Below is a transcript of Racing to the Root of Disparities: An Open and Heartfelt Discussion About Race, Health and Identity, an episode of the From the Front Row podcast produced by students at the University of Iowa College of Public Health. The podcast premiered on June 11, 2020.

This is an open, honest, and heartfelt discussion about race with five Black students in the University of Iowa College of Public Health. This episode is a conversation between Oge and guests Bikere Ikoba, Felicia Pieper, Chelsea Hicks, and Toluwani Adekunle concerning race as a social determinant of health, how racism is normalized, and how identity affects life.

Oge Chigbo:
Welcome back to From The Front Row, brought to you by University of Iowa College of Public Health. I’m Oge Chigbo.

Ian Buchta:
And I’m Ian Buchta. If this is your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student-run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they are relevant to anyone, both in and out of the field of public health. Today, we have a very special episode, which deviates from our usual. Today’s episode will be a conversation held between Oge and a few of our colleagues from the College of Public Health.

Oge Chigbo:
Yes. As we all know, the world has gotten a tad bit more crazy from the usual, and we also decided to switch it up a bit this week. I sat down with a couple of Black women from the college, and we just talked about everything.

Oge Chigbo:
By everything, I mean how identity plays a role in our lives, what we have normalized or what we’ve been conditioned to normalize and be on one type of process then guests rated them. As future experts, we found a way to evolve this around public health. Everything revolves around public health.

Ian Buchta:
And if you’ve been joining with us for a while, or maybe this is your first time hearing our podcast, even if you listened to no more podcasts of ours ever again, you should just listen to this whole episode. I got a chance to edit it and listen to it and it just blew me away. And this conversation is really one that everyone should just stay and listen to the end.

Oge Chigbo:
So we have a long one for you today, so let’s get right into it. All right. So hi everyone. Welcome back to From The Front Row. So today we’re going to hear from my colleagues at the College of Public Health, intellectuals, future professionals, Black women, who are all here gathered today over Zoom to bring you guys this special episode. So if you guys could go around and introduce yourselves.

Bikere Ikoba:
Hello everyone. My name is Bikere Ikoba, and I originally grew up in the Quad City area in Iowa and I am an incoming second year Master of Public Health student in the Community and Behavioral Health Department here at the university of Iowa. Glad to be here.

Chelsea Hicks:
Hi everyone. My name is Chelsea Hicks and I’m kind of from everywhere. I’m a military kid, but I spent a good bit of my life in Madison, Mississippi, and I am a incoming fourth year doctoral candidate in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health here at the University of Iowa.

Felicia Pieper:
Hi, my name is Felicia Pieper and I’m an incoming second year Master’s of Public Health student in the Community Behavioral Health Department. I’m from Iowa City and also spent a good amount of time in Cedar Rapids, so this Eastern Iowa area is what I call home.

Toluwani Adekunle:
Hi everyone. My name is Toluwani. I am from Nigeria and I wrote in the doctoral program in Community and Behavioral Health at the College for Public Health.

Oge Chigbo:
Thanks ladies. And hi, my name is Oge Chigbo. I’m also from Nigeria. I’m your host and I am in Epidemiology. So I guess I’m second year plus, I guess. All right. So how this episode is going to go is I’m just…

Oge Chigbo:
I have a couple of questions that I’m going to ask and anyone can feel free to answer it in whatever order you’d like. So my first question is if you could use a word or a sentence to define what it’s like being a Black woman in America or in the world, what would you say and why?

Bikere Ikoba:
I can start. At least for me I feel like there are many things that I could say. And of course this is just my personal experience, of course, but I think the word that came to mind after thinking about it is proving. I think for me personally I constantly feel like I’m trying to prove something if not to others then to myself and if not to myself then to others.

Bikere Ikoba:
And I think they’re really intertwined with specifically proving that I belong to be in the room, proving that I do have things to contribute to the situation, proving that I can actually help us get to the solutions that people I feel oftentimes look to us to say, “Okay, we want to be more diverse. How do we do this?”

Bikere Ikoba:
And you feel like you have to prove that sense of like, “Oh man, I have to have answers to this question that I didn’t create, but here I am, or to an issue that I didn’t create, but I’m being forced to have to solve.” Proving that yeah, my worth is more than being a diverse face on a brochure somewhere.

Bikere Ikoba:
But even in that too though, I do think that there’s hope in the proving, and specifically with being asked questions like what can we do to make our programs or institutions or whatever more diverse. I think that there’s hope in that proving yourself.

Bikere Ikoba:
I think that there’s hope in this idea that we’re being asked questions now that previous generations and generations weren’t asked. So I think that there’s hope and encouragement even in the proving, even though it can feel a little tiring and hard sometimes. At least for me, I think that’s something that comes to mind.

Chelsea Hicks:
Oh, sure. I can go next. So when I thought of that and I know I kind of thought of something that I wrote earlier this May. So I’m just going to read that. It’s a little, very short thing. So I will not [inaudible 00:05:34] not today, but thinking of that question and I think of this phrase, and so our plight is one of silenced voices. Muted sounds and our muffled voices, so common that people no longer hear them.

Chelsea Hicks:
It’d become the background sound and the irony is that it’s called white noise. And I really feel like that really kind of describe sometimes my existence or sometimes how I feel and in my work or what I’m trying to do in the bigger picture of the world, right? It’s like you can tell people that there are disparities. You can tell when you’re expressing all your concerns about what has existed yet it’s said so often that almost it’s become background noise.

Chelsea Hicks:
That people are hearing it so much that it doesn’t even register because it’s the sound they’re used to having in the background, right? And until it reaches a point that it’s so loud, that it becomes annoying, how you choose to define annoying. When it becomes annoying that is when people start to hear and listen and start to react to that.

Chelsea Hicks:
I feel like that’s a constant fight and struggle with whatever I’m doing and whatever area that I’m in. It’s just the repetition of myself over and over. And even what Bikere said, the proving of myself over and over.

Toluwani Adekunle:
Okay. I think I might go now. So everything everyone said, I second. And honestly, I think being a Black woman just in the world, taking up space in this world is very challenging. No matter where I find myself when I’m back home in Nigeria or even in the United States or in Europe or in Asia I have experienced just that burden of having to prove myself through my worse.

Toluwani Adekunle:
My voice being heard, or just showing that I’m an intelligent being and I know what I’m doing so it’s… And then even navigating life and making sure that I’m not offending anyone with my presence. It’s a burden I’ve had to carry and I still have to carry. So I’m always thinking about my interactions, my relationships with people, the way I talk to people, how I come off to people.

Toluwani Adekunle:
Am I being too strong. Am I being… I feel like it’s a burden. It’s challenging for me, but a challenge is an opportunity to stand up to the ask. And that’s what I find myself doing everyday day, standing up to the ask of the challenge.

Felicia Pieper:
Yeah. So I think just to echo what I think we all kind of shared, my original word… First thing that came to my mind when this question was posed was tired, which is not super uplifting or prophetic in any sense. And I think we kind of described that well, that was like mental hoops that we deal with on a daily basis.

Felicia Pieper:
But I think too, after hearing what we all had to say, just to kind of wrap it up too I think we’re all really incredibly proud of our identities. And incredibly have so much passion in enjoying who we are and what we bring to the table as well. So while being who we are can be quite exhausting and we have to deal with a lot, at the same time comes with immense pride and joy at the same time.

Oge Chigbo:
So I also took the Liberty of answering the question, because even when I wrote it off, I was like, “Oh I don’t know.” So the word I actually put, first of all I was like, “Adaptable,” but then I switched it to intrepid, which means fearless and adventurous. So personally, I am a… I don’t say I’m a scared person. I get scared a lot. So everything terrifies me, but then… And that’s also stems from how I was raised.

Oge Chigbo:
And I think I was raised with Black women, and how I was raised was kind of a sheltered… Like, “Oh let’s just keep her in this box, preserve her.” And I guess it’s that whole idea that, “Oh, the world isn’t really as kind to you as we will be.” So it’s kind of like, “Let’s just give you all this love.” And I’ve come out, and I was like… Because I came to the US in 2015 and I never really had to take on the identity of a Black woman till I came here.

Oge Chigbo:
So it was a major culture shock. I came here and then people were like, “Oh yeah, you’re a Black woman. You’re Black.” And I’m like, “Huh. No I’m not.” It wasn’t said I’m African. It was even a big deal for me, because I never had to prove or say that back at home. So it was like, “Huh. Huh, okay.” And then with every single year that I stayed in the US since 2015, I’ve seen myself really attaching myself to that identity, not only because…

Oge Chigbo:
I mean, everyone has to go through that. It inhabits this body. I’ve taken on the struggles that come with such a label. And it’s like, “Is it really interesting?” Up until you pointed that I got so uncomfortable in my own body. So it’s kind of I just felt it was my body kind of telling me, “No. All those things you’ve learned, all those shelter you were provided it has to come off. You have to take your space. You have to show up. You have to show people.”

Oge Chigbo:
Also, that whole proving yourself thing. You have to show people,” I am here, I am seen, I am capable and I will do it.” So it was like, “It’s a lot, but we’re doing it.” Praise Jesus. But yeah.

Bikere Ikoba:
I love it. I love it.

Chelsea Hicks:
All right. I really resonate with what you just said about with your identity. I grew up a good bit of my life abroad and it was always… My dad was always, “Oh, you’re an American,” or, “You’re a military kid.” That was my identity first. And then moving to the US it was like, “Oh, you’re a Black woman.”

Chelsea Hicks:
I’m like, “Oh, okay.” I mean it’s not as if I wasn’t, but it took on a whole entire different, I guess backpack, right? There was more weight to that title than I was used to. And so then learning how to manage and be, and carry that weight and that burden and the beauty of it as well it’s just been a growing experience.

Oge Chigbo:
Alright. So the next question that I have is, we are all in the field of public health and we know social determinants of health plays a role in the disparities that exist in our communities. So for our listeners, I like to define social determinants of health. It’s the condition in which one lives, work place that has an impact on one’s health. So how do you think social determinants of health has played a role in your life?

Felicia Pieper:
I think for me, the first thing that comes to mind, especially being a grad student is employment and just wealth and income, but more importantly generational wealth and how that is really on display as a grad student and kind of how I interact with my peers and seeing people make decisions for career and things like that.

Felicia Pieper:
And seeing what opportunities people have that have to do with resources from their family that I don’t see with necessarily my community. And I think about it a lot as well, too. When you think about all the things that are happening in the world, it’s just one piece that we don’t highlight enough.

Felicia Pieper:
I think, especially in academia, we can talk about first gen students and highlighting first gen students. But at the same time, there’s just this level of resources that a university cannot provide. And that was what I first thought of when you posed those question?

Oge Chigbo:
All right. So, if anyone still has anything to talk about social determinants of health a second subset of that question is even looking into medical bias. So depending on, I know we all have different subspecialties and things were really looking into, so what are your views on medical bias. With everything going on I see a lot of people paying close and close attention to the statistics and stuff.

Oge Chigbo:
It’s like, not only how are these statistics being calculated, but also how they are being interpreted. I know one of the things I love about public health is that we do highlight the fact that racism is a social determinant of health. And I mean, I was just reading something that was talking about the history of oppression. And I was just reading nothing public health related.

Oge Chigbo:
And I was just reading and I just saw, “Oh the social ecological model was just in there in the middle, and just oh, let’s talk about this.” And I just feel like it’s really interesting that… Or the whole rhetoric that, “Oh, racism is a touchy issue,” which in my own opinion, I’ve believed that it’s a touchy issue because we know it’s still going on and everyone has tried to normalize or walk around it and act like, “Oh yeah, we know that’s the thing but let’s just act like nothing’s happening. Let’s just move forward.”

Oge Chigbo:
And I really like the fact that public health calls it to attention like, “Oh, this is happening.” Well then after calling into that attention, I mean, we’re going to do it this way in this conversation, but how then do we intend on actually fixing these things. Because even with last week, it’s been really talking about these things.

Oge Chigbo:
The whole Black Lives Matter or racism, racism, racism. It’s like, “Yes, this is the thing which has been going on.” So in your own… I’ve just kind of gone off rail. This is what happens when I start to talk. But yeah. In your own subspecialties is there a way your views on these disparities and how the whole social determinants of health racism is a social determinant of health.

Oge Chigbo:
I mean it affects us everywhere daily in things that we do and how we interpret the whole level of violence or who deserves what, or how do we allocate these resources and funds and equity and stuff.

Toluwani Adekunle:
Okay, I’m going to go. Yes, racism is a social determinant of health. I want to talk about place being a social determinant of health as well. Place as in location where you live. For me personally coming to this country when I was young it was a privilege for me just because I was looking for better opportunities. But coming out of where I was born and coming here is something that helped me move further forward in life, right?

Toluwani Adekunle:
But now coming here, now representing the Black identity as a Black person, I figured that it was more than just getting those opportunities. I had to do other things to be able to get these opportunities. And I also had to carry the burden of my peers or people from my race that has to deal with the effect of racism on them and learning about how you zip code determines your life expectancy.

Toluwani Adekunle:
And you see the interesting differences in life expectancy and health outcomes just based on zip code alone, even within the same city, very interesting to see those. And also very interesting to see how just being… Like you said, medical bias. Being a Black woman your voice may not be heard just because people have a preconceived implicit bias about the pain levels you might be going through and your level of education about your level of pain.

Toluwani Adekunle:
And so coming here, I realized I was more than just moving from a country where I felt I didn’t have access to the resources I needed, to come to a country where there are so many resources, but now can I access them because of my skin color? So yeah. I’m just looking at the interrelationship between place and now your identity, it’s all. Yeah. I mean, just coming from personal perspective it’s all interrelated for me. The social determinants of health are interrelated for me.

Chelsea Hicks:
Yeah. I was just thinking of this [inaudible 00:17:41] about place and environment, because I study occupational environmental health. I was thinking about it from the perspective of one has access to resources, but also proximity to toxic dumpsites. Proximity to factories or proximity…

Chelsea Hicks:
And talking about air pollution and water pollution, and we shouldn’t have found and the exposure to different toxins and how you can actually look at it on maps and see the racial differences of certain places being chosen to be put in locations that are predominantly people of color, right? And so thinking about how those decisions are made and thinking about, like Tolu was saying, how place plays a role in that.

Chelsea Hicks:
Or even going from the point of occupation, right? So how do people choose the occupation that they want to go into? And what occupations might have more main predominant people of color or predominately Caucasian people. And so it’s like, “What are those differences, right?” Is that change exposure to injuries, exposure to violence, exposure to…

Chelsea Hicks:
And all of those things, you can look at the data and you see differences. You see that, and it’s… I mean it can be from a variety of reasons, but you can’t ignore it because it’s right there in the numbers.

Oge Chigbo:
Yeah. So for me, this past semester T84 Fundamental Public Health class with Felicia, and honestly, I think I learned so much from attending that class than I ever have just taking any class ever, because I saw myself trying to explain to people who obviously is your first time in public health and even need to all ready even know these concepts.

Oge Chigbo:
But trying to explain how, “Oh, you see all these things that we see it’s way deeper than we think, honestly.” And even depending on how you think depends on what… I don’t know if I should say justification or how you’re going to justify what you are seeing based off of how you interpret on that individual level. And then that is going to also influence how other people you talk to or people in your community are also going to see that thing, that’s… I don’t know.

Oge Chigbo:
So I was kind of telling them how in the US, the United States is the land of the free, and I quote unquote land of the free, because I was like, “If you start to think about these things, your community, wherever you live, they make it look like you’re free. They add stuff around. They put you in a box where they give you options, but then you don’t know that you could have other options, but they’ve just given you the options that we they is right for you to choose.”

Oge Chigbo:
And then you started things like, “Oh, I’m free. I have the choice to…” But it’s like, “You only have the choice to choose from these things that you see.” And if you don’t think about it like that, you’re now like, “Oh you’re just in that mindset.” And I think that’s something, because if you think about it from when we were children to now that we’re adults.

Oge Chigbo:
We, as kids we had that spirit, we had that imagination. You could think about anything and it becomes true. It’s your real life. But then the longer you live this world, the world breaks you. The world makes sure that all those imagination dies down till you start to think in a ‘normal way.’

Oge Chigbo:
And it’s I feel like I have to think in this way in order for me to survive. I have to ignore some certain things just so I can be happy or feel happy and feel like, “You know what? This is all I have. This is all I can make to do with, and I’m just going to work in that way. So that way, even if I’m not as fulfilled as I could potentially be, it’s fine. I’m fulfilled where I’m at right now. And that’s okay.”

Oge Chigbo:
Just kind of like normalizing some things, and when you actually sit down, if you’re never out of your shell, which I thank God everyday I actually stepped out of Nigeria. Because I was talking to a friend. I was like, “If I’m still in Nigeria, I feel like I’d be totally different person.” I wouldn’t have the perspective I have now, which most times actually a lot of people disagree.

Oge Chigbo:
Or they’re like, “No, this is Nigeria. This is not the US,” and I’m like, “Let’s stop. This is wrong. Don’t think this way. There’s 1001 possibility that even me I’m learning every single day. I’m trying to unlearn and relearn, I mean, which is really hard, especially since they’ve already put this one perspective in your head and told you-

Toluwani Adekunle:
Okay. So when you think about the social determinants of health, place is so important to that. There’s enough studies showing that your zip code can determine your health outcomes, right? And you see very stack or very large differences in health outcomes from zip code to zip code, even within the same city.

Toluwani Adekunle:
But something interesting that I think about just myself as an African immigrant to the United States. I think about the social determinants of health back home, where I’m from and the social determinants of health here in the United States. Studies coming out of Harvard by Professor David Williams, who is a public health professor, as well as the Sociology and African American History Professor at Harvard at University of Harvard.

Toluwani Adekunle:
He made it known that following every police brutality, it takes Black men up to three months to recover from the mental trauma of that incident. And not only Black men, it also takes the Black community about the same time. So it’s not only an individual determinant, now you’re talking about the community level of the social ecological model.

Toluwani Adekunle:
And when you think about this, and you think about how frequent these incidents are, how frequently you see different cases of whether an unarmed man, Black man killed by the cops or killed by a regular citizen or mistaken for a criminal, not even only a man, unarmed Black females as well or transgender females.

Toluwani Adekunle:
You think about how much time we actually have to recover from those incidents? Probably not enough if we need up to three months, because before three months is up, there is another incident occurring. So we are carrying the bondage from these incidents, the mental bondage from these incidents. And we know about the genetical effects of trauma. We know how trauma can be encoded in your DNA and can be passed down to your future generations.

Toluwani Adekunle:
And so when you think about all of these combined, you can think about African-American’s health being at risk based on just skin color, based on their race. Yeah. So definitely that’s something to think about when you think about the social determinants of health.

Bikere Ikoba:
Yeah. I just so respect of the wealth of insight that’s brought into this room and into the space even virtually. And so I think for me even just seeing and hearing this question originally, I think when it comes to the social determinants of health being these conditions, as you mentioned Oge, in which we live and learn and work, and even right now as we breathe.

Bikere Ikoba:
I think as we talk about these topics like race and racism, I’m at this national conversation that we’re having right now, and specifically in the context of public health when we talk about topics like medical bias and COVID-19, and these health disparities that we’re seeing.

Bikere Ikoba:
As we talk about so many of these things, I think race intersects with so many of these things, because race intersects with so many of these things. And as a result, race is going to show up in all of these things so clearly. And so I think the social determinants of health do intersect in a lot of these ways already mentioned by these women and even in a lot of the identities that I hold and specifically as a Black woman, because race has so heavily impacted the way that we do perceive and function in our world.

Felicia Pieper:
Thank you Bikere, and that kind of highlights what I wanted to say too thinking about intersections. Just how compounding issues of race are, and even Chelsea to bring up occupation and in environment the name of the firm. To bring up both of those, and then to see a statistic where Black and Brown people are dying at disproportionate rates of COVID, that’s a really hard for the average person to unpack.

Felicia Pieper:
I mean, I don’t know if it’s even possible, right? Our whole education is training us to both take all these different think big picture, think about all these different aspects of our life, social determinants of health. And then we pop out one statistic that tells us a lot about our society, but I think unfortunately that gets interpreted maybe not incorrectly, but it’s only part of the truth over and over.

Felicia Pieper:
Even just specifically thinking about COVID, medical bias has been brought up all these different things comorbidities. But then when we really try to narrow in on one problem, we lose the whole picture. Medical bias is incredibly important.

Felicia Pieper:
It’s something we absolutely need to address, but at the same time, if we’re not keeping in mind that Black folks are living in communities where the air is toxic and we’re not keeping in mind maybe a issue with the police has come up and the whole community’s health is suffering, we’re not solving the problem.

Felicia Pieper:
And I think too I don’t know how much we’ll get into some of the more recent happenings and thinking about policing and what that means for our whole society, specifically Black communities, but at the same time just identifying what’s the symptom? What’s the cause? How do we begin to tackle some of these things? How are we begin to talk to some of these things?

Felicia Pieper:
I think we’ve gotten to a point… At least I’ll speak for myself. I’ve gotten to a point where in academic settings I feel comfortable enough to discuss some of these things, but then to be confronted with just such an ignorant statement sometimes as a grad students to begin to even start to unpack, to explain why something is wrong is… But I think that’s something we could be thinking about more in academics too, is how do we translate some of this?

Felicia Pieper:
I mean Bikere and I just took a whole semester course on health equity, health disparities, and social justice. And we started to get some of the tools that we need to be able to fight for justice and talk about justice. But I think too that we could do a lot more to really translate some of these really complicated health issues to be able to communicate them out more broadly.

Chelsea Hicks:
No, I love that you brought that topic up Felicia because I feel like how we communicate what’s going on, how we’re communicating the data is so valuable and unfortunately not enough researchers know how to do that properly.

Chelsea Hicks:
And sometimes there’s a miscommunication between what a paper presents and what the media presents and trying to find and match that disconnect, I mean, for myself, I believe that we need more people who study these things in these other areas so that things are being translated the best way they possibly can.

Chelsea Hicks:
But from the point of a graduate student, maybe that means we should be taking more courses or actually learning and having webinars and workshops of how to communicate our ideas in a way that are understandable for the general public. I mean, we like to use a lot of jargon, but that doesn’t help the problem with Black maternal mortality, right?

Chelsea Hicks:
That doesn’t. It’s like, you just say it. But if you actually give statistics, if you talk about the stories of people that, a lot of times we’ll connect a lot more to general public hearing the names and not just the numbers.

Oge Chigbo:
On the concept of speaking up or being suffocated by silence, I Can’t Breathe has been used as a metaphor to identify the struggles that is associated with being a Black person in America. What are your opinions on this? Do you think you have the right to have an opinion? Being in public health at a university do you ever feel like your voice is drowned out?

Toluwani Adekunle:
Okay, I’m going to speak on that discussion with the phrase I Can’t Breathe using that as an analogy for the experience of Black people in United States. And there’s so much just in that statement. So much that goes into it. I’ve been reading a lot, exposing myself to different things just in this past few weeks because of the most recent incidents in the United States.

Toluwani Adekunle:
And hearing the voice of the stories of just different people in different sectors, from corporate America even within academia. Currently right now in Twitter there is a phrase. There is this hashtag that is going around twitter called Black In The Ivory, and basically people in academia talking about their experiences in academia.

Toluwani Adekunle:
And even the silencing of Black voices within academia is quite surprising because you think we all know we’re all very knowledgeable about racism and about just the impact it has. You would think that academia should be your safe space, but from what I’m finding and hearing people talk, I’m realizing that this is not the change and the numbers are really low.

Toluwani Adekunle:
When you look at the numbers for women in academia or even just Black people in academia generally, you see people… You see that, first of all, there’re not enough PhDs, not enough doctors or what I… Should I say in the medical field, in the academic… All kinds of fields, doctoral, just the terminal level of people’s careers. They’re not enough.

Toluwani Adekunle:
Our voices are being silenced in this case. And you also hear stories of women working so hard within their department to make it to tenure ship, but they’re not even given that chance to and so you have to do it. Trying so hard we need to breath. We can’t breath in that regard. Voices of people in corporate America working hard, but not getting the recognition they deserve.

Toluwani Adekunle:
We can’t breath. And do you know what? We can’t breath because we can’t express this fragility. White fragility meaning that we don’t want to offend White people when we talk about this. We don’t want to sound like a broken record. We don’t want to be the voice in the background like Chelsea alluded to at the beginning of this podcast, because we’ve talked about this for years, but no one is listening.

Toluwani Adekunle:
But we have to talk about it, because without talking about it we can’t get past it. And so when we talk about it, we’re scared of retaliation, we are scared that we’re going to get fired. We are scared that our paper won’t get published. We are scared that we’re going to lose our position within a certain space. And so yes, we cannot breathe and we want to breathe. It’s time I feel like Black people should be given that space to breathe in this country in every aspect.

Oge Chigbo:
Yes. I love it. I love it. That’s actually really what I was trying to get to with that question, because I’ve been having conversations with people too, or just listening to other people. And I’ve been hearing this whole thing about, “Well, I know this is horrible. This is happened, but I can’t speak about it because when I do, I might lose my job. How am I going to feed?”

Oge Chigbo:
Or even me, I really use my own platform, my Instagram when I’m talking and I’m pushing people to the limit. I’m like, “No, this is bad.” We need to actually talk about this, or… Maybe I’ll go somewhere and just type something and see what people… Whether they are going to interact or not. Things like that. And the thing that goes on to my mind is, “Oh my God I still want to be in academia. What if they use this? They hold this against my neck and be like, ‘Well, you’re perpetrating…'”

Oge Chigbo:
They just look for something and say, I’m trying to perpetrate hate speech or I’m doing this, and I’m doing that and be like, “Oh, we don’t want someone like you.” And I’m just trying to live with that possible reality that someone might not want me because of I’m speaking my own truth and that’s fine.

Chelsea Hicks:
That’s a real fear.

Oge Chigbo:
Exactly. I was like, “You know what? I want to teach them that you need to stand up for yourself. If people will not give you the space that you earned you collect it. You go and you demand it, and you take it. And if they’re still like, ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ don’t go there. Don’t let people degrade you. You walk out. There’s something better. You will find something.”

Oge Chigbo:
And that’s the kind of role model I want to be. So I’m trying to do that with my own life. I’m like, “It’s hard, but you have to push.” And I’m just like, “God, this is what kills. This is stress. This is what kills people.” We should not be fighting like this for common decency.

Oge Chigbo:
If you still have to talk about basic things like race, gender and gender based violence or being equal opportunity like basic things, then imagine the billions of other things that we have problems in this world, but we’re still just trying to figure that basic thing that everyone should be on the same page. Yes, it does. Normal common sense, but… Yeah. So what’d you guys… Do you guys have… Before we go off.

Bikere Ikoba:
I have a question as far as it comes to being Black woman in academia and wanting to be able to talk about these things and to be able to breathe and to be honest, if I come knowing that those things can often come with the fear of, “Will this affect my work getting published? Will this affect future job references because I was perceived as being X, Y, Z, because of other people’s implicit bias that has nothing to do with me?”

Bikere Ikoba:
What does it look like for us as Black women who need and feel that personal drive to speak out about these things, because unless we do things will stay the status quo. We are also recognizing that the people who are in control and who really hold our futures, if we do, that could even impact the future people looking like us, even being in our places.

Oge Chigbo:
I think I got what you’re trying to ask. What are the effects going beyond us, or for future individuals or for future prospects who identify as Black women coming to the same field. So we are not just affecting our future, but yes, if we speak up, is that… What’s your question?

Bikere Ikoba:
Yeah, that is my question. I guess my question is if we speak up and we face the wrath, then we’re in trouble. If we don’t speak up and things remain the same, we can’t breathe. If we… And so it feels… I guess I would just… My question is really talking about how… At least my question is maybe just more of a statement in the sense of it feels like oftentimes we’re being put in this hard place of not being able maintain the status quo because again the status quo was whether we can breathe or not.

Bikere Ikoba:
And at the same time what does that mean? How can I breathe and get my PhD completed? And I think that even the fact that that’s a question that I have to answer, for me in my master’s program these are the things that I’m thinking through that I know that my peers aren’t. So I guess… I don’t know.

Bikere Ikoba:
I guess that’s a question and a statement and just something that I think that at least I have to wrestle with every day. How do I navigate this space and navigate around all of these, what feels like secret landmines of fragility around me and still thrive and succeed and excel so that the next generation of a beautiful, strong, confident, amazing Black woman can enter into these spaces and be more free than even I feel right now? What does that look like? So those are my-

Chelsea Hicks:
Landmines of fragility. I love that.

Bikere Ikoba:
Anyway, so that was my statement of [crosstalk 00:38:35]

Chelsea Hicks:
I love that. I love that. You should get that copyrighted. I feel like I’ve been having that conversation a lot with people lately about what… I guess a lot of people are coming up to me and asking, “What can I do?” Or, “How can I do something within my capacity?” And honestly, I feel like I’m constantly saying, “Do what you can in the season that you’re in. Know your limits and also know what you’re able to do and what is feasible in the season that you’re in.”

Chelsea Hicks:
I know it might seem to the graduate students that maybe they’ll be sometimes in rooms where maybe I’m the only Black person and in those spaces, I’ve learned how to use my voice in the way that I feel most comfortable with. But I also know I can’t sit silent. I think I’ve spent a bit of my life trying to figure out and being quiet, trying to figure out how, or if I should speak.

Chelsea Hicks:
And I’ve reached a point where I’m just going to speak and it wasn’t… What’s that thing you do it and ask forgiveness later, whatever that thing is. There’s a phrase for it. I’m forgetting it right now. But I feel like I’ve reached a point where I try to assess what am I capable of doing now in my season, with what resources I do have, knowing that when I get to a different place and a different season, that I can do bigger and greater things, right?

Chelsea Hicks:
But I mean, I’m having the conversations with the people that I… I’m engaging in those conversations, and these are things that we’ve been doing, especially as Black women, for centuries, for generations. We’ve been having conversations, we’ve been doing these things, right? And I know it feels like it’s a broken record constantly saying the same things, but I’ve learned that I can’t be quiet anymore. And there’s strength and power in our voice as Black women alone.

Chelsea Hicks:
There’s strength and power in our voice, and it’s important that we can, I say, talk the talk and speak eloquently and express how we’re feeling and in a way that can relate to people that maybe necessarily don’t share our background and our history and our trauma and our struggle. And I feel like it’s this ongoing battle, but it’s one that we engage with every day, whether we’re stepping out on the ground and holding protesting signs, or whether we’re stepping into the boardroom where we’re the only person of color.

Chelsea Hicks:
Our daily life is a protest, and I feel like it’s important that we acknowledge that and it’s not like you’re not doing something. You being here, all of us being here in this space is doing something, but it’s also knowing that we hold a certain responsibility with the privilege that we have of being in this space to do something with that privilege.

Toluwani Adekunle:
Can I add to that? Thank you Chelsea for saying, doing what you can do with what you have. I love it because the definition of success is not getting halfway and then being blocked because you said something, or losing that job because you said something. You need to know what your goal is and aim for your goal by any means necessary and then you document everything, right? Keep track of…

Toluwani Adekunle:
Because listen, you can write your book and your story will be heard, but maybe during that time, you couldn’t speak out because you knew the consequences of speaking out will be getting kicked out to your destination. Maybe you have a better platform and you can share your story.

Oge Chigbo:
Yes. Thank you to Tolu for adding that on too. Yes, definitely I too have had a lot of conversations with people and sometimes… Because I’ve had even with our own government in Nigeria, and everyone is like, “Well, what can I do? One day I’ll be in a position where I can actually make an impact.” And I’m like, “Yes, definitely to you can. And I hope you’re there.

Oge Chigbo:
I hope you are there one day, but right now, what can you do right now? And what are you doing right now? If you feel like you can’t do anything right now, why do you think when you get there you’d know better? Or you’ll be better able to navigate or be able to connect to whatever.” Because let’s not forget we’re growing.

Oge Chigbo:
Right now, like me, I am in my early 20s. By the time I’m in my what? Maybe even late 20s or mid 30s, I’m going to forget what I went through right now, or probably how I thought. And it’s very easy to lose touch of who you were and not even being able to empathize with people in that generation or… So when you now get into that place of power that you were once dreaming of being, then you forget what you felt like when you were not, and then lose touch of that.

Oge Chigbo:
And maybe even start to excise your power in your way of… Well, now you’re… Now the oppressed is now the oppressor. So, that kind of thing. You now become the one who is now oppressing people and now you are in this cycle of, “No, maybe I should just wait it out when I get there.” But now your mentality has changed. You never cultivated or… I don’t know. I think I’m making sense.

Oge Chigbo:
But yeah, this is the little things I’m like, “We just have to make sure that you just keep on walking towards it, keeping in mind.” I mean, letting yourself grow, evolve, keep on going in that path where you’re aware, “If I go here, I know what I want to accomplish. I know where I was and…” Well, I mean things like that. Well, do you guys have any other-

Chelsea Hicks:
Yes. It’s definitely good. It’s being faithful with the little you have. So, when you are entrusted with more you know how to handle. It’s a first to think that you can not do anything and not learn the tools and gain the resources and the tools and the understanding, and then be able to apply it to a bigger problem that doesn’t exist.

Chelsea Hicks:
If you have a small, deal with a small thing. If it’s talking to your racist neighbor and getting to have a conversation with you, then that is your small way. And then 10 years from now, it’ll be you talking to a giant worm of CEOs and you’re a woman of color CEO in the room, right?

Chelsea Hicks:
And so you’ve gained those tools along the way. We can’t… I feel like often we’re told in academia and other areas to negate our experiences as if they aren’t enough and that’s just a lie. Our experiences are more than enough.

Oge Chigbo:
All right. Okay. So thank you guys. On to the next question for the segment. What do you hope to see in the future? Basically, what do you intend to use your degree for? And why public health? But as you guys are thinking I’m just going to start. I basically entered public health, at first I had no interest in public health.

Oge Chigbo:
I thought public health was just about microorganisms. And honestly my interest actually sparked when I took microbiology and I was like, “Huh, I actually never thought about bacteria that way, maybe I should take public health then and just learn more.” So I came into public health, thinking I was going to learn about bacteria and diseases.

Oge Chigbo:
I stayed in public health because I got way much more. I started learning about these frameworks, social determinants of health. How to actually look at things deeper than it already is. And I just really got interested like, “Wow, this is actually where I want to go with my life.” So being public health, hopefully being a medical practitioner some other way, because I’m very active.

Oge Chigbo:
I mean public health is active but I don’t like looking for people to help me do something and more or less I want to be the one who gets to actively do this thing. So it’s kind of how can I understand my community? Everything I do right now is for my home. I have plans of going back home. I mean, hoping I can go back home at some point.

Oge Chigbo:
Go back home and use the resources I have learned for something that is way bigger than me. And even if I don’t get to accomplish what I’m dreaming of when I’m alive, as long as I can start something and it continues even long after I’m gone and we’re having the impact, the intended impact, even if we have a little bit unintended consequences such is life, but I really want to see my own home go further, go forward from where it is.

Oge Chigbo:
And I think public health is giving me the knowledge, the insights. But then again everything does boil down to policies and laws and the big circle in all our models, the biggest circle. But yeah.

Felicia Pieper:
So for me I intend on working in the community in some capacity somewhere somehow. I enrolled in the Community and Behavioral Health Department because I truly see community as the antithesis of oppressive systems. If we can take care of each other and create resources and really be focused on our community, that’s when we can kind of suffer and circumvent some of these systems that really do the most harm.

Felicia Pieper:
So this question is always hard for me because I can’t be like, “I have a job title,” Or, “I know where I want to be,” but I know what type of organization I want to be a part of, and I know what type of work I want to do and that’s really getting power into communities, specifically Black communities.

Felicia Pieper:
But really thinking about all the skills that I’ve been gaining in the Master of Public Health programs that think about issues at the top level, thinking upstream, thinking about prevention, but then bringing that back down to action and what that might look like. I know personally too that if I’m not involved in some sort of direct action, I’m going to feel defeated, I’m not working for the cause.

Felicia Pieper:
So I think too, what public health provides is an opportunity to do some more intellectual work that maybe takes a little time before we see actions, but also thinking about what can I do every day that helps my community. Oge mentioned more about T84 for the Fundamental Health class, I personally found teaching to be an excellent combination of the intellectual work I want to do. And then that direct service of hopefully imparting that knowledge on a group of students.

Felicia Pieper:
Thinking a lot about balancing these really more intellectual activities with how am I in my community making ties and making sure that everyone is feeling safe and has the best opportunity to be healthy.

Toluwani Adekunle:
Three things, Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness. They were highlighted in the Declaration of Independence for the United States of America, right? That citizens of this country should have those as they are. Those are their own alienable rights, right? So I’m saying that not everybody has those three things. Not everybody has life, right?

Toluwani Adekunle:
People’s lives have been taken away from them, whether directly or indirectly through structural racism and the factors that exist around us that are not allowing people to have the ultimate health outcomes that they can possibly achieve. Happiness, people are not happy with the situation right now. The pursuit of…

Toluwani Adekunle:
This are the things that we want. And honestly, I want to see a future where, it might not happen in my generation, but my children have access to these things that they know that they can achieve whatever they want to achieve without fear or limitations, things that exist within the community holding them back without… So all the things talked about today are very, very pertinent, very important.

Toluwani Adekunle:
We cannot ignore these things. I know we have the lightest of lightest conversation just a nice kind of brushing the surface of things, but there are a lot of things that exist that we’ve not talked about today. And I’m sure that we are all very much aware of. And people should not be told that they cannot achieve what they want to achieve because of their color or they identify as whatever [inaudible 00:50:43] things that we have going on.

Toluwani Adekunle:
We talk… I feel like we enjoy talking about that. We just like to have a [inaudible 00:50:49] actually doing something and taking a step back and saying, “No, no, no. We’re going to move this forward.” That’s enough of the talk. We want to see [inaudible 00:51:03].

Oge Chigbo:
All right. Thank you for that. Even if we did have glitches, I think we could make out what you are trying to say, and that was really powerful, right on the neck. And this is how we normalize things by brushing things over and doing like, “Oh yeah, I know we all experience this and all this stuff about this, so let’s just keep on moving and…” To the point where everyone explodes and then you’re deemed the perpetrator, the violent one for saying, “I cannot take this anymore.”

Oge Chigbo:
Ain’t that life? But we’re going to change that soon. All right. So does anyone else have anything to say for that question? We usually ask everyone who comes on our pod these two questions is just a really kind of to take the edge off, I guess, from any interview we have. And the first one is, what’s something outside the field of public health that you’re really interested in?

Bikere Ikoba:
For me, I think I’m really interested in psychology. But specifically just with my background, I think I’m interested in psychology and mental health and how that… It is super interconnected with public health. But also even specifically how the field of psychology interacts with culture and how different cultures value and have completely different outlooks on different things.

Bikere Ikoba:
And so, I don’t know. I feel like I really love learning more about the interactions between people and the study of people. However, I’m also particularly interested in how culture intersects with those things.

Chelsea Hicks:
I am really interested in… So I guess when we were… I wanted to think of something super academic and then I was just like, “Oh, dancing and reading.” But honestly those are the two things that I’m very interested in, but I think I really appreciate dance because it literally is, kind of what Bikere was saying, it’s a cultural fusion. It brings people from so many different areas?

Chelsea Hicks:
It’s a language that’s spoken without words. I love dancing. And I love how people can express themselves and express whether it’s interpretive dance, whether it’s West African or Latin dancing or whatever. I mean, there’s so many varieties and I think there’s so much beauty and that’s a great way for us to connect across cultures and to share and embrace the beauty that we all have with our heritage with dance.

Felicia Pieper:
I’ve been more interested in history lately, which I’d never thought I’d say, because it was always my least favorite class which speaks more to the type of education I got and less on the subject. But I’m thinking more about how much we can really learn from incidents in the past and how much history really does repeat us and from a cultural…

Felicia Pieper:
And thinking about the diaspora and what all we could really gain from learning more about our own history and how that affects our own identity, but how we move throughout the world is incredibly valuable.

Toluwani Adekunle:
Oh yeah. I’m interested in a lot of different things, but something I’m looking into now is just reading a lot more and educating myself about past events and how they are influencing occurrences today and how they could influence the future. So I’m trying to read a lot more and [inaudible 00:54:29] if you have any ideas of good books that I can read, I’m always happy to get those ideas and keep reading.

Oge Chigbo:
Well, I am the other hand, I’m interested in fashion and physics and genetics and music, interested in everything. I don’t focus on one thing. My brain just skips 1000 miles. I’m just everywhere at the same time. But yeah. Okay. So the second question is, what is one thing you thought you knew, but found out you were wrong about?

Bikere Ikoba:
I can go. I think for me kind of just along the lines of this conversational topics, specifically talking about race. I think that even for me as someone who does identify as a Black woman, my understanding of what it means to be Black has completely turned on its head over the past five to seven… I guess really about the time I started college. So seven plus years now.

Bikere Ikoba:
In the past decade, I would say my understanding of my racial and ethnic, but specifically my racial identity has completely changed as we’ve learned more about history and the history that I had no idea about my own history, and the history of those who’ve come before me. So I think for me maybe this is…

Bikere Ikoba:
Maybe if we were in a completely different context, I’d say something completely different, but I think truly my understanding of the world in which we live and what it means for people, people like me have… It’s completely and totally dramatically changed over the past decade of my life.

Toluwani Adekunle:
Okay. I guess I’ll go next. I guess for me, one of the things growing up, I thought life is going to be easy. I thought that life was fair. I thought I could work hard and you would get what you want. I though life was easy but now I’m growing up and I’m beginning to realize that life is not linear.

Toluwani Adekunle:
There are different paths and life is not fair and don’t expect so much in life, so adaptability. I guess that first word that you chose is something that is so pertinent because you have to adapt to every situation but still giving in your 100% and that’s it.

Chelsea Hicks:
I feel like I would have to say that my education protects me. I think I used to put a lot of weight on the credentials and the letters after people’s name and seeing people in those authority places and really thinking that, that… Realizing it’s like when someone that you admire kind of lets you down, right?

Chelsea Hicks:
It realizes that one, that we’re human. But two, I realized that my intersection of identities of being a Black woman in education that doesn’t protect me. My higher degree doesn’t protect me from people doing [inaudible 00:57:45] on me. And with every scene, I feel like in the news and across media your wealth, your XYZ does not protect you from bias.

Chelsea Hicks:
And whatever kind of bias you’re experiencing I’m realizing that it’s being shown more and more and more. Well, I don’t discount my education because I realized it informs me and it does empower me in a different way. But I realized it doesn’t hurt me.

Felicia Pieper:
I think for me, and hopefully this resonates with just about anyone who goes to college, but I’ve been spending a lot of time on learning a lot of things, just how I think we’ve all kind of touched on things that we thought were true about the world. And now as we get deeper into our education and really see some of the happenings and seeing how systems actually work to kind of, as Toluwani said, life’s not fair and seeing how that kind of plays out in our society.

Felicia Pieper:
And I think what I’ve really been embracing lately is the idea that… Not the idea that, but really reconciling with the fact that research isn’t objective and learning how to interpret research and really understand that it’s not inherently objective, and that we really need a critical lens to be able to understand that. And again, how do we distill all that information and make it accessible? Is something I’m trying to practice more and more.

Oge Chigbo:
Thank you guys. Thank you so much. And this is also a way to try to ignore my own answer to that question, but thank you so much for sharing. Thank you so much for coming on to the pod today. Well, this has been a very, very lovely conversation honestly. I think we all had fun, right? Or was I just… Everyone is not in agreement.

Bikere Ikoba:
Yes we had…

Toluwani Adekunle:
Yeah, we had fun.

Oge Chigbo:
Yes. So thank you so much.

Ian Buchta:
That’s the end of the podcast for today. Thank you again to our guests for taking the time just to come and talk to us on the pod this week. Now we’re going to have a couple of things. So, oge what do you think?

Oge Chigbo:
I’m actually really grateful for this platform, for the podcast, for us to have the opportunity to actually come together and sit down and discuss issues like this, or just discuss about anything. It’s something that I actually really have wanted to do, from all our podcasts [Mitch 01:00:27] is always saying, “Why don’t we just reach out to other people and just ask questions and stuff.”

Oge Chigbo:
So I think everything that is going on right now, as I said, there was just a tad bit crazy. Just a little. It’s really, really… It was really awesome to just sit down and just talk. Well, what did you think?

Ian Buchta:
Yeah, I mean, I don’t have a lot to say other than I was just blown away by it. I learned a lot and yeah, I got to listen to it quite a few times as I went through and edited and just got to hear it over and over and really sit down and think deeply on it. And I don’t really have a lot to add. I thought it was really, really eye opening. It was really a good conversation.

Oge Chigbo:
So what’d you think about the #ShutDownAcademia, #ShutDownSTEM?

Ian Buchta:
Yeah Oge, you bring up a good point. I think the idea that there’s gate-keeping in academia, that there’s gate-keeping in the STEM fields, I think… I mean, people talk about the leaky pipeline where a lot of people of color come into fields, but then they aren’t able to continue to advance because they’re passed over for promotions because of discrimination or because of continued microaggressions.

Ian Buchta:
They have issues at work because not only are they trying to do their own work, they’re trying to cope with all of the other things that our guests were talking about today. And I think that we need to be having conversations in our workplaces, and academia is absolutely one of those workplaces. In our schools we need to having these conversations.

Oge Chigbo:
Yeah. I really do hope all these improvements, I guess, all this conversation as we have stays because I hope it’s not just like a trend. Because I see there’s just a lot of things going on. Everyone just feels like they have to jump on this bandwagon or else I am this or I am that. But it’s also very easy to forget everything that we’re trying to fight for now, once everything ‘dies down’, and people will just back to the usual ignorance and just, “Oh, that’s just… Yeah, that happened, but let’s continue moving the way that we always did, and…”

Oge Chigbo:
I just hope that’s not the case. I really do hope that we continue to talk about it, learn how to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. I mean, that’s the only way that we can break all these barriers, because if we act ignorant or continue to normalize the situations, then we’re going to have kids and give them the same attributes and it’s just going to be this whole constant loop.

Ian Buchta:
Yeah. And I think one of the things that we’re going to be hearing a lot about in the news in addition to these protests is going to be the resurgence of COVID-19. And I want to just first talk about the fact that we are already seeing a resurgence in COVID-19 and I want to talk about incubation periods.

Ian Buchta:
So the average incubation period is about five days ranging from two to 14 days. And so when we’re seeing these uptick in cases, this really is not due to the protests. In a week or two we’ll be able to say what the protests have done for COVID-19. But we have this major confounder of the fact that we opened up our country.

Ian Buchta:
So we’re seeing that uptick, hospitals are starting to fill right now. But we can’t say that’s because of protests and there’s that major confounder of opening things up. Again, in a week or two, we’re going to have better information, but the cases just are still in incubation if they are rising from the protests. And if you are engaging in these protests, remember please, please, please practice social distancing as much as you can continue to wear masks.

Oge Chigbo:
Hand sanitizers. If you have to cough… If you’re sick, don’t go in the first place, send someone else in your place. Send someone else who isn’t sick in your place and stuff. We are still in the middle of a pandemic, but we’re definitely going to fight for our rights and the rights of our brothers and sisters. All right. So we’re out of here. You can find us on Facebook at the University of Iowa College of Public Health or on iTunes on Spotify as well, at the University of Iowa College of Public Health.

Ian Buchta:
Let us know what you thought about this episode and series at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode of From The Front Row was hosted by Oge Chigbo and Ian Buchta. It was edited by Ian Buchta. Oge Chigbo wrote this episode and Oge Chigbo and Ian Buchta produced this episode.

Oge Chigbo:
Thank you to our guests, Chelsea Hicks, Bikere Ikoba, Toluwani Adekunle and Felicia Pieper, for coming on the pod this week. This podcast is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. See you next week. Happy social distancing, stay safe and have the uncomfortable conversation.