Welcome to the first of a new series on combating institutional racism in the United States! I hope this will be a good chance for all of us who are hoping to help make a change in this country, to figure out the best way to go about it. Since this is the intro post, I will explain what I think is the most helpful way to engage in this issue, and also tell you a little bit about myself. My hope is that this will spark a dialog about the issues that we can all come away from a little more enlightened about.
The "Rules": Obviously any and all people are welcome to read and participate in this, but I am assuming that most people reading this will be white. As a white person living in this country, I can see how segregated we still are in our lives and acknowledge that most of the people in my life, who will have access to this blog, are also white. Because of this, we all come from a place of privilege but may be in different places of realizing and acknowledging it. My hope is to create a safe place for people to ask questions or comment on things without having to worry about being judged for it. One of the things white people who are further along on their journey of dismantling racism in their lives tend to do is rely on self righteousness to make sure they feel better about themselves. "I'm woke, so I'm good, but look at what that white person just said! Let's destroy him so that I can keep showing others just how woke I am." It becomes the "I'm the most non racist person" contest and it doesn't resolve anything. If anything, it makes the problem worse and it plays into our own insecurities. We stop growing when all we do is accuse others of being worse than we are. So, that stops here! No more of that! Unless you make a comment that is blatantly and unapologetically racist, I will do my best to never attack you or respond in anger and I ask anybody else following this blog and commenting, to do the same.
The Format: I will try to do a post every other weekend or so, depending on where I am in reading books and articles on this subject. I would like this project to be sustained over time and I have to tendency to do too much too soon and get burned out.
About Me: I am a liberal woman from Seattle. I'm 40 years old. I don't post where I work online so I won't be sharing that information here, but it is a place that works for the public in a non-profit setting. I identify as "whitish". What in the world is that, you are probably asking me right now. I am white, that is how I look, that is how society sees me. I have been granted full white privilege. However, I actually have a small (2.5%) amount of African DNA in the two DNA tests I have taken. This confirmed what I had suspected based on my research over the past several years. While I acknowledge that I have no place in today's black communities in this country, and I would never try to worm my way into them(see Rachel Dolezal for an example), I know that I have black ancestry in my history. I have chosen, unlike other white people who choose to ignore it, to embrace it. I do not share a present with today's black communities, but I do share part of a past. And because of that, things like white privilege stand out a lot to me. The arbitrary nature of how it's assigned, I feel that very sharply. How can I not? And certain issues hit me on a more personal level now than they did before, even if they still don't actually affect me or my life. So, I decided that instead of ignoring my history, I could embrace it and use my white privilege to reach out to other white people in hopes of helping us as a community to move forward in how we handle racism.
And now, a definition: Racism. We prickle at this word when it comes up in conversation or is used in relation to us. We don't hate anybody! We don't even see color! We're colorblind. We don't actively try to keep anybody else down, so how can I be racist? Not all white people are racist!-Which translates to, other white people might be racist, but I'm not, so make sure to acknowledge that when you talk about racism in this country. I am exempt. The problem is, racism doesn't mean what we think it means. Even though the dictionary defines racism as more of the hatred and active oppression of people, the meaning has changed to now mean a person who benefits from living within a system meant to benefit one group of people over another group of people. What we think of as racism would really fall under the category of prejudice.
Here's a good article about the definition of racism. And I would highly encourage you to read the comments on this article to see the kinds of things people of color have to deal with in order to point out racism to white people. White people can be incredibly angry and defensive when they are told that they benefit from a racist system. It isn't the job of people of color to teach white people about their racism, and most of those who do take the time to point it out, get attacked. This is one way we can take on fighting all levels of racism, by taking on those hostile white people ourselves.
This Week's Topic: Colin Kaepernick's Thwarted Message
Because I'm just starting out and I haven't read any books yet, my topic is something that has been in the hearts and minds of a lot of Americans since it started in 2016 and had resurfaced when Kaepernick teamed up with Nike for an ad campaign that began last week.
Here is a timeline of Kaepernick's first year of protesting police brutality and racial inequity in this nation's justice system, and people's reactions to it. When it first started, nobody really knew what to make of it, but when he started gaining national attention, people began finding reasons to disagree with it. The one that stuck, though, was the idea that sitting during the anthem, or even taking a knee, was somehow disrespectful to the military. Conservatives and conservative news sources latched onto this idea and used it to change the conversation from police brutality and inequity in the justice system, to one of who has the right to protest and under what conditions protesting was considered acceptable. As liberals and liberal news sources fought back, they further continued the discussion of protesting and how it should be done. The message Kaepernick was trying to promote, was buried and the status quo of inequity has continued unchallenged. The conservatives won this battle, with help from us. White privilege is still very much intact and we can go about our day not worrying about what happens if we get pulled over by the cops or have to go to court for something. Too bad for the people who do have to worry about those things, but we had to stand up for the right to protest, right?
I am not going to debate the merits of Colin Kaepernick and whether or not he is "good enough" of a person or a citizen to be the conveyor of this message. I tend to look at all those arguments as continuing to take away from the discussion of racial inequity in the justice system(notice I'm using that phrase a lot? That's because I'm trying to put the focus back on the message, not the debate on protesting. This is a simple tactic we can use to help move the argument back to where it needs to be.) This issue is something very important to Kaepernick and he has the ability to use his current position to bring awareness to something very wrong in this country, and he is doing it. And since nobody else is really standing up for it, he's the man. He's the one, and he is not standing down. The moment we bog ourselves down in "But he doesn't do this or he did do that, and that makes him not a good enough person to convey this message," we are ending the message. We are saying that we will only support this issue if the person talking about it fits our narrative. We're saying that we're waiting for a more ideal or "model" minority to convey this message and until that happens, we won't have anything to do with whatever the message is. This is what is known as "gatekeeping". It makes the white people who do believe in the message, but don't want to align themselves with the messenger, upholders of the racist status quo. This undoes everything we claim to stand for and only works to make us feel more superior than others.
Here's one thing to keep in mind about him, if you are having issues accepting him as the face and voice of this movement: Do you think he's really happy that he has to be taking this stand at all? Do you think it excites him that his football career has been decimated and that he himself is in danger any time he is pulled over by the cops? That he has to see his own community torn apart by the inequity in this country? I highly doubt it. He probably hates this just as much as the people who hate him for standing up to it.
So, going forward, if you believe in Colin Kaepernick's message of racial inequity in terms of the police and the justice system in this country, the easiest thing you can do when you hear others talking about it, or see them online, is change the conversation back to that message. When we hear the debate going on about protesting and taking a knee during the anthem and being respectful towards the military, take it back to the original message. Don't fall for those red herrings. We're only upholding a racist system by doing do.
Does anybody have any thoughts or questions about this? If you have suggestions on books or articles I should read about institutional racism, please share them with me. And if you have any thoughts on a particular institution or industry that we should explore in depth to see how racism affects it, please let me know those too. I have a list going but I'm sure it's hardly comprehensive. I am currently reading a book that I hope to finish and talk about in the next post. So, until then, keep fighting the fight for equity!
-Summer
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