Latest / College Is Fine, Everything's Fine / #37 Walk With Me: Dr. Matthew Kane Shares a Message of Perseverance

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#37 Walk With Me: Dr. Matthew Kane Shares a Message of Perseverance · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

Hello everybody. We are so excited to have someone who is coming to us from Vanderbilt University. He's gonna tell you a little bit about why he's there. Um, we have first time author, Matthew Cain.  Well, Sarah, thank you. Thank you for having me here. yeah, so I'm a doctoral candidate enrolled at the University of Kansas, doing my PhD in counseling psychology. Um, anyone who's familiar with the process of of getting a PhD, it is long and tenuous, and the last year is called internship.So here I am at Vanderbilts University Counseling Center. Uh, done my internship year. I will be graduating in, count it five days.So close.Yeah. It's, I've, I've never not been in school, so , it's both wonderful and terrifying,see what comes next.And nothing like, taking a little bit of a world tour to Kansas now to Tennessee, you kind of seen. Seen a lot of the world. I feel like that could be really interesting too, because we have a national audience here, you know, so some of the things you're gonna be talking about today, I'd be curious to see if different campuses have different kind of vibes to them.But the first time author piece is why you and I kind of found each other , and I'm so excited for this book. I, I'm sort of. Mad at you for being so accomplished at this age. I'm like, you're making me look bad, Matt, No. but tell us a little bit about this book.Yeah, so first off, absolutely not. Uh, I've been able to listen to a number of your guys podcasts and what y'all are doing is just wonderful. It's beautiful to see some of these conversations being had and. Yeah, I am fortunate to have had a number of people in my corner who've really helped support me in getting a number of things, um, completed through this process.So the book, which is called Walk With Me, stories of Black Men's Resilience and Wellbeing through Twin Pandemics, um, originated funny enough out of my dissertation. , so I was never raised to be an academic by, by any stretch. , As a black man actually raised in a predominantly white neighborhood. Well, I'm, I'm sure we'll get more into that.And just the narratives that I really needed to unpack about myself and, and do my own form of racial healing in regards to that, were, were huge and over the last few years, , it has been a trip for everybody and for me. I, I really wanted to elevate what has it been like for those people who've really been in the eye of, of the storm in, in some ways and having a, a background in researching, , black men and masculinity at the intersections of oppression and racism and. All of those things, I decided to really put it into action with my, , dissertation, sort of a, if I have to do it, like let me try to see if I can get two birds with this stone, So I wanted to make it qualitative. I wanted to make it, , An unrelenting sense of reality. , for me, the word qualitative is our nerdy way as a proud nerd. It's our nerdy way of sand stories, talking to real people, and that's what I wanted to do. What I was afraid of doing was creating a dissertation. That was a book that was about other books.That was about other books, , because it felt like, In that time period, you know, really between 2016, um, and 2022, but especially during, you know, uh, when Covid, the Covid 19 pandemic began, I thought it was really important for us to elevate the stories of people. , and for me, , one, I'm a black man, so it was really close to home and I had the privilege of being able to elevate certain voices.So the book in and of itself, I like to think is well researched. I speak to different black men from varying age groups across the country who come from different backgrounds and have different identities and hear their stories of, as you said, what I call the twin pandemic of Covid 19 and social injustice that's really been here since the inception of America.Um, and was made that much more palpable in the last few years as the world slowed down. I'm assuming, I hope most people understand what we're talking about here.The difference between. Having certain social justice issues that have been essentially a longstanding pandemic in some ways, right? And then you have this more acute crisis of Covid 19. I'm curious what is that difference? . It's one of those difficult things that is both simple and complex, and I think that's one of the reasons I, I actually use critical race theory and one part out of spite for the way it's been discussed, but also mainly because it really helps to put in to perspective, how do we understand, like you had just said, these two, what appear to be differing um, experiences and really see how they've been interwoven.So first Covid 19, right? So. We all know that in 2020, the Coronavirus, um, really touched down and hit the United States really hard. Funny enough, my birthday is March 13th, um, which was the day that we went in, in the lockdown. Um, so Iwill ne birthday too. I was lucky enough, me and some friends just got back from, um, we took a road trip out to Denver.Seriously. seriously. But, so the ways in which the Coronavirus pandemic hit the United States was so palpable for everybody, and at the same time, and I'm, I'm going to emphasize that word and instead of but right? We're gonna hold both of these. It impacted all of the United States and Black Americans.And for the sake of this book, black men were heavily, heavily at the ire of the storm. So they're dying at three times the rate. They were less likely to get vaccinated. , they were having harder times even getting access to vaccines. So when people look at that and they're like, oh, well, why aren't, uh, why, why are these things happening?What, what's going on with these statistics? What's the differences here? Well, when we look at the history of it, it all makes sense, right? And that's how the Covid 19 pandemic begins to transition into the social injustice pandemic, for example. , we, Sarah, I'm sure you already know the story of Tuskegee.I also mentioned that in the book, for anyone who's not familiar, definitely go check that out. But stories like that have been passed down in terms of not trusting the healthcare fields because that was a government endeavor. So now there's a lot of black Americans, a lot of black men who are like, I'm not gonna get anything cuz I don't trust what you're going to be putting in my body.That's just as one thing in addition tothis. And I guess just for our audience, the short version is that black men in particular and black individuals have been at the very short end of the stick in terms of medical research taken advantage of to extreme detriment.And so when you mentioned something like Tuskegee, we're talking about intense government sponsored invasions of people's civil rightsAbsolutely. Absolutely.You know, in the name of research.Yep. It, right, right. With the air quotes. Right. So in short, you know, having access to a vaccine that they're not giving to illiterate black men, , for the sake of research. Right. And in addition to that, we also have these systemic variables. Like we see the word systems thrown around and around because it needs to be.So I talk about the history of redlining and how, we could turn on CNN in these last few years and. Even those states that were trying to distribute vaccines equitably, couldn't do so. And you say why? Well, historically, the neighborhoods that still house majority black and brown people were never built to be able to store things like that.They're never built to be able to succeed. So this then bleeds into, like I had said, this social injustice pandemic, right? That has been around for centuries. And we saw it in different ways with George Floyd, with Breonna Taylor, with Ahau Arbery, who, you know, for myself, who I ran track in college. Um, so I had to go on a lot of runs.Yeah, I had to go on a lot of runs. that one hit me differently. And while I was living in Kansas still my, my PhD, h d I remember I had, uh, and I, I discussed this in the book. There's a, there's a memory I have after Ahau Arbery. It took me a while to feel comfortable going on runs again. And one time I actually, I woke up like in a panic from a nightmare, , that I was running in the park and someone pulled a gun on me and I woke up, you know, , sweating and everything, and my partner's asking me if I'm okay and I'm, I'm freaking out and, you know, not, but what, an hour later I have to go to class.And this is the reality, you know, to pull in what it's like to be a college student. You know, I think about. Those other men of color, I think about those other folks of color who need to do these everyday responsibilities despite having these additional experiences, these additional burdens and obstacles that they need to uncover, but still be expected to show up in these ways.Right. If it's okay, I actually wanted to elevate this idea of the bubble effect, and we'll,More than, okay.When talk about ways in which we've been trying to integrate, schools in a way that includes people from more diverse backgrounds, I'm calling in from, you know, Vanderbilt University, which has a prestigious history and sadly with prestige in the United States, history means a lot of things and it means a lot of isms.So when we are trying to be more diverse with bringing in different students from diverse backgrounds, and we have this idea of, you know, this bubble effect, we'll call it the Vanderbilt bubble, or, um, you know, if I'm at Seton Hall, it's the Seton Hill, the Seton Hall bubble, or wherever we always call it this, right?Mm-hmm.And oftentimes we flaunt it, but in actuality it, it's not that helpful. Because students, that are still coming in from these backgrounds are still carrying with them those burdens and those realities. Now, some systems do a better job of having these conversations, and other systems do not.And those systems that do not. What we find and what some of my participants talk about,, in this book is that they're really tortured by this. They're really tortured by the idea that they're expected to show up and that the systems are finding creative ways to ignore the realities of their environment.Mm-hmm. I'm trying understand . and as I would say to any of my kind of clients, I'm always like, I'm wrong all the time. Please correct me. I love to be corrected cuz I wanna try to get it right. There's this bubble that people go into , and the idea is once you're here, you're sort of in this safe, kind of protected You know, you've sort of made And some students who can go into that and live that pretty simply. And other students are coming in and it's a much more complicated picture just at the Mm-hmm. And once they're there, they're probably relearning ways in which it's not quite a bubble for them.Exactly, exactly. So the thing in which we're calling a bubble. Isn't even a bubble for them. It's, that's a wonderful way to put it. Right. So it's both obstacles outside of what we're calling this bubble and obstacles within this bubble. You need to find safe places to navigate. So it's, it becomes another burden for, many , of these students and faculty of color as well, to be expected to, you know, hold spaces for these conversations.I guess we're in this moment specifically talking about colleges, but obviously this is not the, that's not the only place. But I do think it's this, it's this transitional time when you're leaving the place that, you know, The most for better and for worse, and going into another place and having to have your eyes opened a bit more to differences in how people live . Eyes being open to things, to your point, kind of moving to a different place and seeing like, oh, this is kind of here without even people being bothered. , This maybe would be not there or hidden in some other places.What's going on? All right. So there's a big problem the people, if they are trying to get it right, right. What are some things that could start to either have those conversations be more available? Where as a system do we need to do better? But I think for the people who are aware, we're talking to, really, they want help. Today, and the bigger advocacy work takes time. Unfortunately, it takes a long time. So what are the things that colleges, professors, parents of college students, right? The ones who could say, Hey, how can we help, Mm-hmm. , and then , until that starts to happen. What have you seen people be able to do today are there some practical guidelines for, Hey, here's how to feel like you've got some sort of base of support, or, here's how to make sure you're protected. That, your mind and your body are, are protected as much as you can. So thank you for, for breaking that out in a micro and macro level. To start with the large. There's two things that come to mind. One is education. How are we actually going about forms of critical education for understanding? And I mean, we've seen this continued in the news, right? What was it? The, something in Florida just passed where they weren't, they didn't want to teach AP African American history, right?There are, the history of black Americans in this country is absolutely brilliant and beautiful and it's absolutely hard. For people to stomach at times. This is our beautiful reality. it is what we need to be educating our students on. Because for me, for, for example, I don't have kids, but I wish I got to learn more about what people like me did when I was growing up or when I went to undergrad, because they did super things, absolutely super things, but because of the insecurity of those people in power, white people.I don't get to, to be able to hear the stories of my people, so that's bullshit. So we gotta,Yeah, Yeah. Yeah so number one, we, we need to, we need to stop pussy footing around with what is, , and is not allowed to be learned in these, in these schools in forms of education. Second is investment, , because, and this goes to both these points.There is no quick and easy fix to these things. And at the same time, what we need to do is show genuine investment in these topics. Maybe some other college students can resonate with this. I've been the member of a number of different committees and organizations, some of which have been D EI committees.If I didn't know any better, I would think that those d e I committees were completely gilded.And this speaks, heavily to the idea that things don't change until the people in power think that they can somehow benefit from change, so these d e I committees are guilted. They look nice from the outside. We get to put it on our website and tell people we have this. We have X, Y, and Z faculty. We have students on these things as well, but it doesn't matter because any amount of creative brilliance is stifled by a lack of investment in the actual committee.So it doesn't matter how creative you are, you have no money. It doesn't matter how, , many problems you can solve, you have no power.Mm-hmm.they become more figurehead committees. So the genuine investment in different aspects of d EI work, , is absolutely necessary. , because in the actuality aspects of this are abundantly present in every fabric of our society.So the very fact that we even need to have something dedicated towards it lets us know that we aren't even close to being able to highlight all aspects of it. Within the of our systems. So those are the two things, , when it comes to more of the longitudinal systemic pieces that, that cometo mind. Mm-hmm.Now, what I'd like to share are some of the strategies that some of the men, in the book discussed, and one which I heavily resonate with. I'm actually a, a big anime nerd. shout out to any of my, my fellow anime heads out there.My son likes Naruto, but he's only 11. That's probably like Ooh, no, nato. So I grew up on nato.I love it. I love it. One of my favorites is Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. And in it, is this idea of an alchemist, right? And we might already be familiar with it. An alchemist is a person who can transition something into something else, something even better.And the, I have a, a chapter called Superpowers, and there is a number of superpowers that these black men displayed in their everyday lives. One of it I called being an alchemist able to transition. Negative situations, negative encounters into something more positive, not only for themselves, but often for people around them.I thought that was beautiful. Now, it doesn't mean to say that, you know, when you're faced with, , obstacles, you just need to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, be gritty and everything's going to be okay. It's, that's, that's not the idea here.Right. We actually just had an author come on to talk about toxic resilience, right? When that's just sort of the expectation of. Oh, just take this hardship and you must be resilient with it. And that just really invalidates the person who's had to so, so much. So we're seeing a lot more clinicians do this necessary work of what does it mean for us to be able to take off the Cape, right? For me, it's not just about taking off the Cape. I want to be able to have the autonomy and agency to put it on when I want to. And it's, like I said, I have ancestors who had superpowers.I have wonderful, wonderful blood that courses through my, my veins that, that allows me to be able to do these things. And at the same time, , I wanna put it on when I wanna put it on, not because, you know, some situation demands it or, or, or x, y and Z says I, I have to. , so that's one of those strategies that we had seen. We also saw people really getting immersed in education as a way to arm themselves and find safety. But I also want to elevate, again, the balance here because doing things like, you know, using your superpowers or doing things like getting educated in, in different ways can be super filling and it can also be hurtful in other ways.So what does it mean to find that balance? I had one of the, the guys in here say like, you know, like, yeah, I can do all these things, but like, Sometimes I just wanna wake up, like, go to work, come home, eat a steak, and go to bed. You know, like I just, I just wanna relax and that's absolutely one of the strategies that we've seen.So we're reminding ourselves that we have the abilities to do these great things, and it is not an expectation that we have to do these great things. Some people that I, that I spoke to found time to just go, uh, listen to music in their bedroom.Especially if, you know, particularly around like Ahau Arbery or, or George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Nobody wanted to go out on walks or, you know, nobody, there's people afraid of, of catching covid, so they didn't wanna go on walks, so they wanted to listen to music in the room. There were some black men.Who created spaces where other black men could come together and just ask like, Hey, is everything all right? They would just check in. They would shoot the shit, um, whatever it was they needed in those spaces. Some found ways to be physically active, you know, getting their mind, body and spirit engaged in some form of workout, um, or a spiritual practice.So there's a, there's a plethora of ways in which people use their creativity. To cope. So my recommendation for people is to ask ourselves like, what are the things that I enjoy doing that give me life, that fill my cup up? And when do I need to be able to allow myself the grace to do these things? And how can I continually practice that?Because you don't, you don't always have to be super, like I said, I'm just, I'm, I'm just nodding and taking it in. I've gotten chills. , I completely agree. The expectation that you have to always be, you know, wearing your cape, advocating, teaching others, it's too big a burden. Yeah. Can I tell you a story?Yes.\ I worked at, uh, university of Kansas CollegeCounseling Center and pandemic's in full swing. So I'm seeing clients virtually and like I don't have an office, so I'm seeing clients in my bedroom. I gotta pull out the foldable chair and everything.I'm staring at my own bed all day, which is so hard, soYou're taking me back, Matt. You're taking me.I mean, you talk about difficult, you talk about difficult, like, oh, don't lay in it, Matt, don't lay in it.Oh, I know, And um, I was trying to be mindful of like what was happening in the news one as a therapist. I think it's, it's, it's integral to our work to be mindful of the different current events that are happening.And just one day I got so, so tired. So tired. You could say it was putting the cape on or whatever it was. I took it off.I closed the laptop. I walked outta my bedroom. We had this stereo in my house, and I, uh, I hooked my phone up to the stereo and I have this old school playlist, old school music playlist, and I just hit play.I think the first song I I played was James Brown, the Payback.Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It waslike, yep, five o'clock the day is done. I was so tired of the ways in which black people were being, Spoken about on news networks. Some were being tokenized in ways to justify racism. I popped the bottle, I think it was like a PO Reddit or something, and just started dancing. Just started dancing, and that was my moment of solace right there. I am grateful every day for music and how much it got people through. I think it would really cool to have almost either an episode or some sort of discussion where we all pick a few of the songs that got, Us through and made a playlist.Right. I don't know if you'd ever consider sharing some of that with our listeners, but like what are your songs where you really need to just take the cape off and dance, or take the cape off and scream, or you know, And just any of those things, like I think we all have something that says, this is just about no one else, but what I need right now.Um, and to share, share the wealth. So maybe I'll put a link to the playback in our show notes.Absolutely, absolutely. To, to your question. I will listen to almost any kind, any kind of music. If you want to turn on some, some oldies, gimme some of that. James Brown, I had, forget me, knots going on there as well. I'm actually a big Fleetwood Mac fan too.Mm-hmm.gotta add My lion, Richie. Gotta add my Al Green, the Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips.All of that current stuff, like anything with Kendrick Lamar, I'm, I'm absolutely loving it. Yeah. I could talk music all day. The dance session lasted about two hours andOh, yeah. At some point the table was out of the, the way, and I was trying to learn the thriller dance for like, not the first time in my life.Yeah. Yeah. That is like a, that's like a bucket list item, but it It does. Yeah.Right. So I love how you're like, I'm a graduate student, I'm writing a book, I'm doing my dissertation, but by the way, my biggest accomplishment is I've finally learned the thriller. Oh yeah, that goes on the resume for sure. (ADD MUSIC CLIP HERE)  You were talking about, what are the ways right now that you found that the men you spoke to had tried to weave their way through this world? And you mentioned education. I was thinking is that just about going to a higher university? Is that also about, you know, educating yourself? You know, I always think about things in terms of going deep and also going wide, right? So there's education going deep, kind of getting into a subject, becoming an expert, or getting a degree in it. But there also might be going wide, sort of seeing a wider range of resources out there. So you talked about maybe going deep in the education world.Are there other ways where the people you spoke to kind of went wide and found other resources outside of just a degree or a class?I'm, I'm thinking of the, the proverb, the student arrives when the teacher is ready. There are so many ways for us to find forms of education now. I will, you know, I want to add the caveat because, you know, during this time, before and after this period of time, it can be difficult, particularly for folks of color to open themselves up to different forms of media or information because sometimes we need to.Be more mindful of our safety. You know, when, when we do find places and spaces or people where we're able to share in that with, with comfortability, allowing ourselves to be humbled by the brilliance that the world has to offer. I know that's super vague. I'm sorry. So I practice Zen Buddhism, um, and at the core of our practice is what we call this don't know mind.It's a continual. Reminder that we just don't know, and that we're just continuing to try and find it each and every time. There's, there's something for us to find. So there were some of these men who were talking about, um, forming relationships with people who had differing opinions than them, um, when they were comfortable to have conversations with them or having communities of people who had similar backgrounds and learning from their stories.So the, this formalized education, we'll call it, is not by any means. , the only way for us to get educated, there are so many different things that we can do. And it doesn't even necessarily have to be reading books, but just living life with an open and curious enough mind to be able to absorb these, these different topics and to hear, uh, what we say, the sounds of the world, the experiences of other people.We talk about beginner's mind a lot. It's the same idea, it's the same concept. Uh, I like the idea of don't know mind though, because it just, it's sort of like, well, That is a much better, easier way of saying the same thing, just going in and not assuming you have the answer, that you're not the only person who understands the truth of a situation and, um, to start to be open and curious. So I was named after my parents' favorite chapter in the Bible, Matthew. Um, and in Matthew he says, become again as a child, this is the same idea. , continue to look with unbridled curiosity of not knowing., you know, Matt, we're getting to a place where I'm realizing I could just talk to you all day, and I'm not saying that. I mean, I really, I really do mean that. So, um, that said, I, I know that your time is valuable and you have so many more things to do as you count down to that five days to graduation, but I cannot thank you enough for coming on the podcast and sharing this really important message.Your book, walk With Me. We'll make sure to have in the show notes. I got a few more ideas coming down the pipeline. My hope, my hope is tocontinue to inspire. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.