Good morning.
I can offer none of the usual reflections, photos, and offerings today. Other voices need to be heard. The lives of black people are threatened not just by the police but American policies, laws, and culture that have treated white people like me far more gently. Without these policies, laws, and culture, the police would not be able to use excessive force with impunity. A white woman in Central Park would not be able to put a black man’s life in danger because he asked her to control her dog. The votes of millions of black citizens would not be in jeopardy. Covid-19 would not kill more people of color than white people.
This edition of Spark shares some of the voices that are helping me to listen, learn, and to take action to change the policies, laws, and the culture in our country that enable violence against people of color. Please share what you’ve been hearing, reading, learning, and doing. Let’s talk. Let’s do this together.
Information about ways to change policies that can save lives right now where we live
8can’t wait - Here are eight things that can reduce the number of police killings in each community and they don’t require legislation. They do require phone calls, letters to local elected officials and police.
It works. This week’s protests combined with community action led to a decision by San Diego Police Department to abandon use of “carotid restraint,” our mayor called emergency meetings of two law enforcement review boards to review community input for policy changes, large numbers of citizens have sought changes in the city budget that disproportionately funds policing programs.
Longer term actions and proposals with their roots in the Obama administration are explained here along with ways to support and to promote measures to help communities reduce killings and use of excessive force by police along with other reforms.
Lists of other actions we can take for racial justice
75 Things White People Can Do For Racial Justice
Can’t Go Out And Protest? Here’s How To Help From Home
Voices that explain racism to white people
Robin DiAngelo
“The closer you are to blackness, the more profound will be the oppression. This is a system, and your smiling doesn’t interrupt it. Your niceness doesn’t interrupt it. You going to lunch on occasion with a co-worker of color doesn’t interrupt this system. The only thing that interrupts it is strategic, intentional action.” - Robin DiAngelo
Read this short column by Jonathan Capeheart and then listen to his Interview with Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Robin DiAngelo speaks as a white woman who is learning and teaching white people what it means to be racist, that it is liberating for those of us who are white to stop defending ourselves as “not racist” — a meaningless label — and to “get to work.” We did not control the color of our skin at birth but we are not exempt from recognizing how we benefit from it while others suffer. “Guilt is not useful,” she says. But, she warns, the work is uncomfortable, will take a lifetime, and requires us to approach it with humility.
Ibram X. Kendi
“The opposite of racist isn’t “not racist,” It is “anti-racist.” - Ibram X. Kendi
When I first read Ibram X. Kendi’s book How To Be Anti-Racist, I felt a door open up. I saw for the first time that it might be possible to shift the focus from whether or not I am racist or “not racist” to evaluating my actions and ideas as “racist” or “anti-racist.” It becomes less about me and more about what I do, the kinds of laws and changes I support, the ideas I espouse or let go unchallenged.
Here is a short interview with NPR that briefly outlines his main ideas and here’s a much longer, more recent interview with Brene Brown.
Ijeoma Oluo
“We cannot look at a society where racial inequity is so universal and so longstanding and say, ‘This is all the doing of a few individuals with hate in their hearts’… We cannot fix these system issues on a purely emotional basis…We can get every person in America to feel nothing but love for people of color in their hearts, and if our systems aren’t acknowledged and changed, it will bring negligible benefit to the lives of people of color.”- Ijeoma Oluo
Ijeoma Oluo wrote her book So You Want To Talk About Race to start a conversation, that would help people, especially white people, talk about race. I recognized myself more than once when she provided examples of how white people shy away from or handle conversations about race defensively but she demystifies it, encourages the mistakes we will all make, and provides useful information about how to handle it when we fail so we can try again. She is direct, honest, and insightful. More about her and her writings here can be found here, including the Guardian article Confronting racism is not about the needs and feelings of white people.
The protests: where to focus our attention - hint, it’s not always where the television cameras are aimed
Kareem Abdul Jabaar - Don’t Understand the Protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge
“Yes, protests often are used as an excuse for some to take advantage, just as when fans celebrating a hometown sports team championship burn cars and destroy storefronts. I don’t want to see stores looted or even buildings burn. But African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer. Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air.”
And finally, we need to understand how it all began. Here is something that can get us started.
We can’t understand what is happening today without understanding the history of slavery and its role in the history of our country. That is the foundation of The 1619 Project from The New York Times led by Nikole Hannah-Jones. She explains the project in an interview with Trevor Noah. I’ve read parts of this and just ordered the print version so I can sit down and absorb it quietly and fully.
Thank you for reading. I expect to return next week to “regular programming” including the interview with Kathleen Rodgers that we postponed this week. I look forward to making room in Spark on a regular basis for authors of color and work that challenges as well as delights.
Until then, peace. Be well.
Betsy
thank you for this missive about the list of things and ways we can actually help be part of the solution