Every day of quarantine, I have set the goal of studying two hours in the morning for a national psychology licensing exam. I’ve been able to meet that goal, with a few exceptions. In mid-March, I started experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, and it was way too hard to focus on a computer screen without getting a massive migraine, let alone digest any information when all my body wanted to do was sleep.

Then there was this week. I sat to engage in study when two stories came to my attention. In one, Amy Cooper (a White woman) threatened Christian Cooper (a Black man) in a New York City park with a promise to call the police. But it didn’t end there—she evoked his race in the call, apparently as a means of heightening the stakes of his fear.

In another case, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis, was asphyxiated by the force of a White police officer’s knee to his neck. With several Black onlookers pleading with the police officers to change their behavior, you could hear and see the disbelief when George’s life was snuffed out in front of their eyes.

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In the midst of the dueling health and racial pandemics impacting Americans in the past several months, the mental and physical health of Black Americans has become a central focus. Social determinants of health is a direct contributor to the overall health of Black Americans and communities, especially with respect to the following considerations:

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Spring had indeed sprung in the city of Detroit. I was quarantined after developing symptoms for COVID-19 and had not physically left my house for 14 days. But on this day, I finished my work and ventured out to soak up the Vitamin D my skin had been craving since last fall.

My unplanned path through Elmwood Park took me past an empty playground and unoccupied tennis courts. But what I saw next made my eyes squint in disbelief: a basketball court full of people engaging in close-contact ball. I was struggling to understand how the safety precautions blaring nonstop and the numbers swirling about Detroit’s inequitable rate of demise seemed to go unnoticed here on this court…

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Whenever there is news of a criminal’s non-indictment for violence committed against Black people, I run to Facebook to assess the pulse of my friends and colleagues. It’s a phenomenon that started the day after George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the murder of Trayvon Martin. My newsfeed was ablaze with the desperate, despondent, and disastrous beliefs of current and hopeful parents.

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“Overnight, Charlottesville had become known for something for which it never wanted to be known.”

Oh, my dearest Charlottesville, there is a difference between aspirations and reality. The city of Charlottesville, Virginia — of which I was a resident for five years during my clinical psychology doctoral program — does not want to be known for racism, anger, fear, and the loss of life. But the reality — that Thomas Jefferson founded the flagship institution for White men on the backs of slaves who were angry, fearful, and stripped of their lives — is ever present and unresolved.

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After taking a picture with my colleagues to emphasize the importance of focusing on Black children at the Society for Research on Child Development’s (SRCD) biennial conference, my friends and I left out of the building to go to another conference event. My research partner and I would have the pleasure of facilitating a Black Caucus Early Career Meeting on “Keepin it 100 in Academia” and we all had on our shirts, proudly displayed.

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If you haven’t gone to see Get Out, what’s wrong with you?

I mean, you should probably go right now. *Eye rolls annoyingly*

Anywho, my friends and I have been waxing poetically about allathe themes you can catch in this delightful film. You would’ve thought we were getting paid out here the way we’re like, “but, if you hold it up to the light, you’ll see this perspective.” “Ahhhhh!”

But Jordan Peele is in fact not paying us, so we should probably get back to work.

Except, my work is actually to better understand racial dynamics and, well, Get Out was chock full of them.

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