This month my husband and I are taking a class titled Hard Conversations: An Introduction to Racism. This week the lessons are designed to lay the groundwork of fostering dialogue, not debate. We are digging in deep to understand structural and systemic racism. I’ve had two major take-aways so far. #1: Based on videos from Brené Brown and Thich Nhat Hanh, I’ve been chewing on the idea of compassionate listening and how it’s related to empathy. Too often we are worried about solving the problem or sharing our own opinion on a topic. Instead we need to do the hard work of really listening and discovering what unmet needs are being described. Sympathy uses the phrasing, “Well, at least….”, but empathy says, “I don’t know what to say, but thank you for sharing this with me.” That is where I want my students to be before they spout off opinions. This is where we all should be as we examine issues of social justice in our country. #2: After listening to the raw story of a black woman describing the racism she had experienced since a young age, I was struck by her description of the constant fear she lives with because of systemic racism. She walks in stores with her hands in her pockets so she won’t be seen as a shoplifter; she is scared to drive in her car for fear of a run-in with police. And then she addressed white folks like myself who are scared to have conversations about race. I am scared to engage in dialogue, while she is afraid to walk down the street. My privilege runs deep, so I must learn to face the fear and use my voice. I’ve been ruminating on these ideas, and then on Thursday night I received an email from our school’s athletic director relaying a message from the Iowa High School Athletic Association. Attached was a flyer about flag etiquette along with the following message: “The IHSAA would never infringe on one's right to freedom of expression, but I did want to call your attention to a flag etiquette piece created by the IHSAA, IGHSAU, IHSMA & IHSAA in 2006.” Did you catch that BUT? You have freedom of expression, but this is how we want you to express it. How quickly we have forgotten that we live in a country founded on protest. What do you think the Boston Tea Party was? (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t a bunch of guys sitting around in fancy hats and wigs drinking tea.) The Underground Railroad wasn’t a ride at an amusement park. And Rosa Parks had truly had enough. It was protest. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” And now our country is up in arms because of the way some folks are choosing to protest. We have hard conversations at our house about race and privilege; my boys know the stories of Freddie Grey and Tamir Rice. Now we will add Terence Crutcher to the list. They know they are not to be seen outside of our home playing with guns. They know that they will not be afforded the same privilege that their white peers will receive. They know the dangers of hoodies and listening to music and driving and walking in the wrong neighborhood. They’ve heard us talk about the unfair sentencing of the Stanford rapist, and they recognize the injustice when privilege is at play. You know what else my young sons understand? They understand that being against police brutality doesn’t mean they are against police. They understand that saying Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean that other lives don’t matter. They understand that you can be at once patriotic and still want better for your country. They are 11 and 12, and they get that. So many others do not. They flood my newsfeed with their poison, their poison that feels like a direct attack on my precious family. Dang, my fear can be palpable. If I had been at the game last Friday during the National Anthem, I don’t know what I would have done. But I do know this. For now I can use my words. This, right now, is how I kneel. Protest is powerful and necessary where change is needed. Freedom of expression comes with no “buts.” More of my white friends need to be in on these conversations. As Dr. King wrote, again behind the bars of the Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
1 Comment
JoAnne Sackett
9/20/2016 08:52:08 pm
Your words. The resonate so deeply. I have gone through so many feelings in the last few days and you express my fears, my anger, my disapiontment, so well. Thank you for your words.
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