by Kathleen Cross | Jun 30, 2012 | "race", authors |
“I wish, so much, that I hadn’t stayed with the bodies over night. Because that is how I received my imagination…I could hear their blood going into the earth…And I know TOO MUCH.” -Kola Boof
Whenever I think of Kola Boof, I see an image of Naima Bint Harith, a little girl with gorgeous deep brown skin, a sweet smile and shining eyes, who, at age six, witnessed the murder of her parents.
Naima’s father, Harith Bin Farouk (a light-skinned Arab/Egyptian) and her mother, Jiddi (a blue-black Gisi-Waaq Oromo from Somalia) were both slaughtered in retaliation for Harith’s “crime” of speaking out against the enslavement of the charcoal-skinned Sudanese by the lighter-skinned Arab ruling class.
During the first night of her new life as an orphan, Naima’s innocence was dyed blood red as she spent the dark hours before dawn lying alone and traumatized with her parents’ lifeless bodies.
Within days of the murder, Naima’s Egyptian grandmother informed her orphaned grandchild—the only living child of Harith and Jiddi—that her skin was too dark for her to be welcomed into their light-skinned family. Little Naima was put up for adoption.
When I think of Kola Boof, I think of that little girl who should have been happily skipping along the banks of the Nile with her parents, but, who was instead violently and callously flung into a war against white supremacy that no human being should have to (but every human being should be willing to) fight.
It is not lost on me that had Naima’s father been unconcerned and complacent in the face of the injustice he saw, he would still be alive. Her abandonment and suffering are born of his sacrifice. Our complacency is a twisting knife.
If you don’t know who Kola Boof is, I’m going to have to let you Google her, because trying to sum up this writer/activist’s life and work in a few paragraphs is an impossible task.
Suffice it to say that the Sudan-born, D.C.-raised author of “Diary of a Lost Girl,” “Long Train to the Redeeming Sin,” and “The Sexy Part of the Bible,” writes edgy, thought-provoking, paradigm-shifting literary prose (and, at times, vicious, profane, irreverent twitter rants) that have led journalists, fans and haters to variously label her “genius,” “disturbed,” “talented,” “polarizing,” “brave,” “racist,” and, increasingly, among her hundreds of blocked haters on Twitter, “crazy black bitch.”
Though Boof can at times be found at the center of distracting social media hurricanes (like the recent drama in which she boasted about regularly sexing Djimon Honsou during his marriage to Kimora Lee Simmons), her impassioned and important message is that the earth’s dark-skinned black woman is systematically disrespected, hated, insulted and erased by those who, influenced by white supremacy, cannot or will not recognize her black beauty and her intrinsic perfection as a creation of God.
It astounds me that anyone disagrees with that message, as it is quite apparent that in every country or culture on this planet that is heavily influenced by European values, dark-skinned women with black-African hair and features are rarely held up (for its sons and daughters to look to) as models of what is beautiful, marriageable, or worthy of admiration.
Don’t even get me started on the American entertainment industry and its proliferation of images that relegate dark-skinned women to the roles of maid, mammy, slave or sex worker. But it’s not just the media that is guilty. Too many young dark-skinned girls are tormented by their family members and bullied from toddlerhood, with the terms “African,” “dark” and “nappy” being viciously hurled at them like profane weapons.
Insult is added to this injury when darker-skinned black women are uninvited or invisible in situations where light-skinned or biracial black women (whose physical features are closer to the “white ideal” of beauty) are welcomed to show off their “black” beauty. If you need an example of this blatant disregard for the plentifully pigmented sisters among us, click here, or here, or here, or here, or here.
It also astounds me that so many lighter-skinned people who profess to be about “erasing racism,” “honoring diversity” and “building unity” are so resistant to understanding Kola’s life experiences or at least listening with an open mind to her observations about the annihilation-by-rejection and psychic injury dark-skinned women are being subjected to around the world.
I get that folks are turned off by Boof’s caustic delivery and her irreverence-bordering-on-hatred for some of the world’s most revered institutions (such as Christianity and Islam). I get that people are offended by the sweeping negative generalizations she makes about the inhabitants of entire countries (especially since she so deeply and righteously resents the negative generalizations made about black women). I get that people are shocked and repulsed by Kola’s disregard for what she sees as repressive and oppressive Western moral codes.
What I don’t get is how there is this loooooong line of individuals ready to invest their energy in attacking Kola for her lifestyle, her opinions and her temper, yet there are so few champions who are willing to speak up about the HUMAN RIGHT so many black girls have been denied—the right to be seen, to be admired, to be protected and to be cherished.
I admit I am frequently appalled at the words Kola Boof uses to voice her rage against her detractors—especially the vitriol she reserves for black American men (whose psychic injury she acknowledges, but cannot forgive); but even when she is at her angriest, my gut feeling about this sister is that she created “Kola Boof” to be the warrior she needed but didn’t have on the day her parents died–a ferocious defender who should have been there to protect little Naima—the generous, intelligent, soft-hearted, world-embracing spirit that lives inside Kola.
Given the mountainous struggles that little girl faced (severe trauma, several abandonments by parental figures, adapting to American culture, learning English, rejecting colorism…) it makes perfect sense to me that her alter-ego Kola would (on the surface, at least) be so FIERCE.
Anyone who knows even a little bit about the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder a severe childhood trauma creates, knows that one of its key components is an easily triggered and exaggerated fight or flight response. It is an extremely difficult to control SURVIVAL response that has nothing to with intelligence or morals or wisdom.
Among the many symptoms PTSD sufferers deal with are:
Physical ailments with no apparent physical cause
Sleeplessness
Fear for their safety; always feeling on guard
Feelings of shame, despair, or hopelessness.
Difficulty controlling emotions.
Impulsive or self-destructive behavior.
Changed beliefs or changed personality traits.
I don’t know Kola personally and I don’t know the degree to which any or all of these symptoms affect her life, but her writings, her online presence and her tweets seem to indicate that there is much residual injury that she lives with daily. If she is suffering from PTSD, I see no reason why her life’s work to restore THE ORIGINAL AFRICAN WOMAN to her rightful pedestal of dignity and respect should be diminished by it.
“I am a very SAD, broken, damaged human being…And I live, literally, by the grace of GOD. The pain in my vagina I have spoken of…but rarely the pain in my brain and my heart.
My teeth and my bones hurt me like headaches, because I am so broken and damaged EMOTIONALLY.
People read my books and ask, “How can you write like that?” It’s because I live in constant emotional “psychotic” pain.
Don’t they understand that I saw my parents killed in front of me? Do they think a child can EVER grow up and get over that?
And now I wish, so much, that I hadn’t stayed with the bodies over night. Because that is how I received my imagination. From that night, when I could hear their blood going into the earth. I suddenly had an “imagination”. And it’s very…
And I know TOO MUCH.
Much of the vicious attacking you see me do…is mainly to make people AWARE of the rage and bitterness that they create in the world…simply by accepting the world the way it is.
That’s why I tell people…don’t accept it…REBEL.
Because although it’s too late for Naima…it’s not too late for the daughters of the future.
When YOU SEE me hurt someone, strike at someone…I’m just trying to set a new example for the MULES of the world….that we mustn’t go down without loud screaming and fighting.
…I don’t see myself living that long, and I just want to give…as an artist….what the people NEED.
And I pray for my sons to be OK. I know I’ve taught them how to make generations and where inside themselves to find answers and to find me.” -Kola
Although I have never met Ms. Boof, I interacted with her online many years ago and did speak to her once on the telephone after she wrote an amazing poem for me entitled “Angels and Insects” which she posted at the African American Literary Book Club (AALBC) discussion board where she and I crossed paths.
An inter racially married white woman on that discussion board who called herself, “Moon,” had become the target of Kola’s rage when (among other things) she refused to acknowledge that white and light-skinned privilege exists at the expense of black women. Kola was trying to get Moon to realize that privilege and injustice are inseparable and that her white privilege had a cost that she simply chose not to acknowledge (which is another privilege).
Moon was the source of much conflict on that board because she was a white visitor to a black online forum who was always in “teach” mode, and she did not seem to respect the opinions of the black women whose life experiences differed so greatly from hers. Moon was convinced that simply by mothering her mixed children and teaching them that love sees no color she was actively promoting the unity of the human family. “I don’t walk in brown skin,” she wrote, “I can sure teach children about love.”
Being the product of an interracial union myself, I joined the debate. (Forgive the use of CAPS; it was an intense conversation):
“Your children deserve more than your LOVE. They deserve to LEARN what it means to live in a society that will try to convince them they are BETTER because they came from YOU. Who is going to WORK DAILY and DILIGENTLY to undermine that lie in your household?
I am not a hater, Moon. I KNOW in my SOUL that all human beings are ONE CREATION, and these designations of racial categories are not REAL. But that does not mean human beings are not behaving as though they [the labels] are real. WE are all affected by our socializations regarding race, skin color, hair texture, innate intelligence, morality, etc. etc. etc.
You cannot toss me indescriminately onto the heap of black women who you consider jealous of you and your husband, or simply hate your whiteness. My mother is white and my father is black and I can speak on the subject of white privelege personally, because having white skin and blue eyes I am treated with UNEARNED deference just about everywhere I go.
One of the few places my physical appearance is not automatically “respected” is in the company of black women I don’t know. That is when I humbly SHUT MY MOUTH AND LISTEN so that I can LEARN more about what it means to be a black woman in America — and thereby understand more clearly what it means to be a member of the human family.
I don’t agree with everything Kola says, but I don’t take what she says personally either. I know she is “FIGHTING for her life…” Her fight to lift up black women does not diminish me….WHAT are YOU fighting for MOON? The rights of all humans, regardless of skin color, to love and intermarry? That right already EXISTS. As you said earlier, your life is proof of that.
Show me proof that Kola’s BLACK SONS are held in HIGH REGARD by this supremacist society. She is fighting for THEM, MOON. And for EVERY BLACK BABY who will be shown and told (maybe by YOUR children) that they are NOT PERFECT EXACTLY AS THEY WERE CREATED. They will be told that if their father had lain with a Scandinavian or an Asian or a Mexican or ANYTHING but their AFRICAN MOTHER they would be more beautiful or smarter or healthier or… (you know the list you’ve heard it many times).”
Kola’s response to my post was immediate, and, I believe, sincere.
…I have never denied that I have many prejudices against Bi-racial people and white people—despite that fact that I am, technically, Bi-racial and that my White Arab birth father was a great, great man who dedicated his life to the dismantling of “White Supremacy”. He called it “the world’s only true religion”.
But my “prejudice” against Bi-racials and Whites is not what I…..REALLY…..feel when I’m alone, topless in the mountain streams praying. I feel LOVE for those people—only I keep it a secret, because I fear they are against me and my sons.
It seems there are two realities co-existing within this daughter of a slain freedom fighter. There is Kola Boof, the consummate REBEL whose words and actions are symbols of her RESISTANCE to being controlled, ignored or annihilated by the spirit of white supremacy that destroyed her family and threatens her progeny.
And then, there is Naima Bint Harith whose broken heart did not lose its capacity to love us all.
I wrote and posted this short poem on the AALBC discussion boards eight years ago. It still reflects why I love her:
Naima peels back her own skin
with life-sharpened nails
and we peer inside
inside her
and exclaim,
see, a huge heart
oh, and innards
soft, open, vulnerable
and in her exposure
we are exposed
safe, selfish, cowardly
and still
she names us
sister
Click here to read “Angels & Insects” by Kola Boof.
by Kathleen Cross | May 15, 2012 | "race", activists |
If you have ever attended a cultural sensitivity training or participated in a forum or workshop exploring issues of race and racism, you have probably noticed that when the dialogue moves to a specific focus on white/black relations (and the ferocity with which institutionalized racism impacts black people and communities) someone in the room will object.
The objection is often couched in terms that sound inclusive, like “What about Native Americans? They’ve suffered too.” or “That’s not really different from how gays are discriminated against.”
It can be an exasperating moment for those in the room who realize that any authentic effort to focus a lens on the concept of “white supremacy” will invariably lead to a discussion about white on black racism. Not because it is “more important,” than any other expression of racism, but because, as activist Scot Nakagawa so aptly puts it, “Blackness is the fulcrum.”
At his blog RaceFiles.com, Nakagawa states:
I’m often asked why I’ve focused so much more on anti-black racism than on Asians over the years. Some suggest I suffer from internalized racism.
That might well be true since who doesn’t suffer from internalized racism? I mean, even white people internalize racism. The difference is that white people’s internalized racism is against people of color, and it’s backed up by those who control societal institutions and capital.
But some folk have more on their minds. They say that focusing on black and white reinforces a false racial binary that marginalizes the experiences of non-black people of color. No argument here. But I also think that trying to mix things up by putting non-black people of color in the middle is a problem because there’s no “middle.”
So there’s most of my answer. I’m sure I do suffer from internalized racism, but I don’t think that racism is defined only in terms of black and white. I also don’t think white supremacy is a simple vertical hierarchy with whites on top, black people on the bottom, and the rest of us in the middle.
So why do I expend so much effort on lifting up the oppression of black people? Because anti-black racism is the fulcrum of white supremacy. A fulcrum is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the support about which a lever turns” or, alternatively, “one that supplies capability for action.” In other words, if you want to move something, you need a pry bar and some leverage, and what gives you leverage is the fulcrum – that thing you use so the pry bar works like a see-saw…while there’s no bottom, there is something like a binary in that white people exist on one side of these dynamics – the side with force and intention. The way they mostly assert that force and intention is through the fulcrum of anti-black racism.
Please read the full text of his article, and know why I so appreciate Nakagawa’s take on this issue, not because this point was never brilliantly and succinctly addressed by others, including contemporary black writers like Dr. Joy DeGruy, Michael Eric Dyson and Michelle Alexander, but because whenever this sentiment is expressed in any public way by a black person it is mis-perceived as self-serving (read: whining).
When non-black anti-racist activists like Nakagawa, Edward James Olmos and Tim Wise speak about the unique impact of white supremacy on black people, and acknowledge that its eradication will herald the eradication of racism for all groups, a significant number of people will find the message more palatable.
Perhaps a significant number will also find their way into this struggle to internalize the concept of the oneness of humanity, become devoted to dismantling white supremacy and work to purge our institutions, homes and hearts of the insidious (often subtle) blight of racism. . .
. . .both the external and internalized versions.
by Kathleen Cross | Oct 31, 2011 | "race", activists, education, identity |
Fed up with the annual parade of white folks in blackface, “Indian squaws,” and other culturally insensitive Halloween costumes on their campus, a group of students at Ohio University decided to do something about it.
Members of the campus club STARS (Students Teaching Against Racism) created a poster series with the theme “We’re A Culture, Not A Costume,” featuring Halloween revelers dressed in costumes STARS members consider sterotypical and offensive.
The group says the intention of the posters is to:
“Educate and facilitate discussion about racism and to promote racial harmony and to create a safe, non-threatening environment to allow participants to feel comfortable to express their feelings.”
The campaign has definitely incited dialogue, though some of what is being posted on the Internet is not fit to be printed here. Melissa, who blogged about the poster campaign at her website Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, had to disable her comments due to the volume of racist remarks she received.
Arizona University student, Kristine Bui, wrote this about the posters in her school’s paper:
“It’s hard to explain exactly what is so wrong about being a geisha or a sheik for Halloween. It’s unsettling. It’s a feeling I’ve always struggled to articulate — a discomfort that sort of just sits in the place between your heart and your stomach, quietly nagging. It’s a sense of being wronged without knowing exactly what was done to you.
“People who think racism is dead think so because they don’t see active discrimination. They think, ‘But minorities are allowed to do everything I’m allowed to do, so where’s the harm?’ STARS’ poster campaign calls attention to another problem: Minorities are often made into caricatures … As a minority, you’re a character, not a person. People dress up as you on Halloween. On TV, you’re the token black guy, easily replaced by some other black guy after one season.
“Racism is so much stealthier now. It doesn’t announce itself, and it’s complicated.”
STARS President ‘Sarah’ recently posted this update on her Tumbler page:
POSTER CAMPAIGN UPDATE:
Any questions about the posters can be sent to [email protected]. We are so proud of all the support but it’s overwhelming; We have less than 10 members in our group. lol We ask that you do not personally email any of the exec’s or message their personal tumblrs. Thank you guys so much for the love! The purpose was to educate and create dialogue and it did 🙂 We have a meeting with a lawyer on Monday so we can protect our posters and the posters will be all over Ohio University’s campus this week! Again, thanks for the support and have a happy Halloween!
Best, Students Teaching About Racism in Society (STARS) at Ohio University Executive board
Although I’ve never been one to wear ethnically stereotypical or disrespectful costumes, I am definitely thinking more deeply about this issue. These posters have inspired me to take a mental inventory of my own Halloween costume choices over the years, and I don’t think a casual walk through the costume store will ever be the same.
Congratulations on all your hard work STARS. You’ve got people thinking, talking, and costume changing.
by Kathleen Cross | Jul 11, 2011 | "race", discrimination, post-racial myth, unemployed, what the hell? |
You may remember the 2003 University of Chicago study by Devah Pager that sent young white and black “testers” with randomly assigned “felony convictions” to apply for low-wage jobs. The study found that whites with felonies were more likely to be called for interviews than black applicants without criminal records.
Eight years later, black male unemployment has hit the highest rate since the government began keeping track in 1972. It is estimated that only 56.9 percent of black men over age 20 are working, and the prospects for them to earn an honest living anytime soon in this crumbling economy are not good.
While Obama battles the GOP over raising the debt ceiling and preserving “sacred cow” tax cuts and entitlement programs, the unemployed poor are becoming increasingly desperate. Of particular concern is the reality that the once-supportive family members who used to serve as safety nets for struggling felons are now losing their jobs and homes in record numbers. The safety net exists no more.
According to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, the median net worth of white households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households. By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median black net worth had fallen 83 percent to $2,170. And, no, that is not a typo. Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy describes the wealth gap like this, “In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents.”
Two cents. Really? If anyone has the audacity to suggest to me that having a black president means America is now “post racial,” I will have to hold myself back. And, speaking of remaining nonviolent in the face of violent oppression… If there has ever been a reason to march on Washington, it is right the hell now. –originally published at rollingout.com.
by Kathleen Cross | Jun 16, 2011 | "race", activists, authors, born this day, discrimination, heroes, human unity, i rave, identity, privilege, remembering you, transformation |
Today is my birthday. And Tupac’s Too.
Another June 16th human being I really love is John Howard Griffin.
6/16/20 – 9/9/80
I hope you already know all about this man, but if not, he was a White anti-racist who grew up in the South and wanted to do something to reach the hearts and minds of White Americans, most of whom were in denial about the conditions under which Black people lived.
Griffin conducted an experiment in 1959 (years before the Civil Rights movement) that included shaving his head, darkening his skin with lamps and pharmaceuticals and living as a Black man in the deep south.
Though he endured for several weeks, he ended up cutting the experiment short, as he found that being a Black man was too difficult for him to maintain for long. He wrote a book about his experiences that made him a celebrity and (to some) a villain.
“Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man’s face. I felt like saying: “What in God’s name are you doing to yourself?”
“Suddenly I had had enough. Suddenly I could stomach no more of this degradation- not of myself but of all men who were black like me.”
“When all the talk, all the propaganda has been cut away, the criterion is nothing but the color of skin. My experience proved that. They judged me by no quality. My skin was dark.”
Mr. Griffin knew when he conducted his experiment he would forever be putting himself at odds with those in America who didn’t want the ugliest realities of racism to be exposed and so vividly expressed by someone White. After his book “Black Like Me” was published in 1961 he and his family received continual death threats. They left their Texas home and eventually moved to Mexico.
“John Howard Griffin was one of the most remarkable people I have ever encountered…He was just one of those guys that comes along once or twice in a century and lifts the hearts of the rest of us.” -Studs Terkel
Here is an excellent article about Griffin’s life, his experiment and his writings: JimCrowMuseum <<–Highly suggested reading!
by Kathleen Cross | Apr 24, 2011 | "race", africa, authors, i rave, identity |
I am a genealogy enthusiast who has spent countless hours tracing my roots back through the generations, often discovering historical gems that connect me to people I had never heard of whose survival and life choices resulted in my existence. It is a sobering and soul-stirring experience.
When Bryan Sykes’ book, The Seven Daughters of Eve was first released, the genealogist in me was way stoked. Here was the Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford spelling out in words what many of us humans had already concluded in our hearts was true: All of humanity is, in fact, one family.
Blasting any lingering ideas of multi-regional human origins, Sykes, using mitochondrial DNA as a guide, shows how every human being alive today descended from an original “Eve” — an East African woman who passed her mitochondrial DNA to her daughters, and they to their daughters, and so on until your mother and mine.
What makes mitochondrial DNA so fascinating is that unlike recombinant DNA, which we inherent from both parents, and which recombines from one generation to the next to create the beautiful diversity in humanity, mtDNA is passed down from our mother only, and it does not recombine. Your mtDNA is like a relationship timeline that can accurately reveal your generational proximity to another person (that is, how recently related to another human being you are).
We have been conditioned to use physical features to determine our “racial” proximity to others, but the physical features we typically use to determine someone’s “race” (skin color, eye color, hair texture, facial features) are actually determined by a very small amount of human genetic material — less than 1% of who we are genetically has anything to with how we look! In Seven Daughters of Eve, Sykes gives countless examples of people who thought they belonged exclusively to one “racial” group, only to have their mtDNA reveal that their ethnicity was quite mixed and that they had recent ancestors of other “races.”
“These stories and others like them make nonsense of any biological basis for racial classifications…We are all a complete mixture; yet at the same time, we are all related…Our genes did not just appear when we were born. They have been carried to us by millions of individual lives over thousands of generations.“
The implications of Sykes’ work are potentially life-changing for us as individuals, and world changing for us as a human family. When enough human beings make the shift from focusing on imaginary racial and geographical boundaries, to recognizing how truly interconnected we all are, perhaps we will collectively move toward a more peaceful coexistence on this planet we all call home.
Sykes puts it in perspective with this analogy:
“I am on a stage. Before me, in the dim light, all the people who have ever lived are lined up, rank upon rank, stretching far into the distance…I have in my hand the end of the thread which connects me to my ancestral mother way at the back. I pull on the thread and one woman’s face in every generation, feeling the tug, looks up at me…These are my ancestors…These are all my mothers…“
I love that in every human cell mitochondria is the “engine” that uses oxygen to power everything. It is as if, there, in our mitochondria, is our GREAT grandmother Eve, telling us collectively to breathe deeply — and to remember our connection to her and to one another.
The Seven Daughters of Eve may sound too scientific to read for pleasure, but Sykes personalizes the science in a way that makes it a truly interesting read. I highly recommend this book!
by Kathleen Cross | Apr 7, 2011 | "race", privilege |
One comedian’s take on White privilege.
WARNING…EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.
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Is this funny? Offensive? True?
I laughed. And, I think he is telling a truth many people think but would never say.
I’ll try not to write any spoilers for those who are going to watch the video (you might want to stop and watch before reading further–the video’s only about 2 minutes), but the part about going to the year 2 was hilarious. Even his comment about the future is pretty telling. Do White people share a collective fear that the tables might turn? If that is a fear, why hasn’t that happened? (I can think only of Toussaint L’Overture’s uprising in Haiti in 1791 and Nat Turner’s war on slavery in Southampton County, VA in 1831. Are there other examples of Black people organizing violence against Whites en masse?)
When South Africa’s apartheid system was abolished and a Black president was elected, though Whites were vastly outnumbered there was no violent uprising to “punish” them.
Do/should White Americans fear one day being outnumbered? If that is a real fear, how does it affect race relations today?
by Kathleen Cross | Jul 12, 2008 | "race", anti-racist, heroes, i rant, privilege, seriously?, slavery, stereotypes, transformation, young people |
I was returning home to Los Angeles on a flight from Atlanta, where I’d spent a couple of days at a writer’s conference.
Weary from a weekend filled with late night poetry jams and early morning workshops, I boarded the half-empty redeye, found my aisle seat, shoved my bulging carryon bag under the empty middle seat, stretched my legs and thanked the airline gods for arranging an entire row just for me.
I closed my eyes as the last few stragglers made their way to their seats, and got an early start on what I hoped would be a long nap.
“Excuse me, Ma’am.” The voice was deep, the accent, southern.
I opened my eyes to an attractive white man in his early twenties looking down at me. He pointed at the empty seat next to me, shrugged a sheepish apology, and stepped back to let me stand, which I did. He didn’t take the empty window seat. Instead, he plopped his duffel bag near the window and sat himself down right next to me, which meant, of course, that I would have to move my bag.
I reached down and tugged at the strap, but my tightly wedged carryon didn’t budge. “I’ll get that,” he offered. He yanked the bag out, slid it to me and helped me squeeze it under the seat in front of me. It didn’t occur to the guy to just move over to the empty window seat. He flashed a perfect soap opera star smile at me, stowed his bag under the window seat and stretched his legs.
“Hey, what’s this?” He bent over to reach for something on the floor in front of him and came up with an award I had been given at the conference. He read the inscription aloud, “Best Contemporary Fiction,” then looked me over. “Wow,” he said with a raised eyebrow. His expression said my sporty pink jogging suit and Adidas cross trainers didn’t jibe with his vision of what an award-winning author might look like up close. “You’re a writer?”
There goes my nap. I knew in that moment I would spend my five-hour flight locked in conversation. It was inevitable. He would ask me what my book was about and as soon as I said, it’s a novel about a woman who’s half black but looks white,” he would take note of my ivory skin and blue eyes and realize, correctly, that I wrote the book from my own experience. Then the questions would start.
“You’re black? Wow. You don’t look it.” He was immediately intrigued, as are most white people when they meet me. I haven’t completely figured it out, but I suspect their fascination has to do with my apparent whiteness and my paradoxical belonging in the black community (where the majority of people who look like me feel anything but a sense of belonging).
Just as black people often joke that I am a spy infiltrating the white ranks, I suppose white people see me as an insider to the black world—an undercover comrade who can interpret what I’ve seen and experienced in ways they can relate to. That’s the only explanation I have for the ridiculous comments some white folks make when they discover my dual ethnicity.
In addition to the many off-the-wall questions I’m asked (Can you dance like a black person? Why don’t black people swim? Is that penis size thing really true?), white people say things to me they would never say to a more phenotypically obvious black person. For instance, I once had a white woman refer to the black man she had recently stopped dating as “too black.” When I asked what that meant, she explained matter-of-factly, “He’s ignorant and has no ambition.”
In my younger days I bristled at these exchanges, but as I’ve grown older I’ve come to the conclusion that each time I respond to these ignorant questions and statements with some degree of patience, the world becomes a slightly better place. In most cases I find that the decision to practice patience has a positive affect on the outcomes of these exchanges—including the impending conversation with the middle seat taker.
After he introduced himself as Jason, an actor on his way to Hollywood to audition for (who woulda guessed it?) a soap opera, he tugged and nudged me into a conversation that can best be described as Everything Jason Ever Wanted to Know/Say About Black People But Was Afraid to Ask/Get His Ass Whupped. He began the discussion by saying with wide-eyed sincerity, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” He punctuated that idea by adding that he had “even dated black girls.”
While the other passengers slept soundly, Jason and I struggled to keep our voices at a half-whisper as we discussed topic after touchy topic. We talked about the overrepresentation of black people in the criminal justice system. Jason chalked it up to the “fact” that black people are more likely than whites to use illegal drugs. I countered with a government study that found 75% of regular drug users were white and only 8% black; yet 43% of those imprisoned on drug charges were black, and 25% were white. Of course, at the root of that is the fact that blacks are five times more likely to be targeted for arrest than whites for drug crimes (Source: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.)
Jason and I discussed the underrepresentation of black students in college. He believed that was “of course” because black kids and their parents don’t value education. I explained that the best predictor of college entry and success is the quality of middle and high school curriculum. White high school students are three times more likely to be taught challenging coursework as blacks and twice as likely to be taught by an experienced teacher with specific expertise in the subject being taught. (Source: The Education Trust, “Achievement in America”)
We talked about interracial marriage. Jason will date, but couldn’t see himself marrying a black woman, though in his experience he found “mixed” kids to be more beautiful and more intelligent than “regular” black kids—a comment that I, being “mixed” was supposed to have taken as a compliment. Of course my counter argument for that ridiculousness was a thorough lesson on white supremacy and how it permeates everything in America – including how we arrive at our decisions about who is “beautiful” and who is “intelligent.”
Although there were many tense moments in our conversation, during which I had to struggle to maintain my calm, by far the most excruciating subject for me to endure was the one we spent over two hours entrenched in—slavery. I was astounded by Jason’s ignorance of the institution itself. Not only did he reiterate my elementary school teacher’s beliefs about slaves being relatively happy family members, he went so far as to repeat a joke he’d recently heard on a talk radio show which callously declared that American blacks shouldn’t be worrying about reparations, but “ought to be happy we aren’t charging them for their ancestors’ cruise over here.”
Jason seemed (keeping in mind he’s an actor) to have no idea that the Middle Passage constituted a holocaust of unprecedented proportions. Even conservative estimates place the number of slaves who died of abuse, disease, suicide and malnourishment during the Atlantic slave trade in the millions. The “cruises” Jason spoke of were months-long torturous voyages during which the “passengers” were chained to one another on stacked wooden bunks with less than a foot of space on either side. The kidnapped Africans who managed to survive day after day of writhing in blood, vomit, menstrual flow and excrement were delivered to the auction block and sold to the highest bidders. Women and girls had no defense against rape and were mated with men they did not know so they would produce children over whom they had no parental rights. Happy to be slaves? I don’t think so.
When confronted with that reality, Jason didn’t think so either.
What was most disheartening to me was that at his age, and with the advances in “multicultural education” this nation has supposedly made a commitment to, I expected the information I was sharing with Jason to have been taught to him in school. I told him about my experience with my elementary teacher Miss Lewis some thirty years previous—about her insistence that her heroes were good people who behaved in accordance with the times in which they lived; about her ignorance of the many anti-racist Americans who did live during those times but did not uphold the status quo; I talked to Jason about how I was impacted as a child by my teacher’s refusal to denounce slavery.
Though Jason was educated two decades after me, he said he had received the same messages my teacher delivered to me. He knew that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned slaves, but when I asked him whether America’s most revered historical icons were racists, his answer was a safe, “I don’t know. It seems like it.” When I reminded him that America was “the Land of the Free” whose credo is “Liberty and Justice for All,” and whose currency is embellished with the phrase “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of Many One) he admitted that the heroes he was taught to admire and emulate did not live up to those ideals.
When asked to name a white American historical figure other than Abe Lincoln who sacrificed life, liberty or livelihood on behalf of human rights for all people, he could not offer Thomas Paine, John Brown, James and Lucretia Mott, Thaddeus Stevens, Henry David Thoreau, John and Jean Rankin, John Howard Griffin, Penny Patch, Viola Liuzzo, or any of America’s other thousands of white anti-racist heroes. WIth the exception of Lincoln, whose commitment to human rights has been furiously debated by historians, Jason had not one anti-racist role model he had ever been taught to look to for education or inspiration.
Upon our arrival at LAX, Jason said our conversation was one that forever changed him. He thanked me for challenging him to think more deeply about his responsibility—not just to denounce racism, white privilege and white supremacy, but to educate himself about it and to be a part of dismantling it. I hope Jason wasn’t pretending, but even if he was, it was that five-hour interaction with a young white man I would not see or speak to again that stands as one of the most frustrating, at times infuriating and ultimately inspiring conversations about black/white race relations I’ve ever experienced.
It was a conversation that sparked the idea for the book I’m currently working on — a learning tool where young people might come to “Know Good White People.”
by Kathleen Cross | May 31, 2008 | Uncategorized |
On a winter’s night in 2004, I was driving down Middlebelt Road in the Detroit suburb of Livonia, Michigan with two black teenagers—my daughter Akira and my nephew Nathan* (*not his real name). As I approached the freeway on-ramp and signaled to turn, I spotted a police cruiser approaching from the opposite direction—and simultaneously caught a flash in my rear-view mirror of Nathan ducking down in the back seat.
“What are you doing?” I asked, slightly irritated at his knee-jerk need to disappear.
“Auntie, they don’t play in Livonia. I don’t want you to get stopped ‘cause of me.”
The ensuing conversation stung me. Nathan made it clear how much he hated police. Hate. The beautiful brown baby boy I’ve watched grow into a handsome, articulate, intelligent, kind-hearted young man could not or would not believe me when I explained to him that all police are not evil.
He proceeded to describe in detail the half dozen times he’d been pulled over for no apparent reason in the past six months. The last stop, in Livonia, was the most ridiculous. The officer actually asked him, “What are you doing here?” No taillight out. No expired tags. No moving violation. No pretense of a crime committed in the area by a black male suspect. Just Driving While Black in suburbia. DWB. It’s a cliché I am well aware of, but never experience myself.
I don’t get pulled over by the police without reason. Ever. I am an ethnically mixed (black/white) woman with white skin and blue eyes, and the police don’t ever suspect me of anything. I was once pulled over past midnight on I-134 in Glendale, California for weaving in and out of my lane while driving fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit. (I had unbuckled my seatbelt and bent to reach for a Luther Vandross CD on the floor.)
When the young white officer who pulled me over approached my window and politely asked if I had been drinking, I laughed and proclaimed matter-of-factly that I don’t drink alcohol. When he asked for my license and registration, I stopped laughing. I had recently misplaced my license, and my out-of-state registration was expired. I smiled sheepishly and explained to the officer that I had just moved to California and seemed to have misplaced my driver’s license while unpacking. He glanced briefly at the expired registration (not in my name) and muttered something to me about the state law regarding change of address. To make a long story short…
…I drove away without a single citation.
Weaving. Speeding. No license. No seatbelt. No proof I owned the car. Nathan would have likely gone to jail.
In America it is an unearned privilege not to fear or hate the police—a privilege I do not take for granted. I want that privilege for my nephew, and for all youngsters like him who are under siege in their own communities. But, that is a privilege I cannot grant; only good police officers can do that. Unfortunately, Nathan is not likely to come in contact with the good ones. I tried to explain that to him.
“I have several friends who are policemen, Nathan. They are good people you will never meet because they wouldn’t pull you over without cause.”
He considered my point, and for a moment I thought I saw a light in his eyes—a light of recognition that what I’d said was true. The light flickered briefly, then died.
“I hate ‘em. All of ‘em.”
Nothing I said changed his mind. Nathan felt he couldn’t afford to trust any of them. To do so would mean letting down his guard, and for a young black man in America, that, in his estimation, would not be conducive to survival.
The following afternoon, as I was seated in front of the television unraveling my nephew’s tightly-braided cornrows, a news report flashed on the screen. Two white Detroit police officers had been shot dead during a routine traffic stop. The suspect, a 23-year-old black man, was in custody.
Nathan was quiet.
I mourned the tragic loss of life aloud. “God, I feel for their families,” I said, referring to the dead police officers, aged twenty-six and twenty-two.
“Yeah,” Nathan grunted. “His too.” He was referring to the perpetrator, a chocolate brown man with a large unkempt afro who was shown standing in court, tears streaming from his eyes, sadly insisting to the judge that he hadn’t meant to kill the officers. I wondered if my nephew could identify with the kind of rage required to empty a gun into two human beings. Nathan answered my question before I could ask it. “I bet they pulled him over for no good reason.” The coldness in his tone alarmed me.
In that moment I prayed silently that by some miracle my nephew’s heart might somehow be unburdened. I knew the “hate” he was articulating was a catchall term he was using to avoid feeling the awful terror he had of police and the hurt and anger he felt toward strangers who summed him up as a threat without bothering to consider his heart. I knew this young man did not hate anyone, and I prayed for a way to reach him with love, to remind him that we are all one under our diverse human wrappers. My prayer was (painfully) answered within the hour, in a manner, and under circumstances I could never have anticipated.
I do not live in Michigan. I had traveled to Detroit from my home in Los Angeles to visit with my mother-in-law. For Mom’s 74th birthday the kids and I were renovating her bathroom and kitchen. Our plan for that afternoon was to put in a few hours of painting. When I had loosened Nathan’s last braid, and he had combed out his hair into a rather large “fro”, I sent him and Akira to the hardware store for some Spackle and a roll of masking tape. During their errand, something hurtful happened to them that brought tears to all of our eyes in the retelling.
At the hardware store they turned down an aisle in the paint department and happened upon a young white woman and her six or seven-year-old daughter. The woman’s attention was focused on a display of paint swatches—she was apparently trying to decide on a color and was intently absorbed in the task. As Nathan and Akira neared her, the woman looked up, saw the two brown-skinned teenagers (and, I suspect, Nathan’s big hair), grabbed her daughter’s hand and rushed from the aisle. She actually ran from them.
Question: Who runs away? Answer: Someone afraid.
Who’s afraid? Someone threatened. Who threatened that woman? Two teenagers participating in a gift of love for their 74-year-old grandmother. What better symbol is there of the sad state of race relations in America than that two-second encounter?
What is saddest is that Akira and Nathan have been raised to believe that all people, regardless of skin color, are members of the same human family—that we are all not only equal, but connected. These two teenagers have known, loved and trusted people of diverse ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds since they were infants, so it creates a peculiar dissonance for them when they are faced with the reality that not all human beings believe or behave the same.
When that white woman chose to run away from those brown children, she injured them in ways she will never understand. I have no idea what her own child learned in that moment, but I know mine were wounded. Yet, despite the pain and anger that kind of unwarranted rejection always brings, they raised their eyebrows at one another, swallowed their pain and went on about the business of Spackle shopping.
As Akira and Nathan stood in the checkout line waiting for their turn at the register, a tall white stranger entered the store. The man took one look at my nephew’s big hair, contorted his face into an expression of disgust, glared angrily into Nathan’s eyes, then shook his head with obvious contempt. The stranger then walked boldly past, leaving my nephew stunned. Though he has been contending with bigotry his entire young life, for some reason the two incidents back to back were more than he could take.
“I felt my heart drop,” he told me. “I felt a light go off inside me. For real. I promised myself I would not let another white person hurt my feelings—ever. I was beginning to think maybe I should just hate them all.”
No sooner had the thought materialized, Nathan looked up to see another white man passing the checkout line on his way into the store—only, this man did something quite out of the ordinary. The stranger smiled warmly at my nephew, quietly said, “How’s it going?” and walked on past him and down the plumbing aisle.
“He’ll never know what he did,” Nathan said quietly. “That man came across my path at exactly the right moment, you know? It might sound crazy, but his sincerity did something I can’t explain. You were right, Auntie. Some white people are all right.” One corner of Nathan’s mouth turned up in an acquiescent half-smile. “Some policemen might be too.”
A wounded heart, salved with a random, tiny and seemingly insignificant act of kindness.
That stranger will never know what he did for the heart of one young black man in America—a young man whose outlook was changed by a few words spoken by a stranger in passing. Not an exaggerated high five and a patronizing “Yo, what’s happenin’, bro?” but a quiet and sincere, “How’s it going?” Just a tiny act of humanity with the power to restore a young black man’s faith in the human family.
Of course it is silly and irresponsible to conclude from the above true story that the ugly, insidious and far-reaching nature of systemic racism can be solved by white folks randomly smiling at every black black person they see. (That’s a scary, Twilight Zonish thought actually.) The point of the story is that no matter what role (if any) you are currently playing in the fight to dismantle systemic racism — an equally important battle to wage is the one in that organ behind your ribcage.
UPDATE:
A few months after I posted this blog entry, my nephew and a friend were stopped on the street while walking home one night. The police drew guns on them and told them to lay face down on the gravel. The white kid Nathan was walking with was instructed to “crawl away” from my nephew, which he hesitated to do. The friend was then told if he wanted to make it home that night he’d better do as he was told. The white kid did crawl away and my nephew was told to empty his pockets. When they realized that he had only a wallet on him, they were angry. One of the officers told Nathan he was lucky he didn’t “feel like doing all the paperwork” that would come with an officer-involved shooting, and that he was going to “let” him live.
by Kathleen Cross | May 24, 2008 | "race", education, human unity, i rant, seriously? |
I can recall the exact moment my elementary school teacher fell off her greatest-teacher-in-the-world pedestal. It was a high, hard fall—I know because she fell on me, a freckle-faced “mixed-race” girl so blinded by love and admiration for the woman, I couldn’t have possibly predicted her demise.
Miss Lewis* was a youthful blonde with sparkling blue eyes, a warm smile and a voice so calm and soothing, even being chastised by her felt like love. My classmates and I all adored her, though I find it hard to imagine that anyone could have held her in higher esteem than I.
She taught us we could be anything we wanted to be if we worked hard. She challenged us to challenge ourselves. She stocked our bookshelves with reading material above our grade level and introduced us to vocabulary words kids our age weren’t expected to know. She offered five dollars to the first student who could solve the brain-teasing logic problem she posted on the class bulletin board each month, and she maintained an arsenal of fun, challenging games designed to trick even the most resistant among us into learning. And learn we did.
In addition to her ability to motivate us academically, Miss Lewis seemed to genuinely care for each and every one of us regardless of the color of our skin, the brokenness of our homes, or the degree to which we used Ebonics to communicate among ourselves.
I doubt that woman ever suspected she tumbled from greatness one winter morning in 1970. It happened during a history lesson in which our class explored the subject of slavery. I vividly recall opening my textbook to a page with a startling illustration—a drawing depicting slaves hard at work in cotton fields in the South. A dozen or so black people toiling in the sun, their heads wrapped with rags, their clothing tattered, their faces smiling. I raised my hand.
“These slaves are smiling.”
She studied the picture for a moment. “Yes, they are, aren’t they?”
“They’re slaves. Why would they be smiling?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Well, many slaves led quite happy lives. They were well fed and clothed and had a place to call home. Most slaves adopted their owner’s last name, and were sometimes even considered part of the family.”
Miss Lewis’ sweet smile dripped a poison few of us who had descended from kidnapped Africans could bring ourselves to swallow. Though most of the children in the class were white, there was a handful of “us” who had come in on busses to create the diversity forced integration was intended to achieve. Us fell silent.
One of them didn’t know what slavery was.
“Slavery is when a person isn’t free to do what he or she wants to.” Miss Lewis explained. “Black people were owned by white people, and they had to do whatever they were told. Even if it was something they didn’t want to do.”
“Well, I must be a slave,” a white boy joked. “’Cause my mom and dad make me do stuff I don’t want to everyday.”
Miss Lewis chuckled at his innocent response, but we couldn’t laugh. Our black parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, older siblings, neighbors and ministers had already described slavery to us in graphic detail. We knew about the whippings, mutilations and hangings slaves endured and witnessed. Black women were raped by their white owners and mated with other slaves like farm animals. Children our age were sold away from their families never to be seen again.
“It’s wrong to own people.” I proclaimed with enough conviction, I thought, to make Miss Lewis see the error of her ways.
“Yes, that is true.” She seemed to approve of my outburst, giving me hope that she would take back what she’d said about slaves being happy family members. She dug a deeper hole for herself instead. “It is definitely wrong today. But, back then slavery was legal and people didn’t think of it as wrong.”
Miss Lewis saw our astonished faces and tried to strengthen her argument by throwing in the names of real heroes no child, black or otherwise, would dare to convict. “Why, some of our country’s greatest heroes owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson. George Washington. Benjamin Franklin.” She apologized for them with her tone. “Of course, if they lived today,” she assured us, “they would never dream of such a thing. They were good, law abiding men.”
I remembered the assignment I’d completed a few weeks previous—an essay about the cherry tree and George Washington’s uncompromising honesty. I Cannot Tell a Lie, is what I had titled the paper. I’d received an A+ for describing in glowing detail how Washington was an example of the kind of human being and patriot we should all aspire to be.
Why on earth had Miss Lewis so calmly expected us to believe that the father of our country had no idea it was wrong to own another human being? Good ol’ George would have had to tell a huge whopper to get anyone to believe that—so, I decided, had Miss Lewis.
My peers and I discussed the lesson at length in the school yard, but the subject did not come up in the classroom again. We concluded that we had been abandoned by our beloved teacher in favor of a lie that was designed to protect some old dead white people. We wanted her to protect us. We wanted her to admit that she knew how horrible slavery had been, and that those heroes who had owned slaves knew it was horrible too.
In the days following that lesson, I believe Miss Lewis sensed the shift in demeanor that left us sullen and moody, but I don’t think she realized that a wide chasm of distrust had developed between her and her black students. We continued to benefit from her skills as a teacher, but our admiration for her as a human being was diminished–and each of us in our own way mourned the loss.
I was reminded of that incident many years later as I sat in a Black History class taught by Dr. Darryl Milner at Portland State University. We were required to read a booklet by Thomas Jefferson entitled Notes on the State of Virginia in which we learned that Jefferson believed the black race to be inherently inferior and therefore incapable of co-existence with whites on an equal basis.
In defense of his views, Jefferson wrote that blacks “in reason are much inferior…in imagination are dull, tasteless and anomalous.” He commented on “the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species” and said that blacks “have a very strong and disagreeable odor…seem to require less sleep…” and experience only “transient” grief. Jefferson concluded that “…their inferiority is not merely the effect of their condition in life.”
Most of us knew well the famous 1785 Jefferson quote condeming slavery “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just,” but few, including myself, had ever heard of Notes on Virgina, which Jefferson had penned in 1781. The ensuing discussion in Dr. Milner’s classroom was quite intense. A student who had attended nearby Jefferson High School voiced his outrage and disbelief that his alma mater was named after such an avowed racist.
In Jefferson’s defense, a white student stood and calmly reminded us what Miss Lewis had tried to teach me so many years before. “It’s not fair to judge Jefferson by a moral standard that did not exist during that time. In those days Thomas Jefferson was an example of the best of men.” She seated herself with a flair that said she had no doubt that the professor would have to agree with her.
He did not.
Dr. Milner neither excused nor denegrated Thomas Jefferson, he simply presented us with a lesson on Jefferson’s contemporary, Thomas Paine, a founding father whose views and actions regarding slavery were the very antithesis of Jefferson’s. We had all heard of Paine–his pamphlet Common Sense inspired the Declaration of Independence, and it was Paine who coined the term “United States of America” But we did not know that Paine had been an ardent antiracist who insisted slavery should not be allowed in the new country. In a pamphlet he’d written entitled African Slavery in America he warned:
“That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain is more lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, Christianized people should approve and be [involved] in the savage practice is surprising… Our traders in men must know the wickedness of that slave trade, if they attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own hearts… Most shocking of all is alleging the sacred Scriptures to favor this wicked practise… How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us?”
Of course Thomas Paine was not the only white American who loathed the institution of slavery (though not one of my elementary school teachers saw fit to mention any of them during our history lessons). In high school we learned of the abolitionist movement, but its participants were always portrayed as the fringe of society. John Brown was depicted as insane, and the Quakers were presented as a group of odd religious zealots.
As it turns out, Miss Lewis’ assurance that “back then slavery was legal and people didn’t think of it as wrong,” is proved untrue by the existence of Thomas Paine and thousands of other white antiracists who listened to their consciences, refused to bow to America’s racist status quo, and instead spoke, wrote, worked, sacrificed, suffered and in some cases died to uphold the ideal of “liberty and justice for all” upon which this country is founded.
In his book Heroes in America Peter H. Gibbon writes:
“In this short life, we wage a daily battle between a higher and a lower self. The hero stands for our higher self. To get through life and permit the higher self to prevail we depend on public models of excellence, bravery, and goodness.”
With the omission of white antiracist heroes from our national history, the message is sent that “good” white people need not bother themselves with issues of racial justice. Thomas Paine would disagree, as would John and Jean Rankin, William Garrison, John Brown (and his sons, Owen, Watson and Oliver), Wendell Phillips, David Ruggles, Susan B. Anthony, Thaddeus Stevens, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Shurz, Albert Einstein, Jessie Ames, Judge Julius Waties Waring, Elizabeth Avery Waring, Viola Liuzzo, John Griffin, Nathan Rutstein, Morris Dees, Peggy McIntosh, Jus Rhyme, Tim Wise, Katrina Brown, Tom DeWolfe… –the list is much longer than most would imagine.
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
*This blog exists to introduce and honor antiracist heroes, to create unity and to inspire personal and civic transformation — it is not a forum intended to denegrate or dishonor anyone — including those whose actions were intentionally or unintentionally harmful. I did not use my teacher’s real name.
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