Learning How to be an Ally

Created at an art therapy session where I focused on how I could do better amidst the protests, racism, and violence.

I'm hurting tonight.  I'm hurting because I believe in a nation that puts the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for all people at the top of its priority list.  I'm hurting because I know we still have not achieved the world that our founders hoped we might become.  I say this purposefully.  As a student of history, I know that our founders knew that we were not a nation that saw everyone as equals.  As an optimist, I believe they hoped it would happen, and they created a structure, a flexible structure, that would allow it to be.  A couple hundred years later, we haven't yet figured it out.  Institutional racism exists.  White privilege exists.  My status in life is literally an example of it.  My grandparents, who didn't earn a high school degree, lived in a mixed-race community.  Due to structural racism that favored white over black homebuyers, they were able to purchase a home in a gentrified neighborhood, where my mother went to the prestigious high school and gained entrance into a prestigious college, where she met my father.  Then I was born, and earned my PhD.  In just two generations, in part because of the privilege our race afforded us, we transformed our family from high school dropout to Phd.  This likely did not happen for the black people in my grandparents' neighborhood, no matter their work ethic or intelligence.

I haven't been aware of this privilege for most of my life, but I have been for about 20 years.  For the last week or so I've been frustrated by the response of white privilege to the injustices that have occurred recently.  I've been relatively quiet about it, aside from reaching out to my black friends to let them know that I see them.  I'm not sure I did that well, but I did try.

Then today I read several statements by institutions with which I am affiliated. Universities, professional organizations, and even my local police force issued statements condemning racism that caused the death of George Floyd, the most recent in a long line of Black Lives that Matter.  All of these statements were the correct thing to do.  To speak out, to stand against injustice, is right.

However, I was taken aback by the difference in the statements of two universities that sent me a direct email. I am copying the first portions of each for comparison:

This was the first paragraph of the university where I teach, which is a university praised for its diverse population:  

Black Lives Matter. I write today to embrace our black and brown... community members, and to express the love and solidarity of [our] community in this time of pain and heartache. 

My alma mater, a university of which I am very proud, but which is known for its lack of diversity, sent the following message:

The LORD God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life's breath into his nostrils. The human came to life. (Genesis 2:7, Common English Bible) 

Over the past months we have all learned of the terrible consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, but relatively few have witnessed or described the horror of dying from this disease. In the end, victims suffocate as less and less oxygen is available to their blood, despite ventilators and all the rest that medicine brings to bear. It will likely be many months before a vaccine is developed, and in the meantime many thousands more will die. This past weekend, we passed the 100,000 mark of COVID-19 deaths in this country. We all want to be inoculated against losing our breath — the breath of life — seeing our life slip away, crying out, perhaps, for our mothers to save us.

The awful reality of this pandemic is amplified when one considers how differentially our nation’s populations suffer under its murderous grip, signaling again just how far from ideal are our health-care system, our social infrastructure, our commitment to equality, and, I’m afraid, our conception of what it means to be human. The fact that black people are more than twice as likely as white people to die from COVID-19 in this country is an appalling reminder of where we are, and where we need to be, in America.

As a side note, I work at a religious-affiliated university.  I attended a secular institution with no religious affiliation.

Perhaps because I am simultaneously teaching a course called "Diversity in Families, Schools, and Communities" and thinking about how teachers can best reach all children in their classrooms, I was highly sensitized to these messages. I would like to think that I would have read them with a critical lens even if I were not teaching this course, but let me lay out my path to continued cultural understanding as a white, privileged member of society.

I grew up in a homogeneous area.  By the time I graduated high school, I had meaningful conversations with 1 Catholic, 1 atheist, and 3 black people.  Though I am sure there was more diversity, especially in the LGBTQ+ community, it wasn't open.  Everyone I knew closely was Protestant, white, and subscribed to a heterosexual lifestyle.

I attended a college that was similarly not overly diverse.  However, I had the opportunity to learn from great professors who opened my eyes. My first year I realized that Columbus conquered, not discovered, America, and in my second year, I learned, as one of the only white students in a class on black women's history, that I had a lot more to learn.

It wasn't until my graduate coursework where I embraced my privilege.  In a course on diversity, where all but two of my classmates were Black, I learned to listen.  I learned that being color-blind may not be (is not) a good thing.   It was in that course that I changed who I was as a teacher and ever since have strived to be a better listener.

This "awakening," a term I am somewhat reluctant to use because of the political context but also believe describes exactly what I experienced in that class, has influenced my reading of the two messages quoted above.

The president of my current university sent her message, and I immediately applauded.  Within the first three words, she put our university in solidarity - white allies supporting our black and brown family members.

I read the statement from my alma mater quite differently.  Without mentioning the Biblical passage (though I just did), that may have put-off our Muslim, Agnostic, and Atheist (among others) community members (and I can name alumni who fall into each of those categories), I can say that I searched for the first reference of race in this response.  If you haven't yet found it, it's buried at the end of the second full paragraph.  It took a very long time for the president to acknowledge the "race issue."  To me, this doesn't equate with solidarity.

As a teacher of writing, I would tell my student that they need to make their point clear in the first paragrpah, preferably the first sentence.  From my read, this response is lacking.  The fact the (white) writer comments later in the message about his children frolicking in the yard in front of a statue of the first black graduate of the university with a quote by MLK only further serves the point: this letter is written from a place of white privilege, one that does not understand the experience of black Americans.

A few years ago I did an audit of my friend list on Facebook.  I wanted to know the extent to which my bubble was inhibiting my understanding of the world.  I knew that my background was.  After that audit, I reached out to my friends of color and asked them to share their experiences with me. This was something I had never done before.  I learned so much from those who were willing to share if I listened, just as I learned from my classmates in those college and graduate courses.

I will admit, I have few friends I can rely on to help me understand.  This is a product of where I grew up and where I landed.  I will admit that I feel sheepish (and ignorant) asking the few friends I have to help me learn.  I know that I make mistakes.  I make mistakes in the language I use, in the way I read the world, and in how I ask the questions.  For someone like me, who doesn't like to hurt others and who wants to "do right," it's intimidating to ask the question, "Can you tell me about your experience" or "can you give me, a white person, advice on this."  I've asked this question twice in the last 8 hours, and I'm hopeful that my friends of color accept that I am trying to open a conversation, trying to learn, and trying to make a difference.

Do all lives matter?  Of course they do.  But in this moment, #BlackLivesMatter, and understanding the experience of a black American is important to understanding why that is the case.

Understanding how our well-intentioned support of our brothers and sisters can fuel, rather than squelch, the underlying racism, is important.

So to my white friends - ask your friends of color about their experience.  Ask them how they are doing. Let them know that you are still learning how to be an ally but that you want to be.

And to my black and brown friends - I cannot empathize with your experience in this world, but I want you to know that I see it, and I'm constantly learning how to be a better ally.  Please let me know how I can do that, and let me know how you are doing.