For too long, people have ignored Gen Xers. They love to reference the Baby Boomers, and then skip over to Millennials and Gen Z. Well, what about us? The Baby Boomers get a lot of hate these days, deservedly so. But we have to remember that the Boomers fought for everything that they got. They were the hippies of the 60s and 70s practicing free love, making it OK to smoke pot in festivals, and fighting for women to work outside the home and have their own checking accounts i

MRI “claustrophobia” does not necessarily require pills In a previous post, I talked about how I think MRIs make me very, very anxious. It has gotten to the point that I take an Ativan an hour before it so that I will chillax and just go to sleep. I find it very anxiety-producing because there are such high stakes to what the MRI test will reveal. Are the drugs working to stop the progression of the illness? Are there new lesions on my spine or brain that did not exist before

BTS is the biggest band on the planet. We’re talking Beatles levels. The whole world deserves to see them! I am not a member of ARMY, but I love a good show and I've heard that they live up to the hype. BTS, the famous South Korean boy band I was not going to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars to see Beyoncé because, as much as I like her, my budget was not right during her last two tours. Now that my car is fully paid off and my tithing is about to get right with the Lord,

“I treat all my patients the same” is BS When I was diagnosed with MS, my Ivy League doctor barely looked at me. As an Indian immigrant, I imagined he might have been like early Gandhi, holding negative views of Africans from his notch above in a racial hierarchy. Perhaps as a neurologist at the best hospital in the region, my lower socioeconomic status was an eyesore. What I knew for certain was that the week before, when he had done a lumbar puncture, popularly known as a “

A Real Coming to America They knew they were black. My parents migrated to the United States in the 70s. In younger pictures of my parents, uncles, and aunties, and larger kin networks, their hair was cropped closer to their heads or in intricate threading styles. However, as young adults, there was an addition of big afros that screamed James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m proud.” Looking at old pictures of aunties and uncles in Umunam and Emii, they were wearing big bell bottom

MRIs are the ultraviolence. Yesterday, I was in an MRI machine at Community Radiology in Silver Spring, Maryland, at the Medical Center location. I was literally feeling the vibrations of the machine on the bed I was lying on. I thought to myself, “I guess there is a first time for everything." I have been getting MRIs since 2013 when the doctors at Penn suspected that I had multiple sclerosis. They ran test after test and then upon diagnosis, MRIs every six months to make su

Either all of us are illegal or none of us are illegal. [UPDATED 3/10/26] When I was a teenager, my friends used to shock me. Some of my white and Asian classmates would occasionally show me items they had shoplifted from stores. I heard them joke about a phenomenon called “dining and dashing.” I was horrified! I have a Nigerian mother and father, so there was no one to induct me into the world of “petty crime” that many white youths committed. Apparently it's so common that

GETTING MRIs About a year ago, I was at the Chicago Rush Hospital Medical Campus getting an MRI with my brother, Chidi. I get really nervous about MRIs. The first few years when I would do them, it was no big deal. But after realizing how high stakes these diagnostic exams are, it would put me in a panic every time I have had to get one. For this reason, I've asked a number of friends and family members to accompany me. They will just hold my ankle for the entire time and sin

By Chinyere Osuji aka Dr. Chi I was watching a performance by the Korean band called Sangjaru. They play Korean fusion, mixing traditional instruments with contemporary ones. I watched the performance on a very snowy evening from the comfort of my community room with two of my neighbors. As I was watching the performance, my friend, a native Korean, explained the names of the different traditional instruments to me. The one that stood out the most to me was a double-sided dru

Why are they eating white bread toast for breakfast? Yuck! After watching dozens of K-dramas, I have learned about Brahms in Do You Like Brahms and Modigliani in Dali and the Cocky Prince. In Hometown Cha Cha Cha, I saw the male lead debate the merits of Burgundy versus Bordeaux French wines. However, I cannot recall characters lauding over Korean artists or contemplating regional varieties of Korean alcoholic beverages. For some reason, there was a moment in 2020 in which se

Being originally from Chicago, I have seen hustling and have even been victim to a scam myself. Having recent roots in Nigeria, I now laugh at emails from "Nigerian princes, ” even when they are from a white man living in Texas. More recently, a “Danish prince” scammed an American Nigerian woman and her family out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was not so funny to me. I first noticed something was odd when I asked about disability parking where I live. I had just m

I saved up my pretty pennies and had my family members chip in for me to buy the Bioness L300 Go. Unfortunately, I get so many read alerts telling me that electrodes are not in place and it slows me down every time I try to leave my house to try to figure out whether there is an actual issue or a fictitious one. Today, I was on my way to church and there was a fictitious issue that I could not figure out. It kept saying that the electrons were not in place, despite taking th

The Difference Really Matters I used to be so staunch about how in English, we have to stop saying that we live in one America. A lot of people from Spanish-speaking countries have expressed their annoyance that we in the United States like to call ourselves Americans. I often think to myself, that's a bit of Spanish – centrism! Back when they were the colonies of Spain, called new Spain or new Granada and stuff, the United States had decided to fight a war for independence.

Here’s why it’s hard to empathize with Onyeka My name is Chinyere Osuji and I am the author of Boundaries of Love: Interracial Marriage and the Meaning of Race. It was based on over 100 interviews with people in black-white interracial marriages. I am an associate professor and teach classes on race and blackness in the United States, Brazil, and around the world. I recently came across Onyeka Ehie’s “Danish deception” story. Like Onyeka, I am also Igbo and an American Nigeri

Why were interracial couples doing the most? Remember the Latine couple who shared their slave-mistress kink with the world? George Floyd protestors did not risk their lives for this.

"I'm not grateful, innit." During the COVID-19 lockdowns from 2020 to 2021, I discovered the audio social media app, Clubhouse. This happened in the middle of a global rise in nationalism from India to Canada. This included Black Americans who inhabit a bit of a nation within a nation as a minority with a strong sense of linked fate. In these spaces, I became familiar with the term “ADOS.” Political commentator Yvette Carnell and attorney Antonio Moore had already created t

We had just started to get vaccinated and were slowly emerging from lockdown. We were not okay.

Women who cannot run. A woman will be running from danger and will trip over a log in the woods, sand, an embankment, her own feet, nothing. In "Castaway Diva," nobody questioned why a woman would wear white gym shoes on a rainy day. But I also questioned why no one would interfere seeing a man in a dark raincoat walking quickly towards a woman who is running away with all her might. Whatever happened to see some thing, say something? But she couldn't outrun him. Why? Becaus

These buttons open the same door. Several months ago, this year (2025) we put in the silver plate. The blue button has been here at least three years. Why would we automate it again? Who asked for this? (Not me.) How much did it cost? Who thought this was a good idea? I really hope it was free.

In 2019, I gave a keynote speech for the Black Doctoral Network Conference. I decided to tell them the things I wish someone had told me...