The AFRO American Experience

UNM science and biology graduate Justin Aderhold works as a research assistant at the Heart Station at UNM Hospital.

He shared his wisdom on the nature of racism from his couch, where he sat with his foot in a post-surgical boot. He has had foot complications from a basketball accident since the sixth grade when he lived in the Washington, D.C., area. He said the black experience in New Mexico is worlds apart from his experiences on the East Coast. This is the first of two interviews with Aderhold.

Justin Aderhold: Racism is like fighting somebody. You’re fighting everybody. You’re fighting society. You always are looking to protect yourself. So it’s like, times when you think something is racist, it might not even be racist. But it might be, and you don’t know! So, at UNM, it’s like there are two worlds. There’s UNM, and then there’s the cultural subclass of black people within the University.

Daily Lobo: Well, there are 842 black students here. It’s different from the East Coast. Like, I used to live in Florida, and I went to a mostly all-black school. And when I came out here, I just noticed, “Wow. There’s, like, no black people out here at all.”

JA: How do you think the black people in Florida act in comparison to the black people out here?
DL: Dude, they’re crazy fun. They’re all over the place. They seem to have a lot more means of expression. And here, I don’t see very many, and they’re usually quieter and just … (long confused pause) …

JA: Right, just. Just. That’s what I see out here. I’m from the Washington, D.C., area and I’ve experienced basically what you have experienced. The black people are louder; they’re more fun. They’re just them. Out here the personality is sort of, they’re subtle and docile. They’re almost tamed … I met a guy from out here who is black and white. Black and Jewish. And he graduated from Albuquerque High, and he said when he moved out here from Pittsburg, the Mexican kids would seriously line all the black kids up and they would just get picked on the entire time at lunch, every year.

DL: Line them up?
JA: He said it seemed like a firing squad was out there the way they used to get picked on by all the Hispanic kids, just by the simple fact that they’re different. They’re not used to difference. They slap you around … It’s verbal and physical. I lived in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and I was subject to verbal and physical racism all the time. It’s kind of the reason I’m able to survive and adapt, because I already know what’s going on and I know how to, not necessarily work my way around it, but know how to survive.

DL: How does it affect your sense of self?

JA: It deteriorates your sense of self. It’s like somebody telling you you’re fat. If everybody tells you you’re fat, you’re going to think you’re fat. Unless you’re really a strong-minded individual that was told you’re not fat, you’re big, or what have you.
So, it’s like, when you’re born, you have this black skin. And within this black skin are the stereotypes everybody else sees. When I played football, none of my coaches or athletic academic support staff wanted to help me become a doctor. I told them I want to be a biology major. They were like, “No.”

DL: They said no?
JA: They told me, “No, you need to choose something else.” We’re going to make your schedule really easy these first semesters because you’re playing football. They wanted me to be concentrating on football, so less school work means more football concentration. But the thing is I’ve always been smart. I went to an academic high school where the valedictorian went to Harvard every year. It didn’t matter what class I took ’cause I was going to get my grades regardless. Nobody saw that. And the sad thing about racism is that it affects the black people, too. … We’re really all the same, I believe. We just have different skin colors and different cultures. Everybody just wants to be loved and have friends.

DL: Yeah, I saw a movie in an anthropology lab class called “Race: The Power of an Illusion.” They took mitochondrial DNA samples from a class of students and they were like, “Before we look at the results, who do you think you are most likely to have a match with?” So everyone picked people who looked like them. After they came up with the results, they were like, “Oh, this blond girl is mostly related to this Nigerian dude,” and stuff like that. And everyone was totally shocked.

JA: I’m 99.9 percent a genetic match to you. You are a 99.9 percent genetic match to the next person who walks by. It’s the .1 percent that gives us all the diversity that we have as human beings, and it’s beautiful. … I think we focus too much on how people are different than how we’re alike. I think it’s easier to identify with white culture because that’s the main culture out here and from my experience, most white people are inherently racist because of the way they were raised. They weren’t raised around black people, and the only exposure they have is TV. On TV they show negative connotations. They don’t show me sitting here with my LSAT and my MCAT books applying to medical and law school, and I’m going to go play some basketball with my boys afterwards.

DL: No, they show some crackhead running down the street at 2 in the morning.
JA: You know what I’m saying? But the same thing — they don’t realize they got white crackheads running down the street at 2 in the morning, too, you know? So the media — it’s like systematic racism, because this country is founded on slavery, founded on the ideology of slavery, meaning that black people are inferior. And so that has subverted my mind, all of our minds, today. When I walk down the street, I want to say hi to a pretty little white girl but I’m like, “I’m black. What will she say?” And I say hi anyway, but it took years for me to get over that. … You should be judged on the content of your character, not the color of your skin.