Remembering Reparations: A Journey Through Structural Violence

Growing up on the island of Jamaica, violence dominated the long summer nights, breaking through the ideal of paradise that touristic images projected.The sound of gunshots was alarming and created a sense of urgency to leave.My family and I immigrated to the United States, to the concrete streets of Brooklyn, NY, in 2002, when I was six years old.I remember walking off the plane and seeing snow for the first time.It was a cold night but I was mesmerized by this white stuff that fell from the sky and instantly melted on everything it touched, my jacket, my hands, and the tarmac.Living in poverty and climbing a mountain of stress that comes with navigating a new country, my family cut corners in our eating and exercise habits.We paid the consequences.Each family member developed a novel condition in our first three years in the U.S. As my mom worked endlessly to provide for us, her health took a turn for the worse.She was diagnosed with goiter, a thyroid condition, and later type 2 diabetes due to our overwhelming living conditions and poor eating habits.From an early age, I experienced the dynamics of the social determinants of health-and medicine's uneven response to them.My upbringing in Jamaica and subsequent relocation to Brooklyn exposed me firsthand to what I later studied in textbooks as a public health and medical student: the interplay between socio-environmental factors and health outcomes.Eventually, my mom was able to move us to a home on Long Island, where she worked as a home health aide.This move presented me with the opportunity to attend a better school, live in a nicer neighborhood, and a chance for us to save money by not renting.It was not until I relocated to Long Island that I comprehended the influence