Even when I’m challenging the systems that pay me, I’m forcing people to name the social norms that exist about Black people.
What would it mean to decriminalize mental health—to stop criminalizing the symptoms of what is very often untreated mental illness?
And what would it mean to put racial justice at the center of that effort?
The outcomes of the criminal legal system being what they are, those two questions are really inseparable.
All policy is mental health policy. That’s the mantra of Dr. Ruth Shim, one of the guests on this episode of New Thinking.
If you’re Black in this country, policies that restrict voting rights, or that limit your children’s access to good-quality schools—those are mental health policies. What determines an individual's mental health is far larger than just that individual.
To talk about what that means for the practice of mental health work, New Thinking host Matt Watkins is joined by Dr. Ruth Shim and Nijah Afflic.
Dr. Shim is a physician, director of cultural psychiatry, and professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, Davis. In the summer of 2020, she broke publicly with the American Psychiatric Association over what she said was its failure to address structural racism.
Nijah Afflic is a licensed mental health counselor and the program director for the ATLAS initiative at Rising Ground. Funded by New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, ATLAS provides community-based voluntary therapeutic services to people considered most at-risk of engaging in or experiencing violence.
The following is a transcript of the podcast:
Matt WATKINS: Welcome to New Thinking from the Center for Justice Innovation. I’m Matt Watkins.
What would it mean to decriminalize mental health? To stop criminalizing the symptoms of what is very often untreated mental illness.
And then what would it mean to put racial justice at the center of that effort?
The outcomes of the criminal legal system being what they are, those two questions are really inseparable.
We all know, I think, the extent of the problem: how jails in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago have become among the largest mental health institutions in the country.
All policy is mental health policy. That’s the mantra of one of today’s guests. If you’re Black in this country, policies that restrict voting rights, or limit your kids’ access to good-quality schools—those are mental health policies.
That is, what determines an individual’s mental health is much larger than just that individual.
To talk about what that means—for the practice of mental health work and for the prospects of real change—we have two great guests today.
Dr. Ruth Shim is a physician, director of cultural psychiatry, and professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, Davis. She’s well known for her work on what are called the “social determinants of mental health.” And in the summer of 2020, she publicly broke with the American Psychiatric Association over what she said was its failure to address structural racism.
And Nijah Afflic is a licensed mental health counselor and the program director for the ATLAS initiative at Rising Ground. Funded by New York City, ATLAS provides community-based voluntary therapeutic services to people considered most at-risk of engaging in or experiencing violence.
I started our conversation by asking Dr. Shim—Ruth—how her interest in mental health and racial justice first took shape.
Ruth SHIM: So, I went to medical school at Emory University in Atlanta and it's a great medical school and it has all these wonderful attributes and benefits, but one of the things that I think is a defining characteristic of Emory is that it has two major hospitals by which students and even resident physicians train at.
So, one is Emory University Hospital, which is based in the richest part of Atlanta. If we go all the way back to the movie, Driving Miss Daisy, it's where that Driving Miss Daisy movie was filmed for all the really nice houses and everything.
Then the other big, major hospital is Grady Memorial Hospital and that is based in downtown Atlanta. It is actually based in, I would say, probably one of the more financially challenged parts of Atlanta.
But what I was seeing was that I was taking care of patients at one hospital—at the hospital that took care of rich, predominantly white, people. We would bring folks into the hospital and we would give them medication and we would give them all of the care that they needed. They would get better, and we would discharge them and they would return to their lives and they would do fine.
Then when I did the exact same thing at Grady Memorial Hospital, those patients did not get better.
That's when I first started to understand: all of the patients that I took care of at Grady were predominantly Black; all of the patients that I took care at Emory were predominantly white.
Either you could make the assumption that these differences that you were seeing in mental health outcomes had something to do with maybe biological or genetic racial differences, or you could look for or search for another explanation for that. So, I went searching for another explanation.
Sadly, I think for centuries in medicine, that other explanation was that Black people are genetically and biologically inferior and that's why you see these outcomes. So, I started to understand that there are these factors like social determinants of health and structural racism and that these were the things that were driving these differences in outcomes.
That the environmental factors that were impacting people were far greater than something that was happening internally within folks and why they wouldn't recover from their mental health problems.
WATKINS: Nijah, is that something that resonates for you? I mean, this idea of the challenges that the people that you're working with, reasons why they can't get better that are much larger than the individual.
Nijah AFFLIC: I'm feeling so many emotions in even hearing that, when I know that to be true, already. I think it just parallels to my experience in clinical work, and even in rooms I've been in where I'm like: what type of services are you giving to people with specific racialized experiences and racial trauma? And there is no difference in how they are approached or considered or measured.
I find that in my own work, the things that work for people who don't look like me do not work for me. How are we being intentional in training spaces to make sure that message is sent clearly, that people are not rejecting it?
How do we hold clinicians, leaders accountable for doing the work that requires you, in the same way that Ruth did: do the research that speaks to the people that you are serving so that they are successful. And so, I'm having many feelings and I'm super thankful for you being curious about supporting the people who look like us.
WATKINS: Nijah, this might actually make you have more feelings, but I'm going to ask you to revisit something from your past, which is a story you told me about getting a B in grad school on a certain paper, which I think really speaks to what you're saying about people not getting the kind of framework and services that they need.
AFFLIC: So, I went to NYU for my master's degree. It was literally my first time in spaces with white folk and with people teaching me who didn't reflect my background to some degree, which is a privilege in itself because I went to an HBCU. I went to school in Washington Heights. I always felt that cultural comfort.
So, I'm going into NYU, the scenery is already different, I'm already feeling different, I'm super radical, and so that difference means nothing to me.
I forget this actual class, but it was about clinical modalities. By the end of the year, you needed to be able to choose a modality that you were going to go out into the world and utilize in your own practice. My final paper basically said that I'm refusing to choose a modality because the people I want to serve are not considered in this approach.
When the approach was created, you weren't speaking to people who look like me and that's where I'm going when I leave here. So, this is what it looks like to service people who are Black and brown, or who have racialized experiences similar to mine.
My professor was like: “Absolutely not. Take this B, and if you want a better grade you have the opportunity to write this over because I know you are smart, but I'm not accepting this.” I actually chose to not write it over; I took that B.
It was cool. I think that experience really just prepared me for what I was going to encounter, moving into the actual field and working for systems that were created to oppress Black and brown people and choosing to co-conspire with the revolution so that I was not feeding children and families into that pipeline of oppression.
But I'm super thankful for that experience because I think it just allowed me to feel affirmed in who I wanted to be in this field.
WATKINS: Have you guys—maybe the answer is too obvious—but thought about why there is just so much resistance from, let's just say, power, for now, to the idea of there being other frameworks and bringing more people in and even other possibilities.
SHIM: Yes, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I studied psychology in undergrad, so I didn't take any critical Black studies or critical race theory classes. I didn’t take any feminist classes. I didn't take any of these alternative perspective classes.
What I discovered over the years is, I have been on this journey, I would say for the past 10 years, of just educating myself. And when I finally came across, just like a few weeks ago, feminist standpoint theory, I'm like, “oh, this really helps me understand this.”
This idea that the people who have power do not have the view. They don't see the full picture because they have never had to take the perspective, take the standpoint of people who are oppressed. So, the people who are oppressed actually have greater knowledge—and greater scientific knowledge and greater objectivity—than the people who have power.
So, part of the reason that the people who have power are not interested in hearing that perspective is because they do not have full objectivity to realize that their perspectives aren't full. They believe they're thinking about everything. They think that they're seeing the full picture when they're not.
WATKINS: Nijah, I know you work inside of the criminal legal system, to some degree. That's, I imagine, a system, you'd probably give a grade lower than a B to.
AFFLIC: I don't work in there.
WATKINS: Right.
AFFLIC: I work adjacent…
WATKINS: All right, well, let's get into that, let's get into that. What does that look like? You entered grad school with a revolutionary perspective—I imagine it's only further honed. So yeah, talk about that tension then a little bit.
AFFLIC: When I was asked to talk about this, I'm literally: decriminalization of mental health to me is like, it's cute and fluffy—and it's really on the top of what the issue is.
So, when I think about my work in the criminal justice system, I can't even align myself with this idea of reform or whatever the criminal justice system is intended to do, because the true reform is on a level that is so much deeper than: someone does a crime, or someone does something that society deems harmful or inappropriate and they are immediately held accountable for that through the legal system.
Because I am seeing folks in my work who, when we dig deep and we're talking about the reason why they've done the most heinous things, like, I walk into rooms and I hear stories, and I'm afraid of the brother who is sitting at that table because I'm like: I can't believe you did something like that.
When I talk to them and I understand the pain, the context, the fact that, “in order for me to prove to myself and preserve my identity of being a man, of being worthy of deserving respect, I had to do this. Otherwise, who am I? What am I and why am I living?”
That level of hopelessness is so heartbreaking. It doesn't erase the fact that people are hurting people or making poor decisions, but if you are not able to resonate with the idea that if I didn't do this thing, right or wrong, I don't see my worth in living or being seen or being a part of this world.
There's tension, the only tension I have is people are hurting people. People have hurt me, people have hurt my loved ones. Also, they are hurting at a level that is at this point irreparable.
When I think about my partner, who is a Black man, my son, who will be a Black man, and the type of pain they can be caused by people who don't understand them and also people who are part of their groups who want to reject parts of ourselves that we want to be separate from. There's nothing they could do to make me hate them.
I take that approach in the clients we serve, I take that approach to people who are swimming in and out of the criminal justice system. We literally have to gain some level of tolerance that says: you're doing terrible things, but on a soul level, there's nothing you can do to make me hate you because I understand the pain and the oppression you feel every minute of your life.
WATKINS: You’re focusing on the individual, but then there's also this awareness of everything much larger than the individual that they're bringing into the room, right?
AFFLIC: Yes. So, Ruth had just named that her dad was an engineer. When I look at Ruth, I see me, but my dad was not no engineer! My dad was not an engineer. My dad is in prison serving a 50-year sentence, but when I look at Ruth, I see me.
When I think about our experiences and the way the world looks at us, we're the same person. If for whatever reason the world told me that I was a different Black woman than she is because of the pain that I've experienced, because of the circumstances I was born into, that is completely obscene, because I'm out here working hard to be Ruth Jr., right?
When I think about people who are on different levels who are experiencing oppression in different spaces, they're not an individual. We are not a monolith and also we share experiences as a group that are undeniable.
SHIM: I just want to add that I'm out here trying to be Nijah Jr., so I just want to put that in there.
AFFLIC: Thank you!
WATKINS: Now, I don't know what to call either of you now. It's gonna get confusing!
We're talking with Nijah about a focus on individuals... Ruth, you're very well known for your focus on what are called, or what you call, social determinants, which is really this larger structural question of what is actually impacting people's mental health.
But it does seem—whether you guys are juniors or seniors or what—that you're both maybe in different directions tilling the same fields.
SHIM: Yeah, and we are tilling exactly the same field. It's interesting because I think this is back to this idea that our perspectives and our experiences are different, but we are the same. Those differences in perspective, I think is what has been lacking.
But the focus that I have and how this relates to criminalization has a lot to do with this idea that the social determinants of health are those things operating outside of those one-on-one visits that somebody has with a doctor or with a nurse.
Experiences, for example, of trauma or early life experiences, those things lead to poor mental health outcomes, and we have so much data to support that.
But I have been thinking a lot more recently about, how do you even go further upstream, further beyond what I consider to be underlying the social determinants of mental health? There was a context that was created for the development of them.
So, underlying that entire context, I feel are two really critical, important factors.
The first are social norms. Social norms are… We define them as the thoughts and the feelings that we as a society have about who in our society is worthy of advantage, and who in our society is less worthy of advantage or even should be disadvantaged or punished.
And then, public policies. And public policies are the laws and the rules and the ways that we govern our societies and our communities based on those social norms. So, if you think, as this country has thought for a very long time, that Black people are somehow inferior or that they are property, or that they are less genetically and biologically good compared to white people, then you as a society could pass laws that reflect that belief system.
That's how we see people with mental health problems, people with serious mental health problems, people with substance use disorders who happen to be Black and brown, ending up in these systems like the carceral system, like the criminal justice system, instead of getting appropriate care because of the policy decisions we've made that have impacted those folks.
WATKINS: It strikes me that you're both working adjacent to systems—whether it's the psychiatric system or the criminal legal system—that are really not comfortable with the structural focus and are revealingly and exceedingly comfortable with the individual focus and individual responsibility, and that talking about the larger forces is a threat to those systems.
SHIM: Oh, absolutely, because the last thing I will add here is that those systems, all of these systems, they all are working the way they were designed to work. So, everything that we see in the system that looks terrible, they're actually working exactly the way they are supposed to work.
And this is why I get so frustrated when we get into rooms with intellectuals, and we sit around, and we talk about like: how can we fix the system?
There are not enough people who really have a desire and a vested interest to fix the system. If we had that, we wouldn't see these outcomes. But the system is working to give capital and money and power to exactly the people within that system that want money and power, and this is the result of that design.
WATKINS: Well, I don't want either one of you to be frustrated in this conversation by a feeling that we're not getting right down into it. So, can we just maybe name the biggest social determinant that I think you're both contending with—which isn't racially disparate outcomes, it's not even necessarily racism, but I mean more specifically anti-Blackness, running through this country from the beginning, stamped from the beginning.
Nijah, maybe do you want to start with how does that “concept,” that's not the right word, but how does that sharpen how you think about what you're doing and why you're doing it?
AFFLIC: I'm constantly in spaces that are politics-adjacent, that are criminal-justice adjacent, that refuse to name anti-Blackness. It's like if we name the thing that's harming us, the person naming it takes accountability for it existing. So, no one is naming it, everyone is dancing around it.
I remember transitioning from utilizing “people of color” to solely using “Black people,” “brown people,” and then everyone else. Being under the guise of “people of color” has allowed us to act like anti-Blackness isn't a thing. So, we have whiteness perpetuating anti-Blackness, and then we have all the other people also doing it—even Black people.
When I'm thinking about my work and when I'm training staff, even when I'm challenging the systems that pay me, I'm forcing people to name the social norms that exist about Black people, about dark skin, about all of the features that come with being more African and less Eurocentric.
It really challenges all of us, not just white people, but even us, to tap into the beliefs we hold as it relates to what this country has told us is right and what's wrong. Even in the clients we serve, anti-Blackness is the reason why they show up in harmful ways in the community.
Again, we're not naming it. We're not deeming it as the villain, and we're allowing the people in charge to act as if Black-on Black crime, and Black folks having the propensity for violence, and all of these tag phrases that exist, is not something that is intentionally created, that is not part of the system that knows what they're doing and creating something that allows us to also play a role in oppression against Black people.
So, in my work, anti-Blackness is always where I'm digging to get, because we can talk about racism and point fingers at white people all day long.
WATKINS: Or we can talk about diversity and people of color and-
AFFLIC: Right, right. And I'm challenging all of that in the clinical spaces that I oversee because we are going into community and we are hurting the community just as much as the people in charge are, because we're not aware of how social norms impact our views as well.
And we're going into a rabbit hole. We were first all here to “service the community” and “help them not go to jail.” Now we're literally having sessions where we're crying and we're saying, “oh my God, I think I'm better than other Black people.”
If we're able to do that work... And Black folk, our business is our business, but even me being able to name that on this podcast that there is work that we are doing on an individual level, no one who is lighter than us, no one who is more socially accepted than we are, has a pass to not do this work or think through this lens, especially when I'm in the room with them.
WATKINS: Ruth, you have in a way a luxury maybe Nijah doesn't have, to get out of the trenches a little bit.
What would it look like to fundamentally rethink our approach to mental health and try to respond to anti-Blackness…? I feel like I'm just asking you guys massive questions every time.
SHIM: Yeah, I was going to say, if I can answer that, I would win the Nobel prize, I believe!
WATKINS: Yeah.
SHIM: But I do think that in thinking about solutions, then I feel we have to tackle, I think, the three huge pieces: anti-Blackness/white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism.
So, if we were to redesign a mental health system that actually served communities and was focused on providing care to families and people regardless of their ability to pay for those services… I could spend a lot of time talking about the data of how people cannot afford mental health services. It's the main driver of why people don't access mental health services.
I am of a belief, I'm getting more and more as I get older and older, that it can't be that we just make little tweaks around the edges of the system, that this system is going to have to be completely dismantled and rebuilt to really center those people who have suffered at the hands of the system. These are the people who should be designing the mental health care system.
WATKINS: Nijah, when you are in a room with somebody, or maybe it's a staff member you've trained who's in a room with someone, and offering therapy, is it important to name these things: to name anti-Blackness, to name white supremacy, to name the harms of the system you're adjacent to? What difference does that make, in terms of helping someone?
AFFLIC: Regardless of level of education, I think your experience as a Black or brown person in this world, you feel the power of white supremacy impacting your life. You don't know what to call it, you don't know exactly how it's impacting you, but you know there is a higher force that is stepping on your neck, and you can't move.
Oftentimes we see in families that families are blaming their parents, they're blaming other, they're blaming their husband, they're blaming their city, they're blaming politics. But most importantly in the work that I do, strengthening families and communities, they're blaming people in the community who look like them, or who are doing better than them, or who have more advantages than they do.
So, it's important for us to get into the room and name the true villain because then you know who to target your resentment and your anger at, and you recognize the power in collaborating with the people who are also oppressed by these things, versus fighting against those people.
In a session, we've literally had to name how patriarchy and this intersection between being a Black man, but still being a man, hurts so many families. You are constantly oppressing your family through the lens of patriarchy, but you are the most oppressed human being because you are a Black man.
It's very confusing to women, it's confusing to children. So how do we help a family understand how their ideas around what it is to be a man, but what it is to be a Black man, impacts how they rely on each other, how they depend on each other, how they look at each other, how they fear each other.
Naming those things in the room are super important, and figuring out how to do it in a way that everyone understands, is also a key. So, we're working, and it takes a lot of training, because Matt, even as clinicians, no one teaches us this stuff, and so we're coming in-
WATKINS: Or they give you a B for talking about it!
AFFLIC: Or they give me a B at NYU! Really figuring out how to use... And the evidence model we utilize is FFT—Functional Family Therapy—and I love it. I'm a national consultant for it, and I'll ride for that model because I know it works.
I also know that it is super white, and it is intended for white people, and the interventions were created so that they come out of the mouths of white people. How do I use this model and help people who don't understand or don't connect with the interventions, to know that you can use the science behind this in a way that speaks the language we need to speak to for it to land on the hearts and the minds of the people we're servicing?
So, we're naming the stuff in the room, we're naming it in supervision, we're naming it in our agency. We're constantly talking about it, ad nauseam actually, because that deepening of our own understanding never stops, and we can only provide good services if we understand it from a personal perspective first.
WATKINS: Is there a way for you, Ruth, in which the language… Social determinant is very academic-speak, if I may. Is that coded language, basically, for anti-Blackness?
SHIM: There are many, many other ways to say that, right. I'm in favor of saying the thing that resonates the most, but I also think that just saying the statement that there are all these other factors that are leading to these poor outcomes—people are aware of that. People who have power, people who shape our mental healthcare system, they are very much aware of that and not prepared or poised or interested in thinking about that.
I've been having this discussion with several of my medical students that are just starting out and expressing a lot of distress about the idea that, “You, Dr. Shim, spend all your time talking to us about social justice, homelessness, and incarceration, and I can't do anything about that as a doctor. And all I do when you talk about it is feel really, really bad.”
I am really of the belief that all of these doctors should be very prepared to do the work of curing and treating illness and also do the work of running for office or supporting candidates who care about policies—all policies, because all policies are mental health policies.
And there's a lot of debate by the way, right now, in medicine—we know that DEI is under attack. But in medicine, there is this debate about: what is the role of a doctor? And a lot of criticism of the idea that a doctor should be championing all of these social determinants or external factors. Because it is so critical to health, I think it is 100 percent the job of a doctor.
One of my frustrations with the way we teach doctors is that we don't have sociologists, we don't have anthropologists, we don't have the people who understand these systems teaching these doctors.
They're not tested on what are the structurally racist forces that have led to poor health outcomes in certain populations. They're not tested on that at all.
So sorry, for the long diatribe, but I'm just incredibly frustrated at the state of the way that we educate, the way that we teach people, who I believe could go out into the system and actually make a real change and hopefully not be punished and not get bad grades and not be held back for focusing on what I think are the important things.
WATKINS: Well, I mean, it feels like, again, these systems of power, whether it's the criminal legal system or the psychiatric profession, would probably both be happier with both of you if you would just stay in your damn lane! This dangerous focus on the interaction between individuals and structures and then the intersections of all these things.
As we're wrapping up here, Nijah, can you just talk a little bit about how you think about the intersections of your work and maybe how that's deepened over the years for you doing this work on the ground, and thinking about where racial justice meets decarceration and mental health equity and all of that?
AFFLIC: There's never been a time in my personal experience or my educational experience that I didn't know I was Black and that being Black to some degree was impacting what I had going on. So, when you ask that, I feel like you're asking me to disassociate.
In all fairness, everyone doesn't navigate the world carrying that, and for good reason—because it's heavy and you're constantly aware of what's happening and mindful of it, and either it's going to charge you up or it's going to beat you down.
So, it is impossible to do mental health work—and I'm not a psychiatrist, so I'm not curing schizophrenia, I'm not, that's not my thing, I'm not a doctor. But when I think about mental health, which is the everyday stresses that lead to larger issues in your body and in your mind, there is no way for me to ignore the impact of systemic oppression and the treatment of people as a result of the race and all the other constructs that plague us.
I've been in rooms, Matt, with Harvard professionals and all of these amazing people who have done tons of research and understand the field and are innovative in the field. I've asked them: “When you talk to people of color in your sessions, what y'all be talking about? Race never comes up?! Social class never comes up?! Discrimination never comes up?! And you're talking to them about their lives? Impossible. And you don't bring it up?”
We've literally trained ourselves to not think about those things so that we can just get through. All of these systems and people see us as in our lane and as an ally and as productive and professional—and all of those things that whiteness says is good.
So, it is a possibility that people of color are showing up in all of these spaces, clinical and otherwise, and not naming: “Do you see that I'm a Black woman with locks, and that I know you probably have a perception about me that we're not naming?”
But as a clinician who is responsible for the holistic wellbeing of a person and who was trained at the greatest and most esteemed universities, you don't name it? There's a major concern: “You know that it exists, you call yourself an ally, but you refuse to talk about it in spaces that you share with people of color who are vulnerable and who are struggling.”
I can't answer that question in a way that makes people feel like I gave a really good answer to it because I cannot see this world outside of the lens of my experience and the people who share the experiences that I share. Anybody who does needs to explain to me, how are they doing so, and if it's working.
Hope that answered it, Matt, I don't know.
WATKINS: Well, I feel now that I'm asking about intersections as someone who has the luxury of thinking about all these things as intersections, and–
SHIM: I wanted to… I'm glad you named that dynamic, Matt! Because what I'm so loving about this conversation is how, I mean, I feel like if we are going to make progress, we need more people who come from the dominant culture, who come from spaces that they don't experience intersectionality and oppression, to come to see that and understand it more clearly.
WATKINS: Or at least know that you don't know, in some ways.
SHIM: Right, and again, and that's patriarchy too, right? This idea that you're supposed to have the answer all the time.
In my work and thinking about my role, I feel I am blessed to be a Black woman who understands oppression intimately, but I'm also very blessed to be somebody who has socioeconomic status that is very good, that has the privilege of being a physician.
I am not in many of these spaces, and probably if I didn't have my Black woman identity, I would not have any understanding of these spaces at all.
WATKINS: We have thrown a lot out there in this conversation, and I feel like I've been an expert at asking you guys massive, unanswerable questions. So, I want to end in a way that I don't normally do—which is a kind of Hallmark-greeting-card ending.
We are heading into yet another difficult year in America. For each of you, I guess in turn, what at least brings you some hope about the work that you do? [laughter from guests]
It's already not going well! I knew I shouldn't have done the Hallmark ending, but I ‘m gonna to stick with it. What… Nijah, maybe you, first.
AFFLIC: So, I just want to name that Ruth made clear that I am not the most marginalized, oppressed… I have privilege that I carry, a lot of it. I need to use that privilege to speak to people who won't speak to people who are less privileged than I am. They won't even let them in the meeting, like Ruth named.
Okay.
Also, with my privilege, and all of the benefits I get as a result of it, I still feel, and you asking that question, I felt like you was pointing in my face, Matt, because I'm like-
WATKINS: Oh shit.
SHIM: I knew Nijah was going to respond this way! I knew! And I'm so glad you did, I'm so glad you did, Nijah! Because I was like: I know how this question is going to be answered, and if you didn't, I was going to answer it the same way, but I very much appreciate you going there, Nijah, because this is what I love about Nijah. She goes there.
So go ahead, Matt. You're going to have to sit and be uncomfortable–
WATKINS: No, let's go, let's go, let's go.
SHIM: ...a little bit longer. Go ahead.
WATKINS: Let's go. Let's go.
SHIM: Go ahead, Nijah, sorry.
AFFLIC: We are hopeful because hope keeps us alive, hope keeps us working, hope keeps us motivated. But the year don't make me more or less hopeful because every year since my people came to this country, we've just been dealing with shit and figuring out how to get through it.
SHIM: I'm going to just add on, I'm going to pile on while we're here and just say: I've heard this question many times before. Again, I appreciate this because this has a lot to do with where you are with your racial identity development. This is good, this is development.
This is a process that you have to go through, but that process involves, Matt, you feeling incredibly not great right now, just uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable with the conversation, but uncomfortable with the state of the world, and really distressed about how bad things are, and a desire to leave people on this note of: it's bad, but it's not that bad.
WATKINS: Oh, in my defense, I wasn't trying to do that.
SHIM: Oh, okay.
WATKINS: It's bigger than just this year. I get that. It's more, to be fully frank, I just didn't know how to end this interview. So, it's a little bit white guy idiocy, but it's also, yeah, not quite knowing how to stick the landing on this one!
SHIM: But let me tell you, because I was listening to an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, and somebody was talking to him about his new book and they said, “what's a hopeful note we can end on?” He said, “I am not here to give you hope. There are people in the world for that. Go talk to your pastor, but that's not my job. I'm a reporter and I'm a writer and I'm telling you what's going on, and that's my job.”
WATKINS: Yeah, it's against my grain to ask that kind of question, and I definitely will never ask it again.
What makes you guys really depressed and despairing? Maybe we should just end there.
[Laugher from guests]
All right. I'm going to have to decide how much of this tape to leave in. I have to be protective of my public image!
SHIM: As you should, as you should.
WATKINS: I am an important nonprofit podcaster.
SHIM: It is, it's true, you're absolutely right.
I have said this before and maybe this will be helpful to you, but I remain a skeptical optimist. I do want to name something that I feel like comes up a lot in thinking about how internalized racism shows up, which is, sometimes people get really frustrated because so many people have been working so hard in this space for so long.
When we talk about feeling like nothing has changed or feeling depressed about the situation, that it's not acknowledging the work of so many people doing so much in this space for so long.
So, I do want to make sure we're clear that even though we have a lot of work to do still, and even though I sometimes think of the situation as bleak, that in no way negates all of the people who have been struggling and fighting and resisting for centuries.
WATKINS: Nijah, you have any last thoughts?
AFFLIC: Touché.
No, I agree: the work continues, the fight continues. Helping people be more aware and more mindful, it just continues.
I can't think about all the things that make me feel hopeless because then I'll stop, we'll stop if we lean into that. If we're too hopeful, then we'll stop. So, you have to, you got to ride the line and stay committed and stay grateful.
I truly appreciate anyone who gives me space to do the work that I love doing, and I'm just looking forward to having more spaces to do that work and to talk to more people. I can't think too big about anything because it becomes scary.
So, where I am, in a lane that is growing, we're going to get it done. I think we're committed to this work regardless of any type of climate that comes our way.
WATKINS: Well, listen, I want to thank both of you very, very much for making time for this conversation. It's been one of the more memorable ones that I can recall having.
There are days when I really love my job, and today is definitely one of those days. I know I've benefited a lot from the conversation. I feel like we're doing something good for the world—I won't say hopeful, but good.
So, Nijah, Ruth, thank you so much and I hope we can keep the conversation going.
SHIM: Thank you.
AFFLIC: Absolutely, you’re welcome.
WATKINS: That was my interview with Nijah Afflic and Dr. Ruth Shim.
Nijah Afflic is a licensed mental health counselor and the program director for the ATLAS initiative at Rising Ground in New York City.
And Dr. Ruth Shim is a physician, director of cultural psychiatry, and professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, Davis.
For more about both guests and for a transcript of this episode, click the link in your show notes, or go to innovatingjustice.org/newthinking.
For help with this episode, my thanks to Keris Myrick. The interview Keris conducted with Dr. Shim for Keris’s wonderfully titled podcast, Unapologetically Black Unicorns, was very helpful in preparing this conversation. You can hear Keris on this show in an episode from 2021 called, ‘Policing, Race, and Mental Health.’
Today’s episode was produced by Julian Adler and myself and it was edited by me. Samiha Amin Meah is our director of design, Emma Dayton is our V-P of outreach, and we get production assistance from Elijah Michel. Our theme music is by Michael Aharon at quivernyc.com.
This has been New Thinking from the Center for Justice Innovation. I’m Matt Watkins. Thanks for listening.