Fear of Being Discovered

I never thought much about the times I was asked to "quit joking" when I introduced myself by my first name. I have been informed quite a few times that my phenotype does not resemble that of someone from Colombia but from the United States. When my introduction is met with casual disbelief, I offer reassurance that my name is, in fact, "Pablo" and laugh along. When I dig deeper into that kind of comment though, it leaves me wondering. What does someone from these United States look like? What does someone from Colombia look like? The answers to those questions and their relative proportions have changed a great deal between the pre-Columbian era and now, but here I deal with more recent events.

Before medical school, I worked as an emergency room scribe in the Midwestern United States. Once on an overnight shift, my attending and I saw a middle-aged gentleman who, while involved in a brief intoxicated altercation, made his way through a glass window, producing a dozen or so lacerations that would require some help with closure. It was when this gentleman realized we would be together for a while, as 10 minutes passed and we were only 1/8^th of the way through, that in addition to being alert and oriented x3, he became conversational. I admit I operate on assumptions here, but I believe that whatever he enjoyed earlier that evening served a dual purpose: analgesia and disinhibition. He mentioned to us how happy he was to be in the company of two other men with a complexion that matched his. It seems he misinterpreted the doctor's forced smile because then he treated us like a couple of sympathizers. We listened as he described other ethnicities one by one, as though making sure to communicate each of his beliefs about this group or that before moving on to the next one. Occasionally he would backtrack, perhaps out of misplaced concern that if the doctor or I did not hear that particular racial slur, we would be left yearning for it. Some groups he favored less than others, and while he was at times difficult to follow, with each stroke of his broad brush, he painted an increasingly vivid picture of his worldview for us: Skin color matters most, and the fairer the better.

My attending and I took solace in the fact that this man seemed to prefer didactic pedagogy to the Socratic Method. However, he occasionally would ask a question. When it was not rhetorical, my attending took the lead in responding with gentle disagreement followed by a "hold still now; we're almost done here."

Throughout that encounter, I could feel the air in that breezeless room settle over my arms. It did not go anywhere or cool things down; agitated only by the occasional movement of my hands as I typed on my laptop or shifted how I was sitting. Several times I looked up to see a nurse come in and look around the room with a subtle look of amazement at what they had overheard. If I caught their eye, I tried to convey a look that said, "I know. Crazy, right? I don't agree with him either, but please don't say anything too true because we're in here in the city of sharps for at least another 30 with the guy." This was, of course, in the pre-COVID era, so I was not afforded a mask to don and cover my facial expressions. A lot of thoughts crossed my mind; chief among them was equanimity—or at least the control to feign it. Also among them churned a reluctance I had never experienced. I am proud of my culture, of being born in the United States to two immigrants, and though I try not to flaunt it, I am not one to obscure it. But when this man, despite getting stabbed a hundred times by a tiny sewing needle to stop blood from oozing from his several open wounds, gestured angrily at the prospect of encountering the...