white anti-racist parent

grappling with whiteness

2011-08-24T13:33:00.000-07:00

Every time I write out my thoughts on racism, I feel self-conscious, presumptuous and self-indulgent as a white person. But writing helps me process my thoughts and move forward. Also, it is clear that white people need to talk about issues of race more. Otherwise, for us, race is the perpetual elephant in the room and nothing will change. In fact, one thing I am committed to is to consistently bring the topic of racism to the forefront with the white people in my world.

So, here goes my latest two cents...

Taking it in

Since my early years in this country, I have been concerned with issues of race and racism, a topic close to my heart, perhaps because some of my strongest initial bonds in the US were with friends and lovers who happened to be people of color, and who opened my eyes to their experiences. As a white person, I have wrestled with trying to grasp how the reality of living in a racist society impacts me and how I can be useful in efforts to counter and not collude with the oppressive system that exists. This process has taken on a special significance for me since I have become a mother of a white child whom I want to raise with an antiracist consciousness. More recently, I have also become a stepmother to a biracial child, and, again after many years, I am now involved in a black-white interracial relationship.

I spend time every day learning about the inner workings of interpersonal and systemic racism and its impacts on people of color, as well as the meaning of whiteness in all this. I listen with an open heart to my friends' and strangers' stories, read about and watch videos discussing issues of race, I participate in interracial dialogues and workshops. I monetarily support community and civil rights organizations I believe make a difference and occasionally attend protests. Last year I completed a human rights fellowship in Europe, listening to and writing about the struggles of people of color there to educate the international community as well as my white circles in deep denial. I need to know how life is for people of color in the motherland, in this heavily stratified society, and in my overwhelmingly white city. I feel the need to compare how other whites grapple with white privilege, and the responsibility it bestows on them, on us. All this in order to grow and be able to be a good ally; to even perceive injustice, let alone challenge it.

While I process all this, I feel the pain of racism people of color share with me deeply, although it will never be first-hand since I am white. Simultaneously, I get frustrated at how invisible and ungraspable the traps of whiteness are to me. I get impatient, often admonish myself for being slow to understand and, moreover, for not doing enough to upset the status quo interpersonally, and on a larger scale, institutionally.

Parenting right

As a white person who hasn't come across many effective everyday antiracist role models, to use the words of Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy in their book, Raising Biracial Children, I am not sure "how to approach parenting in a way that explicitly acknowledges the omnipresence of race in daily life." I want my family to be one in which "active attention [is] devoted to addressing and explaining race, and where children are encouraged to assume an antiracist stance;. . . where [my son] learns the meaning of [his] whiteness and [learns] to critically challenge notions of white supremacy." I certainly don't come from a family with such a conscious upbringing, so this feels like an uncharted territory. But I know there are valuable resources, such as this article on how to talk to kids about race, available for parents.

In order to provide my children with clear guidance that helps facilitate healthy racial identity development, I feel it would be helpful to form a group of those dedicated to our own growth as antiracists and antiracist parents. That is my next task. (One model I found out there is White Noise, a group of white parents with white children who have been meeting for two years to learn together and support each other in ending white supremacy.)

Claiming whiteness

In my own journey towards racial awareness, being of Jewish heritage (specifically, the granddaughter of concentration camp survivors) and an immigrant whose family was poor for many years, I am still having a hard time claiming my whiteness and claiming US history as my own, even though on an intellectual level I grasp the fact that I am now a part of a racial hierarchy stemming from a very particular historical past, from which even I, a white person who didn't grow up here, benefit tremendously.

I only say this to acknowledge my particular vantage point and history; not as a cop out, keeping in mind the words of Bonnie Berman Cushing and Jeff Hitchcock in their book Accountability and White Anti-racist Organizing: "In an increasingly multiracial society, the historic and present baggage of whiteness and white privilege lead many to eschew a white identity. Yet the privilege remains."

On a cognitive level I grasp that. I am familiar with Peggy MacIntosh's Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege. I get that I have advantages in this society because I am white. For instance, I never get racially profiled while driving or walking down the street. I don't stand out visually in most places in my predominantly white city. I don't generally get followed around in stores as a suspected thief or questioned about items I'm returning with or without a receipt. I am not feared or harassed by the police when in public in a group of my white peers. My skin color makes me seem financially reliable when I pay for merchandise. I don't get called racial epithets. Statistically, I can count on better quality health care and more longevity than people of color. I am aware of all that, but, to be completely honest, there is still a resistance in me in letting the reality of white privilege sink in. Why?

Part of the resistance to claiming my white identity stems from the immigrant and the Jew in me having resisted assimilation so strongly in order to preserve my authenticity and sanity, that I have eventually found comfort, even pride in inhabiting that "otherness" ascribed to me here of someone foreign, someone with an accent; about living psychically on the margins of American society. But when it comes to racism, as a white person I am in the oppressor group. I benefit from the system, and like most white people with whom I have had conversations about this, I have a hard time deeply acknowledging that. For me in particular, it is scary to be associated with the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), middle class mainstream influence which I have so vehemently tried to filter out of my life and my identity because, in many ways aspects of that culture have felt empty, hegemonic and oppressive. Clearly, this disassociation on my part needs bridging, which can be found, for instance in the commonality that for US-based whites, it is key, even if profoundly upsetting, to acknowledge that in American society, we automatically get the benefit of the doubt while we stand on the shoulders of men and women of color whose land, cheap or free labor and lives were (and continue to be) taken from them, seen by whites as nothing but fuel for this capitalist beast in whose belly we now find ourselves.

What a history to inherit.

Untangling race at home

Now I'm in a relationship with a man of African slave ancestry. I don't know how to make sense of our different histories coming together yet. Conversation about racism is a daily occurrence. I am learning so much from him and at the same time continuing my own work. While it is true that every intimate relationship is intercultural, to a degree, since the partners almost always have differences in backgrounds, communication styles, and world views to meld, in a black-white interracial relationships, the weight of history and the reality of everyday racism sometimes plays itself out in a more pronounced way. This is especially true, I'd venture to say, in geographic locations where people of color are disproportionately outnumbered and highly visible in a perpetual sea of white faces (as one blogger described in her piece, What does an all-white room mean?). As Randall Kennedy writes in his book, Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption, "at the dawn of the twenty-first century, a wide array of social pressures continue to make white-black marital crossings more difficult, more costly, and thus less frequent than other types of interethnic or interracial crossings."

Our most visible differences aside, my partner and I do have some experiences in common. Both of us are immigrants, acutely familiar with being uprooted and on the margins in this society. We are both deeply rooted in our home cultures since we moved to the US as teenagers. We share similar political views. We are "blended culture" people who each speak several languages and are widely traveled. We are both college-educated, both divorced, each a parent to one child of the opposite gender from us. Although race is blatantly salient in our relationship, so are gender, class and culture. All these are so intertwined that it becomes quite a puzzle to try to untangle or isolate them to get at the core of differences or conflict. But it's worth trying. We have overcome several big points of friction already, and excavating the sources of the disagreements has been key.

Longing for healing

But back to the impact and implications of living in a highly racialized society on my experience as a white woman. I have come to recognize that my domain of impact in this life is not organizational or political; it is relational. As law professor and author Randall Kennedy argued when explaining why he chose to write about interracial relationships:

People usually expect talk about regulation of laws at the workplace, the regulation of race with respect to housing markets, the regulation of race with respect to education… People don't think about spending a lot of time on the regulation of race with respect to marital intimacy, sexual intimacy. Though if you think about it, if you think about how people get jobs, if you think about how people conceive of themselves, if you think about how people learn about the world, these sorts of relationships are incredibly important. Friendship as an institution, dating as an institution is incredibly important. One thing that drew me to this subject was the extent to which actually people did not talk about it and thought of these relationships as rather trivial. . . This topic is actually more important in social consequences than some of the other institutions upon which we focus much more time.

The place where I connect most intensely around how racism impacts me as a white person is the pain of loss. I am keenly aware of how racism can cause friendships and close bonds to rupture and fall apart or to never form because of mistrust in the first place. On an emotional level I get how racism divides us. And that is the place that spurs me on; it's the desire for this society to become whole, for us to heal, to find each other alive and breathing under the rubble of centuries of injustice, and to feel the richness, vibrancy and joy in bridging the divide. Only when we come together being our authentic selves, speaking and hearing each other's truths, can we create long-lasting change.

So, I'll keep doing the work of learning and engaging with others … for that; for the love that was, is and that could be.

The Black Panthers in my town: a look at how the press shaped local activist history

2010-03-31T10:52:00.000-07:00

The media prime us in ways of thinking about the world, particularly in terms of whom we accept and dismiss as legitimate or illegitimate political actors. In this way, the media frame and “crystallize history.” Media coverage of events affects our understanding of history and “preconditions what collective action we take.” These were the ideas with which Jules Boykoff, associate professor of political science at Pacific University, opened the presentation I attended on March 18. The lecture was organized by The Northwest History Network and entitled “'We’re going to defend ourselves': The Portland Chapter of the Black Panther Party & Local Media Response."

Who were the Black Panthers? What was the organization's mission nationally and locally? How were the wider community's ideas about the group shaped by the press coverage of its activities? What is the party's legacy today? These were some of the questions addressed by the presenters, who, aside from professor Boykoff included Kent Ford and Percy Hampton, both original members of the Portland Black Panther Party chapter, and Martha Gies, an Oregon author who has written extensively about the Portland Black Panthers, one of approximately fifty chapters affiliated with the national party, a progressive organization dedicated to social and economic justice and black empowerment.

The speakers addressed a full house of about eighty-five people (more than thirty were turned away at the door for a lack of space), spanning multiple generations, but somewhat lacking in racial diversity, with approximately ninety percent of the audience being white. In attendance were also two nurses and one laboratory technician who volunteered in the Black Panther-run Portland health clinic forty years ago.

The weekly, Portland Mercury, was the only local paper tocover the talk, however, as we will see below, the report failed to explain the Black Panthers' mission or to provide a larger sociopolitical context for the organization's activities. Additionally, the Mercury article neglected to mention any critique of the media whatsoever provided that night. This is curious, given that scrutiny of the press was one of the main topics discussed; a lens so key to the lecture, in fact, that even the title--not once stated in the Mercury article--included the words “Local Media Response.”

In light of understanding the media's power in shaping history, Boykoff and Gies discussed their findings from a survey they conducted of the local press to see what kind of coverage the Portland Black Panther Party received in Oregon during its most active period from 1969 to 1979. Their inquiry, due to be published in the fall issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly, examined all the articles printed in the local newspapers during that decade.

Investigating the press, Boykoff and Gies found that police were nearly always the only sources quoted in the stories, with the press almost never quoting Black Panther members themselves or ever mentioning the party's ten-point plan, which included: “the power to determine the destiny of our Black and oppressed communities;” full employment for the Black and oppressed people; reparations for slavery; decent housing and education; free health care; an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black and oppressed people; “an immediate end to all wars of aggression;” and “people's community control of modern technology.”

Looking at how the press presented the BPP is important, because, according to many, including historian and activist Manning Marable, quoted in Boykoff's book Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States, the Black Panthers were one of the most influential revolutionary organizations in the U.S.

Plenty has been written about the Black Panther Party, founded in 1966 in Oakland California and active nation-wide throughout the 1970s, but it is important to supply a little bit of historical information when so much is missing in the recent local coverage of this presentation. According to the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving the history and legacy of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party's platform and message was so powerful, "it became a movement of itself," resulting in "a rapid proliferation of other, like minded organizations."

From the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation website:

"Chicanos, or Mexican Americans, in Southern California formed the Brown Berets. Whites in Chicago and environs formed the White Patriot Party. Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Area formed the Red Guard. Puerto Ricans in New York created the Young Lords. Eventually, a group of so called senior citizens organized the Gray Panthers to address the human and civil rights abuses of the elderly in society. The Party expanded from a small Oakland based organization to a national organization, as black youth in 48 states formed chapters of the Party. In addition, Black Panther coalition and support groups began to spring up internationally, in Japan, China, France, England, Germany, Sweden, in Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uruguay and elsewhere, including, even, in Israel.

. . . At the street level, the Party began to develop a series of social programs to provide needed services to black and poor people, promoting thereby, at the same time, a model for an alternative, more humane social scheme. These programs, of which there came to be more than 35, were eventually referred to as Survival Programs. [These included] free breakfast programs and free clinics, but also grocery giveaways, the manufacture and distribution of free shoes, school and education programs, senior transport and service programs, free bussing to prisons and prisoner support and legal aid programs, among others.

One of the greatest strengths of The Panthers was that they strove for a class-based, rather than race-based, solution to social justice. Bobby Seale, one of the co-founders of the BPP, said: "Those who want to obscure the struggle with ethnic differences are the ones who are aiding and maintaining the exploitation of the masses. We need unity to defeat the boss class – every strike shows that. Every workers’ organization’s banner declares: ‘Unity is strength.’"

In 1968, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, pledged to wage a campaign to crush the Black Panther Party, stating the Party represented "the greatest threat to the internal security of the U.S." He enlisted the assistance of local police departments to do so, and thus began the era of raids and assaults on the Party's field offices, accompanied by the FBI's use of "informants, agents provocateur and covert activities involving mayhem and murder."

A program of the BPP seen probably as most controversial by the wider public, was that of armed citizen patrols, an effort to monitor police interactions with the black community, in order to shield community members from police harassment and excessive force.

Bobby Seale commented on the Party's police monitoring work this way, as quoted in Beyond Bullets:

The party realizes that the white power structure's real power is its military force; is its police force. And we can see our black communities are being occupied by policemen just like a foreign country might be occupied by foreign troops. Our politics comes from our hungry stomachs and our crushed heads and the vicious service revolver at a cop's side which is used to tear our flesh, and from the knowledge that black people are drafted to fight in wars, killing other colored people who've never done a damn thing to us. So how do we face these cops in the black community? We have to face them exactly how they come down on us. They come down with guns and force.

Nationwide, writes Boykoff, the media undermined the Panthers and depicted them as "wrongheaded, antisocial, and a national threat."

In Oregon, Boykoff and Gies identified three dominant angles, or frames, used in the reporting.

In his book Beyond Bullets, Boykoff writes:

The mass media present social movements and their actions through a process of framing, in which easily identifiable lenses refract the news and shape public opinion. A frame is “an interpretive schemata that simplifies and condenses the 'world out there' by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences of actions within one's present or past environment.”. . . By framing socio-political issues and controversies in specific ways, news organizations present—if tacitly—the foundational causes and potential consequences of a social problem or issue, as well as possible remedies.

The three dominant frames Boykoff & Gies identified in the local press coverage of the PBB were: criminality, violence, and community organizing. Sixty-three percent of all the articles used the criminality frame, amplifying arrests and trials of party members, thus creating the perception of “a threatening, menacing network of criminal enterprise which justified the need for police presence,” to use Boykoff's words.

Criminality was used as a news peg—a central purpose or justification—for a story in about half the articles with a criminality frame. Such coverage only helped to perpetuate the damaging stereotype of African American men as criminals or “black demons” that has plagued the African American community since the colonial times and is still so prevalent today in mass media depictions of black men, according to sociologist Dennis Rome whose book Black Demons: Mass Media's Depiction of the African American Male Criminal Stereotype, which Boykoff referenced.

Additionally, violence was used as a frame in nearly half the stories, making no distinction between self-defense and other types of violence.

Surprisingly, Boykoff and Gies did not find a dominant anti-white frame in Oregon's press, though the depiction of the Black Panthers as anti-white was abundant in national press forty years ago.

The community organizer frame was present in just over a third of all the articles, though whenever the Black-Panther-run Portland clinic or breakfast program for the poor were mentioned, this was done without substance and “without the civil rights context,” Boykoff said.

Letters to the editor were the only places of dissent, contention and more substantial information about the Black Panthers—perhaps a lesson for today's activists to use this space more actively in order to shed a light on often underrepresented voices in the media, as Boykoff suggested.

The Portland Mercury already covered the bulk of the experiences shared that night by the Oregon Black Panther Party members, but what kind of language was used to do so?

The article was entitled In The Shadows: Talking with the Black Panthers. Why in the shadows? The readers are never enlightened as to the reason for this word choice. Again, the BPP's mission or function in the community is never quite explained. We are told that Kent Ford “was the founder of Portland's chapter of the '60s-era black empowerment organization.” But the rest of the activities of the organization are hardly, if at all, expounded upon. We learn about the Black Panthers' free breakfast program: “The free breakfasts the group handed out to school kids on NE 7th and Wygant are no more.” No context there. The readers find out about the free health and dental clinics run by the Black Panthers, again without the larger context. The only example of patients treated there is that of drug-addicted prostitutes.

The paper informs of the BPP's mission to end police brutality in this way: “Tensions between police and African Americans in his NE Portland neighborhood running at a dangerous high.” Again, this brief statement leaves out the historical context of the Panthers' struggle for justice.

Percy Hampton's crystallizing life event which led to his involvement with the BPP is described somewhat ambiguously: Two officers harassed Hampton while he was walking to a grocery store. “The two officers got angry, beat him up, and sent him to jail for 90 days for assaulting the police.” Nothing more.

Next we learn that the local leader Ford “remembers standing on Union Avenue (now MLK) with a shotgun, monitoring police arrests of black people.” To those unfamiliar with the philosophy and activities of the party, this type of a quote again casts the light of a threatening presence that could potentially justify the use of violence by the police, a dangerous image to broadcast without further explanation, given today's heated struggle against recurring cases of police brutality and use of excessive force, disproportionately affecting Portland's African American community.

It is unfortunate that forty years later, the history of one of the most influential progressive organizations dedicated to affecting social change in this country remains shrouded behind the misleading language used by the press, and in what is missing between the lines. The wider public continues to be "underinformed," if not misinformed, by the media about the real work and achievements of the Black Panther Party. The media, especially the smaller, alternative press like Portland Mercury, should strive to do better than this.

returning

2010-03-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

Life has been a whirlwind. But because I haven't been posting here doesn't mean I haven't stayed dedicated to my personal mission of working towards racial justice.

Over the last year, I have written several articles that I would like to repost here. They are not necessarily directly related to parenting, but they do show some of my thinking and involvement out in the wider community.

It is my hope that more white people will educate themselves as well as speak up and stand up against racism in both interpersonal and institutional contexts.

Over the last year or so, I have been doing that in the articles I have written, but my commitment to the work strengthens as time goes on and as I find more allies and more concrete ways to affect change.

Diversity at my son's school: are they for real?

2010-03-16T10:00:00.001-07:00

A couple of years back, I wrote a post, also published at Anti-Racist Parent--now renamed Love Isn't Enough, in which I surveyed my son's library to examine gender stereotypes and the representation of people of color in his books. I took a trip down memory lane this week, and conducted a similar experiment at his school during my short stint as a volunteer at a Scholastic Book Fair/Fundraiser. Fascinating.

Of course, the school AND the company Scholastic both like to pay a lot of lip service to "diversity." Who doesn't these days.

The first article by Scholastic on "diversity" that popped up in my search says:

Even 3 and 4 year olds are tuned in to matters of culture and ethnicity. For them, the issues are not social but personal, and are closely related to their self-esteem. . . If your child's preschool validates cultural diversity, you'll know it just by looking around. Are a variety of faces represented on the walls?

That article was published in 1996. So, how is Scholastic doing now as far as honoring diversity with the reading materials it sells in the communities who choose Scholastic book fairs as venues for fundraising?

First, let's look at my son's school community. I know that each classroom, during enrollment, tries to balance equally the gender represented in the student body. Racially, in my completely unscientific estimation, the population of the school is about eighty percent white, reflecting--and possibly proportion-wise surpassing--the racial make-up of Portland, the whitest US city with a population of over half-million. (Portland is about 78% white, while the state of Oregon is 87% white. Just to throw in a bit of trivia, the Czech Republic, where I grew up, is about 97% white). Religious affiliations are impossible to determine, though I know for sure that at least three major religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism) are represented. A myriad of ethnicities are represented, however, the only ones I can determine, other than those overrepresented in the region (e.g. Anglo-American and Scandinavian-American), are ones based on the languages I've heard at the school. I have heard Vietnamese, Chinese, French and Spanish. The languages spoken, of course, don't necessarily give me information on specific ethnicities (for instance, a French speaker could be Canadian, Hatian, or French among many other possibilities) but at least we can establish that a percentage of children at my son's school are growing up bi- or multi-lingual.

Let me just say, that to some, this may seem like an odd exercise in face value symbology. But we would be kidding ourselves if we asserted that we live in a colorblind society and that our ideas about people are not influenced by the racial, gender, and many other types of stereotypes which we encounter just about everywhere--in the media, in books, in advertising and entertainment, in our families, etc.

So, I was curious to see what a giant such as Scholastic was doing to educate our children, and if their book selection for the young was reinforcing or helping to shatter two categories of stereotypes in particular: gender pigeonholes and stereotypes about people of color still so prevalent in this society.

As far as gender, I counted how many book covers featured girls and women, paying attention to the numbers of "visible minorities" (yes, indeed a subjective definition), and to what the girls were pictured doing. Were they shown in midst of interesting and varied activities or just standing there looking pretty (and pretty "useless")?

As far as race, I took note of the number of books showing people of color, and again in what context they appeared.

In this survey, I only focused on book covers due to a time constraint, and because it is the cover that usually determines whether parents and children choose the book to pick up, flip through, and possibly purchase.

So, what was the Scholastic preschool/early elementary-level book selection like? Here are my findings:

Of the nearly 300 books displayed, 75 portrayed people only, and 21 showed people and animals together. The rest of the book covers showed either only animals, a scene, a building, or nondescript characters such as aliens. So, about one-third of the books for sale featured people on the front covers.

Of the approximately 100 covers with people on them, 20 featured "visible minorities." Of those books, 11 displayed girls or women on the front, interestingly almost always with one or more males. Four books showed people of color interacting with animals, six showed people of color alone (though I'm being generous here, because one cover was of a must-look-very-closely-to-ascertain African-American boy's arm carrying a suitcase--and I still counted it). Finally, ten, or about half, showed "visible minorities" together with whites.

Three of the twenty books with people of color had Asian-Americans/Pacific Islanders on the cover. Yes, that's three out of 100 when my son's school has quite a few students of Asian heritage, and when the Portland population is more than twice that, percentage-wise. Needless to say, I was disappointed to see such underrepresentation.

Only one of the books had a Latina on the cover (Dora, the Explorer). That's right; only one out of a hundred books showed a Latina, while Latinos, according to the US Census Bureau, represent fifteen percent of the US population, and in the greater Portland Metro area, depending on the location, 7 to 50% of the total local population.

Sixteen of the twenty book covers featuring people of color showed African-Americans.

Eight of the books with "visible minorities" on the front focused on athletes, all African-Americans, and all but one of the many athletes shown on the book cover "collages" were male sports figures. Additionally, two book covers showed Barack Obama--one where he was alone and smiling, and the other where he was smiling, surrounded by his smiling family. Are you smiling yet?

So, let's talk more about what we see people of color doing on the book covers. The Asian girls are just standing there, one looking startled (whoa, she's not smiling!), the other... drum roll... smiling pretty. The one pair of Asian parents we are shown is smiling, climbing up and hugging a giant dinosaur. And Dora? She's at the doctor's office, sitting on the examination table with a stethoscope in her ears. Dora--pictured with a doctor who is a white woman--is, you may gasp now... smiling. And the African-American characters and personalities? Some are engrossed in sports games, others happily posing in sports jerseys. Other than sports figures, there is one black girl sitting on a bench with a book in her lap. However, she is not reading, but talking to a friend instead. And there is one black kid taking eggs out of an Easter basket. And there is that boy carrying a suitcase--his arm only, rather--because the rest of his body is on the back cover. But the remaining people of color are just standing there or jumping up into the air smiling, looking pretty. Even a photograph of Ruby Bridges on the book cover of her autobiographical story for children about being the first African-American to attend an all-white school in New Orleans, is pictured just standing there, smiling. A beautiful photo, nonetheless, but she is seen without books, pencils or anything hinting at the theme of the book. Inside, the book does have powerful photographs of the protests surrounding desegregation and of Ruby at school with her teacher and friends, but on the cover, her image is stripped of the historical context, so central to the story.

It is interesting to note that of all the people, the athletes (and a couple of kids who look scared of ghosts or who knows what) are the only ones whose facial expressions show intensity, this while focusing on a sports game. Otherwise, all the rest of the people, and especially those of color are seen smiling and looking "non-threatening." Showing people (and animals with human-like features) in their happy-go-lucky best is a definite trend with books for this age group in general.

Of the nearly 100 books featuring people, 39 included girls on the cover (Remember, most accompanied by boys or men). Ten of them were girls or women of color. About half the book covers with females showed girls as active and engaged in an activity, including painting, cooking, playing with dolls, performing theater, riding a horse or building a snowman. The other half of girls were pictured mostly posing with smiles on their faces. A much smaller percentage of "active" females was shown on the covers featuring women of color.

As far as the catalogue for the book fair, designed by Scholastic, of the fifty books featured, only ONE book cover displays a person of color, an African-American girl hugging a dog she rescued.

So, in conclusion. Are we seeing Scholastic breaking with or reinforcing gender and racial stereotypes? I must share that I am disappointed that, though a large percentage of books featured females on their covers, many of the girls, especially the girls of color, were shown not engaged in ANY interesting or meaningful activities. Instead, they were posing on the book cover, looking cute. Most of the girls shown as active were doing typically "girly" things such as art, playing with dolls, dancing or cooking. I didn't see any girls (ok, except for the one building a snowman) engaged in scientific pursuits or activities stereotypically assigned to boys, such as building, using machines or doing sports (other than one female basketball player and a horse rider).

I was also unhappy about the relatively low numbers of books featuring people of color, and even deeper than that, that the range of activities in which "visible minorities" were shown engaging was by far much narrower than that of their white counterparts. I mean, half of all the African-American "faces" belonged to athletes. What about the scholars, the scientists, the artists, the writers, the teachers... You get the drift.

Should I send my "analysis" to Scholastic? I think I'll do that... and report back.

Community shares grief, anger and fear following another life lost in an interaction with police

2010-02-15T10:49:00.000-08:00

“If you're shocked, you're not living in America.”

“There are two different Portlands. There is a disparity in treatment many white people don't understand.”

“The stinking sore of racism has been exposed. The band-aid has been pulled off, the disease needs to be treated.”

“This is a fight for life. This is a fight for the life of my children.”

“If you can talk about it (righting the wrong), you have to BE about it.”

The above were just some of the sentiments expressed at Grief, anger and fear: Black lives lost in interactions with police, Portland's own an event put on by Restorative Listening Project on Gentrification, an organization which sponsors dialogues focusing on the “stories and experiences of Portland's Black community and seeks to address historic and continuing harm and disparity.”

The monthly community dialogue—this time focusing on the issue of police brutality—was attended by approximately sixty Portland residents from a variety of backgrounds and of different ages, ranging from young people to veteran activists.

At the forefront of everyone's mind was the recent fatal shooting by a white Portland police officer of Aaron Campbell, an unarmed 25-year-old African-American man. The police officer was acquitted by the grand jury, however Campbell's family has asked the Oregon chapter of Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network to conduct an independent investigation into the shooting death. The case has gotten some national attention with Rev. Jesse Jackson coming to Portland to speak and protest the police shooting on February 16.

On February 15, the experiences of a number of the members of the Portland-area African-American community and their allies resounded throughout the room. Among them were stories of loved ones lost to police brutality. Emotions as well as ideas about strategies and accounts of past actions taken to affect change were shared.

Campbell's grandmother spoke about the stress and grief she has been experiencing since her grandson's death on January 29th. She said: “I keep asking myself why. Why did they have to shoot him down like a dog? He was unarmed.”

Several mothers spoke of the fear they live with; the fear of their black sons getting murdered by the police; a fear which prevents them so often from being able to sleep at night. This very fear was echoed this week in a column by Lisa McCall, an assistant principal in the Portland Public Schools, in Oregon's most widely circulated newspaper, The Oregonian. In the column, McCall writes:

“The tragic death of Aaron Campbell has brought home some of the worst fears the mother of a young black man could have. . . History is against us, against our sons, against our best efforts to protect them. Even in 2010, far from the injustices of the past, we are reminded that our fears are very real. . . .We are reminded that the system has failed to protect us. . . I do wish that police in Portland and around the country would think twice about their own contribution to the fear they see in a black woman's eyes when she instinctively pulls her son close to her while simply walking past a white officer on the street. . . Those good officers owe all those worried black mothers a little respect for that fear, and some public assurance they will try to never let something like this happen in Portland again."

Campbell's uncle and cousin were present at the dialogue as well, both of them upset, grieving, and trying to work with the family to help them heal while also being active in rallying for change in the areas of police conduct and accountability.

There have been exhaustive studies done to show empirically that people of color, especially African-American men, are many times more likely to be searched, accused of a crime, arrested, charged, even killed by the police than any other demographic. Portland is no exception to the disastrous trend of racial profiling and police brutality disproportionately affecting the Black community.

From the American Civil Liberties Union's website:

“The practice of racial profiling by members of law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels remains a widespread and pervasive problem throughout the United States, impacting the lives of millions of people in African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, Arab and Muslim communities.

Data and anecdotal information from across the country reveal that racial minorities continue to be unfairly victimized when authorities investigate, stop, frisk, or search individuals based upon subjective identity-based characteristics rather than identifiable evidence of illegal activity. Victims continue to be racially or ethnically profiled while they work, drive, shop, pray, travel, and stand on the street.”

As ACLU states, the problem is that "many racial profiling victims walk away with traffic tickets, but too often for others the outcome of racial profiling is death."

The ACLU report continues: "It is significant to note that research confirms the existence of bias in decisions to shoot. A series of University of California/University of Chicago studies recreated the experience of a police officer confronted with a potentially dangerous suspect, and found that:

- participants fired on an armed target more quickly when the target was African American than when White, and decided not to shoot an unarmed target more quickly when the target was White than when African American;
- participants failed to shoot an armed target more often when that target was White than when the target was African American. If the target was unarmed, participants mistakenly shot the target more often when African American than when White;
- shooting bias was greater among participants who held a strong cultural stereotype of African Americans as aggressive, violent and dangerous, and among participants who reported more contact with African Americans."

At the event, the ways proposed in which citizens can advocate for change included: continue community dialogue with the aim of finding solutions and healing; push for policy change on every level: city, county, state, etc; demand police accountability; work with young men to provide safe release of anger and frustration; create a support network for fathers and sons to connect emotionally and to become more involved in the community; and empower young people to get more involved in their communities (e.g. patroling the streets) with the idea of eliminating the "need" for a police presence in the neighborhood.

As many of the event participants stressed, police brutality is not just a black or white issue; it's a matter of being one family and community. And in acknowledging our interconnectedness lies the imperative to look out for one another and to jointly keep the "powers that be" in check.

For those wanting to show support to the grieving family and those interested in engaging in community activism surrounding the issue of police brutality, there will be a rally at Pioneer Square this Friday, February 19th at 3:00 pm.

yes, I will return

2008-05-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am planning on returning to blogging here again. I am committed to fighting racism. I have just had a difficult several months during which a tragedy occurred in my life. Please stay tuned.

break

2007-07-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

I am taking a break from blogging for a whole host of reasons, but I plan to be back. Thanks for checking in.

young woman displays courage at the White House

2007-06-30T20:24:00.000-07:00

This high school senior wins my nomination for most courageous woman of the month. Mari Oye, a recent Wellesley High graduate (pictured last year with her spelling bee colleagues on the right), won this year's federal government’s highest honor, the Presidential Scholars medal. Instead of just visiting the White House and getting her picture taken for posterity with the president - the usual routine for Presidential Scholars, Mari persuaded 49 of her 140 fellow scholars to sign a letter she and a dozen others had drafted and she had just written longhand on notebook paper, calling on President Bush to reject torture and treat terrorism suspects humanely.

Mari says her activist spirit was influenced by her Quaker background and by grandparents on her father's side, who were in internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Here is the text of the letter:

Mr. President.

As members of the presidential scholars class of 2007, we have been told that we represent the best and brightest of our nation. Therefore, we believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions. We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants.

Signed

Read the full story here.

just don't take away my TV!

2007-06-28T20:32:00.001-07:00

Hey, that's not me talking. My TV is packed up in the basement and hasn't been used in more than a year. That's the white American participants in a 2006 Ohio State University study entitled "The Cost of Being Black: White Americans' Perceptions and the Question of Reparations" speaking.

As Margaret Kamara reports:

Whites of different ages and geographic regions were asked how much they deserved to be paid for living the rest of their lives as an African American.

Respondents generally requested less than $10,000 to become black. However, they said they'd have to be paid $1 million to give up television for the rest of their lives.

The article continues:

In another scenario, the references "white" and "America" were omitted, and participants were asked to select between being born a minority or majority in a fictional country called, "Atria." They were warned of the disadvantages that the minority group faced -- the same disparities faced by black Americans -- and they said they should be paid an average of $1 million to be born a minority.

"When you take it out of the black-white context, white Americans seem to fully appreciate the costs associated with the kinds of disparities that African Americans actually face in the United States," (study co-author Philip) Mazzocco says. [. . .]"White Americans suffer from a glaring ignorance about what it means to live as a black American."

And here is more. This time, the article discusses the attitude of whites about reparations for slavery:

The study also found that nearly all whites opposed reparations for slavery, saying it was "too long ago" and that the descendants of slavery don't need to be compensated.

However, when researchers ask participants to imagine a situation in which they could be part of a reparation lawsuit that would compensate them $5,000 for an event that occurred 150 years ago to a wealthy ancestor of theirs, 61 percent agreed to be part of the lawsuit.

This is the same percentage of blacks today that support reparations for slave descendants.

Wow! These are my fellow white people in America talking. Surprising? I guess not, but still deeply saddening that so many white people just don't get racism.

And, by the way, most the reader comments under the quoted article are pretty depressing. Denial, whining and just plain racism on the part of many of the white readers. A dialog on race issues is much needed across color lines, but I am of the opinion that sometimes it's a good idea for white people to just to shut up and listen. Why the need to defend white privilege? I wish white people would just read, think, and take the results of the study as an opportunity to examine their own beliefs.

say bye bye to school diversity

2007-06-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

We are now seeing one Supreme Court ruling after another that flies in the face of civil rights, social justice, and democracy. Today, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court imposed new limits on public school desegregation plans, thus making it more difficult for school districts to ensure racially integrated schools.

As Hispanic Business News reported:

A closely divided Supreme Court on Thursday narrowed the ability of public school districts to use race in assigning students to schools.

Affirmative action in education survives but with tighter restrictions following the decisions in two related cases from Kentucky and Washington. Districts in Louisville and Seattle, hoping to maintain diversity, considered race when deciding what schools students can attend.

"The school districts have not carried their heavy burden of showing that the interest they seek to achieve justifies the extreme means they have chosen," Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote for a 5-4 majority.

Roberts failed, however, to persuade five justices to go further and dismiss completely the merits of what he termed "racial balancing."

[. . . ] Washington's Seattle School District No. 1 allowed entering ninth-graders to choose the high school they wanted. Some schools proved more popular than others.

About 60 percent of the school district's 46,000 students were Asian, African-American, Latino or Native American. District officials said they considered race as a "tie-breaker" when assigning students, so that neighborhood schools wouldn't be segregated.

The policy meant some white students couldn't get into the very popular Ballard and Hale high schools in north Seattle.

Kentucky's Jefferson County Public Schools cover a broader area, educating some 97,000 students in the Louisville area. About one-third of the students are African-American.

Unlike Seattle schools, the Jefferson County schools had also formerly been segregated. The district tried to maintain a minimum African-American enrollment of 15 percent at each of its schools, and in doing so officials refused a white student's request to be assigned to a particular school.

[. . . ] "Together, these decisions will put an end to public schools using race as a factor to decide where children can attend public school, something that many thought was put to rest (previously)," said Sharon L. Browne, an attorney with the conservative Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation.

From the other side, 19 former chancellors of the University of California argued in an amicus brief that "racially integrated public schools strengthen the fabric of our diverse democracy."

Free E-Book: How to Be an Anti-Racist Parent

2007-06-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

This book is edited by by Carmen Van Kerckhove and available on Anti-Racist Parent.com. The free, downloadable book features contributions from many members of the Anti-Racist Parent community. For more information go here. I highly recommend it!

The 14th Erase Racism Carnival is here!

2007-06-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the June 2007 edition of the Erase Racism Carnival. Thank you to all who submitted!

I've grouped the featured work by the following themes:

- Race in the Media & Pop Culture
- Defining the Self, Discussing Whiteness & Privilege
- Teaching, Learning & Parenting
- Race & Immigration
- The Justice System

I am thrilled about all the writing below, and am especially honored to host such great pieces on the topic of Race & Immigration. This is partly because I am an immigrant, and thus very close to the issue, and partly because I feel there is an enormous sense of urgency in the need to counter the rising xenophobia and racism surrounding the immigration debate in this country. Since the Erase Racism Carnival hasn't placed much emphasis on immigrant rights in the past, I thought this would be a good opportunity to highlight the issue. As XicanoPowr writes on his blog Para Justicia y Libertad:

I call on every refugees, migrant and anti-racist progressive-minded people to come together in order to demonstrate that another world is possible and that solidarity, justice, brother- sisterhood and liberty are more than empty words. Now is the time not to back down. We are fighting for our lives!

The Erase Racism Carnival is a collection of blog posts dedicated to creating a world free of racism. The Carnival is published around the 20th of every month. The idea is to get more people blogging and/or reading about creating a world free of racism. It’s also a great way to get new readers for your blog. If you would like to host a future edition, check for availability here and email vegankid or Rachel with your interest. The next Carnival will be hosted by RaceWire, the blog of Colorlines, "the national newsmagazine on race and politics." If you'd like to submit, please do so here.

Now, without further ado, here are this month's features:

Race in the Media & Pop Culture

• Too Sense Sunday: On Hip-hop And Acting White by dnA writing on the blog Too Sense: Daily Musings on Race, Politics and Hip Hop from the nation's capitol. Here is an excerpt:

The tragedy of mainstream Hip-hop is not that it questions these assumptions but that it tries, unsuccessfully, to create a mirror image of traditional white American values about hard work, gender, money, power and violence, that can be called uniquely black. The most self-destructive traits in Hip-hop are those that most closely mimic larger American culture. [. . .] Suffice it to say that the problem with mainstream Hip-hop is that it tries to be as "white" as possible while staying "black". It embraces the wider concepts of American culture but it cannot, as a consequence of African American history, accept its moral imperative. [. . .] My problem with current discussions about whiteness, and the idea of "acting white" is that few, if any, question the premise that whiteness and intelligence come together. Instead, they accept, almost universally, that whiteness, and the imitation of it, is a kind of salvation, and blackness, or the performance of it, is a kind of death.

• Don Imus in 2047: Precedents & Presidents by Charles M on the Clean Our House! - Killing Bigotry in All of US blog:

Is it (the Don Imus incident) one of those watershed moments where media and race intersect that will be difficult and embarrassing to explain to our grandchildren? What will I say to my grandchild in 2047 when he/she is working on a high school term paper and stumbles upon a poll from 2007 that shows that half of all Americans thought that Imus should have kept his job?

• Black Camelot? by Josh, writing for The North Star blog.

Michelle Obama does not “emasculate” Barack as she jokingly reveals his flaws, she liberates him from an imposed hypermasculine and distant identity forced upon other men, especially men of color. While I do not think this a necessary duty of a significant other, I do see it as teamwork on the part of the Obamas. [. . .] As for Ms. Dowd, I don't think she knows what to do with a strong black female who will not simply sit and smile but instead will be her own person.

• A Concise History of Black-White Relations in the U.S.A., cartoon by Barry Deutsch, aka Ampersand.

Defining the Self, Discussing Whiteness & Privilege

• Defining Identity by Zahava Sherez, who is not a blogger, per say, but an artist who posts essays on her website. She submitted this essay. Here is an excerpt:

Labels, identities and criteria used to define us are helpful for administrative and social purposes, yet I believe they also feed division, tension and oppressions. When I’m asked to check a square in a multiple-choice official form I scroll down to “Other” adding the word “Human” next to it. See, I have a problem: I am Latina, Israeli/Middle Eastern, American, Jewish, white but not really; I speak with an accent that people can’t identify – I am an enigma, an odd bird.

• On White Privilege by Cara whose blog is The Curvature.

So many people do not understand the concept of "white privilege." This is still something that I, myself, am struggling to learn about and recognize in myself and come to terms with. But so many white people cannot even recognize its existence that by being white, you innately have privilege and advantage over people of color.

• Q: Since When Is Being Criticized Like Having Your Limbs Blown Off by a Landmine? A: Since That Criticism Came from Someone with Less Privilege Than You written by Mandolin on Alas! a blog.

Criticism is not fists, but people really seem to perceive it that way. And the less privilege the person who’s making the criticism has, the more it feels like an attack.

• [X]Press Newspaper: An Example of White Privilege and Ignorance: An Analysis by Jack Stephens on the blog Double Consciousness. This is a piece which deconstructs an article pulished in the college newspaper in which Jack works. Here he exposes the writer's argument as rooted in white hetero-sexual male privilege. Jack also posted a piece on the reactions to his challenge of the author's argument here.

Discussions and talks on diversity are there to challenge our assumptions based on people's race. In a society that is saturated in white privilege and heterosexual privilege we never encounter real genuine discussions on issues such as race and diversity in the newsroom because we are blind to it. It is ingrained in us to see white as the norm, heterosexuality as the norm, etc. So when there are a bunch of white people in the newsroom and in the paper we don't question it or see anything wrong with it because that is what we've been taught to see as normal growing up (subconsciously and consciously). This is why we need to bring up questions of diversity in the workplace, newsroom, etc. because no one is there to bring them up.

Teaching, Learning & Parenting

• Diversity Training Doesn't Work. Here Is Why by Carmen Van Kerckhove, posted on her Race in the Workplace blog.

The truth is, I believe that most diversity training doesn’t work. Why not? Because so many diversity trainers focus on all the wrong thing.

• Africa Is Not a Country by Natasha Sky of the Multiracial Family Life blog:

In the brief meet-and-greet with the kindergarten teachers following the presentation, I asked my questions. What exactly were the kindergarteners studying during the “Africa” unit? (Mostly animals.) Were they studying a particular area of the continent of Africa, or a specific country? (No.)

• Pass With Care: Modern Day Racial “Passing” by Lyonside posted on Rachel's Tavern.

Recently I guest-blogged about some initial reactions to my infant daughter’s appearance, and I had to face facts: my baby girl at some point in her life, knowingly or not, will likely pass for non-Latino white. In her first three months, I’ve dealt with two overtly racial instances on her behalf – one was an honest mistake, the other was racist, and the two incidents were dealt with accordingly. I’m catching myself second-guessing every compliment about her appearance – what are they seeing? What are they really commenting on?

Race & Immigration

• Immigrant Dreams and Nightmares in the White Supremacist Cauldron written by Kai Chang on his blog Zuky: Open mind and open hand strike.

Chinese Americans never forget the fact that the Statue of Liberty faces out across the Atlantic Ocean, towards Europe. The tired, the poor, the huddled masses of dream-hungry immigrants coming across the Pacific — like those coming across the deserts and rivers along the Southern US border — have never been greeted by a Mother of Exiles. More often than not, they have been greeted by racist policies and laws, xenophobic hatred, and white supremacist violence.

• Public Terror: Escalating the War on Migrants by Juan Santos and Leslie Radford, posted on Juan's blog The Fourth World.

Last year, in 2006, millions of migrant and their allies – their familia – took the streets, giving birth to the most powerful mass movement in the U.S. since the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 70s.

The new movement stunned the US ruling class, drove the deepest of wedges straight into the heart of a seemingly unstoppable neo–con drive toward fascism, exposed the essential brutality and racism at the core of the Republican, neo–con agenda, began the public unraveling of the Bush regime, and opened the door to the stunning exposure, repudiation and defeat of the neo-cons in the House and Senate, who had led the racist charge to make felons of all undocumented migrants – and of anyone who so much as gave a ride to someone undocumented.

And like their counterparts in the 60s era, the reactionaries of today saw the unmistakable outlines of the threat presented by brown resistance to their power and their drive toward a fascistic state. Like the reactionaries of that era, they moved to kill the movement with mass arrests and state intimidation. Only this time, it wasn’t the FBI, COINTELPRO, the murders or imprisonment of Black leaders, or the mass incarceration of Black and other peoples of color that the State relied on. This time, it was the department of Homeland Security, ICE, and a strategy of direct vengeance – the deliberate terrorization of the millions who had taken the streets and who had precipitated the collapse of the neo-fascist juggernaut.

• The Immigration Human Zoo written by XicanoPwr on his blog Para Justicia y Libertad!

Since 9/11, protecting the American imperial “homeland” has become an essential priority for the Bush administration. The creation and cultivation of fear is one of the pillars of empire within the “homeland.” Threats of terrorism and twelve million “illegal” immigrants are being used to maintain the government’s threat of discipline, punishment, and violence here in the US. [. . .] Today’s menacing symbol that is dominating our newspapers, flood broadcast channels, and fuel political campaigns - the barbarian Brown hordes threatening to crash the gates and destroy the foundations of civilization - are the undocumented immigrants.

• Immigrants aren't so taxing by Richard Grabman posted on his blog The Mex Files.

Undocumented immigrants aren’t taxing the health care system as much as people think, according to a report released Thursday from the liberal Center for American Progress.

The Justice System

• Billy Ray Johnson Finally "Won" by Changeseeker on her blog Why Am I Not Surprised?

The fact is that none of these good ol' boys went to prison, where they would have been doled out a regular dose of retribution in the general population, assuming they lived through the orientation process. They got off, just like Emmett Till's murderers got off in 1955. And Billy Ray Johnson and his family are the ones who will continue to suffer, not to mention other people of color who know better than to think this means they're protected by the laws in the U.S. of A.

• The Racist Heiress America Loves and Hates and Our Criminal Justice System by XicanoPwr

Why does America continue to consider Pair Hilton’s escapades newsworthy? How is it possible that a socialite’s fate is considered more important over issues like immigration, the G8 summit, global warming, or other world affecting news??? [. . .] The intersection of racial dynamics within the criminal justice system has long been a concern. The problem of whether those in prison tend to be drawn from the ranks of the poor, unemployed, and low social status is indicative of willful discrimination against the underprivileged.

Thanks for stopping by and reading all these great features. Don't forget to submit for the next issue here!

"Searching the minds of American Muslims"

2007-06-18T22:30:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, on May 22, the Pew Research Center released a report on Muslim Americans entitled Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream. Headlines announcing the results and commentary on the study continue to appear in the press.

They include major news outlet headlines such as these:

Troubling signs in poll on Muslims in America (LA Daily News)
Pew Poll finds some US Muslims support suicide bombing (Reuters)
Poll: 1 in 4 U.S. Young Muslims OK With Homicide Bombings Against Civilians (FOX)
Some U.S. Muslims Approve Suicide Strikes (MSNBC)
Poll: 26% Of Young US Muslims OK Bombs (CBS News)

and columns in smaller papers (in order from the "oh-good, we-in-White-Christian-America-can-breathe-easier" to the "beware-of-Satan-lurking-in our-midst" type headlines):

Good News: American Muslims are mainstream (Southern California InFocus)
Searching the minds of American Muslims (Star Tribune)
Muslim first, Arab second, American third (Baltimore Sun)
America must not ignore a dangerous percentage (Laurel Leader Call)
Recognize the Islamic threat (Ranaoke Times)

You can see for yourself. Just do a Google news search. Yikes! Just what American Muslims need - more sensationalism and more media-ignited bigotry.

I wasn't satisfied with the headlines that popped up and searched for alternative information on this study.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali, Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective, made some interesting points about the Pew study. In his article, "Hidden agenda of PEW Center’s million dollar survey of American Muslims", for The American Muslim, argues that the report grossly undercounts the Muslim population in this country by as much as sixty percent, putting the total of U.S. Muslims at 2.4 million instead of the 6 or 7 estimated by many researchers and Muslim organizations.

This undercount, maintains Mr. Ghazali, constitutes "the latest attempt to undercut the influence of American Muslims." This undercount has a strong political basis, Ghazali argues. He writes:

Religious denominations, like all interest groups, can gain or lose political clout based on perceptions of their size, according to J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif. In the case of the U.S. Muslim community, Melton says, its efforts to influence policy in the Middle East would get a boost if it were viewed as being larger than the country’s Jewish population, which is estimated at 6 million. “It’s a political question: How does it sway votes?” he argued.

Ghazali further cites David Harris, The American Jewish Committee’s executive director, who has "warned that the increasingly visible American Muslim lobby posed a challenge to U.S.-Israel relations."

It's always interesting to read a variety of analyses.

Again, Ghazali's article reminds me of my earlier piece on the census. Undercounting generally hurts the undercounted groups, but often benefits those asking the survey questions - those in power.

And the role of the media? If the mainstream media can maintain the general populace's paranoia regarding the Muslims, then maybe the Bush administration can continue to rage its War on Terror largely unquestioned?

shameless plug

2007-06-14T18:28:00.000-07:00

I just participated in the 50 Voices of Equality campaign, "a public education campaign by the Basic Rights Education Fund (BREF). BREF's mission is to build community through education and advocacy and to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Oregon."

As a volunteer I interviewed prominent Oregonians dedicated to working against discrimination. After the interviews, I wrote copy for the campaign's website.

I interviewed Oregon Senator Frank Morse and activist Lew Frederick. I will be interviewing State Representative Judy Uherbelau later this month. So, go to 50voicesforequality.com, click on meet the 50 voices, and you will see the pieces I did.

Mohammed is the new Jack in Britain

2007-06-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

I was tickled by this news item, as some older folks might say.

Mohammed will likely become the most popular name for baby boys in Britain by the end of the year, local media reported on Wednesday, citing government data.

Though official records from the Office for National Statistics list the spelling Mohammed 23rd in its yearly analysis of the top 3,000 names given to children, when all the different spellings of the name are taken into account, it ranks second, only behind Jack, according to The Times.

For all those deniers of diversity, this is yet more proof that Europe is not the monolithic white Christian continent many seem to believe it to be. And trust me, I hear Europe alluded to in this way quite a bit. Wake up! This is the Europe of the 21st century!

voter registration blues

2007-06-07T16:46:00.000-07:00

Today I came across an article exposing the fact that hundreds of public-assistance agencies had illegally failed to offer voter registration to their mostly poor and minority clients.

In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, which imposed the requirement that public-assistance agencies provide voter registration services for their clients. However, there is strong evidence that "after these agencies registered 2.6 million people to vote in 1995-1996, the total registered plunged to about 1 million in 2003-2004." This according to Greg Gordon reporting for McClatchy Newspapers.

"Tennessee, Colorado and Maryland," writes Gordon, "are the only states whose registration numbers didn't decline from figures eight years earlier."

Michael Slater, the Oregon-based deputy director of the national registration group Project Vote, maintains that the Justice Department's civil rights division failed to enforce that part of the law.

Officials for three voter and civil rights groups, as well as former lawyers in the division, all of whom challenged the Justice Department in 2004, armed with evidence that this infringement was indeed the case, said that the Justice Department "has largely ignored the voter registration sections of the law while aggressively using a narrower provision to sue or threaten to sue states that have failed to purge the names of allegedly ineligible people from voter rolls." The groups coming forth were Project Vote; Demos, a New York-based think tank; and People for the American Way, a civil rights group.

The Department, of course, insists that the civil rights division "vigorously defends all the voting laws it is charged with enforcing."

A report on the failure of nearly every state to comply with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) came out in July 2005, and is available here. As the introduction states, "the report offers both a review of the as yet unfulfilled promise of the NVRA in public assistance agencies in the statute's first decade and a plan of action for recomitting ourselves to fulfilling the promise in the months and years ahead."

There is so much orchestrated manipulation done to ensure liberal-leaning voters don't vote, it's disgusting. From voter roll purges, computer "glitches" to voter intimidation. Not just that, numerous new restrictive voter registration laws have been passed in many states. In addition to all those barriers to voting, now we have "non-compliance" with federal law from social service agencies.

Let's look at some of these strategies in a little more detail.

According to Jordan Green's report DOJ ACTIONS ON ELECTION LAW BENEFIT REPUBLICANS, "the Center for Voting Rights and Protection describes Republican vote suppression as combining several tactics: making loud and unsubstantiated claims about vote fraud in predominantly minority precincts; running campaigns of misinformation or fear that target vulnerable minority constituencies; posting armed and uniformed off-duty police officers outside of polling places; photographing, tape-recording or videotaping voters; and using aggressive, face-to-face challenging techniques at polls."

Here is an example from Green's report of a strategy designed to disenfranchise largely Democrat-voting minority voters:

The DOJ has focused significant resources on protecting language minority rights at the polls, but in its handling of provisional ballot issues – which affect the voting rights of students and immigrants who are expected to largely vote Democratic – the department has pursued a strategy of partisan disenfranchisement by narrowing access to the polls.

. . . Making sure every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot in free and fair elections is the job of the Voting Section of the Department of Justice. Included in the Voting Section’s mandate is enforcement of “statutory provisions designed to safeguard the right to vote of racial and language minorities, disabled and illiterate persons, overseas citizens, persons who change their residence shortly before a Presidential election, and persons 18 to 20 years of age.” These are some of the voters expected to rely on provisional ballots the most.

The Voting Section, under the umbrella of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, has taken what could be considered a “states’ rights” position on provisional balloting. The department sided in late October (2004) with three Republican state election officials in the courts in defense of the most restrictive interpretation of who gets to vote by provisional ballot.

In a 2004 report assessing President Bush’s civil rights record, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights stated: “History offers myriad examples of using equipment, people and processes to manipulate elections and disenfranchise voters. If measured by the pace at which it enacted and funded HAVA, or is promoting implementation, the administration appears unmotivated by political pressure, sense of duty, morality, law, or personal agenda to ensure that America has robust, well-designed election systems to preserve the vote, the bedrock of the nation’s democracy.”

HAVA is the Help America Vote Act, a law passed by Congress in 2002. Under HAVA, voters who believe they are registered, but whose names are not on the rolls are entitled to cast “provisional ballots,” which will be counted (or not) later, once their eligibility is confirmed. This again according to Green.

Voting issues are also at the forefront of the ongoing U.S. attorneys scandal. As Bernard Weiner of Dissident Voice writes, "The DOJ, it turns out, is basically run as an arm of the White House’s political operation: inquiring about ideology and party affiliation (which is illegal) before appointing applicants to judicial jobs, staffing the Civil Rights Division with those antagonistic to civil rights and thus not following the law, etc. And other government agencies are similarly infected as well, holding workplace seminars on ways to aid 'our candidates,' which is also illegal."

As Barry Grey reports in his article entitled Testimony by Justice Department official sheds light on White House conspiracy to manipulate elections, published today on the World Socialist Website:

The testimony of a senior Justice Department official before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday provided new insight into the anti-democratic political conspiracy, orchestrated from the White House, that lies at the heart of last year’s purge of nine US attorneys.

The main witness at the hearing, Bradley J. Schlozman, has played a significant role in implementing the Bush administration’s strategy of packing the Justice Department’s legal staff, including the country’s top federal prosecutors, with right-wing Republicans for the purpose of disenfranchising Democratic voters, intimidating Democratic-leaning interest groups, and manipulating elections.

The purge of US attorneys was carried out to pursue a policy of bringing trumped-up voting fraud charges to cripple voter registration drives in poor and minority communities and throw likely Democratic voters off of registration rolls in key “battleground” states.

It is an effort to expand on a national scale the methods that were used to disenfranchise working class voters in the disputed Florida election of 2000, which resulted in the theft of the presidential election and the installation of Bush in the White House.

Schlozman, 36, is one of a group of right-wing lawyers who were recruited into the Justice Department after Bush took office and rapidly elevated to high positions. As a top official in the Justice Department’s civil rights division—for five months in 2005 he was acting head of the division—Schlozman purged long-time career lawyers and replaced them with lawyers recruited from Republican organizations such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.

There you have it. Plus, there was the not-to-be-missed witness testimony by DOJ's Monica Gooding two weeks ago, in which she referred to "vote caging" possibly done by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Tim Griffin. Griffin, during the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign, incidently worked as deputy research director for the Republican National Committee (RNC) conducting “oppo” (opposition) research.

"Vote caging," writes Dahlia Lithwick of Slate Magazine, "is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war)."

Journalist Greg Palast, who has written about the Republican practice of caging during the 2004 Presidential elections extensively, "supplies evidence linking Tim Griffin . . . to this caging plot," writes Lithwick. "Specifically, a series of confidential e-mails to Republican Party muckety-mucks with the suggestive heading 'RE: caging.' The e-mails were accidentally sent to a George Bush parody site. They also contained suggestively named spreadsheets, headed 'caging' as well. The names on the lists are what Palast's researchers deemed to be homeless men and soldiers deployed in Iraq. Here are the e-mails.

So, the saga of systemic disenfranchisement of predominantly Democrat-voting minority and poor voters continues to unfold.

I predict the next presidential election will be a mess.

the importance of challenging systemic racism

2007-06-07T16:34:00.000-07:00

I am reading Uprooting Racism: How white people can work towards racial justice. It's an excellent book that is a must read for all white people wanting to commit to challenging racism.

Here is a quote I want to share:

"Issues of social justice are not fundamentally about individual actions and beliefs. . . White racism . . . is a social system. Although my personal attitudes and actions can either support or confront racism, racism is completely independent of me. In fact, even if most of us were completely non-racist in our attitudes, there are many ways that unequal wages, unequal treatment in the legal system and segregation in jobs, housing and education would continue.

Our beliefs and actions are important. We are responsible for how we treat the people around us and whether or not we are fighting against injustice or contributing to it. But as long as we focus only on individual actions and ignore community and organizational responses, we will leave a system of racism intact."

The more I learn about how racism works, the more I am challenged to see the larger picture and to envision myself involved in uprooting institutional racism. It is an overwhelming thought, indeed, but the only way to really right the wrongs of racism. I am not sure specifically how I will eventually be involved in the work on dismantling systemic racism, but for now, I am beginning with educating myself and simultaneously those in my circles as well as those who read this blog. Occasionally, I also write a letter to the editor. I have a few on the back burner. I know when the time is right, that the right path will manifest itself and lead me towards work on a larger scale.

you incense us, cenus

2007-06-06T21:52:00.000-07:00

The chairman of the African-American Advisory Committee to the U.S. Census said today that more than 700,000 blacks were not counted nationwide in the 2000 Census.

Whoa! A teeny blurb I happened to come across in my daily Google news search, but what a huge number of people! Upon doing a little research on this, I realized this was old news, but back in 2002 when the numbers were released, I was not paying attention.

The 2000 census reported the number of African-Americans living in the U.S. to be 36.6 million, or 12.3% of the total population. So 700,000 or 750,000 people, as other sources claim, means nearly 2% of the black population went uncounted.

It is typical of a census to undercount the poor and minorities. However, in the 2000 census, Blacks were undercounted at a rate almost twice the national average. While about six million Americans, most of them poor or of color, went uncounted in the last census, three million Americans were counted twice. The latter population, predictably, tended to be affluent and live in suburban areas. Still, the 2000 census was more accurate than the previous.

This undercounting is significant in so many ways. Census results are used to allocate Congressional seats ("congressional apportionment"), electoral votes, and government program funding for schools, crime prevention, health care, and transportation.

As PBS's NewsHour Extra webiste geared towards kids puts it: "Census numbers determine 80 percent of federal grants and the number of states' congressional representatives. Whoever has the people gets the money and the representatives, so poorer urban areas, and extremely rural areas, which tend to be undercounted, are likely to be denied millions and underrepresented."

Why are people of color disproportionately undercounted? Civilrights.org provides this answer:

There are several reasons why people of color and the poor are consistently and disproportionately undercounted by the census including: 1) mail and door-to-door collection methods have lower response rates in lower income areas; 2) lower education levels , illiteracy, or difficulty with the English language affect the ability of many individuals to understand the census; 3) a general misunderstanding of the importance of census participation; and, 4) distrust or suspicion of government leading to the fear that the census may be used by immigration and/or law enforcement officials to deport or incarcerate or may disqualify one for social welfare programs.

There is, of course, plenty of reason to be suspiciuos of the government and of the way that census data may be used to oppress or disenfranchise people. Census data has been used for all kinds of dirty purposes.

For example, the 1990 US census data, along with the records of 439,381 Northwest passengers were used by Northwest Airlines to find "'outliers', people that do not conform to predetermined norms and therefore could be a 'threat'," as reported on Don'tSpyOn.us.

Apparently, "the Northwest Airlines passenger data was turned over by the airline, without the knowledge or permission of the passengers concerned, and given to NASA's Ames Research Center." In other words, the government used census data to single-out and profile Americans.

So, how did the 2000 undercount, specifially, affect policy?

In January 1999, the Supreme Court ruled out the use of statistical sampling to adjust the 2000 census to make up for an expected undercount. As CNN reported, "the 5-4 ruling was a defeat for the Clinton administration, which had hoped statistical sampling would add population -- and subsequently House members -- to areas that traditionally vote Democratic."

The CNN article continutes: "The ruling specifically barred the use of statistical sampling for apportionment."

Numerous interest groups worked to challenge the 2000 census. These groups were less concerned with apportionment and more with the "distribution of federal and state aid; particularly federal block grants," write professor Swanson and Walashek in their paper entitled, The Historical Roots of Contentious Litigation Over Census Counts in the Late 20th Century.

They continue:

The appropriated federal block grants for Native American housing in 2003 totaled $649 million with an additional $4,937 million for community development. It is easy to see why more than 100 Indian tribes, complaining of undercount, challenged the 2000 census results and conducted their own head counts. The tribes pointed out that the 2000 census counted 3,334 people at Warm Springs, Oregon, of which 3,018 were Indians. According to tribal registries however, 3,220 tribal members live on the reservation, suggesting that the 2000 census missed 504 Warm Springs tribal members, for an error undercount rate of 14 percent. “We’re being shorted on funding,” they said. “The numbers [the Census Bureau] have are totally inaccurate. We’re doing our census to get the money we’re owed.” This sentiment is not confined to residents of the Warm Springs Reservation.

Is there hope for improvement in the responsiveness during the next census? With the anti-immigrant sentiment growing, the tragedy of Katrina, and the echos of Black voter disenfranchisement in the last major elections still reverbarating; with the increasing erosions by this administration of Americans' civil rights and its incessant appetite for spying on its own citizens, I don't see how trust between the government and the undercounted groups could possibly be increasing.

Is there a chance that accuracy of the count in the 2010 census could improve? According to the New York Times, the Census Bureau requested $18 million for the 2008 budget, so "it can begin its partnership program, part of strategy to improve undercounts for minorities," but the Bush administration allocated nothing to the Bureau for those purposes.

As blogger bobster writes on the statesman blog, "the 140,000 partnerships the Bureau established before the 2000 census resulted in better minority counts, reducing African-American undercounts from 4.57% to 1.84%. Undercounts for Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans (also diminished - my editorial change). The partnerships were with state, local, and tribal govenments, churches, schools, corporations, and community service groups. To refuse to fund these partnerships in the coming census means the Bush/Cheney/Rove government prefers that only white people get counted and that the count leans heavily toward Republicans."

I couldn't have said it better.

The census is such a double-edged sword. Communities need to be accurately counted in order to be allocated the funds to which they are entitled, but who's supposed to trust Big Brother when he acts like The Great Dictator?

Do "white schools" make white kids racist?

2007-06-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

Last month, ABC News reported on a study of elementary and high school students, aimed at finding out whether children use race to socially exclude other children from their groups.

The study of nearly 700 fourth, seventh, and 10th graders of different ethnic and racial backgrounds living in the mid-Atlantic region found that "children and adolescents who had friends from different ethnic backgrounds were significantly more likely to say it is wrong to exclude someone because of their race, citing unfairness or hurting the feelings of the excluded child as reasons."

"In contrast," the article continues, "students who reported few or no cross-race friendships were significantly less likely to view excluding someone on the basis of race as wrong. Their reasons were often based on a lack of familiarity, such as, 'They won't have much in common.'"

Specifically, "European-American children attending 'all-white' schools were more likely than European-American children attending 'mixed ethnicity' schools to use stereotypes when explaining why someone might not be friends with someone, or invite them home to their house, solely because of their race."

This is interesting. At first glance, it makes sense. However, I wonder about the conclusions that can be drawn from this study. Some of the most enlightened white anti-racist activists whose work I read, respect, and learn from, grew up in very homogenous surroundings, comprising of almost only white people. Vegankid, for example, who is part of the Ally Work collective, grew up in a small town with only two families of color. It was Vegankid's sexual identity and his experience as a Queer person that acted as a brigde for his developing of empathy for those affected by racism. You can read Vegankid's Learning Empathy story here.

Like Vegankid, Rachel of Rachel's Tavern, another brilliant anti-racist activist and blogger, grew up around all whites, and her parents, like Vegankid's taught her to treat everyone with respect and dignity. In her piece, Racism and Empathy: Some of My Approximating Experiences, she remembers challenging her white classmates on their racism. For that, she was called a “nigger lover” and threatened. As a result of these experiences, she began to develop a sense of empathy towards people of color. She writes: "I am by no means saying I get everything. I just know what I felt like when these things were directed at me. I knew the fear, the powerlessness, the exasperation, and the anger that racism was creating in me. Because of these experiences (and others), I dedicated myself to fighting racism."

I guess my thoughts on whether integration is really key to lessening racial prejudice in children are mixed. Of course, having friends of color inevitably leads to empathy for those affected by racism, however, maybe the logic in this study is faulty.

I think the failure is in the fact that racism among whites is rarely discussed. White children, in general, receive virtually no anti-racist education. White privilege allows whites to not have to think about race and racism unless directly confronted with it. White children who have friends of color are probably more likely to learn about racism and discuss it in their circles. But this doesn't have to be the case.

As seen in the two stories above, it is completely possible to develop an anti-racist consciousness in a predominantly white environment.

I am by no means advocating segragation. What I am saying is that many people do not have a choice. They live where they live, they go to school where they go to school. Still, lack of a racially diverse environment doesn't and shouldn't have to be an indicator of the degree of race awareness and empathy.

Though I live in the whitest major city in the U.S., though I grew up in a predominantly white society, and though I am married to a white man with whom I have a white child, I feel a moral responsibility to work on helping to eliminate racism. Why couldn't most white children develop the same kind of desire and turn a future study like this on its head? What's stopping them? I am apt to think it's the white adults in their lives who benefit from White Supremacy and white privilege too much to rock the boat. I don't want to be one of those people and I am working very hard to counter, on the one hand, the reality reflected in this study and, on the other, the very stereotype of the bigoted, racist, and ignorant white person from Whiteville that this study perpetuates.

Erase Racism Carnival - send me your submissions!

2007-06-02T23:40:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce that White Anti-Racist Parent is hosting the June issue of Erase Racism Carnival.

The Erase Racism Carnival is a collection of blog posts dedicated to creating a world free of racism. The Carnival is published around the 20th of every month.

You can check out the current issue, hosted by Angry Black Woman, here.

It is now time to send in your submissions! All, not just white anti-racist parents, are welcome to submit work. To submit a post written by you or someone else, go here and click on “submit your blog article to this carnival”. Along with the URL of the article, be sure to include your name and email. You can also send me your submition at warpblog at gmail dot com.

This is a traveling carnival. The idea is to get more people blogging and/or reading about creating a world free of racism. More info about the carnival and how you can become a host can be found here.

Can't wait to read your work!

Supreme Court ruling severly limits recourse against workplace discrimination

2007-06-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, May 29, the Supreme Court ruled to restrict time limits on workers filing discrimination complaints. Employees who decide to sue their employer on the basis of workplace discrimination, now have six months to file their case. In other words, according to the News Sentinel, "employees can't reach more than six months back in time to complain about discriminatory practices."

"The ruling essentially says tough luck to employees who don't immediately challenge their employer's discriminatory acts, even if the discrimination continues to the present time," said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center quoted in the News Sentinel article.

This is a huge set back particularly for women and people of color. Here is yet another example of the current administration's attack on our civil rights.

The global nature of racism - Part II: Global Warming

2007-05-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

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.

graffiti from the pit of hell

2007-05-26T20:16:00.001-07:00

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.

book update

2007-05-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

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!

bookstore adventure

2007-05-24T21:57:00.001-07:00

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.

food for thought

2007-05-23T22:28:00.001-07:00

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?"

the global nature of racism - Part I: Healthcare

2007-05-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

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.

my piece is up on antiracistparent.com

2007-05-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

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

candidate talk

2007-05-12T16:22:00.000-07:00

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?

why do this work? - Part I

2007-05-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

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.

colorblindness, the "new" justification for institutional racism

2007-04-28T20:19:00.000-07:00

Just for my own education and as resources for talking to other white people about racism, I have started collecting articles and studies pointing out institutional racism in this country. It is amazing how much evidence of institutional racism exists in just about every area - environment, housing, health care, education, and more. But, so many white people refuse to see it and even argue against it.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Colorlines, a magazine whose tagline reads "The national newsmagazine on race and politics." It's really an excellent publication. Its March/April 2007 feature is on racial disparities in healthcare and the conscequences of 'colorblind' policies on the health of people of color. Important information!

The article, What Your Doctor Won't See... If conservatives make helthcare "colorblind", incorporates a wide scope, discussing trends in the perception of inequalities:

For three decades, conservative thinkers have worked mightily to discredit race-based considerations in public policy and cement the belief that America today is, as it sould be, a colorblind society. "It really begins in the early '70s," says Bard College sociologist Amy Ansell, author of New Right, New Racism. "Conservatives believe that with the civil rights movement the barriers were brought down, and that's when racism ends. At that point, government and society have nothing more to do."

Instead, (City University of New York (CUNY) researcher Jack) Geiger suggests, the answers are said to lie in changing the behaviors of people of color. Notably, . . . conservative activists do not deny the existence of inequality. To the contrary, says Tarso Luis Ramos, research director of Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank, they nominally share anti-racists' outrage over the gaps. "The rhetoric acknowldges disparities and even decries them on one hand, and on the other hand rejects proposals to reduce these disparities," Ramon says.

A circuitous intellectual route squares this circle of thought. Colorblind ideology rests on two premises: reducing racism to "individual acts of meanness," as Ramos puts it, and blaming uneuqal outcomes in any given area on the cultural norms of individuals affected. Like Ansell, Ramos traces the "new racism" to the years following the civil rights movement, and in particular the infamous Moynihan Report, which he argues established the idea the Blacks' troubles stem from destructive devolution of their culture.

In the ensuing years, Ramos says, rightwing thinkers and advocates built on this premise. They stroked America's individualist ethos as they steadily narrowed racism's definition to exclude broad, structural factors. And they drove home the idea that both oppression and liberation lie in individual rather than societal acts - that, where racism is concerned, I rather than we shall overcome. As a result, efforts like affirmative action are dismissed because they misdirect the burden of fighting racism on individuals. . .

I have noticed this trend myself. It is exhausting to fight against, but imperative.

While politicos argue about things like whether to use the word disparities or differences in reports, the problems, many of which are literally life-and-death issues, go unaddressed. Blacks, for instance, are dying at rates alarmingly higher - a full 40 percent!!!- than whites, according to a 2005 article in the journal Health Affairs, cited by Colorlines. The infant mortality gap between Blacks and whites doubled between 1950 and 2002.

I have just added my collection of studies and articles addressing institutional racism available in the side bar of this blog in the Recommended Online Reading section.

Environmental Racism is Real - check your facts

2007-04-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

A reader commented on my Story beneath the Story post, claiming that the term "Environmental racism" is misleading. He wrote: "A more accurate term might be 'environmental classism.'" In sum, "If you are a minority you are also more likely to be poor, so the net result may be the same, but the motivations are economic, not racist."

What comes to mind is what Carmen at Addicted to Race calls "oppression olympics," a pattern of "competing" and arguing about which oppressed group has it worse, and in the process deminishing or denying valid experiences. What happens as a result is that groups pit themselves against each other instead of uniting for a common cause.

Well, in this case, the reader had it wrong. Though the socioeconomic factor is significant, numerous studies have shown that race and ethnicity are the single most determining factors in predicting toxic exposure from proximity to hazardous-waste sites in this country. For example:

"In the United States the single most important factor in predicting the location of hazardous-waste sites is the ethnic composition of a neighborhood. Three of the five largest commercial hazardous-waste landfills in America are a predominantly black or Hispanic neighborhoods, and three out of every five black or Hispanic Americans live in the vicinity of an uncontrolled toxic-waste site. The wealth of a community is not nearly as good a predictor of hazardous-waste locations as the ethnic background of the residents, suggesting that the selection of sites for hazardous-waste disposal involves racism. James T. Hamilton studied the zip codes in the US targeted for capacity expansion in plans by commercial hazardous waste facilities from 1987 to 1992. Locations for hazardous waste facilities had an average nonwhite population of 25 percent, versus 18 percent for those areas without net expansion. Hamilton suggests that differences in the probability that residents will raise a firm's expected location costs by engaging in successful collective action to oppose expansion offer the best explanation for which neighborhoods are targeted by polluting industries.[1] Another study in 1997 found that the communities most affected by hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities in the Los Angeles area are working-class communities of color."

Source: wikipedia

And more: Race, Waste, and Class: New Perspectives on Environmental Justice. The thesis: "Race is the central determining factor with toxic exposure."

And for a more current look, read this study, Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987-2007, which states:

"More than nine million people (9,222,000) are estimated to live within 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) of the nation’s 413 commercial hazardous waste f acilities. This represents 3.3% of the U.S. population (281,422,000). More than 5.1 million people of color, including 2.5 million Hispanics or Latinos, 1.8 million African Americans, 616,000 Asians/Pacific Islanders and 62,000 Native Americans, live in neighborhoods with one or more commercial hazardous waste facility. . .

". . . Racial disparities in the location of the nation’s commercial hazardous waste f acilities exist in all EPA regions. For Hispanics, African Americans and Asians/Pacific Islanders, statistically significant disparities exist in the majority or vast majority of EPA regions. Moreover, the pattern of people of color being especially concentrated in areas where facilities are clustered is also geographically widespread throughout the country. . .

". . . Racial disparities are more prevalent and extensive than socioeconomic disparities, suggesting that race has more to do with the current distribution of the nation’s hazardous waste facilities than poverty. "

So my response to those who want to deny racism and override it with classism arguments is this:

I hope that after reading this you won't turn a blind eye to the race factor. It's crucial to recognize racism as a huge factor in the denial of people's right to a clean and healthy environment. Denying racism in the arena of environmental justice is, in fact, racism.

Racism Still Poisons Decisions on Toxic Sites

2007-04-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to my piece on the beef I had with the MSNBC article that mentioned high cancer rates in minorities, but not a peep about environmental racism, here is something that I just found on the web.

Today there is an article on Bloomberg.com, implicating government of environmental racism. In the article, Racism Still Poisons Decisions on Toxic Sites, columnist Cindy Skrzycki discusses a recent report by the United Church of Christ in Cleveland. The report, Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, according to Skrzycki, suggests "that decisions made by federal, state and local governments, as well as by companies, have penalized minority groups."

Skrzycki cites several examples of how racism influences the formation and interpretation of governmental policies on the environment. Her piece leaves the reader with a lot of questions, but at least it raises important points about institutional racism that are often omitted in mainstream news.

story beneath the story

2007-04-18T22:11:00.000-07:00

A lot of my posts on here have nothing to do with parenting - directly, that is. They have to do with awareness raising, which to me has everything to do with becoming an anti-racist, and anti-racist parenting just stems from that. So here goes one.

As far as news items go, there is always a story behind the story presented. I have learned to take almost nothing I read in the papers for face value and to read between the lines and follow my hunches on what is being left out. Well, an MSNBC story I read today said that recently researchers from Loma Linda University in California have stated that "racial disparity in cancer rates and outcomes may be driven by genetics as well as socioeconomic factors." In other words, the researchers found that genes may be to blame for the higher of cancer among minorities.

The socioeconomic factors eluded to in the story had to do with "lack of health insurance, poverty, cultural barriers, and limited access to good medical care." But what the story left out was that environmental and institutional racism play a huge part in this equation.

A recent report from the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, “which serves as an update to a landmark 1987 study uncovering the proximity of minority groups to hazardous waste sites across the country, found that an even larger number of Hispanics/Latinos and African-Americans live within two miles of one of more than 400 such facilities in the U.S.”

Hmmm. . . If genes and poverty are the sole culprits for high cancer rate, we, the readers and those at the center of the inquiry regarding cancer rates, are left with no agency. But what if racism is put in the spotlight, then we suddenly may have somebody (perhaps lawmakers & corporations/lobbyists or our own privilege to not have to care) to blame. Hmmm. . .

demonizing the racial "other"

2007-04-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

This is an older post from another blog I am too busy to upkeep. I decided to cross-post it here, because I find it especially relevant in light of Bush's latest pet peave, his "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" platform, which, by the way, I spent an hour researching today, unable to find the detailed text of the bill. Government should be transparent. I always get angry when the public is excluded from the governmental process. Politicians are supposed to represent us and seek input from us, not withold information from us. Uggh!

I thought the post below is also relevant in light of the media's racialization of the Virginia Tech tragedy, which, I have the feeling will unfortunately play beautifully into the hands of the Bush cronies, who will use it to further stir up anti-immigrant sentiments, hoping to push through the above-mentioned and very problematic bill.

The reason I call the Immigration Reform bill problematic is because, as Angry Asian Man reveals, the "immigration reform draft (leaked to the public) could be as devastating as the Chinese Exclusion Act..." Various groups are are "calling the document's principles 'inhumane' and 'un-American' because it calls taking away the right of legal immigrants to sponsor their relatives to join them and breaking up families as a result."

See what I'm talking about? The text of the bill the groups are criticizing was leaked, not made accessible to "we, the people." So, the only part of the bill that I have learned about was the one dealing with legal immigrant sponsorship of relatives. What else is there in the bill, I would like to know!

First, let me explain how the post below relates to the topic of immigration reform and the Virginia Tech shooting. As more and more Americans feel the heat of the rising prices of oil, the plunging value of the dollar, decrease in living wage work opportunities, massive lay-offs, etc., the trend of scapegoating groups perceived as alien has increased. Additionally, since 9/11, policies have been put into place that have significantly curtailed the constitutional rights of the people in this country. Much has been written about many of these laws, passed by capitalizing on the public's (& politicians') irrational fears of immigrants and groups perceived by "mainstream" America as a racial "other." (For example, you can read Naomi Wolf's piece Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps). Thus Juan Santos's reference to fascism.

As you read, I recommend you add Asian to the quoted writer's references to the historically persecuted groups of color.

Now the post by Juan Santos, an LA-based writer and editor, about the need for white people to wake up to fight the fascist regime spreading in this country. Here is an excerpt:

Real oppression – and just as importantly the consciousness of one’s own oppression in the US - has next to nothing to do with the white left. . .

. . . Where are the no-fly-racially-profiled white “terrorists”? Where are white people required to prove their citizenship to rent an apartment? Where do whites come under instant suspicion for deportation? How many European whites are subject to the conditions in Guantanamo? How many have been tortured? How many whites have been stripped of the writ of habeas corpus, held without charges, without access to a lawyer? How many whites are among the native Indians, Blacks and Chicanos in the US, who together comprise the single group most targeted for incarceration in the world?

Obviously, there are none.

That’s why there is no mass movement against fascism in the US.

Because fascism targets the Other, and everyone damn well knows it.

. . . Even if it’s never spoken aloud, everyone knows in their bones that white people are exempt, that white people as a group are not the target of overt violent oppression in the US, and that they never have been and never will be. Guaranteed.

That guarantee is their blue pill, what makes them sleep.

The only people who’ve stood up en masse against the recent rapid escalation toward fascism in the US have been Brown people. Migrants and Chican@s stood up in our millions against the fascistic Sensenbrenner bill, a race law which would have rendered every migrant a felon, and every Chican@ a suspect in a felony. The Sensenbrenner bill would have made the barrio every bit as much a zone of official terror as the ghetto – even more so.

We were all that stood between the status quo and outright universalized fascism in the US.

But almost nothing and no one stood between colonized peoples of color and fascism in the US.

Black, Red and Brown have lived under virtual fascism - mass terror, police occupation and mass incarceration - for a generation now, since the War on Drugs and mass incarceration took the place of segregation and Jim Crow laws.

But it wasn’t the white US-er who was targeted, just like it wasn’t the German, but the Gypsy, Slav and Jew.

. . . Why, then should we be surprised at white silence today?

. . . White people could still wake up; they could still learn to resist the fascism that their culture has programmed them to accept.

But it will take a new understanding; they will have to start seeing themselves as a group like any other, not as a “white nation,” and not as “individuals,” and they will need to begin to understand and to break with the Inquisitorial fear of being different that permeates their culture to its very core. They will have to learn to see their culture’s depth of suspicion, its rigid obedience to the “rules” of the white middle class game, and to experience first hand the depth of violence it reserves for those who betray it.

They will have to stand strong against it, understanding that their own culture and its agents are their mortal enemy.

Most of all they will have to learn that their apparent “privilege” makes them no different at all: that in the long run they are not exempt or superior.

the projectionist syndrome

2007-04-12T19:30:00.000-07:00

Here is something I have to be careful about as a parent, especially with a child who has a limited capacity to communicate verbally as he is only a toddler. I'll call it the "Projectionist Syndrome." What I mean by that is that I've noticed that I sometimes have the tendency to project onto my child. I had a little bit of a wake up call a while back. I blogged about the incident here and more importantly here.

What happened was that my son began to cry one day at the supermarket. I totally misinterpreted the reason he cried, thinking it was because he got scared of a dark-skinned black cashier. Not so. He got scared of getting separated from me, which I realized when the incident repeated itself later, but with a white-like-me female cashier about the same age as I.

Such an incident just goes to show that misinterpreting my kid’s motives or behavior as -I don't want to call it racist at this age, but "racial"- can be a real issue – for all of us, I think. Was I projecting my own racist thoughts onto my son? I think so. At least I was definitely racializing my son's thoughts. And that’s not good, especially since I’m trying to be an anti-racist parent.

Since then, I have been trying to withhold judgment when it comes to my son’s reactions to his environment (unless he is outright violent, a common phenomenon at this age, as toddlers test their strength and influence on their surroundings). Instead of trying to interpret my son’s behavior through my own convoluted lens, I have been trying to remain open and to trust that young children are inherently pure and open-minded, unaffected by racism. So far, this has actually been the case. My son seems equally interested in interacting in all the myriad of ways in which he expresses himself with children and adults of various races and ages.

So, to go back to my initial statement, I am trying hard to make sure that I don’t project my own issues onto my son. I guess that is a good general guideline when it comes to parenting period, but especially as related to anti-racist parenting. To counter my tendency to project, I find myself constantly examining my own thought process and catching myself making unfounded judgments or thinking racist thoughts. Then I try to reprogram those ingrained voices. At the same time, I keep reminding myself to withold judgment when it comes to my child's behavior and to just watch and learn with new eyes. Tricky indeed, but I am noticing a huge shift within myself. I hope it's for the wiser...

no more scapegoating immigrants

2007-04-11T17:08:00.000-07:00

I'm so sick of hearing people say that the U.S. has an “immigration problem” and that immigrants drain “our” resources.

First of all, I’d argue that it’s U.S. governmental policy decisions that drain our resources, with the war in Iraq being number one on my list. This NY Times article, What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy or a website called National Priorities Project, which breaks down some of the budget cuts that the Bush administration has made to such crucial programs as health care and education.

Contrary to popular belief, immigrants are actually less likely to use health care and social services than non-immigrants. According to research published in 2005 in the American Journal of Public health, “per capita total health care expenditures of immigrants were 55% lower than those of US-born persons ($1139 vs $2546).” See this link for more information. Illegal immigrants, are even less likely to utilize health care services than other immigrants (and native-born Americans), though many pay taxes and purchase health insurance through their employers.

Take a look at this quote from a 2006 study published by the HARVARD Latino LAW REVIEW: “Undocumented immigrants living in the United States are subject to the same income tax laws as documented immigrants and U.S. citizens. However, because of their status most unauthorized workers pay a higher effective tax rate than similarly situated documented immigrants or U.S. citizens. Yet these workers and their families use fewer government services than similarly situated documented immigrants or U.S. citizens. Moreover, unauthorized workers have been denied remedies under the National Labor Relations Act by the U.S. Supreme Court, and they may be challenged to receive protection under wage and hour, anti-discrimination and workers’ compensation laws. As a result of all these factors, undocumented immigrants provide a fiscal windfall, and may be the most fiscally beneficial of all immigrants.”

Also, it’s important to note that immigrants actually stimulate the U.S. economy. According to a recently released study released by the Center for an Urban Future, during the past decade. . . immigrants have started more business than their American counterparts, “stimulating growth in sectors from food manufacturing to health care, creating loads of new jobs, and transforming once-sleepy neighborhoods into thriving commercial centers.”

I am citing all these studies, because I’m sick of immigrants baring the brunt of the problems creating by policy-makers. Please don’t be one of the people who blame immigrants for the resource-draining policies instituted by the Bush administration and others in the seat of power.

what does anti-racist parenting/action look like?

2007-04-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm thinking a lot these days about what anti-racist action looks like - for me, anyways. I'm actually having a hard time separating acting against racism from anti-racist parenting. I think it's all one and the same. I say that now while my son is still a toddler. That may change as issues associated with race come into play when he's older. At that point, there will, I'm sure be very specific parenting "techniques" that I will have to explore and employ.

I tend to think about things broadly. I see so many connections between things that sometimes it's hard to focus on something specific. So right now, anti-racist parenting has, for me, been about about the following:

- educating myself about racism, white privilege, and white supremacy

- challenging my own thought patterns and prejudices

- evaluating and altering my son's environment to make it inclusive of diverse people and messages (activities we do and books we read, mostly)

- writing and talking about my experiences & what I learn, esp. with white people with the intent of checking my thinking and nudging people to put anti-racist action to the forefront of their lives

- connecting with like-minded people to again, check my thinking, learn more, and continue feeling energized and inspired to do the work

- taking several larger scale initiatives (e.g. letters to the editor & continuing my membership to support a local independent community radio station, which airs excellent public affairs programs as well as shows by and about communities of color)

The part that I hope to improve upon is challenging racist speech and prejudices in my environment. I still find myself, most of the time, having difficulty doing this. I have challenged some stereotypes I've heard people say, but these interjections have been far and few between. I think I just need more practice.

What does anti-racist action look like for you, anti-racist parents, if you could generalize about some things you focus on?

letter to the editor challenging racism - w/ an update!

2007-04-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

Update: Below is a copy of a letter to the editor I sent out on March 20, 2007. The magazine's tagline, by the way, is "women and children changing the world." This month's World Pulse update featured the following note from the editor:

Editor's Note: Our March 20 Spotlight edition ran a Reuters article entitled "Hungary's Radical Youths Take to the Streets." Astute comments from one of our readers, Tereza Topferova, led us to further investigate the article, as it seemed to glorify the efforts of the "radical youths" in question. We are currently reaching out to our contacts on the ground to gain a better understanding of the situation. In the meantime, we encourage you to explore what the following sources have to say about this radical group:

Country Report on Human Rights Practices - Hungary, 2006 (U.S. Department of State)

Far Right Tries to Take Control of the Revolt (The Times Online)

Original letter I sent to the editor:

Dear World Pulse editors:

As a former editorial volunteer, I am of course your publication's fan. I do enjoy receiving your e-mail spotlights as well. However, I found one of the news items included in your latest (March 20th, 2007) update, greatly disturbing, its message at odds with World Pulse's mission, which according to your website, is to broadcast the "wellspring of positive solutions. . . essential for solving today's cyclical global problems" while "advancing journalism, reframing global debates, magnifying movements, inspiring investment, and motivating action."

The news item I am referring to vaguely alludes to a movement. However, what kind of a movement, I had to research for myself. And what I learned about this movement and its underlying philosophy, after several hours of internet research, troubles me immensely, and brings me to the conclusion that such movements must not be magnified in any way or sanctioned by publications such as yours, because of their hateful, racist undertones.

The news article in question featured in your latest update, which is usually meant to inspire and highlight positive happenings around the world, was a Reuters story entitled "Hungary: Hungary's Radical Youths Take to the Streets".

At a quick glance, it would seem that the combination of the words radical, youth, and streets, would seem to point to a report on a demonstration staged by social justice oriented anti-globalization activists. I could see how this assumption could be made by your magazine's editors, too in a hurry to investigate the story further. However, in your spotlight underneath the article link, you did include a quote from the news report that raised a flag for me and hopefully for many other of your readers. I doubt, though, that most of them had the full knowledge of the issue at hand or the time to research it further. So, I have compiled some information that I hope exposes the "radicals" in this story the way they need to be exposed in the media. It is important that you circulate this information, because I strongly feel that
your publication's editorial credibility has suffered by your inclusion of this article.

The quote you published as a tease for the story is as follows:   Soft-spoken, well-educated and armed with a laptop, 29-year-old Gabor Vona leads a radical right-wing group of young Hungarians usually at the forefront of anti-government protests that began late last year.

The words "right-wing" raised a flag for me, because I thought it strange that World Pulse would endorse an action by a group subscribing to radical, right-wing ideas.

After setting the scene by, in my opinion, vaguely and cursorily establishing the conflict between the current Socialist-led government of Hungary and its opponents, the article continues with a description of Vona, which should have been a clue for World Pulse editors: "'Vona, who has a history degree, admires the Hungarian regime which briefly regained lands lost in World War One by allying itself with Nazi Germany. He also considers the Roma minority a source of crime, though he denies being racist."

Vona leads a party called Jobbik, the article states. The Reuters article does a piss-poor job, I'd say, of explaining the platform of this organization. So, here is what I found out about Jobbik:

According to wikipedia, The Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom) is a radical right-wing political party in Hungary, led by Gábor Vona.

It was launched as a circle of friends of right-wing students at ELTE university in November 1999, under the name Jobboldali Ifjúsági Közösség ("Right-wing Youth Community"), in short, Jobbik. It spread over several other universities in the country and became a political movement. Its short name, Jobbik, is not only an acronym but a word on its own, meaning "the better one" (i.e., out of a closed set) as the word for "better" (and "right") is simply jobb in Hungarian.

And guess who endorses the group's activities? None other than the U.S.-based white supremacist organization National Alliance.

Roger Boyes of Times Online describes Jobbik as an extremist grouping, which allies itself with the Hungarian Justice and Life party (MIEP), whose leader István Csurka "is one of the most sinister figures in the nationalist undergrowth of Central Europe. His anti-Semitic rhetoric, denouncing Jews for their collaboration with communists and their role in global finance, is familiar territory. But Mr Csurka takes prejudice to crazy heights: 178 Hungarian estate agencies, he claimed, are in Jewish hands in a secret attempt to buy up the country."

These two groups are apparently "using the anti-government rallies to break free and carve out their own identity."

The U.S. Department of State website states that “In April [of 2006] during elections for the National Assembly, candidates of the nationalistic, far right-wing Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIEP-Jobbik) espoused xenophobic and anti-Semitic slogans. The party has not been represented in the assembly since 2002.”

Please take better care to research the news items you endorse. Your readership deserves at least that much.

Thank you,
Tereza Topferova

As a follow up, I would like to share a letter I received from the managing editor of World Pulse. In a nutshell, they invited me to become a volunteer regional curator, a person who helps advise their editorial team on the magazine content.

Dearest Tereza,

I apologize that it has taken us so long to respond to your astute letter. Our organization is just this week shifting from a 7-person team to a 15-person team, and we were all in retreat mode last week, figuring out how best to working together as we move forward. Please know that your comments are being taken very seriously and we are preparing a fulller section on the issue for our upcoming newsletter, taking your thoughts into consideration. It is of course of the utmost importance to us that we package and prevent events as responsibly as possible for our audience.

As we go through the process of expanding as an organization, our editorial team will also be expanding to include a volunteer team of regional curators -- people who listen and help advise our team on which voices to highlight across the editorial content for both World Pulse Media (our for-profit media enterprise) and World Pulse Voices (our nonprofit, which houses an online networking tool designed to facilitate social change). The scope of our project is huge and our asipirations high, as you have undoubtely surmised. Nonetheless we remain very seriously dedicated to our overarching mission of empowering the "women and children transforming our world." In order to be sucessfull, will be asking for a great deal of help from savvy, committed individuals such as yourself.

Our global voices director, Ramya, who will be establishing and fostering relations with this group of regional curators, is eager to contact you if you are interested in working together with our group in any way. Just say the word. And if this does not sound like something you are interested in, please know that you have an open invitation to contribute comments, ideas, contacts and stories at any time.

Again, many thanks for your careful reading and for honoring our mission enough to instigate a discussion.

Warmest regards,

Maria Jett
Managing Editor
World Pulse Media

a must-read for all white people & parents

2007-04-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

Just discovered a great blog thanks to Racialicious.com.

This post, Helplessness of white people, is a must-read for all white people. We, white people, need to educate ourselves and each other about racism and white privilege. I totally agree!

I've heard countless times from people of color that they are sick of being put in the situation of having to educate white people about racism and privilege. It's an additional load on top of the racism people of color have to deal with. We, whites, need to take ownership of white supremacy and privilege. I am new to the struggle, but I realize at least that much. And check it out. There is so much already available, in the form of blogs, for example, for us to learn from. All we need to do, just to begin, is to take a little initiative instead of expecting information or validation to be served on a silver platter. We can read and learn and think without putting people on the spot or just being plain abnoxious. That isn't too much to ask, is it?

columnist on Anti-Racist Parent

2007-04-04T16:08:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to be a columnist on antiracistparent.com. I'm thrilled, but intimidated as well. I can't believe how fast things are moving. I only started this blog and committed to antiracist parenting in January! That's four months ago. Well, here is my first antiracistparent.com post, an introduction. I'll let you know when the next post appears.

survey of diversity in my son's books

2007-04-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Sue Lyons-Joell's survey of diversity in parenting magazines, published on antiracistparent.com, I decided to do my own little survey of my son's books.

I sorted his picture books, most of them geared towards toddlers, into piles:

- a pile of books featuring animals or objects (no people)
- a pile of books which include "visible minorities" (subjective definition, of course)
- a pile of books which incorporate white people or ambiguous/unknown people race-wise
- a pile of Dr. Seuss books only
- a pile of books in the Czech language (I am raising my son to be bilingual and bicultural).

Here are the results:

"Jay", who is nearly twenty-months old, has a total of 52 books.

Of those, 16 books focus on objects and animals, excluding humans all together.

9 are Dr. Seuss books, which incorporate humans that are either white or ambiguous-looking. One of Jay's Dr. Seuss book, My Many Colored Days, is quite problematic in that it equates colors, used to describe groups of people, with negative emotions and stereotypes. I blogged about this issue here. That book's got to go!

4 books are Czech picture books. Three of them include white people only (the Czech Republic does happen to be 97% white) and one has one page portraying a father and child of color (They are Roma). This page unfortunately reinforces stereotypes about the Roma people, because the two are shown dancing around the fire; a sort of primitive, tribal image very much removed from reality. This is something I hope to discuss and balance out with other portrayals when my son gets older.

10 books include "visible minorities", whether in drawings or photographs. However, none of my son's books has a person of color as a central character or depicts solely people of color.

Next, 12 books focus on whites or racially ambiguous people, whom I did not count as "visible minorities".

To sum up, only 19% of the total of my son's books and 28% of all his books featuring people, include "visible minorities", and 0% focus solely on people of color.

Time to go change that ASAP!

Why I keep Disney out of my home (for now)

2007-03-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'll admit it. I am not a fan of Disney and so far, I have chosen not to bring any Disney items into my home or my child's life. Now he is a toddler. When he's older, however, and the "nag factor" becomes something to reckon with, he will likely ask for some of Disney's products or "experiences". We'll figure out how to deal with that when we get to that point.

While I choose to keep Disney out for now, I do acknowledge Walt Disney to be a powerful force among today's "culture shapers." (Why, there is a whole school of thought called Disney Studies, dedicated to the study of Disney's influence on society.) I have thought about that quite a bit lately in light of the recent buzz regarding Disney announcing its production of The Frog Princess, the first animated film by the company featuring a black princess. Though I am well aware of the significance of this diversification effort and the need for more multicultural characters in mainstream children's entertainment, I am skeptical.

Given Disney's trademark tendency to sanitize and simplify the complexities of life in the world of its characters, I doubt this film will be groundbreaking in dealing with any social issues. In fact, it will probably not go there at all. The truth is, as Times Online reports, Disney "lags behind other children's brands in its conversion to multiculturalism." Some of the press is already saying that Disney is making this movie to ward off accusations of racism. Plus, another motivation is clearly that a character of color will expand Disney's marketability and profits.

Though Disney is committed to "to producing unparalleled entertainment experiences based on its rich legacy of quality creative content and exceptional storytelling," and promises to "turn the ordinary into the extraordinary" as well as "make dreams come true," the company's mission is first and foremost to "maximize earnings and cash flow, and to allocate capital profitability toward growth initiatives that will drive long-term shareholder value."

And that's what the Frog Princess is all about. If in the process of raking in the dough for Disney, Maddy saves the day by magically erasing Disney's record of racist portrayals of characters of color, as some are already hoping she will, yipee. I'm sorry to put it so blatantly, but it seems to me that Disney, with the help of the press, is out there already pimping poor Maddy, who may very well fit the bill of the role of female "Magic Negro," there to assuage white guilt and any notion that racism is alive and well (at Disney and elsewhere in the society).

What's more, given Disney's huge presence in the cultural & consumerist landscape worldwide, as well as its pattern of whitewashing history, I worry that Disney may be trying to play a part in wiping out any lingering post-Katrina racism-related “beef” and promoting instead the idea that New Orleans, where Princess Frog will be set, is back to its original Jazz Age splendor. It's already touting that image. The shareholders' meeting was held in New Orleans and I can imagine the hype for the movie, replete with all the products, will begin well before the movie's release. Many will say that any effort to help the area still recovering from Katrina is good. And Disney has, as Orlando Sentinel reports,
donated"more than $3 million to Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts, including $1 million to rebuild 16 Boys & Girls Clubs that were destroyed." However, I am concerned that Disney's powerful, sugar-coated voice will drown out the voices (such as these or these) still asking the tough questions and pressing for racial justice in light of Katrina.

But I'm not just skeptical of Disney's latest. I'm wary of Disney on the whole. I feel that Disney movies and products inhibit children's imagination and steer children away from challenging reading, storytelling, unstructured drawing, and the other more old-fashioned ways of entertainment and learning.

Also, Disney esthetics just don't sit well with me. I find them nauseating. From the schmaltzy music to the look of the animated characters. The esthetic Disney represents to is kitsch, which I would define in trite, sentimental, commercially produced stuff in bad taste.

The Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being provides an interesting way of thinking about kitsch. He defines it as "the absolute denial of shit" and argues that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult to come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view of the world in which "all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions."

That is exactly what I feel Disney movies and characters do. Kundera further links kitsch with totalitarianism in that its nature is to paper over the complexities and contraditions of real life. To further borrow wording from wikipedia, in a healthy democracy, diverse interest groups compete and negotiate with one another to produce a generally acceptable consensus; by contrast, "everything that infringes on kitsch," including individualism, doubt, and irony, "must be banished for life" in order for kitsch to survive. Therefore, Kundera wrote, "Whenever a single political movement corners power we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch."

I think that is a brilliant analysis. And if we agree that Disney fits the definition of kitsch, we can see how it then inhibits imagination by crowding out any diversion from the esthetics it dictates.

Then there is the whole whitewashing aspect of history I mentioned earlier, as well as Disney's shadowy (anti-Semitic, anti-communist, and possibly pro-Nazi) side, which I have a hard time disassociating with the company and its products.

Well, that's my two cents on Disney so far. I'm sure I will return to this topic at some point.

lovely and fabulous

2007-03-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

Just returned from New York City, where I reveled in seeing my son interact joyfully with friends, relatives, and strangers of all different skin colors and ethnicities. My 19-month old is still pure and unaffected by racism. Everyone in the world is a potential friend. It just may be enough to wave and smile and the other person will wave and smile back. What a lovely thing.

Also, I got to meet Carmen Van Kerckhove, the founder of New Demographics and editor of antiracistparent.com, racialicious.com, and addictedtorace.com, some of my favorite blogs. She and I had coffee in Manhattan and she is, of course, fabulous. Should have gotten her autograph. But at least that gives me another reason to go back to the Big Apple.

By the way, Carmen invited me to be a columnist on antiracistparent. I am honored, but intimidated too. I will let you know when my first post is up.

these, too, are my people

2007-03-19T14:58:00.000-07:00

When I think about who "my people" are, you know, the communities I identify with, the first group I'll usually list is Czechs. I am a Czech by birth and nationality. (My son is also Czech; he actually has dual citizenship.) I lived in the Czech Republic until I was fourteen. I still have close family and friends there, I'm fluent in the language, and go back frequently. So I feel close affinity with Czech people. But it troubles me deeply to know how racist my people are.

Earlier this month in Geneva, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) reviewed the Czech Republic's compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The findings are devastating, yet no surprise to those of us who've been following the developments in the country's minority/majority race relations.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in the Czech Republic, whites make up about 97% of the population. The Roma (also known by the derogatory term Gypsies) are the largest group of color, who make up somewhere between 1 and 2% of the total population. The Roma people have suffered persecution for centuries. During World War II, more than 90% of Czech Roma died in Nazi concentration camps.

Today the discrimination continues. According to CERD, these are the manifestations of (institutionalized) racism against the Roma in the Czech Republic today:

- Racial segregation in education. Approximately 70% of Roma children are being categorized as mentally handicapped, and therefore receiving a substandard level of education.

- Vulnerability to evictions and segregation in housing.

- Coercive sterilizations of Romani women. Under communism, the Czech Government sterilised Romani women programmatically, as part of policies aimed at reducing the "high, unhealthy" birth rate of Romani women. These practices are still being perpetrated today.

- Racial prejudice against the Roma people. According to a recent opinion poll, 76% of the white Czech population describe persons of Romani origin as "very unlikable."

- Police brutality. Roma are common targets of violence by the police.

These are findings reported in 2007! The report inevitably concludes that "the measures taken on behalf of the Czech Government to combat racial prejudices and discrimination against Roma people currently remain insufficient."

Based on the above findings, Prague Daily Monitor reports, CERD made the demand that:

The government [must] report back to the Committee within one year – instead of the usual five - on four key areas: adoption of the Anti-Discrimination Act, reparations to victims of coercive sterilization, ending segregated education, and establishing an “institution…to receive complaints of racial discrimination.”

The full text of CERD's recommendations can be viewed here

When I think about all this discrimination taking place in my country of birth, I feel sad, angry, sick to my stomach, and sometimes very alone. Racism is so ingrained in most white Czechs that embedding in their consciousness even the idea that the Roma are people too seems farfetched.

I remember an incident that shook me to the core once. I was back in the Czech Rebublic during one summer while in college. A university professor that I had assumed was quite progressive and open-minded, told a racist joke in a group of white Czechs and my American boyfriend. I challenged the professor. He looked me square in the eyes, and in everyone's presence proclaimed: "Yeah, I am a racist. So what?"

All I could do was stare at him wide-eyed with nothing left to say for a moment. I walked away and cried, realizing people like him, too, are my people. Aware of their own racism, but indifferent to it and to the people their attitudes hurt.

What heartens me is the work of young Roma journalists and activists who are fighting to educate, organize, and reverse the discriminatory history of the country. I have met a couple of them. Jarmila Balážová, for example. You can read her bio as well as an interview about her perception of the relationship between the whites and the Roma here.

Unfortunately, I don't know many whites fighting the fight. They are out there, but I haven't met them yet. I only know of one white Czech woman, Milena Hübschmannová, who fought for and with the Roma. According to The Guardian, "She was a professor of Romany studies at Prague's Charles University, and one of the leading experts of her generation, if not of all time, on Roma culture and language." Dzeno Association, an organization serving to promote Roma human rights and an end to discrimination and racism, said of Hübschmannová: "She was well loved for her modesty and her willingness to help among Roma both in the Czech Republic and abroad. We knew her as a loving, good-hearted woman and we will remember her as such." She is one of my heroes. She died in 2005.

If I ever move back, which my family may very likely do for some time, I want to work alongside the Roma activists as a white ally. I hope I am not one of these "pseudo-humaniarian people" that Jarmila in her interview says "feel something for the Roma - even if it's compassion, admiration, or even love - as if a single mass." She says these people "love the Roma, just as foolishly as [those who] hate them." I constantly question my motives with all this anti-racist work that I want to do. I don't want to do it for the wrong reasons. But this wasn't supposed to be about me. Back to Jarmila, whom I admire because though she sometimes feels that "certain powerlessness, when you can't budge that boulder that slightest bit you'd like to," she keeps on plugging away. Bold and unstoppable, against the current of hatred spouted by people who are white and Czech like me.

my many colored days

2007-03-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

I'm disappointed. I took my son to a thrift store today and bought a few toys, including a pink stroller and a black doll, and books. He was getting a bit antsy, so I only skimmed the books before I bought them.

When we got home, I read one of them, My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss, with my son. The illustrations are beautiful paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher. And my son and I usually enjoy Dr. Seuss books, but this one... oy vey!

The "narrator" of the book is a yellow-orange gingerbreadman-like figure who talks about the different ways s/he feels on different days. The feelings are all based on colors. The pages dealing with colors that don't usually describe skin colors are fine: "Gray Day... Everything is gray. I watch. But nothing moves today." or "Then all of a sudden I'm a circus seal! On my Orange Days that's how I feel." Okay, fine. Those are generally happy or neutral, inoculous feelings and pictures.

But when we get to colors that are typically used to describe skin color or race, take a look at this:

"Some days, of course, feel sort of Brown. Then I feel slow and low, low down."

"Then come my Black Days. Mad. And loud. I howl. I growl at every cloud." This page, of course, has some sort of a wild boar or dog with big teeth and a mean expression, growling at the sky. Scary!

How about our "multiracial page" with gingerbread people of all different colors? "Then comes a Mixed-Up Day. And Wham! I don't know who or what I am!"

Of course, there is also the yellow page. I really hope that no one describes Asians as yellow anymore, but I have to quote here: "Then comes a Yellow Day. I am a busy, buzzy bee." Where the other pages had just one animal each, this one has a swarm of bees with indistinguishable features, all flying in the same direction.

Finally, after going through all the colors, including the confusing multi-color page, the narrator concludes: "But it all turns out all right, you see. And I go back to being . . . me." Phew! So relieved our gingerbreadman with green eyes doesn't have to feel black, brown, or all mixed up from too many colors confusing his days.

Well, I could go into a detailed explanation of what racial stereotypes each of those skin color pages reinforce, but I'll just leave it that. So much for a book linking certain colors with certain feelings or characteristics. Very disappointing, to say the least.

take the gum wrapper and run

2007-03-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

Today my son “Jay” and I were at the park, running from swing set to slide to merry-go-round, our usual routine, when a city park employee truck pulled in. The man in the truck said hello to Jay, we greeted him back. He proceeded to pick up and dispose of garbage laying around the park with those cool giant tongs and a bucket in hand. Since one of my son’s greatest obsessions in life is garbage (“gaba” was one of his first words), I pointed at the man in the distance and narrated the man’s activity for Jay: “Yes, the man is picking up garbage that he will throw away.” Jay, of course, got excited. He began picking up garbage himself and yelling about it enthusiastically.

At first I said, “fuj”, the Czech word for yuck, trying to deter him from touching the trash, but then I realized that the gum wrapper he picked up off the grass was probably no more germ-ridden than the rock or stick he had just played with. It occurred to me that it may be confusing to insist he not pick up and throw away a piece of paper in the park, but to expect him to participate in cleaning up at home. Also, it felt funny to be telling my son not to help the Latino man cleaning up the park in which we, the two white people, were the only visitors leisurely taking in the sunshine. My 18-month-old son doesn’t yet make the distinctions between our garbage and someone else’s garbage; my job, your job, or his job… The two voices inside me debated: Do I suspend the rules that we don’t ever touch trash outside the house? Do I indulge my son just this time and sacrifice a little bit of my germ phobia for his s sense of satisfaction from cooperation and a job well-done?

Instead of squashing his joy and sending a message I did not want to send - that we must squelch our desire to help, or that we are too good to pick up trash, or that garbage is for “the brown people” to deal with - I decided to just go with the flow. Why not encourage Jay in helping the man? It really is a lovely thing that he wants so badly to be useful. We’ll resume with our germ theory lessons next time (idea as I write this: maybe with two sticks as our make-shift tongs), I thought. So, I said: “That’s right. Let’s help the man pick up the trash.”

Jay carried his gum wrapper all the way across the park and handed it to the man. “Thank you,” said the man as he threw the wrapper in his bucket. Mission accomplished. One wrapper and the toddler, with his one-minute attention span was on to the next thing.

Maybe I was way overanalyzing the situation, but what I know is that though my son is little now, he remembers a lot. And what I wanted him to remember at the end of the day was not sitting on the sidelines passively in disappointment or fear of yucky things, but the feeling of joy and satisfaction that comes with being helpful.

how could I have missed this podcast episode?

2007-03-06T15:21:00.000-08:00

I just finally listened to an excellent Addicted to Race podcast episode, which features white bloggers and anti-racist activists vegankid and Rachel. This episode is a must for any white person hoping to begin challenging racism and white supremacy personally or publicly.

Vegankid, for example, discussed the various spheres of influence in which we work when wanting to affect change. First, change happens within us (of course, internal work continues as we move out into larger circles), then in our circle of friends and family, next the community, the country, and the world. This was helpful to hear, because as vegankid said, many people fear taking any action at all since they feel they'd have to jump right into the public sphere. Not so. There are so many small steps we can take. And we don't all have to drop everything and become completely and solely dedicated to racial justice. As Rachel said, if every white person just did some introspection, and coupled it with learning about race and racism, the world would be so much better off!

The other part of the discussion I found interesting was about white guilt. White guilt is such a widespread phenomenon, and is in a way indication of awareness of white privilege and white supremacy. But it can be a paralyzing emotion. As vegankid pointed out, guilt diminishes when we take action. I can say I'm experiencing that right now, though I am just beginning to discuss race and racism out in the open. What I do feel very strongly is fear, pretty much any time I post or initiate discussion on these topics. Though this fear is real, it is crucial to act inspite of it, I feel. I will probably say and do stupid stuff, but I can only do so much learning in isolation. And it's only fair that I take up some of this responsibility instead of leaving it to others or hoping racism will go away if I don't think about it.

Tracing Race: one immigrant's journey from race awareness to anti-racist consciousness

2007-02-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

I have often pondered what it is that my husband and I had in common in our lives before we met. We share many of the same values, though we grew up in different parts of the world in very different environments. We both grew up in small families with a lot of quiet time to ourselves, respect for nature, close siblings, and often minimal, yet loving supervision. Those are the commonalities we've known about for a while, but only recently did we both realize that one of the experiences we both had was that of growing up white in a homogeneous community, comprised almost exclusively of other white people.

Unlike my husband, who is American, I am a white European immigrant to the U.S. who grew up in the Czech Republic, a former communist country, where whites make up about 96 to 98% of the population. As a comparison, my husband's home state's white population is about 90% of the total.

This is interesting. We are now white parents of a white child in the whitest major city in the U.S. (coincidence?) and are working on our own race awareness and thinking about how to raise our child in an anti-racist way. In order to parent this way, I find that I have to do a lot of soul searching. How have I thought of "race" throughout my life? What was I taught about the concept and how do I perpetuate what I was taught? What kinds of things do I want to perpetuate and how are these related to what's ingrained in me? In order to begin to answer some of these questions, I need to look at my early experiences and how these have shaped me.

In my country of birth, the largest racial minority of color are the Roma people, a self-identifying term of a group also known as Gypsies. According to unofficial estimates by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations and the European Roma Rights Center, there are approximately 200,000 Roma living in the Czech Republic. This would make the Roma people about 2% of the total population, though on the census the numbers are much lower, one of the reasons being mistrust of the government and historically-based fear of categorization and discrimination based on race.

The second largest group of color are the Vietnamese, who, according to the census make up about 0.2% of the population.

Because I grew up in such a homogeneous culture, having had only a couple of short-lived friendships with a few Romani children when I was very young, I was very sheltered from the concepts of race and racial diversity, though not from the concept of racism. The only memories of outright racist comments I have were those made by whites about the Roma. These had to usually do with stereotypes regarding negative personal characteristics that white Czechs commonly attribute to this group. I also remember jokes about Asians. You know, the ching-chong-style ones a la Rosie O'Donnell.

Despite this, I don't remember having any negative feelings about any groups based on race growing up. Maybe a little bit of fear around groups of Roma, because of the stereotype that many Roma are pickpockets. Mostly I din't think about race. It just wasn't on my radar.

I do remember feeling confused about why the Romani kids in my class were dropping out one by one until there were none left by the third grade. Today I know more about institutionalized racism in the Czech school system (and all other sectors, for that matter) and about the racist practice of segregating disproportionately large numbers (between 46 and 75%!) of Romani kids in special education schools. It is estimated that between 75 and 85 percent of all Romani children drop out of "mainstream" schools. Why? Much of it has to do with discrimination, absence of inclusive curriculum and multicultural teaching techniques, the lack of diversity among school staff, and in general, a sense of alienation these children often experience in, let's face it, racist and hegemonic institutions. From my own observations and readings I've done, I have found that this parallels the experiences of many minority and immigrant children in the U.S.

Because people of color and whites live very separately in the Czech Republic and because a vast majority of the only children of color with which I came into contact left school, the majority of my childhood was spent surrounded solely by whites. It was at the age of fourteen that I suddenly found myself in an environment where whites made up only the tiniest minority - maybe 2%, in my own estimate.

When my family immigrated to the U.S., I began attending a high school program for new immigrants. The majority of the students were Asian and African. The school had some Latinos and just a handful of Europeans. Three or four of us, I think. I was thrilled. Ecstatic, in fact. "So many new people to befriend! So many cultures to learn about!" I remember thinking. Freshmen year I had three best friends: a girl from Ethiopia, a Romanian girl, and a girl from Laos. I flirted with a boy from the Philippines and began learning vocabulary and phrases in all the above languages. I felt totally in my element.

When my English got "better", I was transferred to another alternative program, this one catering to American-born teens returning to school after having dropped out. Many of these students, or so I was told, had been in gangs or were teenage parents. All students but two in this program were black. Only one of the students, an African-American girl became my friend, but we never really got that close because there just wasn't enough contact time. The foreign children and I shared the experience of being new to the U.S. and learning English as a foreign language. The African-American girl and I seemed to have very little in common other than attending a school where "rejects" congregated.

After a year in two alternative programs, my Ethiopian friend and I were transferred to our neighborhood high school. I felt a sense of community with the other English as a Second Language (ESL) students, but the ESL classes were academically not challenging enough for me. Mainstream classes were too difficult, because I was still new to the English language. My friend and I skipped classes together and talked and joked freely about race and race relations, albeit in what many would now call politically incorrect terms. This was my first opportunity to reflect with another person on the questions of race.

On Ally Work, a blog dedicated to "helping White people fight White Supremacy", contributors Rachel and vegankid talk about the significance of approximating moments in the development of empathy needed for anti-racist work. To quote Rachel, "approximating moments are a way Whites can develop more empathetic orientations. . . that help Whites grasp what it is like to be the victim of racial discrimination."

One such defining moment, I remember clearly, occurred when my Ethiopian friend related a story of traveling to the city, where ironically I live now, shortly after an Ethiopian man was murdered here by racist white skinheads. My friend was terrified. Hearing her talk about this had an enormous impact on me.

At the time of our friendship, I began to feel like a social outcast, because school wasn't working out for me since my mainstream American teachers didn't have the skills or time to include English language learners. Maybe that's why I gravitated towards others in the school that may have been perceived as "outcasts" by the school system.

My first love interest in regular high school was an African-American boy who ended up in "juvie" . At the time I became obsessed with listening to rap, R&B and African-influenced world music. Though I couldn't understand most of the rap songs I listened to, I thought I had "found my groove." I was mad about white on black racism, though I had a very limited understanding of the underlying historical context. Around that time I began dating my first boyfriend, who was also African-American. I hoped to have a child with him, because I believed that if races mixed, racism would be eliminated. A few other interracial relationships followed. This intense race awareness-building phase lasted a couple of years and while in it, I managed to humiliate myself thanks to some very awkward and insulting interactions I initiated and ridiculous papers I produced in college.

In college, I also learned about my family history. Though I knew that my father was Jewish, I didn't know that most of his family members were imprisoned and died in concentration camps. I had heard a sanitized version of this as a child, but, perhaps because my family wanted to protect me emotionally, I hadn't really ever learned what all of this meant. I was also not in touch with my father and we reconnected during my college years. He came to visit me and told me stories about his parents and relatives and gave me a little star of David pendant. This was another defining approximating experience for me that shook me to the core.

Other than friends, authors like June Jordan and Tony Morrison opened my eyes to racism and oppression.

The strangest paradox of that time is this: Perhaps because I was so ignorant and naive (though teaming with compassion for the oppressed), I felt completely free to pursue friendships with anyone and say whatever was on my mind. Now that I know more (of course there is still so much to learn!), I am more reserved and fearful of bridging the gaps I, too, was socialized to internalize.

The quiet, inward phase of learning about oppression and trying to understand the inner workings of this culture and my place in it lasted many years. I have lived in the U.S. for nearly two decades, but it has taken me this long to finally begin to be able to put my finger on what it is I have experienced and observed here.

The new phase of my life, as I see it now, is about continuing to learn (and unlearn much of what I've internalized), but also about talking about this process, taking a stance, and following through with action. After all, that is why I started this blog. I look forward to linking up with other allies in this work, because it is crucial to not work on this in isolation.

I don't want to be paralyzed by the fear of saying something wrong or the fear of being punished if I stick my neck out and act against injustice. I want to take responsibility for the white privilege I've inhereted and help dismantle white supremacy. Though I may have once been a stranger in this land, this is my home now. And I do come from Europe, the cradle of white supremacy. And because I am beginning to see clearly how racism plays out, it is my responsibility to work towards social justice. I vow to continue doing internal work, an essential step towards becoming an anti-racist parent, and to follow up with action in a more public sphere. What that looks like will begin to materialize the more I focus on anti-racism work.

feelings on "race" project

2007-02-23T18:51:00.000-08:00

I found this neat project, a website with quotes from ordinary people describing their feelings on the subject of race. Anyone can add their quote anonymously and the moderator will post it once it's reviewed. These quotes provide excellent fodder for reflection on the subject of identity and racism. Here is the site. Check it out: Sharing My Feelings on Race.

White History 101

2007-02-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

Read this excellent article in The Nation by Gary Younge. Here is an excerpt to wet your appetite:

So much of Black History Month takes place in the passive voice. Leaders "get assassinated," patrons "are refused" service, women "are ejected" from public transport. So the objects of racism are many but the subjects few. In removing the instigators, the historians remove the agency and, in the final reckoning, the historical responsibility.

. . . Logic suggests, you cannot have black history without white history. Of course, the trouble is not that we do not hear enough about white history but that what masquerades as history is more akin to mythology. The contradictions of how a "free world" could be founded on genocide, or how the battle for democracy during the Second World War could coincide with Japanese internment and segregation, for example, are rarely addressed.

"I am born with a past and to try to cut myself off from that past is to deform my present relationships," writes Alasdair MacIntyre in his book After Virtue. "The possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide."

The purpose here is not to explore individual guilt--there are therapists for that--but collective responsibility.

could O'Reilly be onto something?

2007-02-20T16:30:00.000-08:00

There was a bit of buzz earlier this month about Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly saying they’re scared to have black friends because they could say something wrong and get yelled at for it. I would normally not waste any breath or energy on these men, whose rhetoric I find utterly messed up and angering. But, what caught my attention was the reaction in the liberal circles that Beck’s and O’Reilly’s statements got.

I first learned of Beck’s quote on Sam Seder’s Air America show. A caller called in about it and Seder just dismissed the whole thing very quickly with one phrase “Oh, Beck is just a racist.” And then he moved on to something else. Many other liberals on blogs and such just smirked at this incident, arrogantly placing themselves on a high horse with that “I’m so much better than him” attitude.

But I thought to myself, as much as I hate admitting this, the Beck/O’Reilly combo is on to something here, though I’m not sure how sincere their comments were – and who cares if they weren’t since these men are pretty much just shock jocks in suits anyway, right? My gut feeling is that in this case, they speak for a lot of white people who are terrified to say the wrong thing in front of a black person. What are they scared of? They’re scared of making another person mad, they’re scared of being called racist, they’re horrified of being associated with the crimes committed against people of color in this country, afraid of being perceived as ignorant, or to be seen as bad people.

As I sit here writing this, I wonder if I am one of those white people. I remember one very significant time I said the “wrong thing” to a black person. And it was so bad and offensive that I made the person furious. Did I mean to? Of course not. I said it out of ignorance. In fact, I thought I was being friendly and funny. And yes, I it was a terrifying situation. But the crazy thing was that we stuck through it and talked and hugged and cried together and I learned something. I will never forget that moment. It was one of those breakthrough events in my life.

In friendships or conversations with people of color, as a white person I am inevitably going to say offensive things. I, like most other white people, have been conditioned to think racist thoughts. I may not always get challenged on these things and that’s fine, because hopefully I can get better at challenging my own thinking. I may not get any affirmation that I'm doing fine or better, but that's fine. I can learn to notice that myself. The trick is to not let the fear that we, white people, will make a mistake stop us from getting close to people. As anti-racist activist Paul Kivel says in his book on how to be a white ally to people of color, "Don't take it personally, . . . don’t be scared of my anger, (and) make mistakes.” So, persevere, I say. Get close and stay close, if you haven't yet. You know you want to. I know I do.

books to check out

2007-02-20T16:05:00.000-08:00

This post is a list of books with an antiracist theme that look worth checking out. I haven't read any of them yet, but I wanted to keep a list of them on this website. I will add new titles to this post as I come across them and post reviews as I read them. All of you readers are welcome to add more to the list and to chime in with your reviews or opinions on these books. You can do that by emailing warpblog*at*gmaildotcom or commenting below.

The Antiracist Cookbook: A Recipe Guide to Conversations About Race That Goes Beyond Covered Dishes and "Kum-Bah-Ya" by Robin Parker and Pamela Smith Chambers

Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel

Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era
by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

40 Ways to Raise a Nonracist Child by Barbara Mathias

Everyday Acts Against Racism: Raising Children in a Multiracial World by Maureen T. Reddy

my bad

2007-02-19T14:28:00.000-08:00

Remember my anti-racist parenting 101 post a while back? Well, I learned a lesson. When "Jay" started crying at the store last month, I thought he was crying because he was scared of the cashier who was black. Last week we went to the same store and our cashier was a white woman about my age. Again, I had to step closer to the credit card machine as she pushed the shopping cart behind the counter to get the groceries out of it, thus separating Jay, still in the cart, from me. And... Jay began to cry. The separation seemed too much and he was scared. The same exact scenario played itself out again today. Again, the cashier was a young white woman. So much for projecting racialized reasoning onto my son. Interesting the way my adult mind connected things like that. Shouldn't be so quick to judge. My bad.

- Tereza Topferova

taking stock of the diversity in my town

2007-02-19T13:47:00.000-08:00

After listening to the latest episode of Addicted to Race, I decided to take stock of the racial diversity of the city where I live.

Over the years, I've heard lots of white people make comments that Portland is too white. I've always scowled at this, thinking that these people are just too blind to the diversity we do have here. I didn't believe these people. Maybe because for several years I lived in a neighborhood populated largely by African-Americans and Latinos, but now seriously gentrified. Perhaps I didn't believe these people because for the great majority of my time in Portland I've worked at a non-profit agency which serves refugees and immigrants and boasts a very ethnically and racially diverse staff.

Well, now after reading some demographical data, I have to concede. Those people were right. Portland is considered the whitest major city in America with 75% of residents being caucasian. Compare that with New York City, the home city of the host of Addicted to Race, in which whites are a minority at 44%. New York state, however, has a white population of about 74%. Oregon as a state has a white population of 90%, compared to the U.S. average of 80%.

Despite all this, I still think that I am right to say that my city, with a population of people of color hovering around 20% and every eighth resident being an immigrant, there is lots of diversity to appreciate here.

One of my white son's two best friends is a child of mixed heritage (Asian-American and white). So, there is no way he'll grow up racist. Just kidding. There is a lot more to anti-racist parenting than exposing my child to racially and ethnically diverse people. Still, the above-mentioned podcast episode made me take a closer look at the environment in which I'm bringing up my child. More to come on this topic.

- Tereza Topferova

the new form of racism

2007-02-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

What do you think of the points in these essays: Colorblind Racism and Colorblind Racism vs. Old Fashioned Racism? The books by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva from which this blogger Rachel, who is a professor of sociology, quotes sound excellent, dont' they?

quiet on the set.... action!

2007-02-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

To go along with my last posting, I would like to start a discussion here about the involvement of white anti-racists in actions taking place in the public sphere. (Hopefully more people will join our blog community soon.) It would be great to hear on this blog from anyone already involved in actions challening systemic racism. It would even be great to begin collecting stories about the actions of other white anti-racist activists. Though I myself am still stuck in the self-education and discussion phase, I want to be a parent who models civic engagement and anti-racist action to my child. Hearing other people's stories and experiences as activists is always inspiring and helpful. Please share any experiences or thoughts you have on this topic.

more about the history of race in the U.S.

2007-02-09T17:37:00.000-08:00

The quotes below are from a resource on race and racism that I found today. It's a website accompanying the 2003 PBS documentary Race: The Power of Illusion. I haven't seen it, but the website has some good stuff on it such as historical information and a discussion on the role of race in science research and medicine.

The most concrete action that any one individual can take is to educate themselves about the ways that race and racism work and to see things in terms of social relations rather than discrete individual acts. Every racial group is always linked to every other racial group. So when you talk about something like white privilege, you have to understand it's a system of inequality that relates groups together. That's a very important part of how institutional racism works: it perpetuates inequality in a way that most people who gain the advantage don't realize. People need to understand these relationships and recognize that if we do the same thing we've always done, we're perpetuating inequality.

- John Cheng, Assistant Professor at George Mason University, where he teaches American history, Asian American studies, and cultural studies.

There needs to be collective action. As an individual you may have to take the SAT even if you are convinced it's racially biased. At the same time, you can take action with others who are likeminded to lobby the University of California to get rid of it, like it is currently happening, or lobby the ETS to change the way they pre-test the questions. You have to do it in the larger public sphere.

- Dalton Conley, Director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research (CASSR) and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at New York University.

what we can do as white allies

2007-02-05T19:01:00.000-08:00

Because I'm just beginning my journey of anti-racist parenting and because my child is still so young (17-months), my musings have had to do with mostly learning about racism and working out some issues inside myself. That is something I will continue to do, but I appreciate Vikki's push for practical suggestions.

I haven't yet read the book How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel, but it looks great! Have any of you read it? A website I found offers some good advice reprinted from this book, if not for parenting, for us adults to put/continue putting into action. Here it is. (It's cool to notice that our group on this blog is already doing a couple of the things from the list :) What are your reactions when you read this?

What People of Color Want from White Allies (an excerpt, page 96)

What kind of active support does a strong white ally provide? People of color that I (Paul Kivel) have talked with over the years have been remarkably consistent in describing the kinds of support they need from white allies. The following list is compiled from their statements at workshops I have facilitated. The focus here is on personal qualities and interpersonal relationships. More active interventions are discussed in the next part of the book.

What People of Color Want from White Allies
"Respect us"
"Find out about us"
"Don't take over"
"Provide information"
"Resources"
"Take risks"
"Don't take it personally"
"Understanding"
"Teach your children about racism"
"Speak up"
"Don't be scared by my anger"
"Listen to us"
"Don't make assumptions"
"Stand by my side"
"Don't assume you know what's best for me"
"Money"
"Make mistakes"
"Honesty"
"Talk to other white people"
"Interrupt jokes and comments"
"Don't ask me to speak for my people"
"Support"
"Your body on the line"

I guess some of the things that come up for me when reading this are: "What would it take for me to speak up more? What would it take for me to trust my thinking on this issue?", "What does committment to anti-racism look like? Does it mean 'my body on the line', and if so, am I willing to go there?"

A little discomfort, if you please

2007-02-02T20:52:00.000-08:00

I am intrigued by the idea that teaching our children (and ourselves) to be comfortable with discomfort could be one of the foundations for an anti-racist life ahead. This came up in one of Susan's posts and before that I was already thinking along the same lines. I think this comfort with discomfort, which can then translate into a willingness to continue with important but difficult grapplings, is really key to helping dismantle the "isms" in our lives. Instilling the patience and desire in our children to stick with people and issues even when things get hard for the greater good is so important.

In our society, the touted values - instant gratification, individualism, and a care-free existence, contradict the values key to building a more just and equitable society. It strikes me that in order to transform our society and ourselves, we must focus on goals diametrically opposed to what we are taught matters. (I know I'm generalizing. But I'm just talking about what I perceive to be mainstream U.S. values - i.e. middle class Anglo/Protestant values.) The main thing is to learn to trust others more and to build stronger ties with our neighbors and community, even our friends. In general as a society, we must learn deep empathy and accept that difficult issues we may never stop grappling with are a part of life and that it is healthy, even exciting sometimes, to have to wrestle with things. All of this contradicts what mainstream media and socialization into the mainstream teaches us.

Buy, don't grapple

Advertising (including product placement in movies and TV shows) has a lot to do with how we develop emotionally as Americans. Advertisers bombard us with images of the ideal life - carefree and happy-go-lucky. And this lifestyle is supposed to be something we're entitled to; our prerogative, which adds another dimension to the emotional equation. Of course, corporations want us to look to their products for solutions. Products, we are taught, can fix any kind of problem for us instantly, whether it be a stain on a shirt, a dirty window, or social anxiety. So, if there is an item or service we can buy or dream of buying, why do the work ourselves? At the same time, we are made to feel more insecure by the advertising we see. We question our looks, our lifestyles, tastes... And all this makes us the perfect consumers, because our insecurities and emotional needs trap us in a web of buying or dreaming of buying. I, for example, though I'm not very materialistic, do find a strange sense of false hope and excitement in buying something once in a while, whether it's new or used or useful or not. I am definitely guilty of projecting hopes and dreams onto items I buy sometimes. And I am conscious of this and am trying to figure out how to become less attached to things and more deeply trusting of people.

But my point is that in order to become better citizens and human beings, we must stop being the perfect consumers, precisely because consumerism encourages values such as individualism, selfishness, a sense of entitlement, and discourages trust in our own capabilities and closeness with others, two of the many makings of a caring, just society.

So, how do we do this? The messages are so pervasive that it's hard to keep them from colonizing our minds, but I try. I want to model strong friendships and trust in others more. Many of us live pretty isolated lives filled with work and so it's hard to get enough contact time with friends and family. That feels very unnatural to me. But I'm trying to be more present with my friends literally and figuratively, so my son sees that.

But as far as advertising, at my house, we have packed up our TV and put it in the basement. We listen to very little radio that plays ads. We don't buy toys or clothing which display huge brand names or messages that perpetuate inequalities or insecurities, etc. My family tends to de-emphasize the materialistic. Most everything we own, including furniture, is found, hand-me-down, or used. I don't mean to preach. I'm just brainstorming here. I'm sure the pressure to buy stuff and watch TV will increase as my child grows older and becomes aware of advertising and who has what. And then I will have a harder time shutting out "the messages," so I will have to teach him to be critical of the media.

The comfort of the right answers

There is an interesting article I read a while back that has stayed with me. The article is not directly related to the topic at hand, but it has some excellent food for thought relevant to anti-racist parenting.

In her piece Standardized Tests: A Clear and Pleasant Danger, published in Rethinking Schools: An Agenda for Change, Dr. Terri Meier, professor at Wheelock College specializing in cross-cultural communication and language development, discusses language socialization among different groups of children. She cites studies which have revealed some fascinating patterns:

Numerous studies of language socialization in white middle-class communities indicate that the largest percentage of questions addressed to preschoolers by mothers and other primary caregivers consists of simply structured questions to which the questioner already has the answer (e.g., "How many eyes do you have?"; "What color is this dolly's dress?"; How many fingers is mommy holding up?"). The purpose of such questions is not for the questioner to gain information, but for the child to display information, for which she is typically rewarded with extensive verbal and non-verbal praise.

When reading stories to preschool children, many middle-class parents often intersperse their reading with questions that focus the child's attention on noting and recalling specific details of the text.

. . . Research indicates that many working-class and minority children come to school with very different values and assumptions about what constitutes meaningful communication. In a 1983 study, Shirley Brice Heath found that in the working-class black community where she spent eleven years studying language socialization, children were almost never asked questions to which the adult or older child already knew the answer. According to Heath's data, the most prevalent type of question addressed to preschoolers in this community was the "analogy question," calling for an open-ended response drawn from the child's experience (e.g., "What do you think you are?" to a child crawling under the furniture). Other frequently asked questions were "story starters" (e.g., "Did you see Maggies' dog yesterday?") and accusations (e.g., "What's that all over your face?"). But very seldom were they asked test-type questions, the assumption being, why would you ask someone something you already know the answer to?

Reading was also often perceived differently, according to Heath. It tended to be a social event in which listeners, young and old, were free to throw in comments or to elaborate on some connection with their personal experience, rather than a context for testing children's reading comprehension or teaching appropriate school behaviors. People in this community were admired for their ability to tell a good story, draw insightful analogies, or present an interesting and unique point of view, rather than for their ability to display information or show off knowledge for its own sake.

How does this tie into anti-racist parenting? The middle-class emphasis on knowing and displaying the knowledge of right answers strikes me as directly related to the comfort/discomfort question. If right answers are so important and we're praised as children (at home or IN SCHOOL) for regurgitating them... the faster the better, this is the pattern we may learn. We want to do good, be good, be accepted, so we learn this style of communication and the values accompanying it. But what happens in situations when there are no right answers or when we have to work as a community to come up with answers together instead of racing to be the first one = the winner? What happens when there is no one to praise us? Catch my drift? Maybe anti-racist parenting extends even to this - the values we communicate on a daily basis to our children in the way we read with them or through the types of questions we ask. What do you think?

Ashamed of being white?

2007-01-31T09:19:00.000-08:00

I'm going to try and create a post here that is cobbled together from an email conversation I had with a friend. I thought some of the points raised were really key to this discussion.

First, from K:
Susan, I too am leaving a comment to let you know that I am reading your stuff and i guess, digesting it. I had a couple of questions - are you ashamed of yourself because you are white? are you ashamed when you participate in white privilege (like getting to travel, or taking your kid out of school to go abroad for 3 weeks or owning a house, or wanting beautiful cookware)? I am not ashamed of these things. (No I don't get to take my kid abroad 4 times a year, but that is because i have the luxury of making the choice to send them to the school of my choice - same thing, different verse).; Though, I am not sure how to live within the cultural and social class privilege that I and my children currently have. It seems (and you know i tend to polarize things because i am not good with nuances and unknowns and maybe not even very mature, but that is a micro, not a macro discussion) that that is the crux of my wonder at this point; how do you practically apply anti-racist parenting? how does it look?; one thing that struck me as very hilarious (just randomly saying stuff off the cuff here).
but when i saw that "got privilege" hat on one of the blogs recently, i laughed hysterically because who else but someone with privelege would spent their money getting that thing printed! it seemed like the pinnacle of privilege. Anyway, I am not meaning these things in a mean or " drive by" sort of way. i am just honestly giving your my thoughts about this entry in particular and then some other things that have come to mind as i contemplate how i am participating in racism.; 7:36 AM
Susan said...: I have to out the fact that after you wrote this comment, you wrote me personally checking in to make sure I wasn't offended. I wasn't and am not. And there is a lot of stuff you say in here that I want to tackle. No, I'm not ashamed of my privilege. Shame isn't the right word - it's more that I feel a great responsibility towards it. My privilege doesn't feel individual, it feels part of a system, a greater whole and so it exists in direct relationship to the other parts of that whole. What that means is, like the chaos theory cliche, when a butterfly flaps its wings in Minnesota, a cyclone starts in Palau. Every action of mine has direct affect on the lives of many others, some I can know and some I will never meet. Acting within the ignorance of my privilege or not taking responsibility for it means causing cyclones that I will never know about. Even taking responsibility for it still means causing those cyclones - I don't think that awareness of this gives me any carte blanche to feel like I'm now separated or the good white person. It's like I've written about elsewhere, it's having to live with discomfort.

I also want to pull at something you said about the privilege of taking Luca out of school for three weeks to travel abroad. To me that isn't privilege so much as responsibility. Yeah, we can argue about what it means to gather the dollars to make it happen (the privilege is that Rocki's family can help us some) but if we didn't have other dollars, than this would be the only thing we saved for every year. Rocki's family lives in Brazil. They speak Portuguese. If we/I didn't support this to happen, then Rocki and Luca would not have a certain access to each other. I think that because it is Brazil they are going to, it sounds unimaginable or crazy or exotic to the US midwest when it isn't. It's like going to Iowa to see your family. You would never NOT go to Iowa to connect with your family, it isn't an option. I feel very strongly about my responsibility to support going to Brazil, even when, quite honestly, I would rather not. If you and I have never had the conversation about my own struggles with how Brazil and Portuguese configures in our life, I would be happy to have that conversation with you.; I was talking a few days before I left with a man I know from the Global Market. He is from Ecuador. He makes way less cash than I do. Every year, he brings his whole family to Ecuador because it is not an option to do otherwise. For him, his earnings go towards basic needs and the trip to Ecuador. All other things come after that. I would have to say that in my priority list of dollars, Brazil exists the same way. More important than the house or any of the other things we spend money on. More of a responsibility. And I do put the responsibility of Brazil in a different category than private school. Private school is a choice. Staying in close touch with Rocki's family is not. But that's how I draw my responsibility lines.; I think your question about the practical application of antiracist parenting is the crux. Vikki has also rightfully accused me of being too abstract. I am going to try and write a blog later this week on the white antiracist parenting website that is just about practicalities.

K said:
i liked your comments on my comment. i think you took my comment about the privelge of travel/going to brazil the wrong way. i sort of said it off the cuff, quickly thinking of things that seemed like privilege in my life/your life our life. i get the differences between staying connected with a family and (your comparison) going to private school.

but, i am kind of glad that i didn't edit it out (like put in "luxury car" instead of "travel") because of this: i think it is great that you got it "out there" for anyone who is reading the blog to help forward the understanding of traveling as a part of privelge and traveling to stay
connected to your family. i also wonder (it is too bad that more people don't read this blog) about people who think that, for instance, "how does RK (one of the engineers at b's job - i don't know how to spell his name) afford to go to india for 2 months a year? b overhears complaints about that. of course no one would ever actually have a conversation with him about it - to further their understanding and make a connection with him. (of course b has conversations with him about it because of their shared love of food, but really that is the extent of it). ok stay with me on this one....which makes me think about how it is white people's responsibility to educate other white people. wow. that was a stream of consciousness......more streams. regarding private school. i will never in a million years take my kids out of lake country. we will only take them out when they kick us out for nonpayment. i am pretty ok with the luxury of my privilege. which is not to mean that i am not owning it, it means that i can understand how, for instance taking my kids presence out of public school probably has a ripple effect on someone somewhere (although our dollars aren't taken out and shouldn't be), but that isn't enough for me to remove them. i recognize that that is privilege and, well, i am choosing to live with the discomfort. even though....and i should be... but am not..... ( and god i wish i was saying this in person so you know that i am not as callous as i sound) that discomforted by it.

Susan said:
It's interesting - I think that a lot of if not most white folks who are progressive do have some shame about being white. I think it's more common that uncommon - or if not shame, then certainly guilt. I think it's a hard one, I wouldn't say I'm proud of being white, I would say that white is the neutral zone and to give it too much energy - shame, guilt, pride - is to move out of the work we have to do. For me, all of this is about a context and a systemic whole. White has intensity only because white privilege is propped up against and involved with the creation of racism. Try and undermine white privilege or separate white - a neutral state that doesn't exist any more than "of color" exists - from white privilege, and you are working for change. But what does that look like in the practical sense, right?

Whiteness: my inheritance

2007-01-28T13:47:00.000-08:00

Since this blog is a space for us white people to discuss our pursuit of anti-racist parenting, I want to talk about what whiteness means. As I sit here, I'm just beginning this journey, thinking about the work I must do internally first. Acting against racism and white supremacy is an imperative, but I can't help but feel "underprepared" to take action. (Yes, discussion is my first and feeble attempt at action and I don't want to stop there.)

A part of that little procrastinator voice inside my head is just my own insecurity, part feeling overwhelmed with the largeness of the issue, part white privilege which allows me to sit on the sidelines, but a part of it is definitely ignorance. I know so little about the history of this country, and thus the history of Whiteness and White Supremacy. Reading about these topics is important, because this information contextualizes the anti-racist work ahead of me. It will help me perceive the systemic nature of racism and help me understand my collusion with the types of privilege and oppression benefiting me. All this awareness must not paralyze me. The challenge is to take all this information and use it to help dismantle the system of White Supremacy, though that process may take generations. We can start with our inner selves, but as Barbara Flagg, professor of law at Washington University and expert on Constitutional Law and Critical Race Theory writes, "Action [must] be directed at systemic social oppression. Individual and/or local action is not adequate to challenge either the material or the ideological reality of White supremacy.".This makes sense, but what can one do on such a scale that it will make a difference? These thoughts are a bit premature for me. Raising my own awareness and that of those around me is the first step.

I was not born or raised in this country. I came here as a teenager from Europe, the Czech Republic to be specific. It has taken me years to begin to understand this society. I live here now, and though I want to sometimes say these problems are not my problems; I am not from here, I do have to take ownership of the things I'm inheriting and benefiting from in this society as a white person and in relationship to the rest of the world as an American (and as a person originally socialized in Europe, the cradle of racism). This anti-racist work, after all, does extend beyond national boundaries.

On this blog, I would like to share what I learn about Whiteness and White Supremacy.

In this posting, I will just share this definition of White Supremacy by the Chicana activist and writer Elizabeth Martinez:

"White Supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power, and privilege."

And a little bit of history as written by Martinez:

"The first European settlers called themselves English, Irish, German, French, Dutch, etc. -- not white. Over half of those who came in the early colonial period were servants. By 1760 the population reached about two million, of whom 400,000 were enslaved Africans. An elite of planters developed in the southern colonies. In Virginia, for example, 50 rich white families held the reins of power but were vastly outnumbered by non-whites. In the Carolinas, 25,000 whites faced 40,000 Black slaves and 60,000 indigenous peoples in the area. Class lines hardened as the distinction between rich and poor became sharper. The problem of control loomed large and fear of revolt from below grew.

"There had been slave revolts from the beginning but elite whites feared even more that discontented whites -- servants, tenant farmers, the urban poor, the property-less, soldiers and sailors -- would join Black slaves to overthrow the existing order. . .

". . . Their solution: divide and control. Certain privileges were given to white indentured servants. They were allowed to join militias, carry guns, acquire land, and have other legal rights not allowed to slaves. With these privileges they were legally declared white on the basis of skin color and continental origin. That made them 'superior' to Blacks (and Indians). Thus whiteness was born as a racist concept to prevent lower-class whites from joining people of color, especially Blacks, against their class enemies. The concept of whiteness became a source of unity and strength for the vastly outnumbered Euroamericans -- as in South Africa, another settler nation. Today, unity across color lines remains the biggest threat in the eyes of a white ruling class.

". . .In the mid-1800s, new historical developments served to strengthen the concept of whiteness and insitutionalize White Supremacy. The doctrine of Manifest Destiny, born at a time of aggressive western expansion, said that the United States was destined by God to take over other peoples and lands. The term was first used in 1845 by the editor of a popular journal, who affirmed 'the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole continent which providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government.'

". . . Manifest Destiny is a profoundly racist concept. For example, a major force of opposition to gobbling up Mexico at the time came from politicians saying 'the degraded Mexican-Spanish' were unfit to become part of the United States; they were 'a wretched people . . . mongrels.' In a similar way, some influential whites who opposed slavery in those years said Blacks should be removed from U.S. soil, to avoid 'contamination' by an inferior people (source of all this information is the book _Manifest Destiny_ by Anders Stephanson, Hill & Wang, 1995)

". . . The doctrine of Manifest Destiny facilitated the geographic extension and economic development of the United States while confirming racist policies and practices. It established White Supremacy more firmly than ever as central to the U.S. definition of itself. The arrogance of asserting that God gave white people (primarily men) the right to dominate everything around them still haunts our society and sustains its racist oppression."

So, how where do I stand in relation to this history? I live in the Pacific Northwest, an area where not so long ago Europeans settled, committing unspeakable violence against the Native peoples of the Northwest. Those that came before me on the Oregon Trail paved the way for me to live on this plundered land rather comfortably and effortlessly. And what a beautiful corner of the world this is! I think about the violence that occurred here often and it is so painful. I not only think about he violence done against the people here, but also against the earth. The magnificent forests that were here once, the streams that are now buried or polluted with industrial waste ... all of that rips my heart apart.

I want to close this post with something that I remembered unexpectedly. It surprises me how I get from point A to point C or X or Z sometimes. Here is a quote from a man whose book I read and whom I saw speak once, Martin Prechtel, a man who lived in Guatemala amongst the Mayans as a shaman:

"Our ancestors weren’t necessarily very smart. In many cases, they are the ones who left us this mess. Some of them were great, but others had huge prejudices. If these ancestors are given their due, then you don’t have to live out their prejudices in your own life. But if you don’t give the ancestors something, if you simply say, 'I’m descended from these people, but they don’t affect me very much; I’m a unique individual,' then you’re cursed to spend your life either fighting your ancestors, or else riding the wave they started. You’ll have to do that long before you can be yourself and pursue what you believe is worth pursuing.

"The Mayan way of dealing with this is to give the ancestors a place to live. You actually build houses for them — called 'sleeping houses' — and put your ancestors in there. The houses are small, because the ancestors don’t take up any space, but they do need a designated place, just like anything else. Then you feed your ancestors with words and eloquence. We all have old, forgotten languages that our languages are descended from, and many of these languages are a great deal more ornate. But even with our current language, we still have the capacity to create strange, mysterious, poetic gifts to feed the ancestors, so that we won’t become depressed by their ghosts devouring our everyday lives.

"If we can get past the prejudices of the last ten thousand years’ worth of ancestors, then we can find our way back to our indigenous souls and culture, where we are always at home and welcome.

". . . People’s longing for each other and for the terrain of home is so enormous that, if you do not weep to express it, you’re poisoning the future with violence. If that longing is not expressed as a loud, beautiful wail, a song, or a piece of art that’s given as a gift to the spirits, then it will turn into violence against other beings — and, more importantly, against the earth itself, because you will have no understanding of home. But if you are able to feed the other world with your grief, then you can live where your dead are buried, and they will become a part of the landscape in a way."

And so perhaps even weeping and recognizing the pain of our inheritance is a form of action that in a spiritual way may help undo the violence our people have committed.

Comfort and discomfort

2007-01-26T09:43:00.000-08:00

In my first blog posting way below, Tereza commented by focusing on one of the lines in my blog:

"Our job is to try and teach her to be critical of whiteness, to be comfortable with being uncomfortable"

and broke it down. In particular, Tereza, you raised points about how comfort is a privilege and that white privilege protects our comfort, that there are far too many knee jerk skills we have perfected that allow us to coast back to comfort in the area of race when discomfort comes up. You said a lot more that is smarter than that.

As an exercise in trying to be more practical and more concrete about this: I want to think about this comfort in discomfort thing and how it comes up with Luca. Luca is a whiner. Meaning, when vulnerability comes up, she doesn't respond aggressively by lashing out, acting out, being pissy. No, when she is vulnerable, she gets whiney. It's so annoyingly gendered, but it's true. Of course, I do the same thing. Anyhow, I have that mama thing that when she is tired or hungry or sad or whiney, my arms open wide and I gather her up and comfort her.

Lately, when she's been crabby or whiney or a butt head, she's started to say, "Don't you understand, even when I'm crabby, what I really want is for you to just cuddle me. Stop talking and cuddle me!" And usually when she says that, my partner Rocki and I say something like, "Luca, if you want to be cuddled, then you need to ask for cuddles rather than getting whiney or crabby or mean. You need to ask us for what you want so that we know. It isn't fair to make us just guess." So here we are, focusing on teaching direct communication, asking for what you need, all of that. Good emotional skills, right?

But I can't help but think about this within the context of this wider conversation of comfort and discomfort. Some of the ability to be comfortable with discomfort that we're talking about is a kind of state of awareness that rests on a strong foundation. At least, that's what I think it is. I think that part of the life gift that Luca will have is a strong sense of self and a security that there are people who love her who are happy and willing to cuddle her. The ability to sit with discomfort would rest on top of this, wouldn't it?

Or are there some things I need to do right now? Sometimes this strange little matron in me wonders if, when she gets all limp and whiney and boneless, if part of what I need to do is stand up all stiff and just make her deal with it. I remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine, years ago when I was first pregnant. This friend, African American Muslim man, grew up hard, still has lots of family members living hard, is a kick ass father, has (I believe) six kids, etc. He was tripping about me becoming a parent because that wasn't how he saw me. But then he asked, "So, are you going to be one of those white liberal folks who won't spank their kids?" Wow, big step back. "Yes," I said. "I am. I don't believe in it." We had this great conversation about where we come from and where we expect our kids to go. This friend is a peace loving stunningly kind man who does some pretty hard core diversity training with organizations that really shifts those organizations. I have seen him touch groups and make change in a way that is very different from a lot of "diversity training" which stays in the superficial. And in our conversation, his point was that, he is raising Black kids, most of them boys. As they grow up, the world around them isn't going to be looking for ways to be kind. Quite the opposite. His kids need a kind of strength, of toughness, that is going to carry them through when their surroundings (people, place, social context) deny their humanity or individuality. As we talked, I reflected that for my white child, a kind of anti-violence bent is probably important. If they are the inheritors of social power, it would make sense that they have spine but that their instinct is towards the collective, away from the individual. We talked about how, if we were raising our kids to be strong folks in a move towards social justice, strong and powerful within their social positions, we might well be raising different kinds of kids. Taking that conversation five years ago and applying it to day (and so I'm paraphrasing a friend and this might not be exactly what he meant( his kids are guaranteed discomfort (within the context of race and racism) and will have to learn how to hold on to and find their own comfort. Kids with white privilege will have the skills of asserting and demanding their own comfort (within the context of race and racism) and asserting their own normal and will have to learn how to hold on to their own discomfort.

And are the skills to do those things the same or different? And is this even a right way to think about it?

Sitting here now, about five years later, I'm not as sure about any of this. Or, I want to hear more perspectives - on raising all of our kids white and of color, within the context of race and racism. Like I wrote earlier, I'm not sure what this means about raising my child - on a day to day basis - or how to raise Luca so that she can sit within discomfort and stay present, keep moving, and resist the desire to hide or go away.

And as an aside, oh the rashness that I write this as though I have the extant of control implied by my words.

anti-racist parenting 101

2007-01-25T23:32:00.000-08:00

Okay, yes, I started this blog. But I'm scared to post any of my thoughts on the subject of anti-racist parenting. Hmmm...interesting thing to notice. I'm afraid of sounding foolish, dumb, ignorant, trite... But I have to just go for it and post anyway. Otherwise, I'll just be living inside my head and never getting feedback and thus never growing. This blog is supposed to be a safe place to discuss unlearning and challenging racism, so, here is a posting from another one of my blogs where I write about all things trivial and not so trivial related to motherhood.

***

I've been thinking a lot about how, as a white parent, I should go about raising my child to be a person who harbors no racial prejudice, and whats more, becomes a person who fights racism when he's older. It's easy to forego thinking about race and racism as a white person. That is, afterall, one aspect of white privilege. I do have the choice to NOT devote any energy to this topic. But precisely because I am white and aware of the existence and gravity of racism in this society as perpetuated by whites, I feel compelled to do something about it. And with that urge to challenge the racism instilled in me and my immediate surrroundings comes fear.

The safest thing is to think and read about the topic. Then it's inside my head for just me to mull over. And yes, the learning phase is an important and ongoing phase. But, there comes a point when one has to take action, whether it's through discussing the issues with others in or outside one's circle (i.e. on this blog) or in other ways. That is where things get scary.

My biggest fear is feeling shame, rejection and hurt. As we grow up (and I'm talking about white people here), we learn what is socially acceptable and what is not, which of course varies somewhat depending on our communities, but overall, any discourse about race is pretty much taboo. But, I should hope that this is true, we are naturally curious about all kinds of people, especially as children. However, our curiosity is often squelched because it's just not socially acceptable to, for example, ask out loud about people's skin color or hair texture. So, we get instantly hushed or shamed. That is not a good start. Immediately we learn that certain types of differences, in this case "racial" differences (racial in quotes because "race" is really a biologically unfounded social construct), are taboo. Something to perhaps ponder silently, but to never speak about. This is how any discourse on "race" is extinguished from the start.

What I just described is the level of communication where a parent can start. Instead of shushing a child who is naturally curious about people who look different from him, the parent can encourage the dialogue and explain to the child that yes, people have different degrees of pigmentation, etc. and make sure the subject doesn't get tagged as taboo in the child's mind.

The other way that as a mother of a toddler I can begin the journey of anti-racist parenting, is by exposing the child to people that look different in very ordinary circumstances - play groups, books with photographs, etc. I know that sounds overly simple and trite, but it is a way to start. And I emphasize start.

I am, of course, already worried that I'm failing in this regard. I do go and socialize with random groups with my son, but he does not see people that are all that racially different. This is just because of the way our city's demographics happen to be. But I do question my choices of the places where I take "Jay". Do I choose the places according to my own comfort level with the families that frequent these particular community centers and libraries?

The children with which Jay interacts are mostly white and Asian. To illustrate my fear that I am failing anti-racist parenting 101, let me share with you a brief anecdote. The other day we went to the store and our cashier was a very dark skinned black man. At the point when I separated from Jay and stepped closer to the credit card reader and the cashier pulled the shopping car with Jay in it slightly behind the cash register to begin unloading the groceries, Jay suddenly had this freightened look on his face and began to cry. The man gave Jay a sticker and told him he was his friend. Jay stopped crying and became more comfortable. But it was interesting to observe my own reaction to the situation. I was pretty certain that Jay became scared of the man because he looked so different from the other people he was used to seeing. I noticed feeling paralyzed and unsure of what to say or how to react. Should I have said, "Oh, Jay. Look at this nice man. Say hello to the nice man?" (I want to thank a friend of mine here for suggesting I rephrase more positively my original response which read: "Oh, Jay, don't worry. Look at this nice man. You don't have to be scared of him.") Of course, Jay is too young to understand a sentence like that, but he can understand emotional tones. Instead of saying anything, I let the cashier deal with the situation. How lame of me. That's what white people tend to do. Stay paralyzed and let people of color navigate the uncomfortable situation for them. And that too is racism.

So, now I've publicly processed this encounter and have hopefully learned something by "thinking aloud."

That's it for my first installment of my thoughts on anti-racist parenting.

- Tereza Topferova

Writing white

2007-01-25T12:52:00.002-08:00

I think I am going to be posting back and forth from my personal blog to this blog. I am eager to see more people join the conversation.

Last night I went to a reading and discussion surrounding the book Outsiders Within, an anthology written by transracial adoptees. There were about 25 folks who attended the event, most of them white and many of them with children they had adopted from outside the US or children of color adopted from within the US. In other words, many of them were the parents of transracially adopted children. A few were in the process of adopting. Most who had children already still had very young children.

Transracial adoption is such a complex subject and it's one that I have big emotions around. I know many many adult adoptees who are very articulate about their struggles, identity conflicts and confusions inherited from being adopted by white adults without the skills to teach them about racism, their birth country, or their specific identities. For the most part, I fall in the same camp as the anthology contributors: I believe we should work hard to make sure that parents all over the world have access to their basic economic needs and human rights and that no parent should ever have to give up a child in order to guarantee their own survival. I look at Luca and she is the same age as some of the adoptees were when they were adopted. She already has such a full life, full of so many relationships, I can't imagine her needing to uproot that completely and "become" someone else just like I can't imagine the emotional struggle involved in having to give her up.

But that isn't the point of this blog. During the discussion, a lot of questions were asked. A LOT of questions. It's clear that many of the white parents were hungry for suggestions from adult adoptees on how they can raise their children with compassion and integrity. It was clear that some of the questioners were used to talking about race and racism and some were a bit more awkward in their language. It is also clear that people were there because of how much they wanted to learn, to be good parents, to do the right thing.

At various points during the discussion, I got angry or frustrated or cynical. I was frustrated with what I felt was the ignorance of some of the white folks, the reluctance to look at racism as a system or to look at our collusion with white privilege and the way that this collusion continually props up racism. I wanted more direct conversation about our responsibility and accountability as white folks. I quoted a Cheri Register piece I read ages ago in which, in discussing her adoption of an African American child, she talked about realizing that while, on the one hand, she had "saved" her child from poverty and the foster care system, on the other hand she had burdened this child with her ignorance, put this child into a vulnerable position by not being able to give her (I don't remember if it was a son or daughter) the life and survival instruction and support for living in a profoundly racist nation. I was so moved by Cheri's willingness to sit within that place of contradiction, refusing to consider "giving up" her child, this piece of her life, yet also refusing to deny that her parenting would by definition bring some harm as well as some good.

This is what I wanted, practical direct conversation that starts with an assumption that white privilege exists and it informs our every action.

And so I got annoyed and then, yes, fell into the "better white than you" trap of white privilege. Meaning, I felt for awhile like I "got" it and "they" didn't and I wanted so desperately to talk with other white folks who "got" it and not with these people.

Breath.

This morning I did the first group of a Mindfulness Politics course. And halfway through, I sat there cross legged on the floor and wept. This is not who I want to be, hard hearted, angry, self-righteous. Race, white privilege, this core of injustice, these things have been on my front burner for most of my adult life. This is the work I want to do. Last night, I forgot HOW I want to do this work. I forgot that sometimes, when sitting in the midst of that conversation, being brave means having compassion.

I am so hungry for conversations about all of this, not just the talking analytical conversations or the mental masturbation as Vikki called it last night, but the scary practical conversations and strategies that help me think about how to parent and how to be as a white person.

This is something I am going to write about a lot more here - and on the antiracist white parent blog. I am also trying to drag the other adults and parents that I love into this conversation, asking them to do their own writing. And more than that, I'm going to use my daughter as a guinea pig. Meaning, I have never parented before. I haven't yet found any practical parenting books about raising white children and yes, I know there are books out there about taking your kids to multicultural events so they know that a diverse world exists, but I am talking about something very different from that. I am looking for help.

Susan Raffo

Why this blog?

2007-01-23T22:08:00.001-08:00

Thank you, Susan Raffo, for being the first contributor to this brand new blog! This is the start of a conversation I have been longing for for some time now.

There is so much that rushes through my mind as I think about my hopes for this new online community. Why a blog for white parents, you may be thinking? And, what's this anti-racist stuff anyway?

The idea is to form an online affinity group of white parents who are dedicated to raising their children with an anti-racist outlook. That of course means that they, or we, are committed to recognizing and challenging racism in our own heads and our surroundings.

Do I really know what it takes to be an anti-racist parent, and what's more, do I dare call myself one? At this stage, perhaps I'm more of a wannabe. My desire to get out of my head and start taking action led me to starting this blog. My hope is that we can bounce ideas off each other; that here, we can vent our fears and frustrations without bogging down people of color, from whom we may be wanting approval, lessons on racism or whatever else they just might happen to be sick of being asked to give us. We white people need each other to put things into perspective better, to understand the issues better, and to be better equipped to join in action and dialog with other groups cross-racially.

As Beverly Daniel Tatum, the author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria says: "Affinity groups [are] separate 'spaces' that facilitate positive identity exploration, where people can pose questions and process issues. . . The shared goal in making affinity groups available is to interrupt the cycle of racism. For white people, this might involve processing their reactions to racism: typically, shame and guilt. . . Affinity groups also help individuals participate in larger, blended groups. They are good for overall community-building."

With that said, I want to invite others to participate in this discussion. Whatever thoughts and insights you may have, related to the journey of anti-racist parenting, are welcome, as long as you write with honesty and respect.

Thanks for stopping by and come back to talk again.

- Tereza Topferova

The Privilege of Looking Back

2007-01-23T05:33:00.000-08:00

To start off, I'm going to post something here from a past blog. My partner is Brazilian and my family went to live in Brazil for six months. The goal was to have my daughter and I strengthen our Portuguese. Luca, my daughter, became fluent. I got better.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006
The Privilege of Looking Back

We head back to Minneapolis in about three weeks. I can't believe how quickly - and how slowly - these six months have gone by. My partner, Rocki, and I were admitting to each other the other day that we are, indeed, both proud of being here. Even before I got pregnant, we made a commitment to spend significant time in Brazil so that our child would grow up bilingual.

So, besides me and Luca speaking better Portuguese, I am thinking about the other goals we had for this trip. Getting rest - well, that has happened. Our sleep reserves have reserves themselves. When I hear about the lives of those I love with small children, I am chomping at the bit to get home, cook for them, and take their kids for overnights. Not that I don't have my own selfish reasons for spending time with them.

The other big thing I said that I wanted to do while I was here was to focus on a project about privilege. In particular, I wanted to record and reflect over the ways in which Luca, my four year old daughter, becomes white. How does a blob of baby without culture or conceit learn how to inherit the tools of privilege and power? What do we as parents and the community at large do to foster this social role? I wanted to do something other than what I find when I look for research on raising white children: introduce them to other cultures, bla bla bla.

It's funny - in trying to watch how Luca becomes white, I am continually struck by the way that race is the USA's class system. Her privilege, at its root, is really about a kind of class privilege that her whiteness gives her carte blanche to use. I think there are other specifically racialized moments that will come up as she ages, but in this preschool four year old period with six months spent in Brazil, the most obvious privilege is class. Some of the racialized children's moments - the color/race of dolls and toys, children's television shows, etc - happen differently here.

It is a strange thing to talk about Luca's privilege while living here in Rio. Her privilege is in sharper relief than it is in Minneapolis. Here, the basic rights of her privilege (having enough food, a safe place to sleep, a safe place to play) can sometimes mask the subtler signs. In the States, there are certainly people without enough food, a safe place to sleep and a safe place to play, but they don't live next door or around the corner. Class/race in the US can be so ghettoized - intense poverty kept to some neighborhoods and not others. Here, everyone lives next to each other - rich, poor and in between. It is always in front of you. Part of having privilege in the US is that you DON'T have to see it. And sometimes, unless you play tourist in communities where you don't live, it can be hard to see it.

In Brazil, Luca's "whiteness" is tied up with her "American-ness" and even more, her English. To speak English here is a huge privilege, one that opens the doors to work and education. Her literal whiteness - as in her coloring - gives her the power of the exotic. She isn't that light in a midwestern US context, but she stands out in Recreio. She gets a lot of attention when we wander around just because she is attractive in a less typical way.

To try and get past my own usual thinking about privilege - I have done a lot of reading in biochemistry and neurology - wanting to understand behavior from a completely different angle. I learned a lot - and it was damned interesting - and one book in particular - Us and Them - gave me some deeper understanding for why we create boundaries between folks we decide are "like us" and folks we assume to be "different." But the only thing they gave me towards understanding this project on Lucaness was to remember that yes, the way we parent Luca and the world that Luca lives in will do a lot towards determining what kind of a white person she becomes.

It's funny how you have to learn and relearn the same things over and over again. This would be an example of that. All of this thinking, this reading, this watching did, at some level, was to get me back to an awareness that I have had in the past: privilege is. It can not be given away or denied. Instead, it has to be tempered. In other words, what is the best way that Luca can be raised within her privilege to be someone who seeks to change, who sees other people for whom they are and not for who she assumes them to be, who knows how to live within the context of seeing herself straight up compared with those around her. What is the best way for Luca to be raised to understand that every moment of her life, she lives in community and to then understand her fluid role within those moments of community? How will she learn to make choices so the context surrounding them is visible?

This is just where I started, but now there are more nuances within that sentence. And what I realize is that I can't create a strategy all laid out with perfect steps and situations. Instead, Rocki and I just have to respond to situations as they come. Which means we have to watch ourselves. Not just as parents, but as people in the world.

So it gets back, again, to what I already believed. The reason why working against whatever social category you're talking about is so difficult, is that it is about responding in unexpected moments, not about knowing the right thing to say or the right way to behave. It is about being sincere and trying to pay attention every day and when you screw up, not getting lost but taking a deep breath and starting all over again. There are and will be moments every day where the fact of who Luca is - her skin color, her ethnicity, her culture - is reified by her surroundings. That is going to happen her whole life - even when she notices how she is different (bilingual, binational, child of queer parents), her racialized self will most often be experienced in her unthinking moments as "normal." Thinking about what flavor of white she becomes is about teaching her to pay attention. And to be curious.

Luca is white and whiteness is a kind of cultural vapor that she has to dance with. Our job is to try and teach her to be critical of whiteness, to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and to try very hard and every day to not forget that she is white. Like walking through clouds, she has to learn to see it even when it is hard to see. And Rocki and I have to do the same.

I had visions of writing something very practical, a kind of day in the life account of a white child becoming white. But that isn't as easy as I thought. Or it is still too early as Luca is only just four. She is still at the age where, for the most part, race is not the first thing she notices, if she notices it at all. But then again, that is probably part of her privilege.

Welcome to white anti-racist parent blog

2007-01-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

I am now launching this blog. The goal is for white parents to have a place to discuss their experience as anti-racist parents. I hope to invite several cool and enlightened contributors very soon. I also hope the community will grow and that many readers will share their opinions in the form of comments. Thanks for visiting! Come back soon.