Abstract
We sang together, “We shall overcome,” marched arm in arm, protested injustices of segregation and war in the 1960s. When the Civil Rights Act was passed, we stood proud! Indeed, the floodgates of racial discrimination were closed. My conscience was clear. We smugly felt we’d done our part.
But wait! Why would I now see four times as many Black men than White behind bars when I researched the Department of Corrections? Or, why were the HUD apartments where I lived in Tucson, Arizona, filled with poor single Black and Brown mothers awaiting the release of imprisoned husbands? (Glittenberg, 2008) Why does the public still blame Black families for missing fathers when for many generations of slavery families were forbidden? When will this societal blaming end?
So now 50 years later why do we see riots, burning buildings, broken windows, looted shops, bleeding people running or dying? Faced squarely we know that healing we thought in the 1960s was only a scab on a deeply festering wound. The very evils that foster inequality remain today, not just in the United States but also all over the world.
If we as transcultural nurses are committed to caring, then through our scholarly studies we must uncover the real connection between poverty and discrimination and separate the cause from the correlation. Marginalized people are locked in Chinese handcuffs (those little “gag puzzles” made of woven bamboo; when an unsuspecting person puts one on, they cannot get it off; they cannot win). Without equal education, equal opportunity for honorable work, without respect and dignity, the struggle is useless; the dream is lost. And, without the needed insight to undo the diabolical handcuffs, the festering wounds turn gangrenous.
As President Obama said, “Our communities—and the whole nation—have soul-searching to do” (Von Drehle, 2015). As transcultural nurses we need to start that soul-searching where we live and work and where we practice, teach, and do research. We cannot wait; let’s begin now.