By: Roger Malebranche, MD, FACS.

Roger Malebranche, MD, FACS. — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 18:06:32 +0000

As a physician, native born Haitian who came to the USA in 1961 I have my own “mental health” view on Haitians born and raised in Haiti, Haitian born and raised in the USA and Blacks called African Americans. Those are personal observations. I am no speaking for Blacks in general and I don’t consider myself an elitist or racist. I will start by saying that I am the classic Haitian, meaning a human MUTT. French and Lebanese grand fathers, Black grandmothers, darker looking Dad with a lighter skinned Mom and a sprinkle of about everything, Mayan great grandma, Chinese, Jewish, Polish, you name it and my DNA study proved it. I have no one in the world I could be prejudiced against. I see every Human as part of my extended family. I am dark with coarse hair, well educated (Saint Louis de Gonzague, Ecole de Medecine, medical fellowship at Columbia Presbyterian after my Haitian medical residency. My family is the typical Haitian rainbow, from the darkest who would be called Ni..er in America to the one who could pass as White.
My first experience with racism was when I landed in New York City and had to wait very long for a cab, then when my fellow students at Columbia (all White) decided just by looking at me that I couldn’t be as good as them, until I told the top one that anything he could do I could do better and I proved it. I also was found to have a high IQ and that helped. The IQ negated my Black skin. I became the rara avis the one in a million NEGRO (that was the term in 1961). I realized then and there the burden Blacks born in America (Haitian and others) had to shoulder from day one of their lives. Followed closely in luxury stores, stared at and neglected in White hotels or restaurants, hated on sight in racist Southern States, pulled on the streets and highways by police, addressed to by Whites with disrespect, condescendence etc… And I then realized what a blessing it had been for me to have be born in my poor Haiti. That little Black, forsaken speck of land in the Caribbean had given me a pride, sense of worth and backbone that have allowed me to survive and prosper in America.
But there has been also a psychological price to pay. I look carefully around when I go any place in this country and I know, looking at the eyes of a White what he / she thinks of me. I have developed the Black disease, the “fight or flight syndrome”. Wherever I go, whatever I do I am never 100% relaxed. Am I welcome here, am I going to be insulted ? What do I do ? Do I fight, creating an uncomfortable scene, with police getting involved (of course on the White side) or do I flight meekly exiting with my tail between my legs ? Most adult Blacks living in America have high blood pressure, me included, and I think this syndrome is the reason. Stress, arterial tightening hormones, flooding our brain… hours, days, years of our living in White America land. There is no history of high blood pressure in my Haitian family still living in Haiti. Is that what American racism does to Blacks born or just living in America ? I don’t know but I strongly think so. There is also the sense of lower self worth. My Haitian upbringing fortunately protected me against that most of the time but I remember starting surgical practice in a mostly White community in Upstate NY and having a practice 100% White while the local Blacks went to the 20 or so White surgeons in the area. The only person who refused my care over 30 plus years of practice was an African American lady referred to me by a White Ob-Gyn doctor. She told me point blank : “I want a White doctor”.
Every day of my life I thank the Lord for having been born in Haiti. I see second generation Haitian Americans who have never experienced the Haitian culture, the “BELONGING” atmosphere of our little island and I see the African American ways catching up to them and I shudder. If I were not 84 years old, particularly the way America is shaping up these days I would be back in my native land in the blink of an eye. I worry about the mental state of all Blacks born and raised in this country and if we don’t hang on the old ways, the old traditions, Haitian Americans are in for a rude awakening.

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By: Roger Malebranche, MD, FACS.