? I'm talking to the White person listening to this. When you hear this, do you pack it away then and then just leave it over there?
Or do you change or do you do something? Like for me, it was a point of no return. When I started to learn things like this, I was like, there's no looking back anymore.
I can't. How could I? If the experience of, I said this to you in a text the other day, I was like, why do I care so much about this?
Like, why does it matter so much to me? I said, because if there's injustice in this world, and if somebody is wronged and an entire group of people is so wronged and it represents like the worst problems in our society, what we do to Black people in society and in medicine represents, I think the worst. Like it's always the worst outcomes.
It's always the worst of every stat is like, it's a Black stat, which is, anyway. So it's always the worst. If we then get to see why that is happening and where that worst outcome and where that wrong and where that injustice is coming from, maybe learning that helps everyone, but most importantly, helps the people who are in the most pain as the result of why it's there.
[Nneka Allen] (26:04 - 26:05)
Yes.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (26:06 - 26:16)
How can we then, how can we turn around? How could we at all ignore that then and say, like, we're going to just keep that over there in that corner? I don't understand how people do that.
How do people do that?
[Nneka Allen] (26:16 - 27:53)
Well, what you're describing is your humanity responding to the humanity of the group of people you're observing or you're exploring, you know, you're learning about. We live in a society that really wants to keep us numb and busy and self-consumed. And it's hard to be thinking about other people when those other things are pressing on you.
Now, in my experience and in my work, I have seen the first person narratives of people really begin to pierce through that numbness because of the way stories affect us, right? The way our brains organize around story, right? We can put ourselves in the story.
It also, you know, because it affects us lower on the brainstem, it's in the area of the brain that monitors behavior. So it actually has the potential to change something for you if you lean in, you know? And so I am always asking, how can we be telling more stories?
But there's also another question on the other side of that, which is how can you be listening to more stories? You know, you know, Uche Blackstock's book was you leaning into a new story. You know?
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (27:54 - 28:39)
It's a domino effect. It's like, honestly, talking to you, being invited into your world, meeting the women in your life, having that collective embrace me and allow for me, like, it's a privilege, actually, to get to be invited. It's a privilege to get to listen.
Like, it's not just like, oh, what a privilege. Your life is, I know you just said, our lives are full with all this other stuff and it's distracting and all that. But Black people's lives are full of generational and current day everything.
[Nneka Allen] (28:39 - 28:39)
Yeah.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (28:40 - 28:42)
And yet you still have space.
[Nneka Allen] (28:42 - 30:24)
Yeah. Though that's because our cultural traditions, it really comes down to culture at the end of the day. You know, we know that the way we survive is by being in community.
You know, Audre Lorde said, without community, there is no liberation. Like, period, that's all. And we know that.
We don't just, it's not just an intellectual sort of cognitive thing that we understand. It's actually in our body. Like, we know it in our bodies.
We've experienced, we all have the examples of it, right? So then when we come together, we always leave feeling better, you know? And so when you came and joined us, it was like, I know for a lot of those women, such a pivotal moment for them because I know some of them were, you know, trying to navigate symptoms that nobody was really paying attention to or symptoms that didn't make any sense, that nobody could connect the dots around.
And even in the time we spent where we were together for a couple of hours, you were able to connect some of those dots. And I know that a lot of those women went away advocating for themselves differently. And I know that, you know, the remedies that they now have are changing their lives.
They're actually changing how they materially feel in their daily life. I mean, only community could do that. Like, people are prepared to be with one another and share our gifts with one another.
That's what you did. You shared your gift with us. And for that, we were absolutely grateful and honored to have you with us.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (30:24 - 31:34)
Yeah, I feel a sense of honor and privilege to be able to be a part of that community. But I also feel a sense of duty. Like we have a sense of duty, non-Black people have a sense of duty to understand the lived experiences and the generational experiences and the historical facts of Black people.
It's just, there's no, I leave no room for excuse because again, it is our responsibility too. And honestly, what are you gonna do if a Black person comes into your office and you know that there's something different about them and there's something different about the way they experience this world, which then translates into how they might show up in disease. You should know what that is because otherwise you're not doing right by them and you're not doing right by you as a clinician because you need to know the inputs.
We're gonna mention Dr. Blackstock's book a million times because it's so important, but there's two things. One of them, I wasn't super familiar with the concept of something called weathering.
[Nneka Allen] (31:34 - 31:35)
Oh, yes.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (31:39 - 32:48)
Like we all carry, and White people will say this a lot, this is like, oh, I'm stressed too and I'm impoverished too. So I experience the same stresses as a person that you're talking about who didn't get that job or has been unemployed or is impoverished. And it's like, there's no difference between a Black person and me.
It's like, hang on. Why they're there are very different reasons than why you're there. And also they carry, they carry hundreds of years of trauma and pain buried in their bodies, biologically buried in their body.
And that cumulative stress over time, before they were born, when their grandmother was born, and then when their mother was born, and then when they were born, and then when their kids are born, that thread, factually, that thread is still totally interwoven into their biology. And it's influencing the way that their body responds to this world, which is more likely to be negative as a result of the ongoing weathering. Like just knowing that is like, it's our duty to do something there.
[Nneka Allen] (32:49 - 35:00)
100%. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I think about weathering, it makes me mad.
It makes me feel protective. It makes me care more acutely for the Black people in my life. And it makes me want to tell the truth more about the realities of Black people.
I think a really powerful way to understand one area of weathering, which is microaggressions, which is a word you hear people using so much these days, which is problematic in a lot of ways. But I think Ibram X. Kendi, in his book, How to Be an Antiracist, gives the best definition and reframe on microaggressions.
So you can actually, I don't know, and I read it, I can feel what weathering is. So I'm going to just read it because it's just good. I use it so much in my work.
I do not use microaggression anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported sudden popularity. I detest its component parts, micro and aggression.
A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term abuse because aggression is not as an exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people, distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide.
What other people call racial microaggressions, I call racist abuse. And I call the zero tolerance policies preventing and punishing these abusers what they are, antiracist. Only racist shy away from the R word.
Racism is steeped in denial. And so microaggressions are racist abuse. Weathering is the outcome of the accumulation of racist abuse over time.
And I think we forget that racism is against the law.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (35:03 - 35:36)
It frames what you just said. Yeah, why do we do that? Why do we minimize?
Why do we minimize these huge things? Like you just said, microaggressions lead to weathering, lead to disease, lead to death. That's right.
Why would we ever minimize those by calling them tiny little insults? Yeah, because you could probably get over those. No, it's actually no, because they are death by a thousand cuts.
That's right. And they're not thorns, they're swords.
[Nneka Allen] (35:37 - 35:38)
That's exactly right.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (35:39 - 35:54)
We do that. Like even you saying that and just like, oh, yeah, right. They're not, they're not small.
They're, they're deep and they are felt and they're felt by the person meant to feel them and receive them. And it's like, it's like, that's none of my business, actually, to feel your shit.
[Nneka Allen] (35:55 - 36:12)
That's exactly right. So, you know, well, one of the things I love to do is I like to put it right back on the, on the perpetrator. Like, I beg your pardon.
Right. And then I even get curious about it. So what exactly do you mean by that?
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (36:12 - 36:13)
Yeah. Okay.
[Nneka Allen] (36:13 - 36:24)
And then when they get done saying whatever they got to say, then I'm going to tell them exactly what I think about what they said. That's one of them. That's one of the ways that I don't allow that to live and sit in my body.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (36:26 - 36:27)
How often are you?
[Nneka Allen] (36:30 - 36:59)
Let me just say this. I got a whole Substack. And I am, and I write about my experiences, right?
And I'm never at a loss for topics because quite literally the amount of things that happen over the course of a month, just as an example, is like, it's wild.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (37:01 - 37:39)
Do you like, okay, so one of the things, first of all, it's probably a real Substack. A sub is probably not appropriate for how big that stack is. So the big stack probably too.
Do you end up having, because it happens so much, do you end up having to like, just like pick and choose sort of like when you might confront that? Or are you like, like, do you know what I mean? Like, ah, the way that person spoke to me in the cab or the way that person looked at me in the airport.
I got to let those all go because like, they just, they're so constant.
[Nneka Allen] (37:39 - 38:08)
So I have like, there's a variety of responses I have. And a lot of it is really based on what's my current capacity, right? But my basic rule is I'm not letting this go.
That's my basic rule. But I do assess my own capacity in the moment, you know, what else is happening, whatever the context is. But I'm saying something.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (38:08 - 38:14)
May you have endless capacity because I wish that for you.
[Nneka Allen] (38:15 - 39:44)
Well, here's the thing, you know, and maybe it's different for me because my work, you know, I do so much of my work in this area around, you know, racial justice, racial liberation, racial identity that I feel so strongly. I just really have maybe my standard is too rigid around this. I don't think it is.
It contributes to my wellbeing, but I'll just give you one example. Last summer, I decided that I, so I rarely go into my bank, my business bank. I had to go in, it was summertime, it was June.
I was on my Sabbath and I had to go in because I had cash in my wallet and I've been carrying this cash around and I was like this, it was US cash. And I was like, this is ridiculous. I need to go put this in the bank.
Driving by the bank, stop, go to the bank. So I'm dressed casually. I go in the bank.
I hate going in the bank and my bank branch had just moved to the main branch. And I don't like this branch. So I had to go in.
I go in and, you know, you have to put your card and you put your pin. So I did. I said, I want to deposit this cash.
She began over-authenticating me immediately. I said, what are you doing? Like I straight was like, ma'am, what are you doing?
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (39:45 - 39:49)
Like what was your grandfather's password for his bank account? A hundred years ago, kind of authentication.
[Nneka Allen] (39:49 - 40:15)
Oh no, like give me your ID, give me like, like over, I had to put in another card, put in another pin. It was like a whole thing. Seriously.
And I was like, I just said to her, she ended up doing it. And I, but I told her, I said, oh, this will not be the last you hear of me. Why don’t you write your manager's name down for me.
Let me just tell you, I'm still dealing with them.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (40:17 - 40:19)
Cause it's always about race.
[Nneka Allen] (40:19 - 40:44)
And I just want you to know that the bigger issue typically is after the racist incident, their response to it or lack of response to it, their cowardly way of trying to not address the thing. That ends up being the bigger problem in the end. But this is what I'm saying.
Oh, I'll be writing about this. It's because the story is literally wild.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (40:46 - 40:47)
Like that.
[Nneka Allen] (40:48 - 41:02)
What happens after? Wild. Sign me up.
Maybe I'll, maybe I'll publish in the summer as a one year anniversary to the.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (41:06 - 41:56)
People will want to say like, why did you got to make that about race? And it's like, because if, if systemic racism is a fact, like we know that this whole world is based off of the construct that you just helped understand. Right.
So systemic racism is, is a fact, which means racism as part of the whole system. Are you in the system? Yes.
Which means you're also biased. You're also racist. You do racist things.
Unless you check those biases, unless you examine those biases, unless you put thought and actual like meditate on those biases before you enter this world, before you leave your home. How are you ever going to escape? Are you a miracle?
Are you a miracle to escape those biases? And now you're not going to be in exuding those biases into the world. Of course you are.
[Nneka Allen] (41:59 - 42:01)
The bank teller wasn't.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (42:02 - 42:06)
Yeah, that doesn't even, that doesn't even matter because it's the system.
[Nneka Allen] (42:08 - 42:17)
And the amount, and the amount of brown people that I've dealt with since then. Yeah, you know.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (42:18 - 42:22)
It's the system. It's built this way. Nobody escapes.
[Nneka Allen] (42:22 - 42:37)
Here's the part I take real exception to. This bank markets itself as being diverse. If you look up their, like, you know, what they stand for and what their values are.
Oh, they got a whole bunch to say about diversity and equity.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (42:38 - 42:39)
I know what bank this is now.
[Nneka Allen] (42:39 - 43:28)
Yeah, well, listen, everybody's going to know when I get done on the sub stack because I told them. I said, and I'm writing about it. Maybe you didn't look me up. You should.
Absolutely. I mean, I'm tired of these corporations cosplaying as activists that actually want to change, you know, power structures.
They signal that to us. And then they can't even deal with racism as it occurs on the ground in their bank. I'm sorry.
That's ridiculous, right? And so that's just, you know, so here I am on my Sabbath. I'm, you know, I'm just going to deposit this money.
And then boom, it's like being slapped in the face.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (43:29 - 43:54)
It's just, it's like the, that's why I wish you capacity, because I feel like if that's what people need to be able to, like, take on this kind of thing and that taking on dismantles or at least plays a role in denting this, because it's lives. It's, it's represented like this, this thing that feels small. It's representative of a thing that is killing people.
[Nneka Allen] (43:55 - 43:57)
That's right. That's exactly right.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (43:58 - 44:11)
Does your… I'm just going to ask this very bluntly.
[Nneka Allen]
Yeah.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND]
Because it's on the backs of this bank teller not being a White person. Does your doctor have to be Black in order to truly care for you?
[Nneka Allen] (44:12 - 44:36)
No, my doctor has to be race conscious. And so that's actually the prerequisite. They have to actually understand something about my life, about my reality, my context.
And so you can be anybody and be race conscious and understand, you know, the effects of anti-Blackness. That's a choice.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (44:38 - 44:53)
How do you learn that about that person? Like, what do you as a patient, what do you as a human, what do you as a woman going through all of the things that you go through, then learn to then trust that this is that kind of person?
[Nneka Allen] (44:54 - 48:26)
So this absolutely comes back. Absolutely. I know today, you know, the landscape today as it relates to finding a GP is a lot different than, you know, when I was younger.
But, you know, when you could choose your family doctor, I remember those days, right? And we saw doctors that other family members have seen and who had successful, good relationships. So for instance, when I was a kid, I was probably less than 10.
My aunt almost died and this new doctor had come to town and he ultimately ended up saving her life. My entire family started to go and see him. To this day, my dad, my mom, my brother, they all still go and see this doctor.
Because of that… Now… And he was my doctor for, you know, my entire life until I left Windsor. And he was a pretty good doctor.
I would say he was a pretty good doctor to the extent that he at least understood that racism existed and it would affect me and my family members in different ways. Now, I wouldn't say that I ever felt like the care he was giving me was targeted to me per se, but I'll give you an example. When I was working at this one employer, I had to file a human rights complaint.
There was a tremendous amount of stress around this. And he had to put me off work because of the stress. And he never gave me any trouble about this.
Like he was very sensitive, you know what I mean? About like how much time did I need? And he never challenged me.
He was very supportive. So that was a great benefit to have a doctor that was like that, you know? So I would say it's often word of mouth.
In this current environment, it's still word of mouth, but I feel like it's word of mouth if you're prepared to pay. Right. Because you can't choose, you know, you can't choose your GP.
Like if you're prepared to pay, you can get a naturopathic doctor, nurse practitioner, you know, and make choices that way. But that's a barrier. That's a very real barrier for a lot of people.
Like if I think about when I was a young mother, that's, you know, that would have been very difficult for me. I found a way to see a naturopathic doctor at least, you know, four times a year, you know what I mean? Just so I could get like the real deal on what was going on with my health and my daughter's health.
But like, you know, what it costs me today would have been completely and utterly unsustainable as a single young mother. So I'm very acutely aware of that that barrier exists. And so in those instances, I mean, you have to be dogged, literally.
You have to like not let them push you around and remember that you have autonomy and that your body is your business. And they don't get to just tell you.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (48:30 - 48:59)
What a barrier, like the, it just feels like a wall. Like I'm just imagining this huge wall of like the things you have to do to climb over to still be a hundred meters back, you know? Like it's just, it's, yeah, there's that thing too.
This makes me think of like, you don't have a distrust of the person. Like we don't have a distrust of the person. We have a distrust of the system that created that.
[Nneka Allen] (48:59 - 49:31)
I'll go further than that. I've, it depends. I, you know, I don't, I don't trust White people easily.
Let me just be real straightforward. Unless they have demonstrated to me that they don't live in that blissfully ignorant bubble. And even then I need to see some behaviors that suggest to me you understand what the real world has going on.
Before I, I'm just trusting you.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (49:32 - 50:15)
That vetting process. That must be so like constantly. And I have the same thing, you know, like I'm, again, again, Dr. Blackstock, if you somehow watch this. But like you also, she brought up this institutional untrustworthiness where we shouldn't ever put the onus on the Black person or the person being affected by the institution to be like, oh, you just don't trust people. You don't have a trust issue. It's like, no, sorry.
The entire institution is untrustworthy and has to be the one who does the work to gain your trust back.
[Nneka Allen] (50:15 - 50:41)
And so exactly. And so when we say institutional mistrust, yes, we are talking about an entity, but institutions are not institutions without people. So how did the institution get to a place of being untrustworthy?
Because the people behaved in ways that were not worthy of people's trust.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (50:41 - 50:45)
Like I said, “What, they escape the system? No, they are the system.”
[Nneka Allen] (50:46 - 52:14)
Exactly, exactly. And so I'm watching, I don't, you know, I don't spend a whole lot of energy on it, but I am watching. I'm always observing.
And I'm not, I'm uninterested in, well, let me say this. Racism is not an identity. It’s behavior, which is the reason why I'm watching.
And I like to think about racism and the North American colonial project that we are all in through the lens of the four behaviors in a closed social system. So these are the behaviors I'm looking for: Perpetrating behaviors, bystanding behaviors, truth-telling behaviors, or dissenting behaviors.
If I see you doing any of those, that's data, that's good data. That lets me know what to think about you. Are you brave enough to tell the truth even when there's consequences?
When I see people do that over a period of time, that tells me something. The same way if people are silent to other people's pain and they, you know, constantly or, you know, repeatedly watch racist things happen, perpetrating behavior happen, and they're silent, that also tells me something.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (52:15 - 52:17)
Oh, it speaks volumes.
[Nneka Allen] (52:18 - 52:21)
And so that's what I'm looking for, right?
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (52:21 - 52:25)
Can you say those four things again, please? Like, I need a second to process.
[Nneka Allen] (52:27 - 52:28)
Perpetrating behaviors.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (52:29 - 52:29)
Okay.
[Nneka Allen] (52:30 - 52:32)
Bystanding behaviors.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (52:32 - 52:38)
I mean, that's huge. It's huge. It's huge.
It's complicit. It's huge.
[Nneka Allen] (52:39 - 52:42)
100%. And extremely dangerous.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (52:42 - 52:43)
Oh, my God. The most...
[Nneka Allen] (52:43 - 52:46)
Bystanding behaviors often uphold the institution.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (52:46 - 52:58)
Yeah, that's why they're so... It's mind-boggling that we are so just bystanderly complicit in everything. Our silence is...
Our silence is the crime.
[Nneka Allen] (52:59 - 53:09)
100%. Truth-telling and dissenting. So that truth-telling is where stories come in, right?
Our stories. You're not telling other people's story. You tell your own story.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (53:11 - 53:47)
Nneka, I could talk to you forever. Like, I honestly could. But for the sake of this Off the Charts podcast, I'm going to end it there because I think that's beautiful to, like, really put it...
Just to really put it back on us, you know? Like, these behaviors, these things that we're supposed to, like, think about as we... Yeah, we have a lot of shit going on in our lives.
Yeah, we're full. We're numb. All the things you just said that, like, why are we dealing with this?
But there's always room because there's shit happening and you shouldn't be a bystander to shit happening. You have a role to play. So I think those...
[Nneka Allen] (53:48 - 54:02)
Some of the shit happening is also happening from you. So, you know, being aware and awake to that. You know, we all have the capacity to act in any one of those ways.
Which ones we want to do and not do.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (54:02 - 54:05)
May we all continue to have that capacity. This is worth it.
[Nneka Allen] (54:06 - 54:07)
Yes, that's a beautiful prayer.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (54:08 - 54:14)
Thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks, Bobby. Oh my God, love you so much, Nneka.
[Nneka Allen] (54:14 - 54:15)
Love you right back.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (54:16 - 54:18)
Okay, bye.
[Nneka Allen] (54:18 - 54:18)
Bye.
[Dr Bobby Parmar, ND] (54:21 - 54:35)
Thank you so much for joining me today. I really had a great time and I hope you did too. Please share this with a friend or a lot of friends and leave me a review.
It really helps promote this podcast. Thanks so much.
Disclaimer: This transcript may contain errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. It should not be considered a verbatim record of the conversation. For context or clarification, please refer to the original audio or video recording.
