Women and Anti-Racism

Hi Friends,

I want to take this opportunity to highlight an article by Courtney Napier called “The Fetishization of Antiracism Work” on her Know Better Do Better blog. The whole article is worth a read, but I want to call attention to the sections below in particular. She’s writing about antiracism work as a whole and how it has been twisted and distracted from its goals.

“The goal is to subvert the entire system. It is to devise a new way to be with one another. It is to undermine every lie, including that anyone inherently embodies an ideology of racial superiority that one cannot rid themselves of.”

This is what I’ve been circling around, especially after my recent trainings with White Awake, about how we need to acknowledge the privilege that white supremacy gives to White people AND ALSO that those privileges are not the natural order of things, that we could choose to live in a world in which those privileges are just the human rights that everyone has (or no one has, depending on which privilege we’re talking about — I wrote about this before here, regarding the Two Faces of Privilege).

Napier continues:

“White supremacy is evil and should be called out in all of its ways. However, there is a difference between calling out racism accurately and conflating someone’s humanity and capacity based on an act of racism. When the call out goes past the action-and-damage and into the space of dominance and humiliation (you must do this, and if you don’t, you are irreparable and worthless), it’s no longer about liberation and instead about humiliation.”

This goes beyond “calling people in” and is especially important for White people doing this work. Antiracist work must come from a place of respect for each person’s humanity, even when a person is saying or doing harmful things. We stray from the path of progress if our antiracist focus is competitive or judgemental when any of us make mistakes. We are also more likely to send people further into embracing white supremacy if we do not make each other feel welcome and accepted and that we have faith in each other to do this work. The harm can be addressed and repaired without anyone losing their humanity.

She also addresses White women in particular:

“White women also need to heal. Instead of gravitating to humiliation for pleasure and identity, white women must reconnect with their power and consequently their responsibility as change-makers in society. White women need to stop exploiting Black women educators, using their intellect for their own emotional appeasement. White women must stop treating these relationships as transactional, that you are somehow achieving antiracism by paying a Black woman to berate you and letting her live to tell the tale, this time.”

I have written about not asking BIPOC to explain things to you, but this takes things a step further. White people can imagine that taking classes, reading books, going to a book club, or having a Black friend means that we have done enough. We are not absolved of doing further work, we have not checked a box of wokeness that gets us off the hook of doing the hard work on ourselves.

Further on White women:

“White women must stop identifying with shame and fragility. It’s harmful to the psyche, but it’s also simply untrue. Consciously or unconsciously, it becomes a place of retreat when the pressures of society’s expectations become too heavy to bear. Like Black people, white women know so little of their history, especially their role as disrupters of the status quo. Instead, our collective narrative often sees them as only self-interested — no matter their political allegiance. Or they are depicted as the pawns of powerful white men. Either way, they are painted as partially awake and disinterested in collective liberation.” [emphasis mine]

Knowing our history, understanding our powerful role in society, is essential. I encourage you to do some research about female “disruptors of the status quo” of all races and political parties, to be inspired by the power of women when we resist harmful stereotypes or low expectations. You might start with Anne Braden and I’d love to hear your suggestions of others.

Emily
Listen. Amplify. Follow. In Solidarity.

Community

Hi Friends,

Happy March! I hope you’re all well.

I have been finding music to be particularly compelling lately and I wanted to share some inspiration with you. First, I want to highlight two Black female artists who have used their musical talents to draw direct attention to racism and the need for change: Mickey Guyton (especially “Black Like Me”) and Whitney Parnell, who just dropped her debut album last month (“What Will You Do”), whose name should sound familiar because I’m so grateful for her organization, Service Never Sleeps. Please check them both out and support their efforts to bring the truth into the light.

Second, I’ve been thinking a lot about community — how we define it for ourselves, how we take care of each other, how it connects to solidarity — and two songs have really inspired me. The first is “Humbling River” by Puscifer and the second is “Crowded Table” by The Highwomen. I hope you enjoy them.

I find that certain experiences, like listening to music, connects with my emotions and an overwhelming feeling of belonging and solidarity. I am not generally a fan of crowds (even before the pandemic), but these moments are consistently positive and memorable, a primal connection to fellow human beings. For example, when a massive crowd at a music concert is cheering or singing along; when our car is one of thousands on a slow pilgrimage into the mountains to enjoy the snow; and, when my voice is one of many others singing together in a choir. I get goosebumps just writing about these experiences — what are your connections to community?

I think we define our communities differently depending on the context. Sometimes we’re focused on our household and nothing else. Other times, we’re called to consider people in another part of the world our community and we send donations or positive thoughts their way. I think what I’m trying to approach is how we think a little more permanently about who we have a responsibility to, who we want to be in solidarity with, whose wellbeing we want to have allied with ours.

We are all constrained by our time and energy, and I’m not asking for any one person to try to care deeply for every single person they encounter on a given day. I think what I’m approaching is how to engage with people in our lives (either temporarily or more long-term) in a way that centers our humanity and basic respect. In many ways, our social structures encourage competition, scarcity, and isolation. The pandemic has made this even more stark and painful. The way through the things that divide us, the fear that makes us shrink from change, is compassion and love.

This is an incredibly vulnerable way to approach the world, gently with your heart and mind open, willing to make a meaningful connection with a stranger or someone you already know. It’s not something we’re likely to be capable of every moment of every day, so it is a goal to strive for. We cannot make meaningful change together if we do not see each other or understand how intrinsically linked we all are.

I cannot recommend Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us highly enough. Much of what I have been writing about in the last few posts have been inspired by her writing and I haven’t even finished the book yet. She lays out so clearly how harmful white supremacy is to all of us (yes, even White people) and how we must understand our history to see how the structures in place are things that can be changed. I am inspired by her work.

Emily
Listen. Amplify. Follow. In Solidarity.

Scarcity and Hoarding

Hi Friends,

Happy 2022! We’re still here, still holding on. Thank you for continuing this work into the new year.

Last time, I talked about our actions as a society from a scarcity mentality, which reinforces a hierarchy of human value and prevents a focus on universal human rights. I’d like to look at scarcity in more detail, especially as it pertains to resource and opportunity hoarding. (Whytni, thank you for asking me about this!)

One example of scarcity is Black Friday, especially this past year because of supply chain challenges (which continue). Remember at the beginning of the pandemic, the panicked run on toilet paper and other essentials when things were shutting down in March 2020? Unfortunately, fear of scarcity can lead to actual scarcity. It’s a fair thing to be concerned that you won’t have the things you need, but fear can lead us to hoarding more than we need, thereby depriving others of what they need. And, the context of our culture means that we’re told from every angle that we need more things than we actually do.

I’m thinking a lot about scarcity in the context of education because for many school districts around the country, it’s school choice time. I recently read Learning In Public and it has some really on-the-nose observations about the panic parents engage in when they try to get “the best” school for their kids. The experience, from everyone I have talked to, is pretty awful, sometimes damaging relationships, inducing high amounts of stress, and even affecting our kids’ well-being. Why do we do this? (Fear.) What are we afraid of? (Failure — as defined by others.)

Consider these questions:
- What would an abundance of quality education look like?
- Can we use our impulse to get the best for our kids to instead advocate for quality education for every kid?
- What do we value in a school that might better serve our children (and all children)?
- Do we want our children to attend certain schools because “everyone says it’s the best” or for our own reasons?
- How do our choices ensure that some schools have more resources and opportunities for students than others?
- What could we change so that every school has adequate resources and opportunities to offer their students?
(Shout out to Integrated Schools, yet again, and especially their Awkward Conversations guide.)

We don’t have to fear scarcity and spend hours going on school tours or bribing administrators or despairing that we will fail our children and their futures. We can choose to stop hoarding the “best” schools and instead change what role we want our schools to play in our childrens’ lives. Wikipedia had a very insightful paragraph about this:

“In the school context, opportunity hoarding contributes to the educational achievement gap when parents ensure that their children to get all the educational needs that they believe their children need to have so they “do not fail” in both school and the greater economic environment among their peers, the workplace to the disadvantage of students from historically marginalized groups.” and “…opportunity hoarding has been identified as one of the components of collective violence that sustain a spectrum of inequalities between members of a society.”

There are so many examples of the ways White, privileged families make these hoarding choices. One of the most striking examples to me was hearing about resource hoarding in the gifted community. Families scrambling to find support for their gifted students were keeping the resources they found to themselves, refusing to share information or opportunities with each other because they were so panicked about getting those things only for their kid. What does this teach our children about being in community with others? How does this cutthroat mindset make us feel? Is this how we want to live?

I’m so inspired by the stories I hear from you about your anti-racist work in your communities. I want to share something from one of my former colleagues in Arlington’s CCPTA. She spoke up at a School Board meeting connecting advantaged children and disadvantaged children by pointing out that one kid can be both simultaneously. She wanted to call attention to the divisive idea that equity “dumbs down standards for [white] children.” Her approach resists divisions, instead focusing on what communities need to do in order to love every child in their schools. (You can hear her words in the November 16 meeting at 38:35.)

I also appreciated Miriam A. Rollin’s description of what education equity looks like (you can ignore the headline and the beginning). If you’re at all concerned about the future of our democracy, education (equitable education) is at the heart of it. Nikole Hannah-Jones also touches on hoarding in her interview with Chris Hayes.

The perception that White students lose something when disadvantaged students have their needs addressed is a white supremacist message. It creates division among those who would unite, stokes fear instead of love or solidarity. It creates competition instead of community. Equity means that everyone gets what they need. The only thing lost by turning away from white supremacy is competitive advantage, like steroids in professional sports, a system of unfairness that takes away from all of us.

White supremacy in our culture keeps us in the childhood stage of being developmentally unable to share, grabbing for all of the toys in sight with a desperate “MINE!” Rejecting this mentality frees us all. We are stunted in our ability to resist because we have been fed fairy tales of the American Dream and fairness and equality. Our democracy, our country, is truly amazing AND flawed, just like each of us is neither all good or all bad. If we want to live up to its promises and inspiration, we must reject white supremacy and hear the truth.

Emily
Listen. Amplify. Follow. In Solidarity.