The Tentacles Of The Twin Pandemics Strangling An Old Black Woman in Queens – Annie Lee Jones

Racism has always been a public health crisis, and I thought I had learned to live with the stalk reality of how its intersecting tentacles encircle me as I move around in public spaces. But I know better now. The twin pandemics of COVID-19 and institutional racism have brought me to my knees as an old black woman who must face the reality of how these two forces impact my life.
I have a deep penetrating dread that I may wake up in the morning with a cough.
I fear that even though I survived another night without a cough, I may fail to keep my body safe during the day and may need to call and ambulance, go to the “nearest ER”, or worst walk up to close to one of the cops on my block and get killed. All of these are fears of death due to the circumstances of my life- a life lived as a black woman in America.

Annie Lee Jones, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in Queens, NY, where she is also the military sexual trauma (MST) coordinator at the New York Harbor Department of Veterans Affairs Community Living Center. She is a faculty member at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the Stephen Mitchell Center Relational Study Center. Dr. Jones is an honorary member of IPTAR, a charter member of Black Psychoanalyst Speak, Inc., and a co-chair of the Committee on Ethnicity, Race, Class, Culture, and Language (CERCCL).

Photo Credit: KHS200 (Pexels)