#FBF: Tattoos As Self-Affirmation, or Some Thoughts on The First Week of School
I have a 5” tattoo of my mom’s face on the inside of my right wrist. A lot of people, when I first meet them, ask me about it and when I tell them it’s my mom they say “Awwwwwwww,” as if she’s no longer with us. However she is very much still with us, lending her unique brand of unrelenting support, which I think is all the more reason to have this tattoo of gratitude. My mom can’t stand tattoos, and she used to have that disappointed mom look every time she would see that I had gotten another one. “That looks terrible,” she would say. Finally one day -I think I was 25 or so- I told her that I was going to get a tattoo of her face next. “Because then you can’t say that it looks terrible."
Now, whenever I travel, I’ve made a ritual out of taking a photo with my arm extended as if the tattoo of my mom is posing as the subject. Sometimes there’s a beautiful mountain in the background, or maybe a tranquil beach scene, or other times she’s just holding up a package of the newest Oreo flavor. I used to post these pictures once or twice a week on Instagram, and my mom would hear from her friends about “her" latest escapades. I used to really get a kick out of doing this and I think/hope that she did as well.
In early December 2014 I headed up the block from my apartment complex to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to hear Dr. Valerie Purdie Greenaway, a professor of Psychology at Columbia University, speak. This event took place on the day following the Staten Island grand jury decision not to indict the NYPD officer who put Eric Garner in the chokehold that caused his death. Although I'm sure it was planned well in advance of the ruling, the timing intensely struck a chord as the title of her lecture was “Race matters, but not how you think it does: How stereotypes affect how we live, work, play, and pray.” Somber and searching as I was while heading up the block that evening, what I took away from the lecture and what I attempt to explain here is not a response to the case and sad death of Eric Garner.
That evening Dr. Purdie Greenaway was set to explain how a relatively simple, structured, values-affirming writing exercise had proven over years of in-classroom study to make significant strides in closing the racial and gender achievement gap. From her setup I scribbled down in my notebook that "people are motivated to see themselves as adequate.” I then wrote, “However, the psychological threat of being stereotyped (threat of possibly not being viewed as ‘adequate’) causes behavioral changes and underperformance." In other words, emotion blocks learning when there is a felt presence of stereotype threat, and over time this effect can be explained as the cause of such an achievement gap.
Recommended by LinkedIn
So, Dr. Purdie Greenaway and her team went into New York City schools and at the start of each term, had the teachers administer a brief writing exercise to their students. The assignment, which students were very clearly instructed would have nothing to do with their grade, simply asked them to spend a few minutes writing about something of value to them. Students took the time to write about things such as family & friends, sports, art, their relationship with God, style, creativity. Dr. Purdie Greenaway explained that this exercise is an “affirmation intervention,” and found that doing the exercise just once or twice during the school year significantly improved short- and long-term academic performance among African American students versus both a control group and the historical records of the schools.
The concept was so simple yet the results so striking, and I was inclined to Instagram a picture of the tattoo of my mom on my wrist with my hand pretending to “hold up” Dr. Purdie Greenaway on stage in the background. The lighting was not ideal to pull off this photo, however as I rolled up my sleeve and extended my arm in attempt it dawned on me: this was MY affirmation intervention. I realized that just about every time I look down at my wrist and I see my mom’s little smirk, I feel motivated, a bit de-stressed (or at least distracted from stress), and somewhat connected to a higher purpose. What started out as a joke and a showcase of early-twenties rebellion has become one of my greatest tools for dealing with life.
On the way out there were people from the Columbia Psychology department passing out sheets of paper with an example of the writing exercise. It asked “What do you value the most? Take a few minutes and write about it here.” And although there are people who find tattoos to be absolutely abhorrent, I can’t help but to think that some tattoos may just be people’s own way of self-intervening with an affirmation exercise. I know this is the case for me, as I seem to answer that question every time I take a glance down at my wrist.
If, like me, you are interested in cobbling together your own Dr. Valerie Purdie Greenaway master class, here are some links to get you started: