USA Today article... sharing a bit about our racist past & present
NOTE: In case you want to skip to the good stuff, at the bottom I recommend this rockin' PBS site with a timeline of the creation of the "race" concept and practice as we know it today.
Hey all. I'm traveling with steve & jesse up to NYC for taiji summer camp...and they've got free USA today newspapers in the lobby. Hidden in the back of the first section of today's paper : "Congress needs to make full confession on slavery."
While that's true, to me what the piece is really about is the importance of education about the actual structures and laws that supported and support racism. In a conversation with steve, he talked about our country as a spooky economic fascist state and related a number of stories about teaching in Oakland. He shared that in his experience, the white-washed history often taught in schools doesn't bring any buy-in for African American students... whereas some political education about the actual machinery of our racist society might have. The anti-lynching bills shot down in congress. The Fugutive slave act that denied slaves trials and the right to testify. The Voting rights act shot down that would have disallowed southern states from illegally blocking Black folks from coming to the polls. This shit still goes on today, in fact, in more subtle but still measurable ways. In my history of social work class through UNC's master's program, the incredible Dr. Iris Carlton-LaNey shared legislation after legislation, informal policies, networks of corruption... and the ways that early social workers both pushed back against and were complicit in racist systems.
But I'm getting away from myself here. What I suggested to Steve is that knowing the history of racism and anti-racist resistance is empowering for everybody - White folks and People of Color. When I was more involved in anti-racism trainings a few years ago (and hope to renew my commitments there in the coming years), I found without exception that learning a deeper and more substantive history wakes people up. It helps name the many destructive aspects of culture and by contrast an alternative vision of a culture we can believe in...providing a sense of purpose and history for those in cultural resistance and a factual legitimizing of an emotional reality people of color (and White folks too) experience that's otherwise denied by our white washed culture and history. Yes, racism was real, was everywhere, was strategic and intentional - and to suggest anything else without knowing the nuts and bolts is ignorance or wishful thinking, protecting an ego that would would so much rather live in a world without atrocity that it would deny reality. Yes, resistance existed and has always existed, has been strategic, has had victories as well as losses... to not really SEE that in our history leads to disempowerment, to separation from a powerful lineage of those that push back against runaway capitalism, materialism and racism.
Steve and I got into this conversation through the lens of food...and how modern culture disables good food choices at so many turns while occasionally tossing bones out to distract from real, healthy, local food. To me, spiritual activism is about being awakened someplace (through the environmental movement, the labor movement, anti-racist resistance, anti-materialism) and bringing that awakening, that new vision of a culture that has good *and* bad, to other areas. If we have a long history of destroying the environment for private gain, of hoodwinking the public for secret ends...and of environmental resistance and Gaiain protection... maybe it's true about the push for more-and-better materialism? Maybe there's a history of
And maybe there's a coherenent ideal of non-patriarching protection and liberation that can be discovered in these histories. Heck, not just discovered, but strengthened by rereading, by learning more, by study. I'm remembering one of the participants in "The Color of Fear" who said, "...and study. Always study." as a suggestion to aspiring anti-racists out there. I think I'm due for more study myself.
If you're interested in a great starter, check this PBS site for links... and particularly this amazing (but truncated, of course) deep timeline of events that helped create the race construct.
Not knowing history, not seeing culture, not awakening to purpose to grow, develop, and assist others in our shared process sucks. But like many things, hot defines cold, high defines low...so it's hard to know what you're missing until you see otherwise. So too I didn't realize how hoodwinked I was until I became more awakened...and don't realize how hoodwinked I am relative to what I'll know later. Strange thing. But again and again, such appreciation to those that have supported me to here.
Hey all. I'm traveling with steve & jesse up to NYC for taiji summer camp...and they've got free USA today newspapers in the lobby. Hidden in the back of the first section of today's paper : "Congress needs to make full confession on slavery."
While that's true, to me what the piece is really about is the importance of education about the actual structures and laws that supported and support racism. In a conversation with steve, he talked about our country as a spooky economic fascist state and related a number of stories about teaching in Oakland. He shared that in his experience, the white-washed history often taught in schools doesn't bring any buy-in for African American students... whereas some political education about the actual machinery of our racist society might have. The anti-lynching bills shot down in congress. The Fugutive slave act that denied slaves trials and the right to testify. The Voting rights act shot down that would have disallowed southern states from illegally blocking Black folks from coming to the polls. This shit still goes on today, in fact, in more subtle but still measurable ways. In my history of social work class through UNC's master's program, the incredible Dr. Iris Carlton-LaNey shared legislation after legislation, informal policies, networks of corruption... and the ways that early social workers both pushed back against and were complicit in racist systems.
But I'm getting away from myself here. What I suggested to Steve is that knowing the history of racism and anti-racist resistance is empowering for everybody - White folks and People of Color. When I was more involved in anti-racism trainings a few years ago (and hope to renew my commitments there in the coming years), I found without exception that learning a deeper and more substantive history wakes people up. It helps name the many destructive aspects of culture and by contrast an alternative vision of a culture we can believe in...providing a sense of purpose and history for those in cultural resistance and a factual legitimizing of an emotional reality people of color (and White folks too) experience that's otherwise denied by our white washed culture and history. Yes, racism was real, was everywhere, was strategic and intentional - and to suggest anything else without knowing the nuts and bolts is ignorance or wishful thinking, protecting an ego that would would so much rather live in a world without atrocity that it would deny reality. Yes, resistance existed and has always existed, has been strategic, has had victories as well as losses... to not really SEE that in our history leads to disempowerment, to separation from a powerful lineage of those that push back against runaway capitalism, materialism and racism.
Steve and I got into this conversation through the lens of food...and how modern culture disables good food choices at so many turns while occasionally tossing bones out to distract from real, healthy, local food. To me, spiritual activism is about being awakened someplace (through the environmental movement, the labor movement, anti-racist resistance, anti-materialism) and bringing that awakening, that new vision of a culture that has good *and* bad, to other areas. If we have a long history of destroying the environment for private gain, of hoodwinking the public for secret ends...and of environmental resistance and Gaiain protection... maybe it's true about the push for more-and-better materialism? Maybe there's a history of
And maybe there's a coherenent ideal of non-patriarching protection and liberation that can be discovered in these histories. Heck, not just discovered, but strengthened by rereading, by learning more, by study. I'm remembering one of the participants in "The Color of Fear" who said, "...and study. Always study." as a suggestion to aspiring anti-racists out there. I think I'm due for more study myself.
If you're interested in a great starter, check this PBS site for links... and particularly this amazing (but truncated, of course) deep timeline of events that helped create the race construct.
Not knowing history, not seeing culture, not awakening to purpose to grow, develop, and assist others in our shared process sucks. But like many things, hot defines cold, high defines low...so it's hard to know what you're missing until you see otherwise. So too I didn't realize how hoodwinked I was until I became more awakened...and don't realize how hoodwinked I am relative to what I'll know later. Strange thing. But again and again, such appreciation to those that have supported me to here.
Labels: social justice
posted by Mike Dolan Fliss at
6/23/2009 09:24:00 AM
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