Anger, Racism, and Black Women
In This Issue: Editor’s Letter, “Anti-Racism 101: Own Your Racism,” “Let’s Talk Black Excellence, People,” and a quote by Thurgood Marshall.
Editor’s Letter
In the past couple months I was near a couple of racist incidents involving Black women I know, and the incidents made me angry but also got me thinking about anger and how we deal with it.
The first was while shopping with Aisha, my Brazilian daughter, a former exchange student who’s now at Wellesley College on full scholarship but comes home to us for the breaks. She is very smart, as you might guess, with excellent English skills (she actually contributed an essay to Our Human Family’s Fieldnotes on Allyship when she was just seventeen!), and hopes to be a doctor someday. She’s also super kind, sweet, and bubbly.
Our whole family was shopping at a little boutique near my sister’s house in Illinois, each of us wandering around in different areas, and Aisha was bopping between us, looking at this and that. The store has a wide range of unique offerings, and I typically spend several hundred dollars there when we visit. I was already holding several shirts when my husband informed me that Aisha had left to sit outside and wait for us. It seemed a clerk was following her every step and glaring.
We have four Black Brazilian daughters we’ve gone various places with, and while I’ve seen hints of racism I hadn’t seen anything that overt. I think sometimes our white privilege extends to them, but in this case the woman saw her with us, referring to us as Mama and Dad, as she does, and it didn’t matter to the clerk.
We were furious. We dropped our potential purchases and walked out. Aisha, who has twenty-one years of experiencing racism, didn’t seem as upset as I was, but her sense was that the woman didn’t want her in the store.
We wrote a letter, and we won’t going be back.
The second incident was much scarier, although I wasn’t present. For some background, Earnest M. Lee was a Black folk art painter who grew up near Raleigh, North Carolina (where I live) and worked toward an art degree at St. Augustine’s University, an HBCU in town, until the grant program was pulled. He then moved to Florida where he died relatively young. His widow is friends with one of my besties and I also love folk art, so when she came to town to show his work at St. Augustine’s I had to check it out.
Choosing prints to purchase was difficult as Earnest had been very prolific, and many of them reflected sites in the Raleigh-Durham area, including families, farms, houses, forests, streams, and more. I narrowed my options down to a couple of prints and went up to pay, chatting with his wife Gloria, when I spotted a print that was unlike the others: a building and several Black folks engulfed in flames.
Read the full article at Our Human Family.
Anti-Racism 101: Own Your Racism
You’ve heard all the clapbacks.
“I have lots of Black friends!”
“My neighbours are Indian, they bring us over samosas all the time!”
“My brother is married to a Black man!”
And, of course, everyone’s favourite, “I don’t see colour!”
As if that proves the utter impossibility of their being racist. It’s laughable. It’s insulting. How dare you even suggest it?
People rarely react well when someone points out their racist behaviour. Point out sexist or homophobic behaviour, say, and they’ll try to laugh it off. But racism? We’re outraged. White people are incredibly touchy about being labelled racist. Most of us will declare we’re anti-racist and we’ve been misunderstood. But few of us are genuinely, actively anti-racist. Even fewer embrace anti-racism 101.
The True Foundation of Anti-racism
Approximately 99.9% of well-meaning white people like me approach anti-racism with the goal of being able to declare that we aren’t racist. We recognise that racism is a deeply rooted, centuries-old systemic injustice that has robbed millions of people of dignity, opportunity and life. We want no part in that, so we Do The Work.
Read the full article at Our Human Family.
Let’s Talk Black Excellence, People!
The increasing hate and bigotry of the past several years has become almost unbearable in America. It’s as if almost half of our fellow Americans have traded in every shred of their integrity — nay, their very humanity — for the right to be openly racist . . . sexist . . . homophobic . . . transphobic . . . xenophobic . . . . If you’re in one of the oppressed groups, I can imagine the added fear and horror, and I’m so sorry. If you’re a straight white person but at all empathetic, and I suspect you are if you’re reading OHF Weekly, it’s heartbreaking.
It’s become so painful that my family has considered moving overseas, but that would be taking advantage of our privilege and so unfair to the groups being targeted, many of whom lack this flexibility. And sadly, where America goes, all too often other countries go, as well. My daughters in Brazil, Italy, Spain, and France (for those who are unaware, we’ve hosted almost a dozen exchange students over the years) have all reported a rise in fascism and bigotry in their countries.
Life has become a delicate balancing act of keeping up with the news so I can be as supportive as possible, while at the same time trying to keep it all to a low roar for my mental health. (I know I’m hardly alone in this, take care of yourselves!)
I lauded the beginning of Pride Month with some my gay and trans friends this past week by running a Love is Love 5K and enjoying our annual Pride Celebration / drag queen show, and for the first time I worried about our safety there . . . wondered whether I shouldn’t have taken two of my daughters (fortunately, it was happy as other years).
At the same time, I was horrified to hear about Ajike “AJ” Owens, a Black mother of four who was shot to death by a white woman through a closed door in front of her child. Worse, the local sheriff debated whether to press charges until it became national news (as is too often the case), and then charged the shooter with manslaughter! This was both murder and a hate crime, people: the killer spewed racist insults at AJ’s children, she knew AJ would be coming to discuss it, she had her gun waiting, and she never even opened the door!
A lot of people just shook their heads and said “Florida,” but let’s not kid ourselves: it could happen in a lot of the fifty states, including my own. And “Stand your ground” laws need to be recognized as the racist excuses for murder they are and removed from the books.
Read the full article at Our Human Family.
Calling all Poets
As a reminder, Tapestry is a new section of Our Human Family devoted to poetry that celebrates both our similarities and our differences, but most of all our shared humanity — and our first few poems will be available this week! It’s poetry that seeks to recognize the contributions from . . . foster racial equity and allyship for . . . and support inclusion of marginalized people into the beautifully varied fabric that is America. We look forward to reading and sharing your poems, as well!
Final Thought
