Sunday, May 27, 2007

The global nature of racism - Part II: Global Warming

Let me preface this post with a pet pieve of mine: why is it that once the Republican spinsters - you know the wordsmiths like Frank Luntz whom the party employs to coin their euphemisms in order to deflect heat from key issues - why is it that once terms get purposefuly and strategically changed by conservatives, many liberals adopt them instantly without a second thought, thus lubricating the conservative machine? I hear this on NPR and Air America all the time.

One example is abortion rights. Abortion rights used to be called "reproductive rights" or "reproductive justice," and "pro-abortion" used to be "pro-choice." The terms "abortion rights" or "pro-abortion "just don't sound right. They make it seem like all that pro-choice people want is abortions. Not so. These new terms antagonize opposing sides even more and narrow the debate. They are meant to repulse. Not helpful. So, if you are pro-reproductive rights and pro-choice, I suggest you refuse to reduce your stand to "pro-abortion."

My last "global nature of racism" post mentioned reproductive rights as key to some of the women affected by racism around the world. For many of them, being "allowed" to HAVE children is as important as the right to choose not to have children. Racially motivated coerced sterilization is very much a problem for many women of color still today - at home and abroad (More here and reader comment from Jennifer James here.) Thus, we would do right by all of us who believe in choice, to use a more inclusive term.

The other example, related to the main idea of this post, is "climate change." The Bushites wanted to turn down the heat of global warming so they could, unfettered, continue reaping their oil, nuclear energy and military complex profits and had their darling consultant Luntz coin the term "climate change" to be used in all talking points and in mainstream media. Much more innocuous, don't you think? So, let's call global warming what it is and not euphemize the phrase.

My point is, and politicians know this so well, that wording does shape the content and tone of both debate and legislation, and in turn affecs all of us. So, I think we should be more critical of the wording we use to discuss key issues.

The issue I want to discuss today is global warming. Namely, my point is that the global warming crisis disproportionately impacts groups of color, indigenous communities, and low-income people.

Today's New York times and Boston Globe feature an article about a group that is now among the first climate refugees in the United States. The people comprising this group, like the vast majority of Katrina refugees, are people of color. More specifically, this time the community in focus are the Newtok, Native people of Alaska.

The article reads:

The earth beneath much of Alaska is not what it used to be. The permanently frozen subsoil, known as permafrost, upon which Newtok and so many other Native Alaskan villages rest, is melting, yielding to warming air temperatures and a warming ocean. Sea ice that would normally protect coastal villages is forming later in the year, allowing fall storms to pound away at the shoreline.

Erosion has made Newtok an island, caught between the ever widening Ninglick River and a slough to the north. The village is below sea level, and sinking.

. . . Studies say Newtok could be washed away within a decade.


And continues with the residents discussing the racist treatment of the tribe by the federal government:

Residents here emphasize that they are a federally recognized American Indian tribe, and they shudder when asked why they cannot just move to an existing village or a city like Fairbanks.

They say their identity is rooted in their isolation, however qualified it has become over the last century by outside influences. It was the government, they say, that insisted decades ago that they abandon their nomadic ways and pick a place to call home.

The current village site was once only a winter camp, and the people of Newtok say they are not to blame just because they are now among the first climate refugees in the United States.

"The federal government, they're the ones who came into our lives and took away some of our values," said Nick Tom Jr., 49, the former Newtok tribal administrator. "They came in and said, 'You aren't civilized. We're going to educate you.' That was hard for our grandparents."


Meanwhile, the Bush administration is fighting tooth and nail any kind of pressure on them to curb carbon emissions. Just yesterday, according to Common Dreams, Greenpeace published "a leaked document showing the United States has raised serious new objections to a proposed global warming declaration for next month’s Group of Eight summit." In the document, "US officials representing the administration of President George W. Bush reject . . . the idea of setting mandatory emissions targets, as well as language calling for G8 nations to raise overall energy efficiencies by 20 percent by 2020."

This from the government of a country which constitutes just 4 percent of the world's population, but that is responsible for about 25 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the main cause of global warming. (Souce: Ms. Laura Orlando: The Melting Point published in the spring 2007 issue of Ms.).

Does the U.S. government care about the Newtok tribe? And on a larger scale, is the government taking steps to prepare for the climate refugees, from within this country and without, that will inevitably begin seeking relocation in just a few short years? No, too busy instituting anti-immigration policies, halting anti-global warming action and destoying the Alaskan wilderness with oil drilling. The Bushites can't even repair the damage once it's been done. Take the New Orleans levees, for example, which about the year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers declared restored to "pre-Hurricane Katrina strength." Recently, however, the New Orleans levees and flood walls were inspected by engineering professor Bob Bea of the University of California, Berkeley along with National Geographic magazine, who found the "riddled with flaws." The walls are so full of weak spots, in fact, that a storm even weaker than Katrina could breach the levees if it hit this year, say leading experts in the field.

Meanwhile the Newtok, thinking ahead, according to the New York Times plan to "move piecemeal rather than in one collective migration, which they say will save money. . . They say he government should pay, no matter the cost -- if only there were a government agency charged with doing so. There is not a formal process by which a village can apply to the government to relocate."

While Native Alaskan tribes try to protect their homes from shifting and sliding on mud while watching the water around them encroach on the land and the animals around them drown in the warming waters, governmental policies on every level continue to ignore the looming crisis, encouraging destructive policies and failing to take a stand against global warming. As Mary Christina Wood, professor of law at University of Oregon said: "County commissioners are approving trophy home subdivisions and destination resorts as if global warming didn't exist. State environmental agencies are approving air permits as if global warming didn't exist. The Forest Service is approving timber sales as if global warming didn't exist. And the electric power industry is racing to build more than 150 new coal-fired power plants across the U.S., banking on federal approval as if global warming didn't exist."

On a global scale, the emissions coming from the U.S., the pollution U.S. companies export elsewhere, and the wars U.S. is waging in the Middle East and elsewhere, are directly responsible for much of the global warming, causing suffering and displacement of largely poor people and people of color around the world. But this is just the beginning. Everyone will feel the heat eventually.

Wood summarizes the already visible and possible future effects of global warming:

"United Nations reports show rapid melting of the polar ice sheets, Antarctica, Greenland and glaciers throughout the world. The oceans are heating and rising. Coral reefs are bleaching and dying. Species are on exodus from their habitats towards the poles. As a result of global warming the world now faces crop losses, food shortages, flooding, coastal loss, wildfire, drought, pests, hurricanes, heat waves, disease and extinctions. An international climate team has warned countries to prepare for as many as 50 million human environmental refugees by 2010. Scientists explain that, due to the carbon already in the atmosphere, we are locked into a temperature rise of at least 2 degrees F. This alone will have impacts for generations to come, but if we continue business as usual, they predict Earth will warm as much as 10.4 degrees F, which will leave as many as 600 million people in the world facing starvation and 3.2 billion people suffering water shortages; it will convert the Amazon rainforest into savannah, and trigger the kind of mass extinction that hasn't occurred on Earth for 55 million years."


And this quote really brings it home:

"Global warming threatens all of our basic survival mechanisms -- food, water, shelter, and health. British commentator Mark Lynas, author of High Tide, summarizes it this way: If we go on emitting greenhouse gases at anything like the current rate, most of the surface of the globe will be rendered uninhabitable within the lifetimes of most readers of this article."


Native tribes in Alaska and Hurricane Katrina and Rita refugees, among whom the African American individuals were hit harder than whites, acorrding to a recent study are the first groups among our midst to feel the might of our man-made climate mess. By the way, about 86,000 families are still homeless as a result of the hurricanes. Globally, the communities most affected as of now are the South Pacific due to the recurring hurricanes and cyclones; South Asia with its deluges, droughts, mudslides, annual flooding and even droughts; and Africa with its perennial and long-drawn African droughts. But other regions are registering dramatic changes as well. The Himalayan glaciers are melting as are the polar caps.

I agree with Wood when she describes the attitude of most Americans as blase towards global warming. We may be reading about it, thinking about it, talking about it, and dreaming about it at night (At a party I went to recently, the vast majority of the guests came to realize they were having recurring global warming nightmares almost nightly). But despite all this, very little is being done by the masses and the government in this country

As Wood says:

The reality today is that most Americans are too absorbed in their own routines to make time for global warming. We parents tend to be an especially busy group. We are so consumed with taking our children to soccer games and piano lessons that we don't think ahead to how our children will get food and water, and be safe from storms, disease, and all of the other life-threatening circumstances that planet's heating will bring them. By living out the American dream, we are essentially signing our own children up for a draft for their lifetimes. But this war will be the most frightening because it has no end in sight for even their descendants, and all of Nature's survival resources will be scarce. Unfortunately, it's no consolation that we are good, devoted parents who just aren't that interested in global warming. Nature won't recognize our children as conscientious objectors to climate crisis.

To be sure, there are some Americans who are engaged and responding with small changes in their lives. They ride the bus more often, they refuse to buy bottled water, they turn off lights. This brings them comfort, thinking the problem is on its way to being solved. These people are important models, but national defense cannot be put on the backs of a few good soldiers. Most concerned citizens are doing nothing to enlist the rest of society in climate defense.

. . . Overall, our society is nowhere near decarbonizing. Climate defense entails carbon math. We lose this war for countless generations to come if we can't get our total planetary carbon levels down before the tipping point. Each day that passes, the window of opportunity to avert global catastrophe closes a little more.


Action must be taken at the highest legislative level.

Josh Lynch has a nice comprehensive piece on the It's Getting Hot in Here blog, which "features student and youth leaders from the movement to stop global warming and to build a more just and sustainable future." Josh's piece outlines some actions that can be taken domestically to curb global warming and prioritize green energy.

We must take individual actions, but more importantly press the government to make action to slow global warming and to aid affected groups a priority - for our children and for those worldwide in harms way because of the greed and racism inherent in the American Dream.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

graffiti from the pit of hell


First, look at this beautiful scenery. This river valley is truly one of the most gorgeous places in my area. My husband, son, and I went on a hike there today.

When we sat down at a picnic table to eat our lunch, low and behold, I noticed the graffiti on the picnic table - in German. Scribbled on the table in thick black marker were the words which the Nazis placed over concentration camp gates: "Work brings freedom." But the author also added the word Jews in German.


This hit me right in the pit of my stomach. My grandparents and many other relatives were imprisoned in concentration camps, many died there. How could anyone propagate this kind of thought and hate today? And in one of the most beautiful places in our region. Truly despicable. I took a picture of the sign, then tried my best to scratch it off the table with a sharp rock.

Friday, May 25, 2007

book update


My son loves This Jazz Man! The cover says the book is appropriate for three- to seven-year-olds, but my son, who is barely two, loves it. I already had to read/sing it to him about ten times today and he cried when I refused to read it again. He has already learned a few words from the book: bass, encore, jazz man.... He loves the playfulness of the language (scat and bee bop sounds) and the instruments in the book. His uncle, who unfortunately lives 3,000 miles away, is a jazz drummer. My son got to play his uncle's drum set and piano when we last visited and still remembers the thrill. The book gives us a chance to review his drum knowledge too (drum sticks, bass drum, high hat, etc.)! So, this book was a great buy. And, as I mentioned before, the illustrations are wonderful. I highly recommend This Jazz Man!

Thursday, May 24, 2007

bookstore adventure

Today I snuck out of work early and stole away to a bookstore to take a look at the multicultural books recommended to me by the readers and contributors to AntiRacistParent.com in response to my column on the lack of diversity in toddler literature.

I spent an (uninterrupted!) hour and a half at the store, which happens to be the largest new and used bookstore in the world. Yes, you guessed it - Powell's Books. I was able to locate only a handful of the recommended titles, and of those only about four actually featured characters of color. Unfortunately, I found some of the illustrations to be of poor esthetic quality. A matter of personal taste and bias, I know.

For example, Spike Lee's Please Baby Please is an excellent concept. I loved the language and the playfulness of the ideas, but the illustrations, I thought, were terrible. The babies on some of the pages seemed misshapen and malformed with stubby arms and strangely twisted bodies and facial expressions that were supposed to be happy, but seemed full of agony. That was too bad, because I loved the text of the book. I know my son would have loved it too.

I was impressed with the Snowy Day Book by Ezra Jack Keats, but summer is about to hit and snow is quite a ways away. Maybe a good Christmas gift?

What disappointed me the most, though, was how few children's books with central, even secondary characters of color were displayed and stocked by the bookstore. By the end of my bookstore experience I was so sick of looking at silly pink and purple animal characters and white people on nearly every page that I felt discouraged. Just like that time I went to the same store looking for birthday cards for two friends of color. All I found were white faces or kitchy and borderline racist Asian-style cards. Man oh man. And I never said anything to the store. I suppose there is still time.

During today's excursion I did decide to browse the international folktale picture book section too though my 21-months-old son is too young for folk tales. But those books were pretty much a horror story as well. Most of the folk tales were Asian, retold by Anglos (because they tell it best - know what I mean?) with illustrations so racist (like this one) that I was shocked. Scary! And why does one have to go to the international section to find books focusing on people of color anyway?

I did buy one picture book that was recommended to me on Anti-Racist Parent. It's called This Jazz Man and is written by Karen Ehrhardt, an African-American author Karen Ehrhardt. The book introduces famous African-American jazz musicians as it counts to nine. It's beautifully illustrated with collages by R.G. Roth. We'll see what my son thinks. It's definitely not a book about construction equipment, which is his latest obsession.

Well, I won't let myself get discouraged so easily by this bookstore experience. I will keep searching. If you have any recommendations on toddler books featuring characters of color, please let me know.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

food for thought

I have been so busy lately that I haven't had much time to write, but I did want to post some food for thought. The questions below are actually transcribed from a voice recording by Liam McGrath, who posed these questions on Addicted to Race, a podcast about America's obsession with race, to which I listen regularly.

Liam's mission was to encourage those of us thinking, writing, and doing anti-racist activism to define for ourselves and the sake of the movement why we are doing this work. One of the points he made was that it is important to be clear about our intentions in order to be able to "arrive at common ground in pursuit of common goals" with the overarching goal being working together to affect change on a large scale. I asked Liam for permission to post the questions he posed because I think they are really excellent and needed.

Liam asks:

Why are we interested in race in America?

Is it to:
- dismantle white supremacy?
- fight for economic justice?
- fight for social justice?
- change laws?
- change minds?
- teach?
- protect our kids?
- protect ourselves?
- make friends?
- get ahead at work?
- learn about people & cultures?
- lambast other people?
- assuage our guilt?
- unleash our anger?
- because we made a choice to be involved?
- because we have no choice but to be involved?
- make self a better person?
- justify self?
- so other people will treat other people better?
- so people around us will treat others better?
- so people around us will treat us better?
- to be entertained?
- to be prepared for talk around the water cooler?
- be better understood and not judged by the body we're wrapped in?
- better understand the people we judge by the body they're wrapped in?
- because we don't want to offend?
- because we've been offended?
- because we should all just get along?
- because we will never get along?
- because we're insecure?
- because we're curious?

Liam says: "Why are we part of this multitude of discussions?" and "Now that we are here? Where are we trying to go?"

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

the global nature of racism - Part I: Healthcare

As I do my daily dose of self-education about racism, I find so many similarities between institutional racism across the world. For example, just in the last two weeks, a number of news stories have come out about reports on inequities in health care for various groups of color in several countries.

For example, the Colorlines Magazine article I mentioned in an earlier post, discusses racial disparities in healthcare and the conscequences of "colorblind" policies on the health of people of color. The article includes such alarming statistics as:

- Blacks are dying at a 40 percent higher rate than whites &

- The infant mortality gap between Blacks and whites doubled between 1950 and 2002.


Though heavily edited by the Bush administration, the National Healthcare Disparities Report, cited in the Colorlines article, and released in 2002, reveals that "racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities are national problems that affect health care at all points in the process, at all sites of care, and for all medical conditions—in fact, disparities are pervasive in our health care system."

This according to Kai Wright, writing for Colorlines:

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report "rocked the healthcare world. Conventional wisdom had thus far been that racial health disparities were primarily due to access to care, that people of color got sick and died more often because they were more likely to be uninsured or underinsured.

But the IOM study asserted that much more was at play. It declared that even given the same insurance, the same income and the same type of treatment facility, people of color were less likely to receive quality care. The disturbing gap existed across a wide range of treatments-breast cancer screenings, angioplasties, hip fracture repairs, and on and on. Whites were even more likely to get an eye exam than nonwhites.

The IOM cited a host of complex and dynamic causes for this inequality. There were structural factors, such as financial incentives to limit services given to poor patients; communication factors like missing translators or English-only signage and literature; even factors driven by the patients themselves, whose own beliefs and preferences led them to refuse certain types of care or fail to follow doctors' instructions. But what grabbed everyone's attention was the IOM's charge that at least part of the disparity results from care providers making racist and stereotyped decisions about when and what treatment to offer." (emphasis mine)


Now compare this to a study that was just released last week, on May 8th in Australia, which found that "Aboriginal health in Australia was 100 years behind the rest of the population in quality."

"Leprosy, rheumatic heart disease and tuberculosis haven't been experienced in white populations for decades, but they are still problems for some indigenous communities," WHO researcher Lisa Jackson Pulver, quoted in a Reuters article, said.

(If you read the article, notice the unethical insertion of the journalist's/editor's bigoted opinion in the sentence describing the issue of governmental budget allocations needed to: "drag Aborigines off welfare.")

The Australian study found that "Australia's Aborigines live 17 years less on average than other Australians."

The article continutes:

"Australia's 460,000 Aborigines make up two percent of the 20 million population. They have consistently been the nation's most disadvantaged group, with far higher rates of unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence.

The report said Australia ranked last among first world countries New Zealand, Canada and the United States for life expectancy among indigenous people.

While Australia's Aborigines died nearly 20 years younger than other citizens, in other countries the figure was seven years. For infants, the mortality figure was three times the rate of non-indigenous Australians."


And, finally, compare this to yet another study, released last month regarding the access to health care for the Eastern and Southern European Roma ("Gypsy") population. The study states:

"For the millions of Roma living in Central and Eastern Europe and South Eastern Europe, persistent discrimination and marginalization are a daily reality that results in poorer health for individuals and communities. Roma make up the largest ethnic minority in these countries with an overall population estimated at 5 to 6 million people. Available data consistently shows higher rates of illness and mortality among Roma than in majority populations."


These are some of the findings:

- Life expectancy for Roma populations in Eastern Europe is about 10 years less than the overall population.

- Infant mortality rates are twice as high among the Roma than the non-Roma in the Czech Republic (my country of birth!!!), Slovakia, and Hungary.

- It is widely agreed that TB, HIV/AIDS, and viral hepatitis disproportionately affect minority populations in Eastern and Central Europe. In a Serbian Roma community, the TB prevalence rate was found to be more than 2.5 times the national average.


And here is the pinnacle, for me, of the last study:

The disparities in healthcare are due to "direct discrimination by government policies" and health care providers. Sound familiar? The study states that "an overwhelming majority (95 percent) of the Roma women who had experienced gender discrimination also believed that health care professionals discriminate against Roma."

I have shared here the results of three different studies from three different continents. The U.S. study incorporated the health care disparities for a number of minority groups, though my quotes illustrated the impact of the disparities on African Americans. The other studies each focused on a single group - the Aborigines, or Native people of Australia, and the Roma, the largest ethnic minority in Europe, perceived as a "race" and racially discriminated against by many white Europeans.

What all these studies bring home is that institutional racism is real worldwide and that what ties these discriminatory practices together is institutionalized White Supremacy. That so much suffering happens worldwide at the hand of White Supremacy, is all ll the more reason to work on dismantling it.

Monday, May 14, 2007

my piece is up on antiracistparent.com

I forgot to mention that my column went up last Friday on antiracistparent.com. Check it out.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

candidate talk

Last night I went to a gathering of friends, all of them white, in their thirties, and ranging in political persuasion from mainstream liberal to more progressive. We discussed politics and the upcoming presidential elections. What I found unsettling when the conversation centered on who my friends will most likely vote for in the fall, was the following statement one of my friends made: "Unfortunately, America is not ready for a black or a woman president." And then he went on to justify why his white male Democratic candidate seemed to him like the best choice.

I grew quiet, thinking about his words. I have a hard time believing that sentiment. Of course, I am not blind to the fact that, as recently reported by a variety of press outlets, including the Guardian, Barrack Obama requested secret service protection "far earlier in the campaign than any previous candidate following worries about racist threats." I am not blind to the racism expressed all around the internet and on shows like Rush Limbaugh, or to the masogynistic bashing of Hillary on personality traits and looks, but I stil don't buy the idea that a candidate couldn't win just because of his or her race or gender. It's not the public that's not ready, I think; it's the establishment - the powerful white males in control of most institutions and others who benefit from and are unwilling to challenge white supremacy that feel threatened by someone "outside the status quo."

Imgagine if Oprah ran, for example. Don't you think she would get the vote? I am convinced of it. Just this week, Oprah endorsed Obama. With an estimated audience of 14 million a day, this might have impact beyond what we can imagine. I know I'm just using Oprah as not a very representative example of the personalities out there who could very well defy my friend's theory, but a part of what disturbs me about his statement is that he seemed to be using this unsupported theory to justify his own choice for not voting for a woman or a black candidate. He would have probably said to that that he is only being realistic. I heard that argument many times during the last two elections for why people voted for Kerry as opposed to one of the other more progressive candidates. But maybe behind that "I'm just being realistic" mask hides the fact that my friend is himself not ready for a black or female president. But saying that straight out would, of course, have made him sound like a sexist and racist...

All I said at the gathering was that I don't believe America isn't ready, but it took me some time after the party to sort out why I felt strange about the statement and the context in which it was said. What do you think?

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

why do this work? - Part I

From the day I made a commitment to leading an anti-racist life, I knew I would have to continually evaluate my thinking, motivations, and actions. I also knew that by writing about my journey on a blog and talking about it in my circles, I would be opening myself up to public scrutiny. And that’s fine. That comes with the territory. In fact, I long for and need feedback to keep myself on track. I am a person that learns from interactions more than from other sources. Criticism and support are both helpful if honest and coming from the heart. I have gotten both so far. But there are other types of feedback I’ve gotten. At this point, I don’t know what scares me more – being met with hostility or with silence.

I guess both responses scare me in different ways. Silence, unfortunately, has been more common than I had expected. And believe me; I have been far from confrontational. It’s enough to just mention anything related to racism out of the blue or in response to “What have you been up to?” and the reaction I’ve seen more often than I would’ve imagined is white people getting paler and more uncomfortable, turning away or changing the subject.

Silence from white people I talk to scares me because it feels like a door shut. When silence is the reply I get from my white friends and acquaintances when I broach the subject of racism or anti-racist parenting, despair sets in rather quickly. What is a good strategy for pulling fellow white people into the dialog? Isn’t there a deep longing in most people to heal from racism? If so, and I hope there is, how do we tap into that with people who haven’t yet begun the journey?

Hostile comments – well, those have begun too. But I have vowed to keep doing the work and keep finding better and more effective ways to move forward towards affecting change.

Why do I, as a white person who does not experience racism directly, do the work? I’ve already been accused of writing about racism just to pat myself on the back. What to say to that? I am a person who secondguesses every decision I make and every action I take. With anti-racist work, I quintupleguess all I do, to say the least. I think about race, racism, the discussions I have around those and my relationship to all of this so much that I often can't sleep at night. I am well aware of the trap that exists for people with privilege, in this case white privilege, in doing any kind of social justice work. Our privilege allows us to disassociate ourselves from the "ism" we're fighting. We can easily think we are doing something positive but actually get in the way instead. I try to be alert to my ego getting in the way.

Right now I'm in the self-awareness phase - learning about racism and simultaneously unlearning oppressive things I've learned. Occasionally I have branched out to talk to others and to take anti-racist action out in the world. But in the largely self-awareness stage, it's easy to get caught up in thinking about me: "This is scary. I could get hurt." or the woe-is-me "I feel so alone. Where are all the other anti-racist white people?" or the condescending "I'm so much more aware than some other people." I catch myself sometimes and have to redirect my thinking after beating myself up some, of course. The work, ultimately, obviously isn't about me at all. It's about working with other allies on eliminating racism in people's heads (my own too!), actions, and institutions.

I was just reading the Report from the Third White Antiracist Summit put on by the White Anti-racist Community Action Network (WACAN). The summit, which I was unfortunately unable to attend, took place last month in Colorado. Some of the concerns raised in the discussions at the summit around building a white anti-racist movement echoed my concerns. Others I found enlightening (like the last one).

For example, some of the workshop attendees worried about the following obstacles to anti-racist action - these are just a few selections: (Note that I look at these as either external or internal behavior that could sabotage individual actions or the whole movement)

- White folks beating up on and being righteous with one another
- Whites considering selves "experts"
- Internalized racial superiority
- Unresolved pain and anger being acted out and being divisive
- Taking an individualistic and competitive approach, which many whites are taught, rather than a collective one

Anyways, I am being open with my process here. Ultimately, it's not my intentions or internal dialog, but my actions that matter.

Peace.