Of Mistakes: On Learning How Anti-Racist I Really Am

It's been a while since I wrote anything.

Since last posting many more Black lives have been lost, many more streets have been shut down in protest, many more guilty cops have been acquitted, many more racist acts committed.

Including one of my own.

Well, I guess I should clarify. It wasn't a racist act but it wasn't an anti-racist act either. And therefore I allowed racism to live and thrive.

As you know by now, the DMV has been shut down by a big blizzard. And I've enjoyed every day trying to find something fun (and exhausting) for my 1.5 yr. old to do. Most days that's been outside in the snow. But as the piles have been melting, it's kinda disgusting right now to play outside, so we've been finding all the free indoor play spaces possible. Yesterday that was a Chick-fil-a north of our home.

I don't like to support Chick-fil-a, but anyone with kids will know that they must play hard or they will not function properly.

So I took my two nephews and son up to the Chick-fil-a where they played in the play area for about an hour before we got some sandwiches, played some more, and then headed home.

Since it was lunch time and since, let's be honest, (homophobia aside) Chick-fil-a is delicious, I got us lunch.
The line was a decent length since I had waited until actual lunch time to order, so I had my three boys sit in a booth and entertain each other while I ordered.

There were three white men in front of me in line, all dressed the same. I assumed they worked together doing something that required camo.
They ordered. I ordered. Then we all stood off to the side while we waited for our food to be ready.

When I ordered, the cashier asked for my name. Same went for the other customers waiting for their food.

When the food for the three white camo guys came, it was delivered by an older Black gentleman, probably in his early fifties. He called out the name of the owner of the food - "boss."

What happened next in my mind took about 4 milliseconds: I assumed one of these three white men was the boss of the other two and that's why he gave the name "boss". How kind and unassuming of me. Would I have been so kind to a person of color doing anything?

The slight pain on the older Black gentleman's face, combined with the snickering of the other two white men, proved that this was a racist act and an assertion of power.
One of the three white men took the food and they began walking toward the door. As they walked, one of them repeated the word quietly to themselves, reliving the hilarious high of racism to his racist buddies.

This was when I almost followed them out the door.
This was when I almost spoke up and called them out for their racism.
This was when I almost used my white privilege for good.

It was a public place, full of people, well-lit, and day-time. I had no excuses except for my fear.
And I was afraid.
And I said nothing.
And I took my food and fed my kids and went home.
And I regret this.

I write this story not for your sympathy, for who really cares about my self-disappointment when this older Black gentleman was humiliated again by racists.
I write this story because I must remind myself every day to be an anti-racist, not just a non-racist. A non-racist would see what happened and shake her head and sigh and share the story with other people as a sign of the deep problems in society these days. How we're still so backward, etc.

But a white anti-racist would speak to her white people. A white anti-racist would call them in, would ask them why they thought it was ok to humiliate and shame another person in such a public way, a person who has likely suffered enormous pain at the hands and words and minds and decisions and pockets of white folks.

Why did you do that? Why did you give the name "boss"?

But I didn't.
I wasn't an anti-racist that day.


PS: I am white. I am writing for white folks. Please do not take this story as an important one. It's not an important story in the movement for Black Lives. Please read Black stories more than white stories. They're actually important. But if you're a white non-racist thinking of moving into anti-racism, and this story stuck somewhere inside of you, cool.

Racial Dialogue? Maybe That Could Do Something?

The democratic debates

The republican debates

Sermons on Sundays

The State of the Union Address

Articles

Blogs (kinda ironic, right?)

Books

Pundits

Interviews

Radio Talk Shows

We're listening to people speaking at us, all the time. 

We expect our leaders to be articulate talkers and we encourage their constant talking. 

When we hear from our President or our representatives, it's always in the form of a speech or an interview. 

What I want to see is a good dialogue. 

Not a debate, wherein two people with opposing views go head to head and try to win.

I want a discussion. A good dialogue in which two or more people get together with the clear intention of learning from another and talking and listening and asking questions of each other around a specific topic. 

I think if we could get our white leaders and black leaders to sit down and dialogue about race, as white people we might learn something. 

Because right now we have people addressing us regarding race. They have clear ideas about race in America and they are going to share those clear ideas with us. 

And the ones who are dialoguing and listening to others about race are not our leaders. They are on the Kojo show or in your church, but they are not our representatives. 

No, we expect our representatives to have done their thinking, to have clear ideas and clear heads and to state what they think at us. 

How much more might we respect our leaders if we saw them actually wrestling with tough issues like humans do? Instead of just preaching at us?

Maybe if we got to see our leaders THINKING about race in dialogue, we would be willing to listen more and learn through their dialogue.

I know that I don't usually recommend anything to the reader except to always ask questions, but I want to recommend something. 

I think we should push for a national dialogue on race.

It could be something as elaborate as a series of discussion questions disseminated to all Americans to get them asking difficult questions about what they believe about race. 

Or it could be something as simple as a weekly dialogue on race with our president and respected leaders centered on a weekly question. 

No goals for this dialogue except openness and tolerance. Just honest dialogue in which white people (and people in general) are required to think about what race means and how people are actually treated in these United States. 

And I say white people in particular, because in this current society we as white people have the distinct privilege of choosing when we think about race. We don't have to think about race every day like persons of color do. 

We have the privilege of ignorance. 

I'm in a book group at my church. We're reading and discussing The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and one of the questions our leader brought up today was why there weren't more white people in our group. I don't think we actually answered the question, but I kept thinking about it nonetheless. I think as white people we don't talk about race because we don't have to talk about race. I think we often don't want to talk about race because for some reason we feel guilty, like we're being called racists whenever the topic is brought up. But I think the key reason why we don't talk about race is that first reason: we don't have to. 

But we MUST. We must think about race and talk about race and begin to dismantle its deep hold in this society or else we are letting oppression continue and we are denying the possibility of justice for all. 

We must dialogue. And we must push our leaders to dialogue, not just talk at us.

For it is only through thinking out loud and listening to others that we learn what it is that we actually think and believe and push ourselves to change for the better. 

E.M. Forster said "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"

We must talk to each other so we can change ourselves for the better.

And wouldn't that be cool if our leaders did the same?

White Privilege Helps Me Out...Again

I gain so much from my white privilege.

I met recently with an adviser at the college in which I'm currently enrolled. After a BA and an MA in my subject area, I finally recognized that I must complete some basic education courses in order to certify to teach in all states. So I'm going back to school, happily if I'll be honest, because I do really love school, no matter the ease of subject material. I guess that comes with always asking questions.

So I have a meeting scheduled for 5pm, but I get there early with my one-year-old son in hopes that I can squeeze in an earlier appointment.
I can't.
They are definitely backed up.

At five, the adviser Erica calls me back. A kind young white woman, probably about my age, and very skilled in helping me feel comfortable, Erica, from her credentials, has been advising for a while. In fact during our meeting another adviser steps in to ask her a question, signaling to me that Erica must be in charge or at least leading a collection of other advisers.

The reason I came into the office today, Erica, is to get a hold-override  on a course I need, I tell her when we sit down. The hold is in place because my pre-requisites for the course have not been verified - I need to have taken their introduction to education course before I can register.
Now I took a foundations of education course in my undergrad years. But that was eight years ago and the content requirements have shifted dramatically in the aftermath of Race to the Top and the introduction of the Common Core Standards and PARCC assessments.

In my mind I know my previous course does not meet the pre-requisite standard as laid out by the course catalog.

So I begin to mentally piece together my argument, mentioning first that I can try to get the 2007 course catalog from my alma mater so we can compare the two and pulling my two transcripts out for reference, but she stops me.

She says "I should refer you to the education department on this one, since that's what I'm supposed to do, but you seem like a pretty responsible person, so I'm going to do the override."

I'm somewhat speechless. All my pretty good arguments about how the State had accepted my undergrad course as valid and how my graduate courses more recently dug into that content I was missing fall onto the floor.

In the moment, I thank her profusely for removing the hassle of 1) getting a meeting with an education chair and/or 2) having to take and pay for another course this semester; I round up my things and my kiddo, and stroll on out of there.

It wasn't until I was in the car that I began to dismantle her statement.

I "seem like a pretty responsible person."


Let me list some pieces of evidence arguing against her assumption for a second:

1) She hadn't looked over my transcripts at all and took my claim of a BA and MA on my word alone.
2) I was not dressed professionally
3) I brought my son. My fifteen month-old BUSY son, with me. My son who is constantly chatting and eating and getting into everything. I brought him. To this meeting.


Evidence supporting her assumption that I am responsible:

1) I am white


I recognize that some might say NO! She might have done the same thing for a black woman. And maybe she would have, but the statistics say that bias against black bodies is real. That she would not have done the same thing for a black woman.
Maybe if the black woman was dressed nicely and didn't bring her kid along. But a black woman in jeans with a toddler in the stroller that she was feeding throughout the meeting? No, Erica would have referred her to the education department. Because that black woman would not "seem like a pretty responsible person."

Now this course pre-requisite override is a small example of the major benefits I receive from being white.

As I've mentioned before, the BIGGEST, all-time privilege I receive from being white is this: I don't have to think about the injustices suffered by black people. I don't have to think about the injustices suffered by persons of color at all. I don't have to think about the injustice perpetrated against them every single day.

But I must choose to think about injustice.

Every day I must choose to SEE and RECOGNIZE my privilege and choose to SEE and RECOGNIZE privilege systemically built into the foundations of this country. And I must listen to stories from black life. And I must talk with white folks about their privilege. And I must choose to do this every day.

For it is so easy to forget.

This Starts With Me

Donald Trump's followers include many overt white-supremacist racists. Donald Trump, I would argue is also an obvious racist.

For a while I thought this public overt racism might be a good thing for the Black Lives Matter movement. Trump's speeches and voter questions are revealing a large segment of the population that is deeply and obviously and proudly racist.

Wouldn't that make us all realize that racism is alive and well?

I mean, you can't deny that general bigotry exists when one of his supporters claims all the problems in the US today are due to Muslims and that we need to "get rid of them."

 Wouldn't those sort of comments make the even the strongest racism-ended-with-Obama arguments fall to pieces?

In part, yes, no one can deny that a large part of the population holds racist beliefs - Trump and his followers have made that obvious.

Where this public knowledge actually hurts our progress is in how progressive white folk take and use this information about overt racism.

As I've said before, the movement to end systemic racism is NOT a black responsibility. It is a white responsibility. We must recognize individually our white privilege, dismantle it, and use our white privilege as leverage to bring about social justice. It starts within our individual selves.

But Trump and Limbaugh and Cruz and the rest of them have made it so much easier to relocate the problem outside of ourselves.
THEY are the racists.
THEY are the bigots.
THEY are the problem.

And the discussion of racism becomes an us-vs-them debate. WE progressives have it right. THEY conservatives are the racists and the bigots. THEY are wrong.

There is no possibility of ending systemic racism if we make this conversation about THOSE racists.

The conversation, white people, must be about I, racist.
I, white privileged.
I, complicit ignorer of injustice.

This starts with me.

In the Gospel of Luke we're told that Jesus shared a parable about a Pharisee and a tax-collector praying at the same time in the temple. Jesus says that the Pharisee stood praying before the Lord and thanked God that he was not like this evil-doer, this tax-collector. Jesus notes that the tax-collector also prayed, but did so with deep humility. Jesus says that "He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’"

Then Jesus praises the tax-collector for his humility instead of the praising the Pharisee for his self-exalting righteousness.

I would say we could replace those two job titles in the parable with progressive and conservative, or democrat and republican, or whatever degrading term you have for "the other side" and the story would still hold. 

I thank God I am not like those racist conservatives. 

But as Jesus teaches, that pride is wrong. 

Christ calls us to a life of self-reflection. 

A life of humility. 

God, have mercy on me, a privileged white racist. 

The Beloved Community starts with me. 

Taking Away Your Privilege

"That can't be productive"

I've heard this statement or something like it in response to the actions of the members of the #blacklivesmatter movement and other similar organizations in Ferguson, MO these last few days.

Blocking I-70? Rioting? Protests, no matter how peaceful? Interrupting political campaigns? Doesn't this just make people angry? 

The answer is yes. Yes, people will get angry. People will be inconvenienced. Your life will be interrupted.

 

Drivers stuck behind a wall of human arms stretching across a major highway. Patrons of various businesses shut down by protesters. Progressives attending rallies for fill-in-blank-with-favorite-candidate. 

YOU.

You will be inconvenienced. You might even get angry. 

But you will be forced to THINK. You will be required to STOP and think. 

You will lose a few seconds or minutes of your life to these space-occupying persons of color and their white supporters. 

And in those few seconds or minutes will hopefully be a mental reckoning. For this issue, this problem, this discussion of race in America is IMPORTANT. 

It's important enough to interrupt your life. 

Privilege is this: being able to turn off the suffering of others and completely forget about it without a single consequence for yourself.

So this black movement is taking away your privilege. 

You're no longer allowed to turn off their suffering. 

You will be faced with it time and time again. 

And you will have to think about it.   

Of White Discomfort

Baby boy, husband and I were boarding the train to head downtown to do something. I cannot recall what now, but I'm sure it was something fun; we rarely do un-fun things as a family these days.
Baby boy was in the stroller as he is a no-good walker still, so we took the elevator down to the platform.
We're chatting, the two of us, about something mindless and baby boy is joining in the chatter.

The elevator door opens and a black man and woman exit the elevator continuing in their conversation. As she passes me, she says, without looking me in the face and with the sincerest of tones, "ma'am, I am sorry for being so loud."

I immediately respond, "Oh no, don't worry, you're fine," in my sincerest of tones.
We load on the elevator and head up to the platform. Once we're on, though, I turned to husband and say, "Oh my goodness, that sucks. She thinks she made me uncomfortable. So she apologized. Because I'm white and because black persons always have to always make white people feel ok."

I start thinking of what I should've said, other than "you're fine."

A couple days later baby boy and I are downtown playing in the splash fountain. He's sopping wet but I don't want that in my car, so we head to Starbucks for an inevitable beverage and the usage of their lovely changing table.

As I round the corner to the back of the store where there are two bathrooms, I encounter a large black man and I say, "They're both full?" He responds affirmatively and says something nice to my son who smiles and waves at him - we're making conversation.

One bathroom opens up, and, as he is first in line I expect him to use it. He instead holds the door and insists that I go first. I say, "Thank you, but we can wait." There's another one that will open soon.

 He insists kindly, still holding the door for us.

I accept and enter the bathroom. He lets the door close and says to me in a sincere and friendly tone, "Now don't forget to lock the door."

He's giving me permission to lock the door.

He's recognizing that as a white woman, archetypically I am uncomfortable around him, and he's recognizing my discomfort and attempting to ameliorate that discomfort.

He was gone when I left the bathroom with my changed and dry baby boy.

What could I have said, anyway, had he been there? Thank you, of course, but what else?

It's not my job nor my right to tell African Americans that they don't need to make me comfortable. I don't need to teach black folk a lesson on how to interact with white folks. Because they know how to interact with white folks for the sake of the safety of their bodies.

If I said anything to this man or to the woman on the elevator about how they didn't need to make me feel comfortable, that would be selfish - that would be me trying to make me feel better about the fact that I am a part of this white expectation of comfort. Or at least a white expectation that you as a person of color will not cause me discomfort.

Black folk who make white folk uncomfortable suffer consequences in this country. Their rights and their safety and their bodies are taken from them so quickly when they make a white person uncomfortable.

And yet, in the last year since Ferguson, as the #BlackLivesMatter movement has been popping up on white screens and in white news sources, white people have started to feel uncomfortable.

We've started to squirm a little bit and wince a little bit. Because for the first time in many of our lives we have had to consider race. We have had to think about what it means to be white in relation to what it means to be a person of color.

And for many of us, we've never HAD to think of this before. We've never been required to think of what life as a white person even means. Because as a white person, we're the normal, and all y'all are deviations.

AND THIS IS UNJUST.

We must feel discomfort. We must ask ourselves the tough difficult awkward questions. We must be willing to feel white and feel wrong, for it is only when we begin to question our own whiteness and what that whiteness means,
what that whiteness has gotten us,
what that whiteness can get us, can we begin to dismantle greater systemic racism.

It is only when I can recognize as a white person that I got that job, I got that relationship, I got that raise, I'm in this house, I got that loan, I got that car, I got that degree in large part because I am white; only when I recognize this discomforting fact can I begin to recognize the system of disadvantage, the system of racism, faced by persons of color on every front, in every part of their lives.

Persons of color are facing systemic discomfort all the time and yet they're expected to keep us comfortable? That's some bullshit.

As white folk, we need to get uncomfortable.

Leveraging Privilege

What is whiteness? Is being white even a thing? Why do I feel more white today than I ever have? Is it good to feel white? Should I feel bad if I'm white?

There is no biological difference between white persons and persons of other races save a slight melanin change. So just as you have blue eyes and I do not, she has more melanin and I have less melanin.

If there's not biological difference between us, then what is race?

 Race is a social construct created to establish power.

It's not our skin color that has separated us but our investment in our skin color that has separated us.

As George Lipsitz writes in Bill Moore's Body, whiteness: "has a cash value: it accounts for advantages that come to individuals through profits made from housing secured in discriminatory markets, through the unequal educations allocated to children of different races, through insider networks that channel employment opportunities to the relatives and friends of those who have profited most from present and past racial discrimination, and especially through intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that pass on the spoils of discrimination to succeeding generations."

Race might be just a social construct, but it is one that weighs heavily on all of life.
From the hospital you're born in to the doctor who treats you for your first ear infection;
from the preschool you attend (or don't) to the elementary teacher's disciplinary actions toward you;
from your high school involvement to your college application process;
from the adults involved in your life to the careers you're encouraged to pursue;
from investment opportunities afforded to you to your neighborhood and your kid's neighborhood.

Race weighs heavily on it all.

Let's back up for a second. You might be asking me, what does this mean? This "social construct" idea? What even is that?

Social constructs, according to Foucault, Bakhtin, Vygotsky and a bunch of other old white guys, are how we create reality.

The theory of constructionism is in opposition to the theory of essentialism, which basically says that things are how they are because that's how they are.

For instance, many people would argue that boys are born with an innate set of personality traits. Boys are strong. Boys are non-emotional. Boys are natural leaders.
Some would argue that these are essential traits - they are biological - they are predetermined.
A constructionist would argue, however, that these traits are not innately "male," they are instead taught. They are constructed. The idea of the boy is a social construct. Over time we have created the reality of boy-ness, requiring these characteristics and teaching, albeit not directly, that effeminate qualities are inappropriate in boys. This is especially problematic when a boy feels that he does not exhibit these "masculine" qualities naturally as some would expect.

This discussion of sex v. gender is extremely oversimplified, but I provide it only as an attempt to explain what a social construct is.

We construct our reality in an attempt to organize our world. Through billions of years we've developed as a species, building our societies on what we have deemed best practice overtime.
Why do we do this? Why must we organize our world and create our reality?

It always comes back to power. Everything is about power. Everything.

We organize our world  - we create our reality - so that we can establish systems of power.

To go back to the gender example, if there are constructed male qualities that over time are deemed better than constructed female qualities, we will invest in the male qualities instead of the female. And the more we invest, the more power is held.

So race. How is race a social construct? And what does this construct have to do with power? And what does this construct have to do with me?

Over time we have invested in whiteness. This was not an individual's decision. No future KKK member came out to a group of white folks and said, let's demonize the black person so that we can hold power over them. This idea of whiteness has evolved.

As human beings we naturally work in our best interest and our best interest is to hold the power. Therefore we have overtime created a series of beliefs about humans whose bodies produce more melanin so that we can hold the power over them. On the plantation, in the field, in the career path, in the classroom, on the road, in the justice system, we hold the power because of our socially constructed whiteness.

And the most disturbing part of this idea of whiteness is that we have been told it does not exist.

We are told that the black race exists and the hispanic race and the asian race and the middle eastern race, but not the white race.

That is privilege in its finest. The privilege of never having to be labeled. Of always being the unmarked category.

The more we ignore the existence of whiteness as a social construct in which we invest in our daily decisions, the more we can ignore the disadvantages faced by those of the marked categories, the "races."

We must begin the process leveraging our whiteness for justice, and this begins with a recognition that whiteness is real (albeit constructed, but what isn't), whiteness exists, whiteness is powerful.

Only then can we dismantle the power whiteness holds in our own lives and use that power for justice.