How to Stop a Racist in One Simple Step
Episode 11 from the Educational Equity Emancipation podcast.
Did you hear that? Can you hear it? Get closer.
Listen carefully, because it's been coming for quite some time. And maybe you've heard it, but you didn't know what to do with it. Maybe it's been picking up steam in your community, but you weren't aware that it was there. Maybe you participated in it. But you couldn't quite place it or you didn't understand why it was where it was.
It's the A. The fourth car on the DEI train. And that A stands for antiracism. And by the end of today's episode, you're going to understand why it's the fourth car, and how we are going to leverage that in our own work as equity warriors.
In my workshops, I'm often asked why do I focus on race and racism?
Why do I focus on privilege?
And why don't I focus more on other issues of equity, like LGBTQ?
And my answer to all of these is because it's easy for us to look at other stuff. But it's not always so easy to address our nation's original sin. And it's not so easy for us sometimes, to look deep down within ourselves at the bottom of the iceberg, as I call it, and understand the ways that we as individuals have the ability or the tendency to continue to support systems of oppression, to support racism, as it appears in systems, particularly when we benefit from it.
Now, yes, race is a social construct. We are all biologically 99% the same.
But that 1%, the color of our skins, our ancestry? That 1% results in our leading some very different lives.
That 1% results in are having very different everyday experiences for our own selves, as adults.
But most importantly for our children in school, that 1% results in different experiences and preparation for teacher candidates. It's also what impacts professors of color who prepare them.
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In Episode 8, The Teacher and the Black Girls Tattoo, you could see how that teacher’s preparation did not prepare them to be in a classroom with a student of color. And in Episode 19 on decolonizing the curriculum and decentering whiteness in curriculum and instruction, you hear how that 1% impacts what we teach and how we teach it.
And it's that 1% that results in us having different life outcomes such as
the jobs that we are employed in,
our ability to be employed,
the earnings we make not just on an hourly basis, but over a lifetime,
the opportunities that we are presented with,
the opportunities that we're able to take part in,
our encounters with law enforcement,
just to name a few.
You see, it's that 1%, that if I were to walk in and say to you that I identify as Scotch Irish, you'd look at me like I had five horns on my head.
Because that 1% is what governs the color of my skin.
And even if you were to say to me, “I don't see color.” There is a part of you that's going to say, “Scotch Irish?”
That 1% is the reason that we have to add the A. We have to have antiracism as the fourth car in our work on diversity, equity and inclusion.
We have to think about diversity of
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who we are,
where we come from,
how we think,
what we believe
We have to think about equity in terms of
our opportunities and
our access to opportunities,
inclusion, no matter what our diversity is, and
the work of anti-racism, so that we can fully embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion.
See, without anti-racism work to shift our mindsets, we live still at the bottom of our iceberg. We live still saying those things and holding those beliefs that people are not all equal, not all equally equipped to do something not deserving of equal opportunity.
Without anti-racism to shift our mindsets, we continue to have these fundamental thoughts and beliefs that certain people because of the color of their skin, are less capable, less intelligent, less trustworthy.
Without anti-racism work to shift our mindsets and our language, there is still this belief that children who come to school not speaking School English are lesser than.
And we will continue to have institutions of learning that are built on systemic racism and systemic oppression. We won't have the tools to change them.
We can't believe in DEI and hold racist thoughts.
We can't believe in DEI and hold racist thoughts.
Either you truly believe in diversity, equity and inclusion, and you are an anti-racist, or you don't really believe in DEI. You're sort of tinkering around the edges.
Because somewhere, you still have these racist thoughts that certain people, because of that 1%, are “lesser than.”
Now keep in mind racism, and that is institutional, right? I'm not saying that because you have racist thoughts, you are a racist. But you can have racist thoughts.
Racism is institutional. It is structural. Racism involves systems of power.
Yes, again, people of color can have racist thoughts and often do about their own people. About people with whom they share ancestry. About people with whom they share ethnicity, or they share language.
Because racism is about power. And very often, when people get power, they don't use their power for the good of marginalized people. Their power corrupts them. And they find the things that they want to identify with that are not connected to the marginalization they may have experienced, or that people who look like them are experiencing.
You see, that's a crisis of identity.
And there are many components to our identity. I am not just a Black being. I am Black. I am a woman. I am a Doctor of Education. I am a mother. I am a wife. I have certain religious beliefs that don't need to enter this conversation because it doesn't affect this conversation.
When we get into identity and those multiple components of our identity, we have to start looking at the intersectionalities of all of those things of race, ethnicity, gender, gender, identity, SES, profession, religion, or geographic location.
There's an activity I do at workshops, as we construct what I call our “human billboards” to identify what all those components of our identities are. How they impact our daily lived experiences. How they impact our thoughts. How it affects our work in DEI&A.
So as convenient as it would be to simply lean into the 99% of what is our sameness as human beings is, the one true race, the race of humanity, it is our 1% that is causing the most harm.
It's the 1% that is the first thing we are judged on.
Many times people have said to me, “I don't see color.”
The 1% is something that we all see.
And my response to that is, “So if I were to hold you at gunpoint, and steal whatever it is that you have on you that is of value, or threaten your life and well-being, when you report to the police the person who did this to you, how would you describe me? How would you describe me?”
The 1% is something that we all see. So, I want you to go back to your Roadmap to Emancipation, especially those of you who have already done this work. And if you don't have your Roadmap to Emancipation, go to 3epodcast.com, sign up for the show, and get your free copy.
Once you've got it, when you get to Highway 4, focus on the three checkpoints there. Because as we do that work on Highway 4, we have to not only accept but respect the equal and inherent dignity of every human being. No matter what race shows on their exterior.
So at checkpoint 10, where we're using working definitions for demographics, go back and examine your communities the following terms:
Black versus African American. Who is defining that?
Indigenous versus Native American and tribal identities whenever and wherever possible. Again, who's defining that?
People of color versus minorities? Again, why are we using those terms? When are we using those terms? And who's defining or determining how we use them?
And then our current or end current and most common challenge right now, if you're in a community with a significant demographic of people with origins in Central and South America and the Caribbean, begin the work on understanding the differences between Hispanic, Latino, Latina, Latin X, Afro Latino, Afro Caribbean, and then began to have the conversations around an understanding of the erasure of the Black, Latino and indigenous Latino; their experiences as marginalized groups within the American comfort term of Hispanic.
Have conversations about the silencing of groups, particularly those groups who, through the lens of or through the framework of colorism, have more melanin in their skins. That 1%.
Have conversations about the silencing of heavily melanated peoples in their home countries, and here in the US. Examine the impact of colonialism, legal status, and geopolitics.
And this isn't necessarily work that you can do by yourselves.
Recruit experts from within your communities or go outside if you need to. If you can't find someone, go to AskDrBerry.com. And let me know.
Experts are needed to help you with this work. And most importantly, understand.
Understand that it is important for people, particularly those who are marginalized and marginalized within their own greater community, to have a say in how they are described, referenced, identified.
…fine line of domination between privilege and oppression.
Understand how they choose to identify and why it's important to respect their choice of identity. That's all at checkpoint 10.
At checkpoint 11, isolate race and identity. Peel that onion. Get down to those various layers of identity and start working on understanding intersectionality.
See, there's this fine line of domination between privilege and oppression. And we're going to dig deeper into that in Episode 12, “The Four ‘I’s of Oppression.
Then at checkpoint 12, examine cultural assimilation. Assimilation has been used as a weapon to divide, to strip away the power of knowing who we are. To destroy pride in who we are and where we come from. To eliminate pride in the culture of our ancestors, as opposed to melting into some White Eurocentric definition of being American. Not growing into cultural assimilation growing instead into cultural competence, and greater cultural awareness.
You see, it's assimilation that prevents us from working to become anti-racist.
So you choose: victim or victor?
Do you choose to be the victim of racism or the victor through adding the A?
Do you choose to be victimized by minimizing the impact of diversity, equity and inclusion and fearing the boogeyman that's invoked by calling our work things that it is not?
Or do you choose to be the victor over systemic racism and racist thinking?
You choose.
And then you join me every week. Send me your questions, topics and request to AskDrBerry.com. And I will answer those questions and bring you information and experts to help address those topics.
As always, don't worry about the things you cannot change. Change the things you can no longer accept.
I'll see you next time.
