If you know me, you know that I’m in school. If you don’t
know me, now you know: I am in school. I am nearing the end of my first year in
a public health program – next year I’ll *finally* earn my bachelor’s – only 20
years later than I originally thought I would.
This quarter I am taking a class titled Health Equity and Justice and it
is one of my absolute favorite classes.
At the beginning of the quarter we were given an assignment
to do some form of community engagement. I chose to attend a workshop put on by
CARW, the Coalition of Anti-Racists Whites,
an organization that “educates, organizes, and mobilizes white people to show
up powerfully for racial justice and collective liberation.”
I will admit that I was very nervous about this meeting. Was
it going to be four hours of being lectured on why white people are terrible? It
was not. It was four hours of learning to recognize what institutional racism
looks like, how we can use our privilege to disrupt the perpetuation of racist
speech and ideology and how to have conversations around hot button topics
(reverse racism, All Lives Matter, profiling…) in a calm and respectful manner.
The event was kicked off by three volunteers within the all-volunteer
organization recognizing the land we were occupying had once belonged to the
Duwamish. Then recognizing the church, Plymouth Church, that was hosting our
meeting has been fighting for social justice since it first opened its doors in
1869. Those two callouts were significant to me, and likely others in the room.
We acknowledged we were on land where we pushed the original occupants out. We
were in a building whose founders were part of the group that took the land and
yet, they still sought to work to protect Chinese
laborers and hosting women’s suffrage events.
For the first half of our time we worked through “Structures
and Strategies of Hierarchy” which was broken into six components. Basic
Hierarchy – someone is in power. Everyone is dehumanized, those at the top with
the power and those at the bottom without the power. It is the scaffolding that
keeps some people in power via racism, sexism, wealth inequity, etc.
The second structure is labeled: Control and Contain. Means
for this are slavery, genocide, colonization and bordering. I know there is a
mindset that slavery was so long ago that for anyone to bring it up now as
something that is holding them back is just an excuse. This exercise shows that
the repercussions of each event (enslavement, genocide, colonization….) didn’t
disappear when slavery was banned, small pox blankets were no longer distributed
(click
here to be linked to letters stating the mission to inoculate Native Americans
with small pox via blankets) and the West quit colonizing. The
repercussions just became less obvious and they flowed into the next form of
attempts to control.
Do you ever wonder why there are areas of cities that are
predominantly made up of black people? Why are those areas poor? Is it a sign
of racial inferiority? No, it is the continuing legacy of bordering – think redlining
and the answer to when redlining was outlawed: steering. Redlining – the practice
of keeping minorities within certain geographic bounds, while always a problem,
became a legal practice with the Housing
Act of 1934. While it was outlawed in 1968 it is a practice that continues to
this day. The NY
Times published an article last week
about minorities being directed, “steered” towards “black neighborhoods” or away
from “white neighborhoods”.
I’m not going to go into the rest of the structures of the
hierarchy because that would make this post longer than anyone would read.I
want you to actually read this whole post. I think if the understanding around
why minorities are poorer and marginalized reflected reality – they were
prevented from buying homes in affluent areas (more tax dollars = better schools)
and were directed towards poor areas (fewer tax dollars = underfunded schools;
greater distance to “good jobs”, poorer infrastructure – think lead in the water
which leads to permanent cognitive impairment and poor behavior which further reinforces
the false narrative that minorities are inferior) – all of these factors are
pieces to a puzzle that shows a picture of a people who can not easily get
ahead because the system is stacked against them.
Here is the difficult transition for white people. We can
recognize how those practices are unfair – they are immoral, unjust and keep
people from advancing. Those examples illustrate how the saying that people
should pull themselves up by their bootstraps only works when bootstraps are available
to everyone. White people can recognize that we have bootstraps by which we can
pull ourselves up, but we can’t recognize how us having the bootstraps gives us
power, or White Privilege.
Having the bootstraps is the white privilege. Acknowledging
we have advantages is acknowledging our power. Having that power doesn’t make white
people evil but it does force us to confront the privileges we have.
Did you read about the little white boy playing with a toy
gun in a park who was shot by a cop two seconds after the cop arrived? Speeding
cop car, screeching halt, one count, two count, dead. You didn’t. That was Tamir
Rice, a little black boy.
What about John Crawford III who picked up a toy rifle off
the shelf in a Walmart? A man called 911 saying a black man was walking around
the store pointing a gun at people. Video shows that was not
true and the man who called 911 changed his story after the fact. Police
arrived and almost immediately upon seeing John, shot and killed him. Ohio is
an open carry state.
Jemel Roberson was a good
guy with a gun. He stopped a shooting and was detaining the shooter. When
the police arrived, people in the crowd told the cops that Jemel, wearing
clothes that said “Security”, was in fact, security and not the shooter. Jemel
was shot and later died from his wounds.
Here is a video that shows how two men are treated very differently
for doing the same legal behavior, open carrying an AR15. A white man is politely questioned by a
skeptical police officer. The black man is forced to the ground at gunpoint and
back up officers are called.
White people are given the benefit of the doubt, black
people are viewed suspiciously. Sitting
in a Starbucks while waiting for a friend, moving
into an apartment, killed by
police in home while playing video games , barbecuing
in public park. It just goes on and on.
After breaking into groups and discussing all of the ways
the rules and laws are written for everyone but enforced or not enforced
depending on who it applies to. We discussed two ways of confronting statements
that perpetuate racism.
First, we can call someone out which often is shaming and causes
people to move further apart. It can be necessary to call out in a moment when
there is violence or angry, hateful speech being directed at someone.
The other strategy is to call in and connect. It is a softer
approach that seeks to build relationship and invite other white people into
the movement for racial justice.
Here
is an example of a woman using her white privilege to stand up for a woman of
color that falls somewhere between calling out and calling in.
We were given guidelines for calling in.
·
Ground yourself and stay connected – racism disconnects;
don’t set yourself up for failure by letting a
·
Ask questions, seek to understand. Be comfortable
with the quiet. Let the other person speak
·
Tell stories of your change. Show ways you have
grown. Don’t shame.
·
Stop when you’ve reached an agreement. This isn’t
stop when you agree. No one changes a lifetime of thinking in the span of one
conversation. Stop when you come to AN agreement. Maybe you both acknowledge
black people proportionally more affected by police profiling. You don’t need
to soldier on. End on a good note.
·
Remember the goal is not perfection – for yourself
or anyone else. Racism is rooted in perfectionism – white is superior, better
than…. We are all flawed and on this journey for the long haul.
After going over the tips for calling in and connecting we
broke into groups of three to discuss hot button topics. A gentleman in my
group – who turned out to be a mutual friend from my old parents group – ran through
a scenario he encounters at work. I practiced the Black Lives/All Lives matter narrative.
I sought to clarify that the Black Lives matter movement isn’t saying, Only
Black Lives Matter but rather, Black Lives Matter Too. When black people, who
make up around 13% of the
population, yet account for 33%
of the prison population, it is clear black people are treated differently than
white people.
Here is a graphic from the Washington Post that breaks down how many people are shot
and killed by police:
It is hard to deny the disparity when looking at these numbers
and I think knowing information like the graph shows it will be easier to make
an argument that isn’t based on feelings. I am not going to be persuaded by
someone’s impassioned argument if there aren’t verifiable fact to back up their
statements.
The challenge is to be calm and rational when we are sitting
at the dinner table at Thanksgiving and these topics come up.
At the end of the workshop we were challenged to keep growing
in our efforts to continue interrupting systemic, institutionalized racism by acknowledging
we all have prejudices, we all participate in the systems that oppress other people
and to extend grace to people who are not aware of their own privilege and
power by gently calling them into conversation.
