Prejudice is permeated. Laws need not apply.

Trayvon Martin shooting protest 2012 (Photo credit: david_shankbone)

The Trayvon Martin incident highlights in tragic detail the extent to which prejudice continues to permeate us.  Some say that we live in a post-racial world because Barack Obama is president.  Some say racism was so 1950s.  But what those people fail to understand is that discrimination is an attitude, not just a law.  The attitudes came first;  the laws were created to protect and enable the attitudes that were already mainstream.  This did not change, for hundreds of years.  To be sure, civil rights and the end of segregation mean a great deal, but it does not mean that prejudice is erased.

One might even argue that in some ways, civil rights laws merely push underground what was blatant in previous years.  Still today, for example, we see white flight in cities across the country.  Since segregation laws no longer require separation, and redlining is illegal, white families are doing just fine separating themselves, thank you very much.  In addition, the criminal (in)justice system is doing a bang-up  pretty good job of replacing slavery in the case of African American men (see Michelle Alexander for much more on this).   And then, we come to George Zimmerman’s racially-charged murder of Trayvon Martin.  Zimmerman was acting on a prejudice that lies within all of us.  We learn it so early in our lives that by the time we are old enough to notice, it is as familiar to us as our name.    If we really want a post-racial society, what do we do about this?

My solution is education, reflection, and self-growth (this solution, by the way, is the essence of Multicultural Education).  Psychologically speaking, we all feed ourselves both positive and negative messages.  About ourselves, and about others.  The most effective way to stop the negative messages is to first become aware of their existence.  We do not realize we are being too hard on ourselves, for example, until someone else points it out.  So, becoming aware of negative stereotypes you hold against yourself and others is required if you want to stop being controlled by those stereotypes (something I was trying to impart on my neighbor, without success).   In this instance, ask yourself – what negative images/messages do I believe about [insert marginalized group here]?   And this is not just about race, either. It’s about our beliefs and attitudes toward sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, language, body size, height, age, and so much more.

Changing worldviews and ideologies of millions of people takes a long, long time.  I don’t know if I will see a major shift in racial attitudes in my lifetime.  But I do hope, for all the victims of racial violence, that each tragedy opens a conversation about injustice that we can no longer ignore.  As James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Trayvon Martin, Neighborhood Watch and The Fear of Clothing

By now you have probably heard of the 17-year old Trayvon Martin, who was murdered by George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain.  He claims he was acting in self defense, even though Mr. Martin was unarmed – carrying only a bag of skittles and a can of iced tea.  At this time, Zimmerman has not been arrested – and he murdered Trayvon last month.Out of this tragedy comes a conversation that is long overdue, about the fear and prejudice that many people still harbor deep down about African Americans – particularly, African American men.  About the fact that an innocent teenager could be walking down the street, talking on the phone to his girlfriend about how he is terrified of the man (Zimmerman) who seemed to be following him, and ends up dead because his clothes fit the description of ‘thug’.

My neighborhood watch has a Facebook page where we share safety concerns.   Several times in the past few months there have been racially-fueled comments that were very offensive.

I posted about Trayvon Martin as a reminder of what can happen when our prejudices overcomes us.  One response I received was from a middle-aged white guy: “people like Zimmerman scare me alot more than “suspicious” teenagers walking down the street. I’m covered in tattoos and wear Black Sabbath t-shirts, so an idiot like Zimmerman would probably try to shoot a suspicious person like me too.”   In response to that, another man said:

Yep...this kid is definitely up to no good. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“I’d be less afraid of you in a t-shirt than a teen in a hoodie.”

His reasoning?

“It’s pretty hard to hide a gun in a t-shirt.”

I suppose he neglected to consider the most prominent methods of concealing a weapon, which is in your waistband and/or holster under your clothes – no hoodies required.  Other common concealment locations include a backpack, purse, or vehicle.  And yet, it is the image of a teenager wearing a hoodie that strikes fear into this man’s heart. According to this man, teenagers wearing hoodies are quite obviously the biggest threat to our personal security.  According to this man, my neighbor, people like Zimmerman are the heroes.

He ended his comment with this:  “I can pretty much tell who’s from the neighborhood and who’s not; read into that what you will…I am not going to walk on eggshells. I see anyone suspicious, and I will act accordingly.”

Note that he said if he ‘sees anyone suspicious’…he does not seem to care if they are doing anything suspicious, just their very existence could be suspicious.  Zimmerman had the same perspective.  And this is reminiscent of the way in which we called undocumented immigrants “illegals“….just their very existence is called into question – not just their actions.  When I mentioned that perhaps it’s a good idea to question our ideas about what should be deemed ‘suspicious’, I was told by this person that “this is a neighborhood crime watch group, not a Buddhist self-realization group.”  It is disheartening that people – in my neighborhood no less – consider self-growth and reflection to be so unwarranted as to only belong in a Buddhist environment – implying that these skills are not something that any  Judeo-Christian person should be involved in.  What a tragedy for our society – for our collective future.

Read up, educate yourself:

#millionhoodie march (Twitter)

Fox News & Trayvon Martin (Mother Jones)

The Murder of Trayvon Martin (boing boing)

Standing Your Ground and Vigilantism (National Review Online)

Trayvon Martin: The Lingering Memory of Dead Boys (NPR)

Why Gay Folks Should Care About Trayvon Martin’s Case (HuffPost)

What it Means to Look “Suspicious” 

Eight Things Whites Can Do To Be Anti-Racist

The other day I was conversing with folks on Twitter about what it means to be white and anti-racist, and whether it is possible, considering Derrick Bell‘s theory of Interest Convergence, to be anti-racist without having some self-interest in the outcome.  I commented that I believe it is in everyone’s interest to be anti-racist because the oppression of one holds the entire society back.  There is no true success that comes from privilege if someone else has been oppressed in order for me to “succeed”.

Out of that conversation and further reflection, I came up with this list!

Eight Things Whites Can Do To Be Anti-Racist (Not Just Less Racist)

“I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group” ~Peggy McIntosh

8.   Don’t assume that racism is gone just because of the Civil Rights Act or Brown vs. Board of Education.   This is a fallacy that a lot of white people want to believe.  It is your responsibility to have your eyes open and to be able to identify the current sources and causes of oppression and racism.

Given the way that whiteness has been rendered invisible in our society, much of our training as white people has taught us to see racism and racial hierarchies as normal. This is probably our single greatest challenge as allies. Even as we work to end racism, it is constantly cultivated in the world around us and in ourselves. We need to persistently root it out. ¹

7.  Learn American history.  Not the history you were taught in school, because that’s not accurate history.  Read A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America and A People’s History of the United States, for a start.  (Here’s the graphic adaptation of A People’s History, which would be great for kids and young adults – or anyone who doesn’t like to read.)  After you’ve read those, check out all the writers who wrote about oppression and white privilege way before any white people did: W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Sojourner Truth, Alice Walker, Richard Wright, Alex Haley, Audre Lorde, Harriet Ann Jacobs.

6. Understand White Privilege and be aware that you have it, all the time.  Read and reflect on Peggy McIntosh’s Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.  Share it with your friends and family; talk about it at work.

5.  Challenge yourself and your loved ones. Talk to your friends about white privilege and institutional discrimination. Be observant and mindful of your actions, and embrace the discomfort you may feel about being white in America.   Read Tim Wise’s We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know.  Remember that it is your responsibility to call attention to racist comments, prejudiced thinking, and discriminatory actions.  I know it’s difficult, but you aren’t truly an anti-racist if you can’t challenge racism when it happens around you.

4  Remember that race is a social construct. Race is a label someone is given based on their skin tone and physical characteristics.  A person’s race is externally decided and has nothing to do with genetics, culture, intellect, or personality. Read that again: a person’s race has no influence on their intelligence, ability to speak clearly, or their ability to learn.

3. Don’t believe the colorblind myth.   I wrote a while back about this topic in more detail. People of color are not just exactly like you, except a different skin color.  This is a perilous way of thinking which drastically diminishes the value of difference and diversity.  It also forces those real differences in culture, experience, and perspectives to be oppressed.

2.  Don’t pretend to be an expert or think that you truly understand what it is like for people of color in America.   Because you will never truly understand their struggle.  Humility on your part is required, and your role is to be a supporting voice to people of color.  Don’t let anybody tell you that whites should not be involved in anti-racist work, because if whites aren’t involved, then racism and oppression will never stop.

1. Do something with that all that privilege. So you’re white, and you have a lot of privilege.  This can include economic privilege, social privilege (knowing the right people), professional privilege (getting jobs because you’re presumed to be more competent/capable than others), educational privilege, and the list goes on and on.   So what are you going to do with all that privilege?  One of the best things to do is to use your privilege to create opportunities for people of color so that they can reach their full potential, too.

References

¹ Michael, A., and Conger, M.C. (2009). Becoming an Anti-Racist White Ally: How a White Affinity Group Can Help. Perspectives of Urban Education.

Weekly Progressive Scholar Reader

There’s been great activity in the blogosphere lately.  Here’s just a hodge-podge of what I’ve been reading:

From COLORLINES:

Senate Negotiations Narrow DREAM Act’s Scope as Vote Nears

Image via Wikipedia

Rosa Parks and the Love For Justice

(Celebrating the 55th Anniversary of Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.)

Campus Progress:

Pentagon Report on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t’ Tell Says Troops Are For Repeal

The Need for Unemployment Benefits Is Still Great

Celebrities’ Misguided Activism Compares Abstaining from Social Networking to Death

From EcoLocalizer:

Bicycle-Friendly University Award System

From Race-Talk:

World AIDS Day 2010: Victory and voice

ASU students rally to push passage of elusive DREAM Act

Why WikiLeaks is good for democracy

From Humane Connection:

Using a Little Sweat of Our Own to Find Out About Corporate Practices & Sweatshops

Dear Riki: Less Schtick, More Substance!

Ever since I read “Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer“, I have held Riki Wilchins as a role model and favorite queer theorist.  So you can imagine my glee (and my squeeee!) when I heard that she was slated to speak at my university.

Riki Wilchins (taken by Todd Franson, borrowed from metroweekly.com)

Having seen Angela Davis speak last year, I was expecting a brilliant speech about transgender issues and identities, an opportunity to open the door to more conversations of this sort and an increased awareness among the students, faculty and administrators in the audience. Instead, what we got was a whole lot of schtick and very little substance.

Mid-November Post Round-up

From Mother Jones: Closing the Achievement Gap: Race Still Matters:

“A new report (PDF) looking at math and reading proficiency among young black males in urban public schools concludes they’re doing even worse than is generally known, and poverty alone doesn’t explain it.  Most K-12 data is usually broken up by race or ethnicity, but not gender. What this sharpened interpretation reveals is that young black males face more obstacles to graduating from high school than any other subgroup, from living in a household without a male guardian, to more frequent encounters with overzealous cops, to higher dropout rates and more suspensions.”

From Pam’s House Blend: Disillusionment & Consequences: Moving Equality Forward After Setbacks:

“Now that a little time has passed after the midterm elections, it’s time for us to pick ourselves up and figure out how to move forward in a very different political climate. There has been much talk about voter disillusionment with the Democrats, especially in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender (LGBT) community, which voted for the GOP in much higher numbers than in previous cycles — even against their own interests and rights in many cases.”

From Tim Wise:  An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum:

“I know, you think you’ve taken “your country back” with this election — and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking, cuz that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how dare anyone else say otherwise — but you are wrong.”

In Remembrance: Recent LGBT Suicides

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

Clockwise: Billy Lucas, Asher Brown, Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh

In the past month, ten (ten!) lgbtq youth have taken their lives.  Every time I think about this my heart breaks and tears burn my eyes.  People like to think that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning individuals are completely accepted now, like there was some queer-friendly wave that rushed over the country after Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena’s tragic deaths in the 90s.

We are NOT a queer friendly nation. The resistance to ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and the gay marriage are not just political games, they have real impact on our youth. There is a not-so-subtle message in these arguments and debates;  our society’s resistance to these policies is based on deep-rooted homophobia and transphobia.

This post is dedicated to our fallen youth, who will never again get the chance to shine their brilliant lights on this world.  You will not be forgotten, and your legacy will push people (myself included) to work harder to stop the hate and bullying and violence.

Raymond Chase

Among the deceased are: 13-year-old Seth Walsh who after months of relentless bullying hanged himself from a tree outside his California home this week; Billy Lucas of Indiana, 15, who hanged himself after being called a “fag” over and over again; Asher Brown, 13, whose classmates teased him without mercy and acted out mock gay sex acts in class, shot himself in the head; and Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi who killed himself by jumping off a bridge after his roommate secretly recorded him with another male student, then broadcast the video online. (Source)

Jeanine Blanchette and Chantal Dube

We also remember Raymond Chase (pictured above), a student at Johnson & Wales in Providence, Rhode Island, who died by hanging himself in his dorm room;  21-year-old Jeanine Blanchette and 17-year-old Chantal Dube, a lesbian couple who committed a double suicide; Justin Aaberg, age 15, who hung himself; and Cody Barker, 17, Wisconsin.

Related Articles

• LGBT Community Mourns String of Suicides (chicagoist.com)

New report reveals that LGBT-friendly campuses aren’t really all that friendly.

This does not come as much of a shock to me;  I have attended universities deemed in the “Top 100″ from the Advocate and they were rarely LGBT-friendly.  How do we create truly friendly campuses?  I think it begins at the K-12 level and in teacher education programs.

I’ve included a segment (with emphasis added), but here’s the article from the Boston Edge.

The nation’s first comprehensive survey of LGBT students, faculty and staff at America’s colleges campuses was released Sept. 23 at a briefing hosted by openly gay members of Congress on Capitol Hill. Considering the reputation college campuses have of being ultra-liberal, trendy and sexually aware (not to mention relentless criticism from right-wing bloggers, talk radio hosts and religious leaders for it), the results were surprisingly downbeat.

Indeed, the survey is an eye-opener for those of — probably nearly all us, gay straight, left, right — complacent enough to believe that college life is a walk in the park (or on the campus). Even choosing one of those schools touted as being particularly “gay friendly” doesn’t guarantee a happy time in academia.

The 2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People reports on the experiences of nearly 6,000 students, faculty, staff and administrators in all 50 states. It shows significant harassment of students and a lack of safety and inclusiveness, even among those supposedly “welcoming” institutions.

As if to dramatize the report’s findings, on the same day advocates unveiled the study, members of the University of Rhode Island’s GLBT Center and Gay-Straight Alliance staged a sit-in to demand that its administration take immediate steps to ensure the safety and inclusion of LGBT students and employees after a rash of anti-gay incidents.

Harassment, the Closet, Even Physical Assaults
The survey’s key findings included these shocking statistics:

An Open Letter to Teachers Everywhere | Teaching Tolerance

I first read this letter last year, and continue to go back to it for inspiration.  I hope it inspires you too.

An Open Letter to Teachers Everywhere
A look at an educator’s struggle to reconcile ideology with reality in our nations’ classrooms and schools.
by Rhonda Thomason

I am troubled.

As an educator, as a parent and as an activist, I am deeply troubled as I rethink public education and struggle to reconcile ideology with reality in our nations’ classrooms and schools.

Collectively, I hear educators — and parents and politicians and others — say children are our future. We say that we want students to think critically, that we want them to be problem-solvers, to ask questions, to challenge us to make the world a better place.

And yet I see educators setting aside these high aspirations, choosing safety and compliance over boldness and creativity. I see educators silenced by the fear of professional disfavor and criticism.

I want a revolution of hope. I want educators to seize a golden opportunity to rethink the nature and purpose of public education.

A revolution that eliminates the hands-off practice of urging students to resolve their own problems while leaving students vulnerable to bullying and burdened with issues too huge for them to ever resolve. A revolution that no longer supports sanctions that allow educators to ignore bullying or harassment when it echoes one’s own personal biases. A revolution that eliminates sanctioned school prayers which favor a particular religion and affirms the acceptance of students with differing beliefs.

Imagine such a revolution.

Read the rest here: An Open Letter to Teachers Everywhere | Teaching Tolerance