Friday, September 4, 2015

Martin Luther King Jr. Can’t Share His Opinion of Black Lives Matter

I understand people like presidential candidate Governor Mike Huckabee who object to the use of the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” I am a straight white U.S. American male. I grew up an upper middle-class family, child of a male who had a professional career outside of the home and a female who had a domestic career within it.  I was taught that our differences don’t matter, that it’s the ways we’re the same that matter.  No matter what your race color or creed, we’re all Americans first.  And since our differences don’t matter, we don’t talk about them.  Highlighting our differences is the first step to racism.  How can we treat everyone the same if were thinking about the ways we're different?
What Gov. Huckabee had to say in a recent interview on The Situation Room is perfectly aligned with what I learned about race growing up: "When I hear people scream, 'black lives matter,' I think, 'Of course they do.' But all lives matter. It's not that any life matters more than another. That's the whole message that Dr. King tried to present, and I think he'd be appalled by the notion that we're elevating some lives above others.”
The continuing process by which I came to hold the racial beliefs that I currently do, ones very different from the one’s I was raised with, is not only too long and complex for these pages, but is also, in many ways, not available to my conscious mind.  It involves study with powerful practitioners in the multiculturalism field. It involves having meaningful relationships with people who are not only of other races but exceptionally warm, open, and patient with me.  It involves crippling bouts of foot-in-mouth disease, attacks of which I have on a regular basis.  It involves much, much more.
One of the most important things I have learned as a white person who is committed to racial equity is to listen to non-whites in the knowledge that they are capable of analyzing their experience much more accurately than I am. This doesn’t mean I must uncritically believe anything that anyone who isn’t white says, but I do have to respect others’ perspectives. Based on what many people of color are saying in general, and the specific feedback I get from the people of color in my life, I feel as if my understanding of the phrase Black Lives Matter is informed by the experience of my brothers and sisters of color. One of the reasons people of color are using the phrase Black Lives Matter is not because they think that black lives matter more than other lives. It is because they have the experience that many individuals and our society as a whole do not behave as if black lives actually matter as much as white ones.  Most people I know hold to the belief that one should care about one’s fellow human beings.  Certainly Gov. (and Reverend) Huckabee does.  When someone we care about says, “the behavior that you are engaging in makes me feel as if I do not matter to you,” what is an appropriate response? Should we be offended? Should we tell them that their perception of reality is wrong?  Should we ignore the data that they present to us upon which their belief is founded?  Should we value their silence and our comfort over their perception of what is in their best interest?
Sometimes it feels like we whites are purposefully shutting out the experiences of people of color.  Those of us who see the marginalization, and in many cases murder, of people of color can feel frustrated to the point of outrage. Gov. Huckabee’s statement is an excellent example of this.  Reduced to its face value the statement that Dr. King would be appalled at the notion that some lives matter more than others is probably true. I hesitate to put any words into the mouth of any person of color, let alone the great Dr. King’s.  But the context of the statement goes deeper. 
One context is the actual reducing of the statement to its face value. Reductionism is a value within white culture that has led to much success.  I’m not saying that no one other than whites engage in reductionism, and I’m not saying that all whites do all the time, but I am saying that breaking concepts down to smaller parts so that we can study and understand them is central to the white mindset.  (I’m also not saying that I don’t expect the comment section of this blog post to fill up with the appalled protestations of my white brothers and sisters who read this post and out of its entirety perceive only the statement: ”Only white people reduce and they reduce everything always!” On the contrary, I do.) 
Another context, which is less reductionist, is historical.  Dr. King was born a few months before my still living father. If he were alive today he could quite possibly be a robust 86 years old and we very likely would’ve been able to hear Dr. King’s opinion about the Black Lives Matter movement directly from the man himself. Unfortunately, Dr. King was murdered by a white man, one who very likely held the opinion that black lives do not matter as much as white ones. For Gov. Huckabee to invoke the example of murdered, black Martin Luther King Jr. to rally against a movement that identifies itself as Black Lives Matter is at its simplest thoughtlessness to the point of dangerousness.  How are we to trust the governor’s motives when his actions lack such basic historical perspective?  How can we be surprised when we act similarly and our brothers and sisters of color do not trust us? Do good intentions trump negative impact?  Not when the impact is on you.
Since April 4, 1968 our world has been without Dr. King; without his insights and inspiration; without his passion for justice; without his skill as an organizer.  His children have been without their father, his wife without her husband. What might the people of the Black Lives Matter movement be doing right now if Dr. King’s life had mattered more than it did to James Earl Ray?

Sunday, August 16, 2015

7 Things We White People Can Do When We’ve Said or Done Something Biased

It’s a painful truth that just about everybody has preconceived notions about other people, sometimes based on their racial identity. We whites spend a lot of our lives bombarded with messages in the media and from those around us about what people of other races are like and how they behave, often based on irrelevant or vastly misunderstood ideas of the lived experiences of members of other groups (whiteness and the media being a huge topic in and of itself for another time). This is compounded by the fact that many of us whites spend very little time in the company of people who are racially different from us. For those of us who do, if we ask ourselves honestly how close we are to people of other races, we often discover that we only have passing relationships with them. We don’t have dinner at each other’s houses nor do our kids have play dates with theirs. This is not to suggest that anyone reading this should run out and find a new friend of a different race: it’s just to be frank about some of the realities of the way many of us live race in the USA.

Of course, none of us wants to be biased. In the waiting room before we came to earth as children, we didn’t tick the boxes; “Blond hair: check. Blue eyes: check. Unconscious negative racial bias: check.” Our unconscious racial biases are inherited from our exposure to the system of racial bias. But just because we inherited them doesn't mean they’re not ours, any less than our (metaphorical) blond hair and blue eyes are ours. And just like anything that resides in our unconscious, our biases can rear their misinformed heads and lead us to say or do some pretty stinky stuff sometimes. When we do, here’s a list of suggestions that might help to process that lousy feeling, grow through it, take responsibility for ourselves, and become less likely to act out our biases in the future.

1. Admit it to ourselves. If we’ve said or done something to expose them, staying in denial doesn't hide our unconscious biases from others, only from ourselves. Being able to admit that we’ve done it, or err on the side of believing we have when we aren’t sure, is the most basic thing we can do to move in a new direction. While we don’t want to be cavalier about our biases, in my experience people of other races are often not surprised when a white person around them says something racially naive. They see it a lot. One of the reasons it’s important to deal maturely with ourselves when we’ve done it is to not make the racial burden of others any heavier.

2. Accept it. One of the worst things a person can be in our society is racist. It’s so bad that a card carrying member of the KKK will tell you that, “I’m not racist, I’m just fighting for the survival of my own race,” as if we whites are somehow a dwindling race, or it’s a bad thing for the races to live and love closely. How much harder is it for us well-meaning whites that think the races should live in harmony and that fairness should rule? Admitting we have biases is very different from deciding to act out on them. Accepting them makes it possible for us to confront them head on.

3. Take responsibility for our feelings. Saying or doing something that exposes our unconscious bias is a painful and often embarrassing thing. For many of us, the need to feel relief from feelings of guilt or shame becomes our number one priority and, in one way or another, we try to get the person who was the target of our bias to help us feel better by telling us it wasn’t biased (as if they know our inner lives better than we do), telling us that they weren’t offended or annoyed (what if they were?), or any number of other ways we can enlist them to help us feel better. In doing this, that person has now not only just been the target of our bias, adding an unpleasant experience to her or his day, but is now being asked to help us manage our feelings about it. That’s doubly unfair! If we can’t handle the feelings we’re having, we should talk with a person we know and trust and who won’t minimize the importance of our awareness development. If we don’t have anyone like that in our lives, we should get someone.

4. Admit it, if appropriate, to the person/people that were the target of our bias. This is a tricky one. The first priority should be the experience of the other person. If we feel that we can safely contain our feelings and not ask the other person to do any emotional or psychological work for us, and if saying something won’t make it more awkward for the other person, then an honest apology can be a good thing. Maybe we can say something like: “You know, I think what I just said came from a biased place. While I didn’t intend for it to happen, I take responsibility for it and I apologize.” If the other person wants to talk about it then perhaps we can talk more. But it’s important not to force the other person into a discussion about race. They’re not there to teach us about it. They might just want to get their groceries, or get off the bus, or whatever they were doing before we came along.

5. Don’t let it end there. And since they’re not there to teach us about race, it’s our responsibility to educate ourselves about it. There are hundreds of great resources. There are books like, A Race is a Nice Thing to Have by Janet Helm which is a primer on white racial identity awareness development; The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter; White Over Black by Winthrop Jordan, to name a few. There are fantastic groups that offer training on race, such as the Undoing Racism Workshop offered by The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. The organization Training for Change offers various workshops. My blog, Middling to Fair, has a number of resources and you’re always welcome to connect with me there. 

6. Compassion, compassion, compassion. While racial inequity is a burden for people who are its targets, in a more subtle way, we whites are also damaged by it. We are given bad information from an early age that actually separates us from our fellow humans, makes us less aware of our realities, leads to us being more emotionally brittle than we might be otherwise, and subtly manipulates us into perpetuating the biases that are foisted upon us. The most powerful tool we have to fight that is compassion for ourselves in the process of becoming more fully aware of who we are as racial beings. Being compassionate does not mean relinquishing our responsibility to grow and treat people fairly. It means that we acknowledge that we are flawed humans that make mistakes. It means moving beyond our own guilt and towards greater love for our fellow humans and ourselves. It means refusing to beat anyone, including ourselves, into submission, but inviting all, including ourselves, into inclusion.

7. Repeat.  We are people in a process of personal development. It is a journey that may have a goal but never has an end. When we think we’ve arrived all that’s really happened is we’ve stopped moving. We should expect that we’ll say or do something biased again, and when we do, we can commit to growing through it again.
 

Sunday, February 15, 2015

It's On Me

Some comments about the Teachers College Winter Roundtable

Yesterday and the day before were The Winter Roundtable at Teachers College which, to quote their website, is “the longest running continuing professional education program in the United States devoted solely to cultural issues in psychology and education.” One of the highlights for me was the plenary session which included speeches by and conversation between Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D, and Dr. Joseph L. White. Dr. White shared his experience of being the first Black PhD psychology student at The University of Michigan and among the first in the US.
Dr. White's description of his strategy process within the White dominated system was powerful to hear. His ability to understand social networks and the impact of White supremacy on his choices both early in his career and in the current times are great lessons for me as a White practitioner, both to give me more insight into the added bandwidth that people of color are forced to bring to their work compared to us Whites, the importance of applying strategy to my own work, especially in the context of my racial awareness development work.
Drs White's and Parham’s relationship was also a great pleasure to experience such as we were invited into it during their interactions on the stage. I was left with a feeling of admiration that would be akin to Mudita, from the Buddhist term meaning appreciative joy at the success and good fortune of others.

Yesterday I presented my workshop, “It’s On Me: Processing Our Microaggressions.” It was designed to create a space for people from privileged groups, especially Whites, to discuss and strategize how we deal with our own unconscious bias, especially when we have committed a microaggression. In the context of The Roundtable, there were a number of people of color, more than whites, so that the conversation naturally turned to strategizing around being the recipient of MA’s at times, but it was refreshing to see people of all groups consider and speak relatively freely about their experiences, concerns, worries, and triumphs in dealing with their own unconscious biases. It’s never an easy thing to keep people focused on things that cause them discomfort, and what could be more uncomfortable than having acted out unconscious bias?
I'm looking forward to the next opportunity to deliver this workshop.