The Deconstruction of Nikki Thomas

Whiteness consumes me.That was how it felt to walk into the empty room designated for my unnecessary therapy session: consumed by the whiteness of the walls, the chairs, the floors, and the little table in the middle of the room. It was wintery, deadening to my mind and displeasing to my eyes. The whiteness swallowed me up and held my body frozen.I realized how still I was and jerked towards a chair. There were two dull white chairs sitting in the back of the room. A small white table between them. I chose the farthest chair, so that I might see the man who was supposed to help me enter this barren place.I don’t know how long I sat there – perhaps it was a minute or maybe even thirty. I felt, rather than heard, the time ticking away since there wasn’t even a clock to mar the purity of these walls. I couldn’t even gauge the time by watching my cell phone – it was prohibited from entering the room. In fact, I was asked to leave everything from my phone and purse to the gum in my mouth in the waiting room with that frosty blonde receptionist. Maybe they were afraid I’d taint the chamber.I found myself staring blankly at the door, the doorknob to be exact. The unstimulating nature of this room left my mind blank and unable to think of anything besides my desire to be gone. I was stuck in a vacuum, a caged lion ready to jump from her cell. My patience crumbled to nothing. My legs began to bounce. My fingers drummed to some rhythm unknown to me. My eyes zeroed in on the turning doorknob and suddenly I regained perfect control of my body. My back straightened, my legs crossed prettily, and I adopted the friendly but business-like countenance that expressed my willingness to be kind until I could no longer play nice.The man who entered was uniquely average. He seemed like a coalition of every white man I had ever seen: His hair was a dull dark color, his eyes had no certain color, he wasn’t tall or short, nor was he fat or skinny. Nothing about him seemed concrete, the only things about him that I could latch onto were his long, white lab coat and the manila folder that was tucked under his arm.He immediately took the open chair, seemingly unsurprised by my choice to face the door. He pulled the little white table closer to himself and spread the folder over it. “Hello, Ms. Thomas,” he began. His voice was elevator music, both melodic and aggravating. “I will begin by introducing myself. I am Doctor Coleman, and I will be assessing you today since you’ve been referred to my private practice.” He kept his eyes down on the file, sifting through all of the papers, scanning them for information on me.I leaned forward in my seat, watching him glance over the scattered pages of information that’d been dug up on me. I knew what my profile would say: Name: Nicole Thomas (prefers Nicky)Age: 23Race: African AmericanProfession: Harvard Law School student Anyone could have gathered this kind of data on me. As an intelligent, young black woman, I was revered in my hometown. I was constantly plastered on the city’s newspaper as the star point guard on our varsity women’s basketball team and as a 4.0 student every single term of my academic career. My parents assured that I maintained a great image by taking me to church every Sunday, signing me up to do paperwork at our local law firm–which greatly enhanced my desire to be a lawyer–and helping me make connections with people who gave me inside knowledge as to what I had to do to become an attorney. When the time came to apply for college and scholarships, I was the most qualified and deserving student I knew.“Nice to meet you, Doctor Coleman,” I responded. I did not want to just give this man any aspect of myself. My answer was polite but not too inviting. Nor was it very telling of myself… or maybe it was.The doctor looked up at me. Intrusive and unyielding, it would have been difficult for someone less guarded to meet and hold his gaze. I did so with ease. Our staring contest did not last long; he dropped his gaze, jotting a quick memo on a notepad he’d pulled from the folder.“Ms. Thomas, why are you here today?” he inquired.I leaned back in my seat, unwilling to let my body betray my thoughts as I debated how to answer this question. I couldn’t possibly declare that I was in this awful place with him unnecessarily–a woman such as myself didn’t get sent to a therapist’s office without cause. Nor could I play coy and pretend I had no idea why I sat before him. I’d already thrown that card away by falling into the staring contest trap, demonstrating my inability to back down from a challenge and unwillingness to lose even a simple dominance game. I wanted always to be the most dominant person in the room, and it had cost me in this moment. I would have to play by his rules for a bit.“I’m here because I’ve been told I have an anger management problem,” I answered coolly.My response did not surprise the good doctor. “Do you think you have an anger problem?” he asked. Suddenly, his arranged his face into a picture of concern and sympathy, but his eyes remained calculating. The face was a front that I could not condone. My eyebrows lifted, an involuntary reaction. “Do I think I have an anger problem?” I repeated incredulously. “No, I don’t. I think my control is excellent. I think my anger is healthy. I think that I’ve been cornered and forced to heel with a ridiculous accusation of mental incompetence that has absolutely no business being associated with me.” The answer sprung quickly from my lips. I was defensive, but controlled. An outright denial like mine should be emotional, but not overly. I kept still. My eyes locked onto his, allowing him to see the clarity of my mind but not its contents.I could tell he felt as though he’d struck a nerve with me. His eyes became zealous, introducing a slight glint to their ambiguous color. His hand scrawled quickly on the notepad while his eyes remained trained on me. I bitterly wished that his scribbling was so quick and unchecked that his notes became indiscernible.“Ms. Thomas, I’m intrigued by your response. You feel you have been wrongly judged, but I can feel anger in your speech.” He stopped there. Somehow, it felt as if he was trying to urge me on, to draw out the beast inside me. He wanted me to put up some type of offense denying the palpable emotion I’d displayed. But I would not fall into a trap that easily again. I stayed silent, forcing him to meet this lioness head on. He backtracked slightly, his eyes losing some of their luster. “Could you describe the situation that led you to meet me?” he asked, again donning that façade of innocent concern.A little smile curled the tips of my mouth. “Sure,” I told him. Law school hits you hard. I had to study and sharpen my mind to a point to get through it. The class I loved most, Criminal Law, was perhaps the most difficult. We struggled to understand the ways in which law can be understood and twisted. There are so many loopholes in our justice system, I’d feel like I’d been thrown for one after every class period. The debates were what kept me sharp. I thrived in debates. I loved to see someone build up their cases, only for me to obliterate them in one jab–a pinprick to a balloon.That fateful day, class began as usual. Our professor, WIlliam Drake, had handed us a new case that he was working on to study the day before. I was up all night memorizing the information. It was a rape charge: a white woman crying rape against a black man. The woman claimed that she went to a party, got drunk, and woke up with the man beside her in bed. The breathalyzer confirmed her inebriated state, but it was not so high as to warrant her complete loss of control of her body. The man’s profile was also in her favor. The man was described as a hulk with a scowl, someone who little kids would be scared to cross. He admitted to being at the party and even having sex with the woman, but he said it was consensual sex. I thought long and hard about how to approach this case. The next day, I was ready. I’d dressed in a blazer-skirt combo that announced my empowered femininity. My opponent, conservative junkie Blanche Van Hise, was dressed equally as professionally as myself, but she lacked the stunning fierceness with which I was able to present myself. She attacked my defendant’s profile as expected and played the poor victimized woman card to a T. But I was able to drum up something special. I found Facebook statuses and pictures of the woman showing her reckless party habits. I attacked her convenient inability to remember anything from the night of that party, and used the breathalyzer as proof that she should have had the ability to act clearly enough as to consent to sex. I also found that the woman’s conservative family posted very strong anti-interracial relationship comments on the internet and used that to determine the reason for the woman’s inability to tell the truth about her sexual experience with a black man. I also used records of the man’s kind nature. He was an avid church-goer. He constantly volunteered at the shelter near his apartment. I built up his character until I saw my professor’s eyes twinkling with pride and I knew I had won my case.My hard work had paid off and I felt all the better for being the champion of an innocent black man. The room was quiet as I basked in the glory, but then I heard a whispered, “So says the angry black woman.”I remember being angry after that. I remember feeling it wash over me, taking me over. I remember showing everybody in that lecture hall what the speech of an angry black woman really looks and sounds like. I remember the stark fear in those eyes. I remember grabbing my briefcase and my dignity and walking out of that place feeling like I’d destroyed everything I’d ever worked for. Like the fighting I’d done to raise myself and my race as much as I did, was for nothing. Like I’d disgraced every civil rights leader that ever utilized non-violence to promote our race. As I spoke, the little smile I’d earned from my power struggle with Doctor Coleman lost its place on my face and my head bowed in shame.“What happened, Ms. Thomas?” the doctor asked me. “What exactly did you do?”Flashes of red and black splashed across my mind. I couldn’t allow myself to go back there. It was too dangerous. Nor would I perpetuate that violence any further. I wouldn’t give him any more. I couldn’t. My head shook vehemently. For my entire life, I’d been giving the world every drop of black blood I had so that I could fight. I fought for my race. I fought for every spec of recognition, for every little inch that I climbed to get to law school, just so that I could stop having to be judged by my blackness. All of my life, I’d been jealous of the ease of life that whiteness granted people who took it for granted. So I fought like hell to taste some power and fight, in the future, for people like me.I’d always idealized lawyers as the strong people. The people who fought for those that couldn’t fight for themselves. The people who fought with words and their brilliant minds. And it was that. That was the principle of it, anyway. But how could I fight for others when the people with the power barely allowed me to stand up for myself? It infuriated me – the absolute powerlessness that I felt that eventful day – that I was demeaned in a matter of six small words to something so miniscule yet so completely shattering. But my fury was no match for my guilt. How could I disgrace myself, my family, my friends, and every black face in America by becoming the very fictitious monsters that the white man loved to demean us as?“Ms. Thomas,” the doctor said. “Let’s revisit the original question. Do you think you have an anger problem?”My head was still bowed, tears threatening to come down. My body sagged under the weight of my guilt. The white chair beneath me was the only thing keeping me from falling to the floor. I latched onto that fact. The insignificant white chair in this terrible chamber was the one thing that kept me from losing the very spirit that embodied me. With this thought, I sat upright. I would not let this thing support me. I stood on the shoulders of many great men and women who fought hard for me to get this far. I would not bring us all down now. I gathered my will and my body, lifted my chin high, and looked into the watchful eyes of the man before me.“Doctor Coleman,” I began quietly. “I will admit that I am angry. I’m angry that I have to wonder whether people think I got into law school simply because of my skin color. I’m angry that every word out of my mouth seems to represent my entire race at every moment. I’m angry that I can be the most articulate person in a room and it’s a shock. I’m angry that negative stereotypes haunt me at every turn. I’m angry that I can’t just let go of slavery because it still affects me today. I’m angry that I can’t be unaware of my skin color. I am angry!” With every word that came out, I felt more empowered, but also more bothered. Years of repressed feelings spewed out of me. I suddenly couldn’t stand this chair. I couldn’t allow it and its inherent whiteness to support me any longer. I stood slowly, the doctor’s wide eyes following my rise. I took a step towards him; this lioness had left her cage and he could see it. He slowly leaned all the way back in his chair, inhaling heavily.“But Doctor,” I shook my head. My voice became softer and I stepped even closer to the man so that he would hear my every word. “You cannot tell me that I don’t have the right to be angry.” The white man just watched, his eyes gazing up at me as if in that moment I had realized some great truth. I was scaring myself, but I couldn’t be contained any longer.I stepped back from the doctor and took a long look at him. Suddenly, everything about him became clear. The face that had been so strangely ambiguous now had definition. There were deep brown eyes that mirrored mine and thin chapped lips. His chin was pronounced and so were his cheekbones. He was lean and well built. But more surprisingly, Doctor Coleman had no hair on his head whatsoever. His baldness glowed in the white of this room. I had been so deep my hatred of all things white that I completely redesigned the person standing before me.Astounded by this new revelation, I staggered back a few steps. My right hand flew up to my heart and I took in all the oxygen from this room. The doctor said nothing, just watching as I came into my revelation. And when I was done, when the reeling ended and reality sunk in, I met his gaze and held it. I offered no challenge, and neither did he. Instead, he too rose, held out his right hand which I gingerly shook and said, “Thank you for coming to me today, Ms. Thomas. I think you got what you needed.”He gathered his papers calmly and efficiently, and left. I stared after him, unsure of what had happened but feeling that together, that man and I had saved me.When I realized that it was time to leave, I gathered my strength and walked towards the door. Before leaving I looked again at the room, and although it was still startlingly white, there was no prison-like feeling to it. It was just a very white room. I walked out the door. Darkness engulfed me, and I felt free. To Whom It May Concern, You at Harvard Law asked me to assess Ms. Nicky Thomas. I originally wondered why you referred her to my private practice, but I can see exactly the reason, now. My specialization in reverse psychology has been extremely effective in regards to Ms. Thomas.  After the appointment, I determined that Ms. Thomas simply needed a healthy outlet of her frustration and exhaustion with living and struggling through life as someone who identifies as a black woman who needs and deserves control over every outcome. She suffered from the pressures that society places on the African American community and those that she burdened herself with. It is my professional opinion that once you speak with her upon her return to Harvard, you will agree with my assessment of her. After twenty-two years in the psychological field, I’ve never had a patient that I respect and admire so thoroughly. She will do wonders for this world and you are lucky to have her.   – Dr. Coleman.