Monthly Archives: August 2017

#Charlottesville Is Us, But We Can Change: The Finale

28 Monday Aug 2017

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I have three final suggestions as to how we can end the vicious cycle of division and racism that has so long plagued our country.  You can read Parts 1 and 2 by clicking here and here.

7.  Christians Have to Stop Segregating Themselves.  I truly believe that the Civil Rights Movement, Jim Crow, or even slavery would not have lasted so long if Christians would have stepped up to the plate and condemned the institutions, policies, and procedures that caused a body of people to endure oppression for a period of over 300 years.  If the collective church that boasts to be of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all…” can remain silent and divisive when members of the church are oppressed, mistreated, or abused, how can anyone take their message of unity seriously?  If Jesus died for ALL, but your Christianity only allows you to support those that look like you or have your political convictions, what should we make of your Jesus?  When Dr. King was asked what kind of challenges or mistakes he had made during his tenure as leader of the Civil Rights Movement he responded: “Well, the most pervasive mistake I have made was in believing that because our cause was just, we could be sure that the white ministers of the South, once their Christian consciences were challenged, would rise to our aid. I felt that white ministers would take our cause to the white power structure. I ended up, of course, chastened and disillusioned. As our movement unfolded, and direct appeals were made to white ministers, most folded their hands—and some even took stands against us (see full interview here).“How could those white southern ministers remain silent as their fellow co-minister of the Gospel, Rev., Dr. Martin Luther King, braved water-hoses, incarceration, the KKK, and death as he fought for the realization of his God-given equal rights?  This silence was not specific to Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement.  This silence is just as prevalent today in many churches on both sides of the color line and will continue to be prevalent until we decide to truly unify with one another rather than tolerate one another.  To remain divided on racial issues is to continue to cause great detriment to the body of Christ and it sullies the message of Christ.  Either all of God’s children matter or none of them matter.  Each time the church remains segregated along denominational lines, racial lines, political lines, economic lines, or social lines, a loud and public message is being to sent to the world about what really matters and who really matters.  If you are a Christian, what message are you sending the world about racism?  What message is your church sending the world about racism?

8.  Rely on Yourself for Education. This summer I had the opportunity to speak in a corporate setting about the history of Juneteenth.  I was amazed at some of the questions that followed my presentation.  So few people truly understand the economics, the politics, and the social dynamics of slavery upon our country. Perhaps your education system glossed over these subjects and unless you majored in U.S. History or specialized in the Antebellum Period in college, it is likely that you never had to encounter a class about slavery or the effects thereof.  Regardless of your education curriculum, there’s really no excuse not to have a better understanding of our country’s history in this day and age.  Google makes personal research finger-snapping fast.  There are excellent Internet tools, books, children’s literature, and magazines that can help bring insight into the racial history of the United States and how it has affected our country.  Refuse to be educated by cable news empires that capitalize off of keeping you emotionally charged about subjects they are never going to fully reveal.  It is not economically advantageous for news channels to provide the entire story because sensationalism and emotionalism-not truth and facts brings profit. You must become your own teacher and learn the entire story for yourself.  Once you’ve learned that story, teach it to someone else.

9.  Be Patient with the Process.  The racial division within our country did not happen overnight and we cannot expect the changes to happen overnight.  We have to be patient with the process.  Celebrate the daily strides you make to be the change you want to see.  Don’t be too hard on yourself if you notice that old habits are changing slowly.  Change takes time.  Our future is predicated off of the decisions and actions that happen today.   If we all do our part, there is nothing we can’t do.  Right now, people from all over America are sending their resources to help victims of #HurricaneHarvey.  People are driving down to be a part of the rescue efforts.  Strangers are helping strangers.  Neighbors are checking on neighbors.  People who speak different languages and who have different skin tones are clinging on to rafts and boats to get to safety.  It is sad that sometimes it takes natural disasters to remind us of how much we need each other and how much we all have in common.  #Charlottesville is us, but #Houston is also us.  We all have a choice in which America we will create for our children and grandchildren.  Be patient with the process, and commit to change one day at a time.

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#Charlottesville Is Us, But We Can Change Part 2

20 Sunday Aug 2017

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(7 minute read)

If you are following the news, social media, or break-room conversations, than you know that emotions are riding high over the racially-charged and violent events in #Charlottesville.  Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I am actually living in 2017.  The hate, the division, the racism shows no signs of stopping, however, my message remains the same. We can change.  Below are three more ways to become more unified and create a new era for the next generation.  You can find the first three ways by clicking here.

4.  Speak Up and Speak Out.  I truly believe that one reason racism and division persist is because good people remain silent or selfish. We either don’t say anything out of fear or we don’t say anything because we don’t want to mess up our social or financial position. Therefore we become complicit in creating environments like #Charlottesville. Things normally don’t get better with time and silence. Things normally only improve when there is confrontation, a fall-out of some sort, and swift action takes place. Silence is always the friend of racism and division.  Several years ago, I had a conversation with a department chair and they revealed to me that in the 20 years they had been affiliated with the program, no black females had ever returned to speak or encourage admitted students or given back as alumni of the institution.  The department chair was white and I could tell they sincerely wanted to know what was going on that made black women feel so uncomfortable.  I asked several questions and the chair answered honestly.  The chair asked several questions and I answered honestly.  There were several “a-ha” moments and there were some points of disagreement but the overall conversation was great.  One thing stayed with me long after I left that meeting.  I had asked the chair had they ever received any complaints or concerns from any of their students of color and the answer was no.  This really puzzled me.  If the experience in the program was so negative and unwelcoming that no black woman wanted to be affiliated with it any longer, why didn’t anyone complain?  20 years is a long time.  A few months later I was sitting at lunch talking about the PhD process with several black females who were at different stages in their academic journey.  They all basically gave me the same speech: “You will feel isolated.  You must work twice as hard.  Keep your head down, and just get through it.  Your PhD awaits you on the other side.”  It was good advice, and now that I am in the process of getting my own PhD, I understand exactly what they were telling me.  Yet, something still nags me about that advice.  It is the part about “keeping your head down.”  How many people get this type of advice and rather than contribute to change within an organization, they unknowingly guarantee that things will stay the same?  By keeping your head down, you will undoubtedly reach your financial, social, or academic goal, but what would it have cost you and what will it cost the people who come after you?  Folks kept their heads down while their Jewish neighbors were removed from their homes and transported to concentration camps.  Folks kept their heads down while four little black girls were bombed to death in a church basement on a Sunday morning. Keeping your head down may result in some good for you, but a whole lot of bad for someone else.  Speak up for others.  You never know when you will need someone to speak up for you.

5.  Befriend Someone of the Opposite Race.  Depending on your location or your age, making new friends can be challenging, but I encourage you to accept the challenge.  I also encourage you to go beyond a social media or text messaging friendship although this is a good start.  Embrace the discomfort and seek out someone with a different skin tone, belief system, or sexuality preference and befriend them.  Is there someone on your job, at your church, at the gym, or at your favorite grocery store that you keep running into?  Is it possible for you to introduce yourself, strike up a conversation and begin the process of getting to know them?  Can you invite someone to lunch-someone who doesn’t fit in your group and makes you a bit uncomfortable?   If you allow your assumptions to dictate who you will and won’t befriend, you will most likely miss some great opportunities, partnerships, and friendships.  Yes, it is always more comfortable to be around people that talk, think, and act like you, but this is also exactly why we have so much division and racism in our country today.  We refuse to move out of our safe boxes of agreement and engage with different viewpoints and life experiences.

6.  Stop Segregating Your Kids.   I know this one is a tough one.  But if your child grows up around people that think, act, and look like them, how will they ever be able to relate to people that are different from them?  Let me be completely transparent.  My family and I live in a very culturally mixed apartment complex and the complex has its own daycare facility which has been really convenient for us.  We don’t have to fight traffic or put the boys in a car to take them to daycare.  We merely push them in the stroller on a short 5-minute walk.  The daycare is the most diverse daycare facility I have ever seen.  My oldest son’s best friend is an Arabic boy from Saudi Arabia.  His mother, like me, is working on her PhD.  His other best friend is a little girl from China who hugs him every day. The boys adore their teachers who all appear to be non-native English speakers, and their teachers seem to adore them, but in spite of all this, Richard and I were not satisfied with their multicultural experience.  We wanted to find a daycare where they could be supported in their blackness and develop confidence in an all-black environment.  That is something that we have been discussing even before the boys were born.  We did not want them in a place where they felt isolated, ostracized, or invisible so although they were being exposed to various cultures, we preferred Blackness. We actually found a place that fit all of our requirements.  The owner of the daycare is black.  Almost all of the teachers are black.  Most of the kids are black.  It was a top-notch facility, with an awesome learning curriculum and extracurricular activities.  We had found our pot of gold, but really we hadn’t.  The more we talked, the more we realized that what we were attempting to do with our sons is what many people who are fleeing public schools are doing for their kids.  They are leaving environments that don’t fit or line up with their personal ideas or goals.  Now, hear me out.  By no means, do I think cultural support is not important.  I wish I would have had more teachers of color along my academic journey.  In my four years of undergraduate studies, I had one professor of color.  During my Master’s programs, I also only had one professor of color.  That is a problem.  I also think it is a problem that there are so few black males teaching in elementary and middle schools.  My husband and I are doing all we can to surround the boys with images of themselves in the books we read to them, the shows they watch on television, and the home environment we are creating for them.  Yet, we also have to start considering the consequences of our children growing up in silos. The world is vast.  It’s global.  It’s full of color and different languages.  Will your child be prepared to live and thrive in that world or are they being groomed to live and thrive in little boxes where they can avoid conflict, competition, and change?  Richard and I realized that what we do or don’t do in the home will have the largest impact on our sons.  If our sons have to constantly be in all-black environments to learn properly and feel good about themselves, something is wrong.  If the only exposure your children have with other racial groups is through television shows or the nightly news, what messages are being sent to them? The strength of our country has always been its diversity.  The girl on the ranch in Montana, the boy on the metro in Chicago, the girl on the farm in Texas, the boy on the beach in California, and the girl on the ice in Minnesota all have one thing in common.  They all represent the United States of America.  If you lose sight of this, your children will too and we will have to live through another #Charlottesville 20 years from now.

None of the changes I have suggested are easy.  As we speak, I am putting every single one of them into practice and the emotions I have experienced have been crazy.  That is why I also made the cover photo for this blog a picture of my sons.  When I look at them and consider the future I want them to have, I know that I have to keep pushing myself and challenging my own ideas.  It makes no sense at all that we are still talking about race in 2017.  Let us be the generation that changes that.  I believe it can happen, one person at a time.

 

Charlottesville is Us, But We Can Change

13 Sunday Aug 2017

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(7-minute read)

#Charlottesville was ugly, embarrassing, horrific, outrageous, disgusting, violent, racist, and yet very characteristic of the nature of our country.  #Charlottesville is us and has been us for a very long time.  Yet, we can change.  We just have to decide if we want to.  When I look at my sons and think about their future and the type of America they will inherit from me and my generation, I definitely want to create change.  When they grow up and become men, I don’t want them grappling with images of white supremacist groups fully clothed in militia gear yelling “you will not replace us.” Likewise, I definitely don’t want them growing up having to convince other fellow Americans that their “black lives matter.”  An entire generation of men and women braved the KKK, endured lynchings, Jim Crow, water hoses, the murder of loved ones and verbal  and mental abuse so we could be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin and yet in 2017, we seem to be on the verge of repeating history.

One of the main reasons we are still dealing with the remnants of our past is that we are much more comfortable talking about the problem, blaming different groups for the problem, ignoring the problem, and hoping the problem just goes away.  It’s so much easier to remain on the surface of the problem.  And while we do those things, racism and prejudice persist. Dylan Roof was 21 when he went into Emanuel AME church and killed 9 people.  James Smith, the guy who rammed his car into a crowd of people in Charlottesville, Virginia killing a woman and injuring several others, is 20.  Racism and prejudice are not dying out.  Instead its thriving and just coming of age.

Below are my first three considerations on how to counter the racism that seems so foundational to America. I have nine suggestions in total but to keep the blogs a reasonable length, I am only posting three at a time.  These first three are personal.  The next three are more public and the last three are collective.  If you can commit to doing just one of them, we will all be much better off.

1.  Deal with your own prejudice.  Before you post or refer to the oft-used Dr. King quote, “…hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that,” commit to dealing with your own prejudice.  All of us have to check our propensities to treat other groups differently.  How do you really feel about black people? White people? Gay people? Transgender people? Latino people? Dark skinned people? Light skinned people? Poor people? Rich people? Take some time to really think about your thoughts towards other groups that are different from you?  Do you truly see them as equals?  If a Mexican family moved in across the street from you, how would you react? If you found out your son’s favorite teacher was gay, what would you do? If a white man wanted to marry your black daughter, how would you feel? If a black female pastor replaces your retiring white male pastor, would you remain a member? In your personal quiet time, ask yourself how you really feel about other groups and deal with your own answers.  The only reason love drives out hate is because love requires truth.  Without truth, love becomes tolerance and tolerance will never drive out hate.  Tolerance only masks hate.

2.   Deal with your fear.  When the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished in America, new fears developed on each side of the color line.  White people, particularly in the South where blacks were the vast majority in some states, feared retaliation. They also feared the loss of social, political and economic positioning that the free labor of slavery had helped afford them.  To counter this fear, many laws and codes were enacted to make sure that freedmen would have to remain in subservient positions.  For example, after slavery was abolished, it was illegal for freedmen to be educated, to assemble together in public without a white person present, and it was also unlawful for freedmen to have guns.  (Please research Black Codes to learn more about these cruel laws).  This fear is also why the KKK was established to help ensure that blacks remained in positions of inferiority and under threat of imprisonment, death, or violence.  For newly freed blacks there were also fears that surfaced for obvious reasons.  First, there was the internal challenge of dealing with freedom for the first time.  Most freedmen had seen all of their ancestors die as slaves.  They would be given the huge responsibility to live under their own constraints with little training, little education, few mentors, and hardly any financial support.  Additionally, freedmen also lived with the fear of white supremacy.  Lynchings were common.  The KKK was rampant.  State laws did not protect people of color and juries rarely if ever voted in favor of a black person. Although free in form, in practice many freedmen were still under invisible bondages and shackles to Jim Crow. These were two sets of fears for two different groups.  For whites, the fear of retaliation and loss of position.  For blacks, the fear of violence, imprisonment, and of always being in subservient positions.  These fears arguably are still just as relevant in 2017.  #Charlottesville illustrates that.  The political rhetoric of today echoes that.  Philando Castille’s murder with no conviction mirrors that.  The fear of loss of self or position is so strong that it has blinded our country from realizing what we are capable of gaining if we would just look beyond our own skin tone. It is time each of us asked ourselves, “Why am I so afraid of that group of humans?” Why won’t I ask a person of the opposite race out on a date? Why do I refuse to greet the same sex couple that moved into my neighborhood? When the Arabic girl in my son’s school invited him to her birthday party, why did I make up an excuse to say no? What is so threatening about a black man walking down the street that I immediately clutch my purse and avoid making eye contact?  Admittedly, this is difficult. I am asking you to be vulnerable. I am doing the same thing with my own fears. After watching the countless videos of 13-year old Tamir Rice gunned down by police for carrying a toy gun, after watching Sandra Bland be taken to jail for no real reason and finding out later that she died behind bars, after watching Philando die on video as his girlfriend tried to make sense of what had just happened, fear gripped me like a plague. I found myself unable to sleep until my husband, who leaves to go to work at 3:30 in the morning, had texted me to say he arrived safely. My mind was full of fearful scenarios of the police stopping him, questioning him, finding him to be a threat and shooting him. My fears were real, justifiable, and consuming me mentally and emotionally. They were also changing me and I found myself building up a wall of resentment toward police officers, white people, Donald Trump voters, America in general. That’s no way to live. Fear is consuming and most dangerous is that your children will pick up on those fears as well.  I cannot say that all my fear has subsided as it relates to all these awful police shootings of unarmed black and brown bodies, but I am much better and I have learned not to let that fear control or dictate how I live my life. If you really want change, you will have to deal with your own fears first.  Fear always causes us to make the wrong decisions and draw the wrong conclusions. Fear made people put white sheets over their faces and burn crosses in their neighbor’s yards. Fear got Rosa Parks arrested for sitting in the front of a bus and not in the back. Fear made people write Jackie Robinson angry hate letters for hitting a baseball in an all white league. Fear lashes out at Colin Kaepernick for being unpatriotic while the same fear kept black soldiers from receiving GI bills for housing and schooling after returning from serving their country in world wars. Lastly, fear makes good people remain silent on bad issues. It’s your choice to deal with your fears. Just know they are dealing with you.

3. Stop dismissing, belittling, excusing, and ignoring the impact of slavery on America past, present and future.  The truth is slavery-not freedom-founded this country.  Slaves fought in the Revolutionary War.  Before America had gained its own freedom, it had been taking freedom away from others for over 100 years. Moreover, our first president, George Washington, owned over 300 slaves.  Thomas Jefferson, our third president, owned over 600.  Slavery didn’t just build the White House physically.  It built the White House politically.  It also shaped us religiously, socially, and economically.  To dismiss over 250 years of slavery in a country that only just celebrated its 241st birthday is absurd.  Our legacy of slavery is longer than our legacy of freedom.  To deny that legacy and to ignore it is to do so at your own peril.  We cannot heal what we won’t reveal.  We cannot create a new foundation if we won’t acknowledge and than dismantle our old foundation.  This is why #Charlottesville keeps happening.  We must address the elephant in the room called slavery.  You must personally take the time to understand the impact of taking a group of people (over 10 million) and stripping them from their homeland, their language, their religions, their culture, and their families. You must take the time to understand the racial relationships developed within our American ancestries…the stories of enslaved babies torn from their enslaved mother’s arms  and those same enslaved mothers having to nurse white babies that would grow up to be their new masters and overseers.  You must take the time to understand the impact of a newly freed black man trying to locate his two children that were sold down in Georgia, and the wife that was sold in Virginia so he could make a new home for them in North Carolina.  You must take the time to understand how the Bible Belt was also the home of slavery; how good Christian people whipped their slaves Monday through Saturday, and preached to them on Sunday.  Those pains, those contradictions are not easily broken.  You do not just get over generational tragedies.  Healing occurs when we face our past, not when we ignore it.  Yes, not all white people owned slaves.  Yes, not every black and brown person in America is a descendant of slaves.  Yet, neither did everyone fight in the Revolutionary War, yet we all like to celebrate the Fourth of July.  Being a true patriot is not just about acknowledging the good parts of American history.  It also means acknowledging the bad parts of American history.   #Charlottesville is us, largely because we have ignored the legacy of slavery and the racist foundation that it developed.  We can change it, but we have to individually stop ignoring it and wishing it would just go away. Are you ready to face the past legacy of slavery so we can create a new future?

I look forward to taking this journey of change with you and sharing my own challenges and successes.  In a few days, I will post three more ways we can reverse the effects of racism on our country.  In the meantime, I hope you will share things that you are committing to do to make this country truly the land of the Free and the home of the Brave.

Remember, be the change you want to see. Our futures will either reproduce the past or create a new future. It’s your move. Choose wisely.