Our Racial Justice Group at Church

In the fall we started a book group at church discussing The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. We would meet in the church parlor once a month following the 11:00 service and discuss one or two of her enormous and complex chapters on how the current system of mass incarceration in the US is a means of proliferating white supremacy by creating a lower class of Black folk - a new form of segregation and oppression - a new Jim Crow.
In our first meeting, our Reverend asked us to chat with the folks next to us about our initial reaction to the content in the book, specifically to rate on a scale of 0-5 how much of this information was new to us and how much of it was old news, with zero being brand new information and five being common knowledge to us.
I turned to the three elderly Black women on my left and listened as they all gave fives - mass incarceration was not new. Targeting Black folks for petty crimes and labeling them as felons in order to keep them down was not new. The war on drugs as a means to create a lower class system of people of color was not new. Five.

Then I was to speak. To identify what I knew and what I didn't know. To reveal my knowledge or my ignorance.

I said one. And that might have been generous.

I said something along these lines: I've known that we have a huge prison population but that was it. I didn't know that our prison population does not whatsoever reflect our national demographic statistics - that black and brown folks make up a huge amount of our prison population. I didn't know that the war on drugs was a means of rounding up Black men and imprisoning them, even though statistically white folks are more likely to use and sell drugs as Black folks. I didn't know any statistics on the racism of stop-and-frisks.

I had a sense, but I didn't know. Which is why I said one.

These women were not surprised. Of course I didn't know. I didn't have to know. I didn't have to live this reality. For I am white and one of the perks of my whiteness is the privilege of ignorance.

This book group has been kind and patient with a learner.
I need to know. I need to listen. I need to learn.
For if I don't know that something exists, then it does not exist in my world.
If I don't choose to learn that their are extreme racial disparities in this country, then to me there are no racial disparities in this country.
They will not exist.

Probably in the second and third week of our meeting together, someone mentioned the dearth of white folks.
"Why aren't there more white people in this group?"

As one of the only white folks there, I responded "because we don't have to be here. To learn about race and racism is a choice we get to make, not a requirement. And since learning can be uncomfortable, we often choose not to do it."

I try not to talk at all in our discussion groups. I try to limit my comments to once or twice, and those only after listening for a good long while to the rest of the group.

As a white person, I approach this group as a learner and a listener. For it is through listening and learning that I can change myself. And in changing myself I can hopefully change my world, including my white folks.