When it comes to racism are you a non or an anti
[Music]
i want to
present an argument to you and
make it on your behalf as well
that’s going to help guide you
in responding to this important question
when it comes to racism are you a
non-racist or are you an anti-racist
i have found that people are able to
see oppression in its many forms
when they are able to own the privileges
that they have in themselves
my privilege i mean a special right
advantage
or immunity granted or made available
only to a particular person or
group of people here’s what i mean
if i were to ask all of you in the
audience how many of you are
left-handed here’s what
folks who are left-handed would say
about
living in a right-handed person’s world
they might say that their family’s
culture
discouraged them from using their left
hand
and even forced them to put their left
hand behind their back or even
tap it when they tried to use it
they might say that i remember back in
kindergarten those scissors never worked
for me
they might also say that when i sit down
to write as a left-handed person
i always get ink and marks all over my
arm and i get spiral marks all up and
down my arm
now if you are right handed and you
never thought about that
that’s a privilege that you have it’s a
special right
advantage or immunity granted or made
available
only to right-handed people because
those scissors worked fine for me when i
was in elementary school as a
right-handed person
my colleagues and friends who are white
have continued to peel back
and uncover what peggy mcintosh refers
to as
white privilege an invisible knapsack
of unearned assets that i can
count on cashing in every day but here’s
the key piece
but about which i was meant to remain
oblivious
this is my privileged bracelet as you
can see it has a lot of different colors
on it because
i have a lot of privilege these
green beads represent my gender
privilege
and one of these beads represents the
fact that
i know whenever i go out into the street
i am not going to get unwanted comments
about my clothing or
cat calls directed at me because of my
wardrobe
these red beads represent my nationality
privilege
and one of these beads represents the
fact that
i assume people are going to talk to me
in english when they speak to me
and these blue beads represent my
ability privilege
and one of these bees represents the
fact that
i know i can gain easy access to any
building
anytime
i have been doing this work as an
anti-racist educator for
over 25 years and i remember when i
started because it was during the
terrible time of the
earthquake in kobe japan that destroyed
the city
and i remember saying to my earliest
audiences
kobe will be rebuilt before racism will
be eradicated
in this country and today kobe is once
again a thriving city
albeit in the time of covid
so then a central question to this
conversation is
how do you define racism and if i were
to
ask all of you in the audience how do
you define racism
your words might include prejudice
stereotype power
injustice discrimination and many others
in 1977 david wellman
authored a book entitled portraits of
white racism
and in the book he defines racism this
way
the essential feature of racism is not
about
hostility nor misperception
but rather a system of advantage
that is derived on the basis of race
so when i talk about racism i’m looking
through that
lens of systems of advantage that are
derived on the basis of race
i believe that racism is expressed in
three different ways
at the individual level at the cultural
level
and at the institutional level
racism at the end excuse me at the
individual level
is the racism that we are all familiar
with sing
it’s where black man is arrested for
waiting on a business meeting in a
starbucks
or where a black man is
has the police called on him by a white
woman watching
birds and he’s watching birds
but the police are called on him or
about the violence that we currently see
against the aapi
community those are all the things that
and more constitute individual racism
and
denzel washington says racism hasn’t
changed
it’s just being filled
racism at the cultural level is about
the
messages we are set about what it means
to be
normal and whoever creates that cultural
standard
puts themselves at the top of the
hierarchy
so not too long ago pre-covert
a black high school wrestler was
ordered by a white referee
to cut off his dreadlocks right in the
midst of a wrestling match
in other words the referee was putting
himself
at the top of the cultural hierarchy
when it came to what he thought
was appropriate hair length or a
wrestling match
cultural racism is also expressed in the
pushback that colin kaepernick and
others have received about taking a knee
during the playing of the national
anthem and cultural racism is
also found in the story of a person’s
name austin channing brown writes about
this in her book i’m still here
where she describes why her parents gave
her the name that they did as they were
thinking ahead to
the academic and professional
experiences that she would have and the
doors that we
would be open for her with that name
austin
racism at the institutional level
is deeply entrenched historically
in places such as government education
criminal justice economic opportunity
and so many more in a recent abc news
nightline piece
about home refinancing a biracial couple
a white husband and a black wife
sought to get an appraisal on their home
for the purposes of refinancing the
first appraisal came back at 336 000
the couple went to their bank officer
the bank officer looked at the
appraisal and thought that perhaps they
needed to get another appraisal because
that seemed just a little bit low
so the couple did but this time
only the husband was present and
all representations that there was a
black woman living in the house
culture pictures everything was removed
from the house
before the second appraisal which came
back at over four hundred and sixty
thousand dollars the economic wealth gap
in this country has been growing
exponentially especially over the last
30 years
and currently the aggregate household
wealth for white families in this
country
is about 17 times greater
than the aggregate household wealth for
black families
who is racist is not as
important as what are you doing to
interrupt these cycles of oppression
these
systemic advantages that are based on
race
so here’s that question once again when
it comes to racism
are you a non-racist or are you an
anti-racist now i want you to imagine
that i’ve got
four boxes up here with me
on the stage and this first box is
called the
active racist box and what goes into the
active racist box
well certainly all those individual acts
that wellman wrote about certainly all
those misperceptions
that wellman wrote about but also in
this box of active racism
would go a history of systemic advantage
based on race specifically
in my case that i’m going to share here
with you about economics
because we can go back to sharecropping
and peonage during the periods of
reconstruction
and move on up to 1921 and the
destruction of black wealth
in tulsa oklahoma and we can move
forward then to the end of world war
ii when black gis were denied mortgages
instead being redlined into enclaves of
disadvantagement
you don’t get any equity when you’re
renting
all the way up through today with
regards
to the gentrification practices that are
taking place
throughout this country
that’s the racist box the active racist
box
now this second box is called passive
racism
and this is one of the places where a
non-racist
feels comfortable because they’ll say
you know
i don’t support those policies i’m not
doing what those people are doing
discriminating against other people
i’m not like those people in in that box
number one
i’m not a racist
martin luther king would remind them in
the end
we will not remember the words of our
enemies
but the silence of our friends
now here’s box number three box number
three is the active
anti-racist box and anti-racism
is a verb it requires action
anti-racism is also not just about the
black white dichotomy
anti-racism is also not just about
racism it requires action
speak out educate others
get involved make your life a
have to ibram kendy even asks us to be
introspective
in our anti-racist work so that we’re
able
to find those places where we may still
be complicit in advancing
those systems of advantage that are
based on race
and other areas of oppression
at the peace and justice institute at
valencia college where i’m blessed to be
a facilitator
these actions take place by making
human connections with people while we
have
difficult conversations courageous
conversations
about the extraordinary times in which
we live
i said there were four boxes box number
four
the passive anti-racist box
this is an oxymoron there’s no such
thing
as passive anti-racism because
anti-racism is a verb it requires action
you can’t just be sitting there and
saying i’m passively anti-racist
because desmond tutu would tap you on
the shoulder and say
if you are neutral in the face of
oppression
you have chosen the side of the
oppressor
so is that question again when it comes
to racism
are you a non-racist or are you
an anti-racist james baldwin stated it
perfectly
not everything that is faced can be
changed
but nothing can be changed until it is
faced
may you be well may you be loved
may you be free of anxiety and worry
hakuna matata
and when it comes to racism may you be
an
anti-racist thank you
you