Category: Speaking Truth

Respect and Racism

On By drmuffyrwIn Speaking Truth1 Comment

Much to reflect on tonight as we have hit day two of our trip. I did not post last night, but am somewhat grateful I was not feeling up to it. My motion sick bus ride to Memphis left me tired last night. I won’t go into the details of the bus ride, but suffice it to say, I was ill.

Yesterday afternoon I visited the National Civil Rights Museum as our first museum for the class trip on Exploring Civil Rights. What I noticed was how museums are a place for respect. Two exhibits in the museum, which I noticed specifically, had signage asking for respect. The first one was telling the story of the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike in 1968. On the sanitation truck, the museum included a sign asking visitors to not touch the truck out of respect for the workers who went on strike for fair wages.

I am a ManSanitation TruckA large sign was posted on the wall of the exhibit of the Lorraine Motel’s Room 306, the last room Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed in, asking for silence and respect. I don’t think I gave enough respect. I was trying to find a way to capture the room, frozen in time, behind glass in a photo as so many others were also doing. What did I miss out on when I saw the room through a phone camera rather than through my eyes? I will never know. I could post a photo below of Room 306, but why? No image of a 1968 motel room can capture what it meant to lose a man who was changing the world in the fight for equality for all people. What was lost that day cannot fit in a photo frame. I cannot help but think that the purpose of the exhibit is well beyond the notion that we know what cigarettes were smoked, what color the bedspreads were or anything trivial of that nature. Yet, that is what I was “capturing.”

How do I enter these spaces that demand respect, even if they don’t explicitly state it with signs, and learn all that I can? How do I use the history of civil rights to help me fight my own racist thoughts and deeds? As Robin DiAngelo tells me in White Fragility, I cannot help but be a racist as I am a white person raised in a white supremacist society. Racism might as well be in my DNA makeup because that is how entrenched it is in the United States. I acknowledge I am a racist and that does not make me anything special. It means I am doing what all white people should be doing. If you are white, come to terms with your racism, and then work to be better every day in fighting it and the white supremacy around you.

When I enter the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on Tuesday, I will work to be more mindful of why I am there and what I can learn. How can I use what I take in from the exhibits and history displayed and use it to be a better accomplice in the fight against racism? If I am not there to learn that, why am I there at all?

Who am I and what is my role in anti-racism?

On By drmuffyrwIn Speaking Truth1 Comment

One weekend ago I attended a Black student organization leadership conference for regional colleges and universities. Groups of Black students and advisors descended upon a midwestern city bringing a level of intellect, energy, and beauty unlike any this city has ever seen–I have no doubt of this though have done no research on it. Last year was the first year I attended, and I was uncomfortable at a minimum. I felt much more at ease this go around; I made jokes about being white with my students and thought I understood my role there as a faculty advisor to my school’s Black Student Union.

I was wrong. I understood nothing until…

When Saturday arrived, I found myself realizing that I should have been asking permission to sit on workshops. After all, four decades of planning and growing this conference for Black students was not intended to serve me, a white faculty advisor. Instead, my epiphany that I had inserted myself into a safe space created for Black students, many attending PWIs, had me in knots. I was angry with myself. Anger, for me is often expressed in tears.

Hello, white fragility.

Robin DiAngelo writes, “Tears that are driven by white guilt are self-indulgent. When we are mired in guilt, we are narcissistic and ineffective; guilt functions as an excuse for inaction” (135). Briskly walking to the hotel elevators, I called my daughter. I managed to get up to the hotel room before I began sobbing, grateful that none of my BSU students saw my display of anger and guilt. Happily, I have a grown child who is wise and helped with the logic of the situation and the need for me to be honest with my students. You see, I had determined that I was going to pull myself out of the rest of the conference as best I could. Explaining why to BSU students worried me. 

I knew this was on me and only me. I did not want them putting any emotional labor on themselves to support me. They have a tendency to want to protect me, which touches me deeply, but I have to reassure them often that I am in the role of supporting them. I have white middle-class, cis, heterosexual privilege that protects me. I hate thinking that they do emotional labor to support me–they have enough labor they do, both mental and physical, that I need not be one more weight. 

Talking to my students proved difficult. I was terrified that I had irreparably damaged a relationship with one of the students who has helped me grow as a person and a professor. I can say, gratefully, we have mended the relationship. Or, more so, she mended it through her willingness to accept me and the progress I am trying to make on living an anti-racist life. 

I am now asking myself the question: am I seeing myself as a white savior? Do I have white savior complex? I hate that I have to ask myself this question. Hate.

White privilege runs deep. No white person is immune to it. My journey of become an accomplice in the fight against racism proves to be full of bumps and roadblocks. My job, and I do mean job, must be navigating the road with intention and self-reflection. 

I strive to do better. That is the best I can do. 

DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Beacon, 2018.

 

 

 

Reluctant Honesty

On By drmuffyrwIn Speaking TruthLeave a comment

11/7/2019

My intent for this blog is sharing honest emotions and thoughts about my journey through preparing and teaching a course on civil rights. However, honesty can be, and often is, difficult, especially when talking about matters of race. It would be easier, though not fully comfortable, to write about gender or disability—both topics I have taught and researched with less anxiety about what others will think of me or say about me.

I know from my own experiences and books like White Fragility that regardless of my “progressive” views about race, I was born and raised in a country founded on racism—one in which white supremacy reigns. Because of this, I cannot escape having racist thoughts. What I can do, however, is reflect on these and learn how to change them.

As a teacher, I am well aware that learning often comes in moments of discomfort. For me, transformation came in a moment of great discomfort regarding my race and whiteness. See forthcoming posts about my work as my institution’s faculty advisor for the Black Student Union (BSU) to learn more about how far I have come as an anti-racist. Read the blog as I move forward to see how much further I have to go.

I had grand plans to blog every night last weekend about what I was experiencing. After all, I was in the deep South for the first time and developing ideas for this spring class on civil rights. Instead of writing, I fought with technology for over an hour (I blame age on this) attempting to delete an image from my not yet published blog. Frustration with technology was easier than wrestling with myself, my feelings, my fears, my hopes.

As I struggle for honesty in sharing my experiences, please let me know if something I write sounds disingenuous or half-hearted. Above all else, I want this blog to be real, nitty-gritty and raw real. I sit here crying now as I think of the realness my BSU students have willingly shared with me about their lives as black and multi-racial people. Their generosity with telling me their truths has made me a better person; however, not a finished person. I need to check myself constantly in my personal life and work life. Ask myself how I am using my white privilege for good, how am I fighting racism as an agitator not only an ally, how am I, honestly, growing as a person to become someone true to my conscious.

I invite you to check me with honesty as I continue my journey.

An honest representation of who I am