Being of Service, Even When Your Core Is Questioned

I am the proud daughter of Dominican immigrants who raised me in the Grant Housing Projects in Harlem. I am a first-generation graduate and currently a fourth-year medical student. My path to medicine has not been easy nor straightforward but my passion, stubborn pursuit, and community have gotten me here. I get to enjoy the fruits of the labor and sacrifices my ancestors made and that is not lost on me. I am proud of that cultivated resilience that runs through my veins, but during a year of Covid-19, political contentiousness, and the overall fracturing of society that resilience has been tested. Naturally, I asked myself, how should I show up at this moment?

I decided to serve as an election official or poll worker during the 2020 Presidential election. A task that would not only be impactful but could also jolt me out of the angst and helplessness I felt – or so I thought.

The morning of November 3, I rose at 4:51 AM, excited to be leaving my home, and drove to the polling location. I, along with nine other volunteers, was responsible for ensuring proper and orderly voting at our polling station. The energy in the room was palpable as we set up our location – a public elementary school in a predominantly low-income neighborhood in the city’s most concentrated Black community. Democracy was on the line, and I was going to do everything in my power to cheer on our voters who braved a surging pandemic to exercise their right to vote. It was a day of freedom. As they showed up, I excitedly greeted them and sprinkled in catchphrases throughout the day - “happy voting,” “congratulations, your vote was counted,” and “wear that sticker proudly!” I felt like an Avenger of Democracy.

“Democracy was on the line, and I was going to do everything in my power to cheer on our voters who braved a surging pandemic to exercise their right to vote”

Strangely, as the day progressed, a pit in my stomach began to grow. I happily read the ballot in Spanish to countless older voters and even used my handy translation app to assist voters in Portuguese, Creole, and Russian. On a few occasions, I was left with silent dread as I pointed to the little circle next to the Republican candidate some requested to fill in. I wondered, how can a disabled, Spanish-speaking, immigrant woman vote for someone who demonstrates utter repulsion for so many identities she holds?

Nonetheless, I cheerfully reminded them to “please fill the circle darkly and to the best of your ability so the machine reads it.” My feelings, personal lived experiences, nor partisanship mattered at that moment; I was there to serve a purpose: to ensure everyone got the opportunity to vote fairly whether or not I agreed with their candidate or what their vote represented. This feeling wasn’t foreign but it surprised me to feel it at this moment.

In medicine, we are taught to practice science – no matter how the patient views us, their socioeconomic status, or their politics – we are there to help preserve life. The feeling I reflected on at that election day folding table is the same feeling I’ve experienced many times during my medical training. I feel it when a professor with limited cultural understanding assesses my professionalism through tired definitions of what it means to serve in medicine. I feel it when taking care of patients who make inappropriate passes at me - commenting on my looks, how young I am, or, condescendingly, on how proud my parents should be. I distinctly felt it when a white male patient blurted out, as he pointed at me, “get that half-n**ger out my room.”

The day after the election, like many of us, I could not focus on anything else but the results trickling in. Throughout the day I grew increasingly anxious with thoughts of all that could be lost. I worried, as I often do, about my four nephews who are young Black boys - how can our family keep them safe from the lurking eyes of this divided nation? I thought about the strapped medical resources and the lives lost to this pandemic - how are we going to “make it” with a “leader” who actively undermines the scientific community?

It surprised me to see direct parallels between these acts of service - notably the lack of appropriate translation services, the unequal distribution of BIPOC voices in votes and healthcare access, and ultimately having to hold my emotions behind a levee I worked hard to construct. Serving as an election official and as a medical student call for me to be non-partisan, professional, and unruffled, but embodying these traits, as an Afro-Dominicana, sometimes comes at the expense of a piece of my identity.

“Serving as an election official and as a medical student call for me to be non-partisan, professional, and unruffled, but embodying these traits, as an Afro-Dominicana, sometimes comes at the expense of a piece of my identity.”

As a future physician, I believe in impartiality, especially in medicine and politics, but for those with similar identities as me, it seems like impartiality does not believe in us. As a medical student, I almost have to believe in fairness, equal quality of care, and democracy, because if I don’t, what does that mean for our country’s future?

I will continue to show up, grateful for my vocation to serve others, to help answer that question.