Melanin Mess Up
“Wait.” I froze and stared at the screen. “That’s not me!”
I still remember staring at the picture in my school’s athletic hallway. The name, the description of the sport, and the reason I was being featured were all there, but the person whose picture was displayed was clearly not me. In fact, the only similarity between us was that we were both South Asian people on the Cross Country team.
I went through a whirlwind of emotions; the first was irritation. How could they confuse me that easily with someone else? I had dedicated over 15 hours a week to the sport that I love, and when the time of recognition came, the school didn’t even know what I looked like!
Then, I was filled with bemusement. I couldn’t believe that the school had confused two people who look nothing alike, solely because they both seemed to have similar amounts of melanin in their systems. I chuckled to myself as I envisioned headlines of different news sources’ articles if they covered this story: “Indian-American Cross Country Runner Mistaken for Brown Classmate,” “Melanin Mess-up: What Really Happened?,” “Top 10 Things to Know About The NCHS South Asian Picture Swap.”
Soon after, however, I just felt sadness. I began to doubt my role at my school, not just as a member of a team, but as a student in my classes. Were my accomplishments really worth anything? When people saw me in the hallways did they think of me as “just another Indian”?
Over the course of the three months that I fought to have the picture changed, I wasn’t met with very reassuring answers to these questions. I was stuck in an endless cycle, traveling between the athletic office and the main office, hoping that at some point in time, one staff member would acknowledge what was happening and help to fix it, rather than dismissing it as the hysteria of an entitled student.
The whole debacle, or as I now like to call it, the Photographical Fiasco of Fall (PFF for short), was taken care of after I finally mustered the courage to discuss what had happened with my counselor, but the incident left a lasting impression on me. For a while, I stopped thinking anything I did at school counted. I tried less in practice and started participating less in class, telling myself that it doesn’t matter anyway because the place in which I was achieving things didn’t seem to care about me at all.
This despondency finally ended when one of my teachers just said the phrase, “Good job today.” It sounds simple, but those three words made me feel seen again. It felt like a dark cloud had flown off of my head, dissipated a little bit, and made a speedy return to a far-away part of the troposphere. I started to realize once more that I do matter and I can choose to not let others’ ignorance weigh me down. Even though PFF had happened, I had the power to say “pff” right back.
Though I can’t control other peoples’ actions, I can still control my own and find strength in standing up for myself while maintaining a positive sense of well-being. I wanted to help keep others from simmering in the same sullenness. So I did. Ever since then, because that small moment of acknowledgment was so impactful for me, I have made it my goal to find little ways to make my teammates, peers, and strangers feel seen.
As an aspiring physician, I am aware of the fact that keeping others safe, healthy, and happy is paramount, and unfortunately, the third condition is often overlooked. It is for this reason that I plan on making every effort to ensure that all my patients feel valued in order to continue to make people feel better, one action at a time.