Your Mental Health Care Provider May Be A Racist And Other Startling Facts

By Andrea N. Jones

"Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief."  -Sigmund Freud 

I stood in my driveway, hands high above my head. At least 4 officers (none black) proceeded to raise their gun directly toward me. My heart skipped a beat. Words came to my mind like they always had in times of crisis. I thought, " Oh, shit," trembling, "they're here to kill me."

With 4 guns pointed in my direction, I was sure I'd be killed if I moved an inch. I couldn't breathe.

I went catonic while exclaiming, "If you shoot me, I will become the second most famous resident in Hayward because Oscar Grant (a young black man who had been murdered on the Fruitvale BART station's platform six years prior on New Year's Day) will always be the first!!!" These words may have saved my life because as soon as they were spoken the officers/overseers/crackers lowered their weapons. However, I was not totally off the hook. 

The officers/overseers/crackers tossed  me to the ground, handcuffed me and tried to toss me in the back of a police car. I was not having it. I did not trust these officers/overseer/crackers at all. I did not trust him with my black body. Perhaps if my body were white, even Asian, I may have thought differently. 

But due to the fact that I had experienced extreme racism from the Hayward Police Department before, I was fearful and had to act. I proceeded to go limp as I'd  seen the civil rights activists doing countless film footage. Once my ambulance had arrived only then could I breathe. 

Thing is, every time I tell that story I could tell some folks hardly believe me. Why would the cops do such a thing you might ask. Because they're dicks. Dicks to the mentally ill. Frightening fragile. This is what I'm used to and it has been my life and my experience.

I was 5150'd and driven by blaring siren to John P. George Pavilion, the notorious local county mental hospital, for evaluation and treatment.

At the age of 22, I was diagnosed with an invisible illness that would shape the rest of my life. That illness was Bipolar Disorder. I wailed like a baby for weeks on end when I found this out because, not only did I instinctively know the diagnoses was true,  I knew my life would never be the same. In fact, my worst fears have been realized. 

At 40, I can sit back and actually see all that I have lost-- friends, so-called family, jobs, possessions, love and status.

At my height, I hobnobbed with international players and at my lowest, I sat in county clinics full of drunkards and addicts just to get my meds. The disorder is quite common among writers. I feel that what most people don't know won't hurt them, so this part of my life I share with very few people. It's just not everyone's business, you know?

I've been taking my meds for months as prescribed by my outpatient doctor, however, I have recently experienced a symptoms' flare up that needed to be managed. I was hesitant to go to the local psych facility. Like the county clink, Santa Rita, once they get you, they have you and there's just no telling when you get to leave that hell behind.

My best option was a nearby mental hospital, John George Pavillion, where the staff knows me very well. Or, so they think. I've been coming here for more than 15 years. Getting 5150'd is not the business.  It's been a 15 year history of terror for me and it goes much like this:

1) Family member calls the cops on me to get me 5150'd (placed under custody for a 72-hour psychological hold) with a simple "white lie," like, "she's threatening to kill me!" The Hayward Police Overseers/Officers/Crackers are quick to declare my rights modified on the spot.

2) I am swiftly 5150'd and taken by ambulance to the county psych ward at John George Pavillion for evaluation. I am always admitted.
3) I always get in trouble with the staff for being willful.
4)I am warehoused and given activities to perform to justify the staffs' paychecks.
5) I go to court with an advocate or public defender who sits on his ass while the prosecution defames me as a violent, psychopathic, maniacal drug addict (because I carry a medical marijuana card).

6) Eventually, I am released for good behavior and I am forced to go about the business of rebuilding my life, from what may be scratch, yet again.

It's become clear to me that my latest in-patient doctor is absolutely colorstruck. If you're light-skinned and act like white is right, y'all may as well be related because you are for sure getting out of this piece in a minute. If you're black and radical like me, you are treated like nothing less than an enemy of the state. Europeans have performed great studies on racism and health care disparities among their populations. 

Studies in England and Wales suggest that a great disparity does in fact exist between the ethnicities: 

The first census report published in 2005 showed that the black patient experience was in stark contrast to their white counterparts, with detention rates under the Mental Health Act 44% higher among this group. Once in the system, the data also showed that black patients were more likely to be admitted to intensive care and secure services, and be given higher doses of antipsychotic medication. They were also 29% more likely to be forcibly restrained and 49% more likely to be placed in seclusion.
Rather than seeing an improvement in this area, the figures show that the number of black patients formally detained under the Mental Health Act shot up from 2,700 to 4,600 in the four years to 2009-10 – a rise of nearly 70%.

I tried to rationalize with my doctor. I lost my job for not reporting while I was hopped up on heavy psychotropics in the hospital. He told me I would have lost my job anyway. I'm sure the stank face I gave him was the most sincere one he received all day. 

My boss and I were hella cool. He didn't know what he was talking about--  typical white male, afraid of the impending black planet seeks to destroy my black family and love relationship by separating me from the ones I love and love me back.

Meanwhile, I've seen many white, brown and Asian patients regain their freedom as I sit here waiting for mine. Some of these patients have been violent, aggressive and exhibit more pressured speech than I do, but they are not warehoused. Their lives are valid to Thomicini, while mine is not.

I've come to see myself as a political prison here on my 22nd day in John George Pavilion. I fear no man as man can only take my life while God, He can take my soul. I let my stance on my involuntary hospitalization be known. Before I was kidnapped by night-riding, overseers/officers in the middle of the night, I was very active on various media sites doing my part to serve and make a difference. Since I've been institutionalized, I think of Angela Davis (and all political prisoners) daily. What a strong sistah! 

I  write about nothing if not inequality in the heart of the S.F.-Oakland Bay Area, yet here I am, a victim of the beast's system and racist/white supremacist paradigm.  So, I do my time knowing how much harder sistahs like Ms. Davis had it paving the way more than 60 years ago.

My doctor, a Dr. Asseipe, is nothing short of a basic Reaganite. He sports the Colonel Sanders white hair and beard and is partial to sweater vests. He warehouses me here with no plan. I wonder if he plays god with me or mere devil because he has given me nothing resembling a release date. All I am told is that I am still "not well" yet. Shiiiiit. 

If well means I am no longer irreverent and I stop speaking truth to power, he might as well curl up and die today. Because the day I loose my spark and spunk will be my last living day as well.

Simply put, I could never be white enough to please Dr. Assmuncher, and frankly put, I love my black and wish to be no other.

So, I must wait four more days to hear the judge's verdict which will seal the fate of my upcoming fall season. I'm a Jones. A double Jones (on both sides)! I am not easily impressed by doctors. I really haven't the time to sweat an asshole, would you?  

"As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism." -Angela Davis 

Driving On Fire

Momma's Firebird 

by Andrea N. Jones 

Picture it– the year was 1976, the same year as the great Bicentennial. 

I was a toddler and my mother had just divorced my father. She ended up buying a sweet, brand new, silver Pontiac Firebird with red vinyl interior. She, my older sister Rhonda and I would be mobbin' around the streets of Oakland, day and night. I never minded that it was a two-door and I had to crawl my way to my back buckle seat. What I did mind was getting in on hot summer days because the interior would feel hotter than the sun and my little brown legs would sweat then stick to my seat. 

It was always so cool when my mom would pick Rhonda and me up from the roller rink or the movies at the Eastmont Mall. Our friends loved packing in, we didn't grow up on car seats and seat belts, you dig? 

My mom worked hard 5 days a week at Southern Pacific, starting out as a Switchboard Operator and moving up to Accounts. We were living for the weekend. Mom would bump The Commodores, Earth, Wind & Fire, Teddy Pendergrass, Rick James or Parliament as we'd make our way up to the Oakland Hills to an affluent community up Skyline Drive, past the Oakland Zoo (Knowland Zoo then) and visit her brother, my Uncle Jimmy, his wife Aunt Connie and my cousins James Jr., Darryl, Tommy and Roxanne. We would PAAARTA! 

Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Connie were our black Ozzie & Harriet. They were wholesome but not stuck up. We'd be met at the door with some light barking by their German Shepard Keno as if he were the court announcer. People still smoked indoors back then and us kids didn't do all that fake coughing and carrying on these brats do today. No, no, no. Liquor and beer flowed but no one there ever struck me as being drunk. To this day, I've never tasted cleaner, fresher comfort food in all my life than that prepared by my Aunt Connie's hands. I swear she sprinkled magic over her dishes.

The whole gang would be there, even my dad and his new wife, what seemed like every weekend. Uncle Chester, my grandmother's ginger-headed brother was always there with a sweet smelling cigar between his lips and a toothy smile. He was a prominent dry cleaner and a past Ebony Magazine Who's Who who's Operatic and Barbershop Quartet baritone voice could make a grown man cry. His son Ricky would be in tow, my quietest cousin, a good boy who was all eyes and dark, shaggy hair. The Raiders game would be on. Those were the Madden years and we were kicking ass! At night we'd watch that dirty, old Englishman Benny Hill until I fell asleep and woke up in my bed down the hill at my mom's home on 75th & Mac Arthur to a brand new day.

Those were the days. That Firebird wasn't just a car, it was a statement. It was my mom telling the world that she, Linda Jones, was free, fly af and was not afraid to flaunt her and her girls around in sporty style. Now with 45 years passed all of our relatives that made The Town warm and cozy have since passed or moved away. I thank GOD for all the rich memories I have of them and the endearing love of family that lives in my mind through memory. Without those layers of easy living and peaceful joy, I would not be the strong, irreverent black woman I am today. Thank you! #vroomvroom #flatlanddiva #califia