{"id":3845,"date":"2012-08-26T12:02:26","date_gmt":"2012-08-26T16:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=3845"},"modified":"2012-08-26T12:02:26","modified_gmt":"2012-08-26T16:02:26","slug":"revisiting-microagressions-and-social-justice-and-what-white-people-get-out-of-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/08\/revisiting-microagressions-and-social-justice-and-what-white-people-get-out-of-both.html","title":{"rendered":"revisiting microagressions and social justice (and what white people get out of both) ~"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0I spent most of June this summe, in a graduate Institute with teachers of all grade levels (k-university), in several content areas, and from varied backgrounds. The seminar lasts for three weeks. During week 2 we discuss cultures: what each of us — teacher & student alike — bring to a classroom.<\/p>\n

Of this year’s 15+ participants, we brought many demographics to the table: male, female, young teacher, older teacher, black, white, Native American, \u00a0Asian American, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, atheist. We’ve spent time discussing gay rights, the Holocaust, the Tulsa Race Riot, and many other touchy, culture-based topics. We’ve even had presentations on how to best engage in these hard talks. But despite the very clear challenges for women, men, gays, Muslims, Native Americans, Jews, & others in today’s U.S., we kept coming back to race.<\/p>\n

In this country, race has always been the subtext. Sometimes, not even the \u2018sub\u2019 text \u2014 perhaps race is \u00a0the\u00a0Ur text<\/a> of American culture. Written so deeply into who and what we are, the result of assuming a highly populated area is \u2018empty\u2019 because the inhabitants don\u2019t look like us \u2014 how convenient, when what we want is their land \u2014 that we never escape it. We are born into this text. It is imprinted indelibly on us, encultured from birth. We have to fight HARD to resist its insidious poison.<\/p>\n

From the very beginning of European conquest of the Americas, race has been a trump card. Religion, class, gender \u2014 race trumps most of them. In the early days of slavery, the Papal bull\u00a0Dum Diversas<\/a>\u00a0made\u00a0\"\"<\/a> it just fine to \u2018subjugate\u2019 and make slaves of anyone felt to be a pagan, a heretic or an \u2018enemy of Christ.\u2019 Again, how very convenient for Europe, just beginning to feel the stirrings of social justice as the Renaissance danced. Let\u2019s call it \u2018religion\u2019 to define everyone who looks different, disagrees with us, or has something we want as \u2018soul-less infidels\u2019 and either kill them or enslave them. And let\u2019s say God \u2014 however we (white Christians) define \u2018him\u2019 \u2014 is on our side, when we do so.<\/p>\n

We (white folks) like to point to Obama with pride, and pat ourselves on the back about \u00a0how far we\u2019ve come from ‘those’ days. Never mind the \u2018achievement gap\u2019 (and yes, I hate the term too, but I don\u2019t have another term for the way the US educational system fails so many students of colour). Never mind the inequities of the so-called justice system, which incarcerates more black males than attend college. And never mind our own unconscious participation in this biased, skewed system.<\/p>\n

This past June, the 15+ teachers in \u00a0Institute talked for hours \u00a0about what teachers can do — what each of us, individually as well as together — can do to change the stats. To change the world :). Help students learn, obviously, so that they can join the conversation. Be part of the system, should they choose. But over & over, what I heard when I listened (which is far harder than it should be!) to dear friends & colleagues was this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We need to share our stories. All of us. Each of us. Share our cultures, our foods, our stories and music and where we’re from. There’s a poem, by Georgia Ella Lyons, ‘Where I’m From.’ Many of my friends & colleagues make use of it to help students make visible to others their own internal cultures. The music and food and traditions and stories that ground & frame them. \u00a0This, I heard from a man whose native language is slowly fading from memory, would help us learn from each other. This, I heard from a man whose family is part of a white demographic<\/a> often discriminated against, might help us see each other as people.<\/p>\n

As a teacher and a writer — a teller of stories in so many ways and venues — I would like to think so. Because this past week’s conversations reminded me of an epiphany I had almost two years ago, at that kingdom of magic, Disneyland World.<\/p>\n

My friend Shanedra (a newly minted, brilliant Ph.D.) had been part of a session at our national conference, held that year in Disney World. She was relating the response she received to her bang-up presentation:<\/p>\n

\u201cHow old are you?\u201d asked the middle-aged white academic of my admittedly young-looking friend Shanedra. Shanedra responded (and she is indeed young, compared to a lot of the oldsters at the conference).<\/p>\n

\u201cOh!\u201d gushed the white chick. \u201cYou\u2019re just so eloquent! I just can\u2019t believe how eloquent you were\/are!\u201d<\/p>\n

When two of us (both white) heard Shanedra retell this anecdote, we saw the agism immediately. \u201cThat was pretty dismissive,\u201d I remember saying. I wasn\u2019t prepared for what happened next:<\/p>\n

My dear friend Sylvia, another African American academic, exploded. Quiet, balanced, rarely upset Sylvia leaned in to the table, and exploded.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it wasn\u2019t\u00a0 AGE she was talking about,\u201d Sylvia said\u00a0and why \"\"<\/a>can\u2019t I think of a verb or even an adjective that adequately conveys Sylvia\u2019s voice? That admixture of disgust, familiarity w\/ the situation, and bone-deep frustration and resentment?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t AGE,\u201d she repeated.<\/p>\n

Sally and I were puzzled. \u201cSo what was it?\u201d We asked. And honestly \u2014 after all these years of working HARD to understand the many many many ways in which white privilege and unconscious racism impact (daily \u2014 every day\u2026) so many of my friends and colleagues and students \u2014 I didn\u2019t see it.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe meant<\/em>,\u201d and Sylvia\u2019s normally quiet, even reserved voice deepened and thickened to an almost menacing snarkiness, \u201cShe meant\u00a0how did a little black girl like you get to be so smart?<\/em>\u00a0She meant\u00a0you don\u2019t have an accent<\/em>. She meant\u00a0you speak so well for a black chick<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked at Shanedra for corroboration. She was nodding in agreement, totally unphased by Sylvia\u2019s tone of voice.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Allies ~ are those White individuals who act in ways that counter the hegemony of racial privilege, stand as \u201cenlightened witnesses\u201d (hooks, 2003, p. 89) to people of Color during racialized experiences, and work within the socio-political systems to eliminate the privileges and advantages that White people are given (Kivel, 2002).tion, but I do.\u00a0\":)\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The point? I truly didn\u2019t see the racial axis in that exchange, only the agism. And yet I heard years of facing that specific attitude in Sylvia\u2019s voice. When she went off, I heard the pent-up resentment of daily dismissals and microagressions cracking open \u2014 detonating like improvised explosive devices in a guerilla war of race: white privilege against everyone else.<\/p>\n

When I shared this story — as we do at the summer institute I was helping direct — the following question arose: so what? The white chick probably didn’t even realise she’d committed a ‘microagression<\/a>.’ Why bother telling people when they screw up, if it’s unintentional? In other words: what do white people get out of hearing all this? Why should we bother tell to them (and I’m a ‘them’ too, of course) when they screw up? And why would they bother to change?<\/p>\n

This is the importance of a word I’ve grown fiercely attached to: ally<\/em>. It\u2019s not enough to \u2018do no harm.\u2019 We need\u00a0advocates<\/em>: white people to fight for racial justice. Straight people to fight for gay equality. And other mainstream cultures to fight on the side of the side-lined.<\/p>\n

Because social justice is not just having a half-black president. Social justice will be served in this country only when there is not only address of wrongs (the many \u2018gaps\u2019 between blacks & whites, for instance), but redress of wrongs. Do I believe Tulsa,\"\"<\/a> for instance, should offer some kind of compensation to the families who lost properties in the 1921 race riots? Absolutely I do. The same way that the US offered token compensation to the Japanese victims of internment.\u00a0 There is a principle that shows\u00a0<\/em>\u2018apology.\u2019 Not mere lip service, but what this country too often values more than integrity: money.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not holding my breath. Any more than I believe I can make daily life any less a minefield for Sylvia. Or Shanedra. Or Ben, or Dewayne, or any of a number of dear friends who are black. Or my friends who are afraid to tell their parents — after 15 years of living together — that they are partners.\u00a0 But at least I can go on record: watch what you say. Pay attention. I\u2019m watching. And I\u2019m learning. I\u2019m learning how to be an ally. And for this white person? That’s enough.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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