Is our identity only about what people see on the outside? In this powerful and personal conversation, I welcome psychotherapist Meyleen Velasquez, one of the incredible authors from the book that inspired this podcast. Meyleen shares her journey as a Latinx immigrant and how her experience with vitiligo, a condition that affects skin pigmentation, has given her a unique perspective on how the world perceives race and how we define ourselves.
We explore the complex and often harmful idea of “colorblindness” within Latinx communities, discuss the life-threatening impact of medical racism on Black and Brown mothers, and learn about a practice called “critical self-reflection” that can help us all uncover our hidden biases. This episode is a moving exploration of what it means to carry your identity on the inside, regardless of how the world sees you on the outside.
Meyleen Velasquez, DSW, is an immigrant Latinx psychotherapist specializing in perinatal and infant mental health. She focused her doctoral research on anti-racist and anti-oppressive mental health services and works to support birthing people and providers from an anti-oppressive framework. She is a contributing author to the book, Anti-Blackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies.
In this episode, you will learn about:
- Meyleen’s personal story of living with vitiligo and how it has shaped her experience of her Latinx identity.
- The concept of mestizaje (the idea that all Latinx people are “mixed”) and how it can unfortunately erase the identities of Black and Indigenous people.
- The power of “critical self-reflection” as a tool to better understand our own values, beliefs, and biases.
Meyleen M. Velasquez’ Links
https://www.youtube.com/c/meyleenvelasquez
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meyleen-velasquez-5b780985/ https://www.instagram.com/meyleenvelasquez/
Dr Carolyn’s Links
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-coker-ross-md-mph-ceds-c-7b81176/
TEDxPleasantGrove talk: https://youtu.be/ljdFLCc3RtM
To buy “Antiblackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies” – bit.ly/3ZuSp1T
Hi, this is Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross, bringing you the Inclusive Minds Podcast. This podcast was inspired by the book of which I’m a co-editor entitled Anti-Blackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies. Lived experiences in the fight against institutionalized racism. If you’re a psychologist, a social worker, an addiction professional, or a healthcare provider, or anyone who wants to broaden your horizons, then this podcast is for you.
The goal of the podcast is to help you understand some of the more complex issues facing our culture today. My guest. Are experts in their fields, and we’ll be talking about a wide array of topics including cross-cultural issues, the intersection of race and trauma, social justice and health inequities.
They will be sharing both their lived experiences and their expert opinions. The goal is to give you a felt experience and to let you know that you are not alone in being confused by these complex. Issues. We want to provide nuanced information with context that will enable you to make your own decisions about these important topics.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Inclusive Minds Podcast. I’m Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross. And today my guest is a very special person to me and she’s an author in the book, Anti-Blackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies, which has inspired this podcast. Um, Meyleen Velasquez is an immigrant Latinx psychotherapist specializing in perinatal and infant mental health.
Oh, infant Mental Health Meyleen has a doctorate in social work and focused her research on anti-racist and anti-oppressive mental health services. Her practice supports birthing people and providers working from an anti-oppressive framework. Welcome to the show.
Meyleen Velasquez: Thank you so much Dr. Ross. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: And hi everyone. Always, always a pleasure to hang out with you. So your chapter was called Anti-Blackness in Latinx Communities, striving to Become anti-Racist. What motivated you to write this chapter? Oh goodness. I feel like I’ve been on a, um, I’m now on a lifelong journey to just learn more about history, learn more about.
Where I come from, learn more about the values that I grew up with and the values that I’m working to continue shifting. Um, so I think it’s a, it’s a mix of like my internal journey and what I’ve discovered about myself, about my family, about the ways that white supremacy filters everything that I experience, how I see myself, how I see others.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Tell us a little bit about that. I know you immigrated to the United States and you have, you, you’ve mentioned in the chapter also that you, uh, people can’t assume your race or your, your ethnicity based on how you look, because you have a certain condition that makes things a little tricky. Kind of like my.
The way I look makes things a little tricky for me. Do you mind saying a little bit about your own personal journey?
Meyleen Velasquez: Sure, sure. I’ll start with saying that I have vitiligo for me. It developed when I was 16 years old and it started with two tiny little spots under my eye. Um, that just. Continue to grow.
Most of my body remained brown until I was around 28 years old when it just moved exponentially quickly. And so if you see me now, most of the melanin in my body has been taken by vitiligo. ’cause that’s what it, what the condition does that attacks the cells produce melanin. And so it’s been an interesting journey, sort of kind of.
Sitting in my identity. The older that I am, the more that I wanna learn, the more connected to myself and my ancestors that, that I feel, and that I’m striving to be. And so it’s carrying a brownness that I no longer carry on the inside, but that it is a part of me and so just to share a little bit of my background, I was born in Venezuela.
Um, my family migrated to Venezuela. I don’t remember which year, but they lived there for 27 years. I grew up with my maternal family who are Cuban. Um. My paternal family is Colombian, but I didn’t grow up with my paternal family and so we’re small. Yeah.
Yeah. Where I was very excited for, for folks that are listening and the Dr. Ross remembering at the eating disorder conference, the I UP conference, that was, uh, when Columbia was walking, I was like.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah, so because I really find how people. Identify very interesting and you know, I recently had someone ask me, well, you know, you don’t look like, like you’re black. And so how come you don’t just say you’re biracial? You know, there’s all these like confusing thoughts that people have, but like you. The part of me that I identify as black, which is all of me, it comes from an internal sense and my own lived experiences.
And it sounds like the same for you.
Meyleen Velasquez: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I was just, um, yesterday, um, somebody needed something off me and, and they were like, oh, my English is not good. So I was like, and, and so we got to talking and the person was like. Oh my in Spanish. Oh my God. I would’ve never, ever, ever, ever thought that, like never, there’s nothing about you.
And I was, you know, I have to own it because this is how I live. But there’s a little part of me that’s like very,
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: it hurts your feelings, doesn’t it?
Meyleen Velasquez: Like you don’t, that’s that’s a lot of never.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. Well, and that’s what I get all the time. You know, like, and that’s why this. I was really offended when this person said that to me.
It was kind of like, well, you don’t, you know? Yeah. You can’t know someone by the color of their skin. And that’s the problem that with this social construct of race, you know, people in white communities identify those of us in bipoc communities as brown or, you know, black or, and all by the color of your skin or, or, you know.
Features that you have, and you really can’t use that because of colonization in which, you know, people were raped and there was intermarriage and all of that stuff that changed. How all of us look coming from any colonial nation. So does the chapter that you wrote reflect your personal lived experience in general or in specifics?
Meyleen Velasquez: I think it does because it talks about Mestizaje, which is the, the construct of Latinidad, which is the idea that we’re all the same, that all Latino communities are mixed. Yeah. Uh, which there is some reality to this is what colonization did. It makes black and indigenous and the Spaniard ancestry. Yeah.
And at the same time, the idea of me erases black and indigenous.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: And how does it erase by the idea that like, everyone is the same. Right?
Meyleen Velasquez:, I think it really aligns with colorblindness. Yeah. Right. And like, like I don’t see color. All lives matter. Yeah. I don’t see color. Like we’re all the same. We’re all mixed.
Yeah. Yeah. But then when you look at mainstream Latin American content, when you look at who the actors that are represented in movies, when you look at like who products are created from are lighter skin. Latin American people, Latin is what you see. Just thinking. There is an influencer that I follow and, um, her handle is Latina and she’s a, a black Latina woman.
She often talks about how the idea of me is something that really does erase blackness. Mm-hmm. How people are often like, oh my God, like you speak Spanish, right? A little bit. Yeah. Like similar, but like mm-hmm. Different than the experience of like, I cannot believe that you are.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: in other words, American person, someone who may be dark skinned, isn’t identified as a Latina because they’re.
Too Dark. Dark. And then you were too light. Yeah.
Meyleen Velasquez: Yeah. So you’re right. So it does make, and there’s a very real separation, right. Thinking about my, my experience growing up, my grandfather, my uncle, like other family members or Afro Latinos, uh, but it wasn’t until like I was, it’s, it’s like a state of dissonance.
It wasn’t until I became an adult and I’m doing this work that I’m like, all these family members were Afro-Latino. And we grew up strongly. I remember like one of my family members, um, being told like, you, you are like Cuban. Okay? You’re not, you’re not black. You’re Cuban.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: like how a whole nother layer of identity Yeah.
Is national identity.
Meyleen Velasquez: . Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: really interesting. In your chapter you say, and I’m quoting, in the US Latin Americans are seen, seen as people of color for many lighter skin Latinx individuals arrival in the us. Will be their first experience with discrimination or prejudice. Did you experience this when you immigrated to the us?
Meyleen Velasquez: think to a certain extent what was taken from me was my South American title. And so it’s like all of a sudden finding out that you’re not American and finding out that you’re Hispanic. So I grew up in a very interesting context mm-hmm. Um, in that my family was not Venezuelan, but we were growing up in Venezuela.
So what we experienced was xenophobia, but not belonging. The, you know, like my teachers called me, the daughter of the Cuban. Um, and so there was a very like separation. Um, my family was darker. I was darker than a lot of my classmates. Okay. And so there was like a big separation and that, like, that sense of not belonging was always present for me.
and I think because it was present for me, there’s this awareness that like, it’s not present for a lot of folks because lighter skin is also in Latin America Preferred. And it’s, you know, see it’s the dominant. And so it’s the dominant, but it’s not the dominant here.
Because in here you have a little, a little bit of color and it’s all of a sudden you’re different or you have an accent once you speak. Right. Like, it’s not first when they look at you, it’s once you speak.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Right. Uh, again, more layers. So I really was interested in your chapter when you talked about something called you called critical reflection.
I thought that was fascinating. Can you say a little bit about that and how you use that in your work or what it’s to do?
Meyleen Velasquez: Yeah. I think my reflective practice has come a lot from my work in infant mental health, where reflective practice and really thinking deeply about. Who am I? Who am I to this person?
How are we sitting together? Really influences or supposed to influence the practice. Mm-hmm. So the critical lens, it’s bringing in how identity, how social location, it’s really impacting how we’re, how we’re sitting with ourselves. So when a situation happens, when I’m sitting with somebody, it’s about.
Thoughts, my hypotheses, my feelings, what my actions as I sit with this person from my lived experience, from their lived experience, from uh, where we are socially, from what it’s spoken. And also like how do I know that’s like digging in a little bit deeper. ’cause sometimes we stop at like, okay, this is how I’m thinking and I’m feeling about this situation.
So let me go and take, make some action based on that. And the other step is like, how do I know this? What values, what experiences are informing this?
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: And and what biases are informing it too. You had some questions that you listed like that could be used or examples of critical reflection, such as what were the values and beliefs that I learned about black and indigenous races from my family of origin growing up.
Uh, did my value system and beliefs regarding blackness change as I transition through adulthood? And I think those aren’t questions that, especially when we’re in a mixed group. I think it’s really interesting sometimes to see the interactions. ’cause people do just make assumptions. Like for me, people assume, oh, well she’s a doctor, so she must be this, this, this, and this.
They, they assume, you know, race, they assume, you know, oh, I know one in particular. Oh, she’s a doctor. She must be wealthy. Ah. ’cause I, I was renting a house in San Diego four years or so, and it was a extremely nice house in a very nice neighborhood and the people, so I had this group come over to my house and then later.
When I was saying, oh, I moved, I moved into a condo and, and you know, I was renting that house. And they’re like, we thought you owned that house. We just assumed that you owned it. I mean, it’s, it’s a, yeah. Multimillion dollar house. They assume that, that I owned it. No, I would love to, but I don’t. Yeah. Those are the lenses that they were seeing me through that I didn’t even realize was, you know, I mean, I actually told some of the people that I was renting, so I just didn’t know that they were thinking that way.
Meyleen Velasquez: . So many layers of complexity to the human story. There’s like the things that we see, right? And there’s privilege in. Like for me not having melanin. Yeah. I often share that, like I haven’t been stopped by a cop for driving. In like 15 years and getting stopped in Miami wasn’t like, I was getting stopped all the time, but I got stopped a few times and usually the question was like, are these real.
You know, when I would hand my ID or, oh, are these real’s real?
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Or are you undocumented and you have false id?
Meyleen Velasquez: . Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that hasn’t happened, right? So that’s a fear I don’t have to navigate. No. There’s some other fear, some navigating the world with in the current sociopolitical climate that we’re living in.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: since you work with infant mental health, I’m sure you’ve thought about this development of a sense of identity as children, you know, get older and Beverly Tatum as that exercise where the first racialized experience, what do you see in terms of, you know, infant mental health in terms of, you know, anti-blackness?
Racism and that sort of thing. How does that?
Meyleen Velasquez: there, there’s so many, many layers. Dr. Ross, I, I wanna say that the first thing that’s rising for me as you’re asking that question is the privilege that rise that is there for families that don’t have to have those conversations with their children. What I’m learning from the folks I’m working with is that black and indigenous families are always having these conversations with their children.
And that for many of us that grew up with Latinidad, non-black and non-indigenous, we hold a certain privilege where we haven’t had to have those conversations. There’s privilege and there’s also internalized oppression that happens. There’s also the alignment or the wish to align with, with whiteness and with dominance.
Wanting to not be othered. Right. I think it’s, it’s a feature of survival and it causes harm. And then how hard it’s to try to see that or try to undo that because the person that I’m working with has to be willing to be in that space with me. That when racism, which is usually what, what rises, whether it is racism that the person is experiencing as a parent, as a caregiver, navigating the world or racism that they’re sharing, that they’re unaware of.
I will name it, like, I would say something like, you know, I hear you say this and this is what comes up for me. I’m wondering how you’re thinking about it. And then the invitation is, you know, if we’re gonna work together, these are some of the topics that you
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Do you counsel mothers on how to handle the first racialized experience that their children have.
I mean, I know for me, growing, you know, even though I’m fair skinned, my children are beautifully caramel and you know, I remember for each of them the first time that they were called the N word and just, you know, uh, many parents don’t know how to deal with that. Is that part of what you do with mothers and children or, um.
Meyleen Velasquez: I think it depends. I’m always having to hold in my the complexity of how I look on the outside and the comfort level of the person that I’m sitting with. And honoring the lived expertise of the person. So I invite everything and anything of the person. Um. That they wanna invite into the session. I constantly use myself and my social identity in the session, and we’re holding conversations about it.
Um, but really because of the, I think the age that I’m working with, a lot of what we’re navigating is the mother’s experiences of racism as they’re navigating the medical system. That is something that comes up a lot as they’re navigating labor and delivery as they’re interacting with a doctor and a doctor says something racist to them, which is very common.
A lot more common. Yeah. Than we wish. Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. So in terms of, uh, navigating the health system, what are your patients or clients, you know, seeing just from start to finish? Is it things people say or the, the health inequities or
Meyleen Velasquez: It’s everything. Dr. Ross, I can give you an example. Um, yeah. Which, which is one that has like really, really stayed with me.
I worked with, um, a woman, um, a woman of color. And during our time together, she became pregnant. And so the pregnancy was, well, I didn’t see her for several months, and then she came to see me maybe in her six months. Mm-hmm. Um, and one of the things that she kept complaining of was that her feet were swollen.
Yeah, so the first thing that happened was that the doctor put her on bedrest. And so she’s like, I’m on bedrest, that I feel bad. I feel so icky, and I keep going back. I keep asking, you know, that my feet are swollen, and she just kept, and she was like, I’m telling the doctor that I’m in bed that I am not moving, and like these things are still happening.
So I ended up doing a referral to a home visiting service..that, that I love a nurse family partnership. Just giving them a shout out. They’re across the US and thank the universe. When this nurse went to visit the client The client was triaged emergency to the hospital and had an emergency delivery.
This mom would have died. If this nurse had an intervened and triaged her in care.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: So she was misdiagnosed?
Meyleen Velasquez: Yeah. And what she, nobody was, I don’t know how nobody was testing her blood pressure.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: What?
Meyleen Velasquez: She had preeclampsia. She had swollen ankles and no one was testing her blood pressure. Nobody was testing her.Nobody.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: I wonder what, you know, they just, I wonder, what were they assuming then? What were they thinking was,
Meyleen Velasquez: I am not sure. But what went on from, you know, this. This being disregarded and unseen that put her in danger. What we know about black maternal death in the US is that most, if 80% are preventable Yeah.
Deaths. Exactly. And, and so. Nobody was checking in on her. Her experience navigating labor and delivery were very, very traumatic. People doing things and speaking about her as if she were not in the room, and so that loss of control. Um, taking away the baby because now she, um, she had to be induced so there were some complications in the baby and people not, you know, letting her know, like the human part.
Like, Hey, we’re gonna have to take your baby. This is what’s going on. You know, we’re gonna give you some updates. There was. It’s almost like you hear these stories and you’re like, this can’t happen. I, I can’t be real.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Wouldn’t be surprised if the people in now in labor and delivery blamed her for not getting help sooner.
When in fact she was going, going, going and no’s helping her, but then she goes to the hospital and she’s in dire straits and they’re probably thinking, oh, this. She just doesn’t care, you know, but Yeah. Yeah. But what’s interesting to me is it doesn’t matter what your educational level is, it doesn’t matter how wealthy you are.
I mean, Serena Williams, you know, wrote that incredible story of her experience with her first, um, daughter, uh, where she almost died, you know? And people ignored her. Yeah. And you think, what? This is crazy.
Meyleen Velasquez: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very ’cause it’s these, you know, when we think about this idea of critical self-reflection, it’s hard.
Hard to do because it means looking at the yucky parts of ourselves. Yeah. And often in this anti-racist and anti-oppressive work, one of the things that we often do is that we say, this would be wonderful. This would be wonderful for my neighbor to hear about or this other provider that I talk to, like to hear, and it’s hard to, to shift the lens and to say, you know what?
This is for me. I’m sitting here in this room and this conversation is happening. What do I need to be learning about?
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Um, does, does white fragility play a role in all of that? In the difficulty with critical reflection?
Meyleen Velasquez: I absolutely think, think it does. Um, I lean a lot into, um, Tim CO’s characteristics of white supremacy.
Mm-hmm. And so when I think of white fragility, I think about the right to comfort.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Um, and what does that, what does that mean?
Meyleen Velasquez: It’s, it’s the, you know, this, this idea that we have a right to be comfortable and that when conversations come up that make us uncomfortable, that like, you know, you feel dysregulated.
That, you know, it’s like, okay, let’s all agree to disagree. Let’s everybody come down. Let’s table this conversation and we’ll come back when everybody has a cool head. Yeah. And there’s a privilege in, in being able to do that because folks of color don’t have the privilege of saying, okay, everybody, like, stop your racism and yeah.
You know, let’s, let’s navigate the world differently.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: That’s such a good point. And there’s just so many examples of that in today’s world. You know, I was, uh, sadly, heard me Megyn Kelly say something about, I, I don’t know if you saw that, where she announced this had to do with the jeans ad. I have, I can’t even remember the slogan.
It’s not really that eye catching, but her response was, well, we shouldn’t have to feel like we are being told that we can’t, you know? Be white basically, or we can’t celebrate our whiteness, is kind of how I interpret it. I don’t know her, her words, but you know, just this feeling that if we give any, if we do any self-reflection, somehow it’s taking away from our privilege really.
I mean, she didn’t say privilege, but it’s kinda like. I’m gonna hold onto my privilege. I don’t care what anybody says, you know? And, and I think nobody’s in anti-racism work. Nobody’s trying to, you know, take people’s privilege away, but self-reflection, it is, you know, often seen as, uh, it’s like, well, I shouldn’t have to do that.
You know? That’s for those people, like you said, that’s for those people. Yeah. Yeah.
Meyleen Velasquez: And like, privilege is not bad. Mm, you’re, you’re born with it. There is, there is nothing that we can do to remove it, right? Mm-hmm. I wasn’t born with mine. I have it now. At least like I was born with tons of privileges. I mean this, yeah.
Has allowed me to be here having this conversation with you that’s been listened to. All you radiant humans. It’s what do we do with it? Yeah, more and more
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: how do we use our privilege?
Meyleen Velasquez: Yeah. Like this is a sacred responsibility. What am I gonna do with it? Right? How am I gonna use what I’ve been given to really continue to shine a light?
In, in my life, in the lives of folks that I’m serving and the lives of folks that I care about. Yeah. And love, which I hope continues to expand more and more to the rest of humanity because we need a lot of love right now.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: We all do. My final question is, what gives you hope in today’s world?
Oh. Sorry.That’s a hard it’s, isn’t it funny that that simple question is so hard for us right now? You know?
Meyleen Velasquez: Yeah. I think that there are pockets of Okay, that, that hope is not this thing that’s just everywhere. There are pockets of hope that lie in love. That lie in abolitionist work that small communities are doing?
Yeah. That lie in growth, that lie in somebody. Having an insight about where they are and where they wanna be in life.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: That it’s a, it’s a small things. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, and we, we have to keep looking for those small things. Grateful for those. It sounds like
Meyleen Velasquez: I’ve been really looking at like in this mess
Everywhere that has been here and and will continue to be here. Like what is my corner of harm that I am untethering. And how do I continuously go back to my corner? Because if I lift up and I look at like, all that needs to be done. Then I’m gonna freeze and get paralyzed. And that happens like three, four times a year.
But like, how do I come back to my little corner?
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: I think that’s such a good perspective because the more we continue to raise our own level of consciousness about all of these issues that we’re talking about, you know, it’s just one more way that we can further the work and you know, doing our own work is so important while we’re doing this other work or while we’re hoping to change the world.
So I’ll end there. Thank you so much for this stimulating conversation. It’s so wonderful to see you again. And thank you. Appreciate your contribution to the book and all the work that you do.
Meyleen Velasquez: So thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Thanks for listening. Please subscribe to the Inclusive Minds Podcast so we can let you know when the next great guest comes on.
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