Nearly 20 years ago I worked in an urban community college where 75% of my students were people of color (all ages–from 16-60+) and the staff was also very diverse. I worked in the counseling and advising center running a grant program for students who were low income, first generation students and students with disabilities. I had left my community organizing job for this one, partly because it paid better and partly because organizing to preserve affordable housing was so depressing–we were mostly losing housing stock and mostly seeing slum lords win or at least not be held accountable. Racism was absolutely part of the puzzle, a kind of hidden pattern that was revealed as more pieces came together. Hidden for me, as a young white activist. Not hidden for those who had been living in this housing for 20 years (and the neighborhood surrounding it.)
When I moved to the community college I was suddenly in a very new environment. My colleagues taught me many lessons about myself, about privilege and about cultural differences. Humor, volume, metaphors, language, silence, were all used differently by my colleagues. What sounded like a fight to my white, untrained ears was often humor; what sounded like quiet could be a fight brewing. I learned new dance moves, (although I could never really follow them), and new music and new metaphors and language.
One colleague I really didn’t understand until recently was an older woman who was always extremely careful, cautious, and distant with me and other white colleagues. I can remember feeling a little affronted–we were approaching the millenium. Hadn’t things changes enough that she could see I wasn’t like those other white people? I remember feeling sad that she felt it necessary to maintain the wall of separation, to never be open to more connection or relationship. In my protected world of privilege, I only saw the gains my students and colleagues were making. I saw degrees being earned, and jobs being offered, colleagues being promoted. I saw and understood some of the micro-aggressions that took place, but I am sure it was only a very small percentage of the ones endured by the members of my community who didn’t share the “privilege” of being white.
Our narrative we had was about how a college president at our institution had once been an “elevator boy” in our building that was once a department store–see how far he had come? About how we were the first institution in our city to integrate–before the public schools. All of this was true, and so many of our students did find some of the trappings of success as they followed this path of education. But it was also true that systemic racism created roadblocks and shifted the playing field. It is still true. While I saw continued de facto segregation in our city and the way it isolated communities from vital resources and sustained poverty, I definitely did not see or understand the level of violence and antipathy that still remained in our institutions and community. And while strange fruit may not be hanging in the trees today, we are still seeing high levels of violence fueled by racism and institutionalized racism that has led to failing schools and struggling neighborhoods, prisons with disproportionate people of color, and the aggregation of a high volume of micro aggressions that affect spiritual and physical health.
I definitely did not understand how much her caution was born of these realities–that she didn’t know if I would defend police officers who shoot or beat black men and women and cover it up as necessary force or if I would stand in solidarity against this. She didn’t know what she could expect from me, and based on her very real, lived experience my whiteness was enough to assume my collusion with a corrupt and destructive system. Knowing what I know now, her stance and choices make a lot of sense. I now wonder what others weren’t telling me or sharing with me when I assumed I was being a good ally. What did I not see or understand about the lives of my colleagues, students and friends? I think I failed to see how precarious their gains were, how many times in one day they would face bits and pieces of racism, and how truly exhausting it must be to be “friends” with a white ally who thinks they are seeing you when really, they’re not.
I think I also failed to see how little the systems I touted–degrees and jobs and money–would actually impact their experience of racism. I watched bright, educated, motivated young people search for work longer than their white peers. I watched some of them lose jobs or work in hostile environments. I watched many more become underemployed–working in jobs below their ability and education and training. And I have watched an African American President be treated with disrespect, hostility and openly racist behavior from every corner of American society. If the President isn’t exempt from this, then no one is.
When I became a minister in a very white, very educated and affluent denomination I worried that I would lose touch with how others experience the world–with how racism and classism are destroying our communities. I also worried that I wouldn’t be able to convince the communities I lead to look more deeply and ask more questions, to see beyond their presumptions and expectations. I still worry about this. Every day. Because if it took me nearly 20 years to understand one woman’s preservationist caution, to really get it, then how long will it take for this movement to shift the lived realities of oppressed communities in our country? Confronting my inner racist and hidden collusion with a system that disables and destroys our communities is just the beginning. But we gotta start somewhere.
#blacklivesmatter #whatwouldyoudiefor #whatwillyoustandfor #blmally
ministryandspirit 