My name is Carrie Hutchinson and I strive to be a white accomplice. It sounds like an admission of something shady, I know. A lot of my really nice white friends feel the same way. We are eager and passionate, yet tentative and cautious. We are scared to overstep, terrified of offending, but even more scared of being part of the problem by doing nothing. Hell, I even started a separate Facebook page where I could share news about racial injustice since I didn't want my non-activist middle class white friends getting tired of my impassioned posts (quick plug: please like https://www.facebook.com/SURJSB/).
Ever share news on social media relating to Black Lives Matter only to be met with crickets? You get what I'm saying. Wait. Since I haven't really seen my white friends post anything related to Black Lives Matter, let's try this: Ever read something about the black struggle that you thought was share-worthy but it just seemed like a bad idea for a variety of reasons you didn't dig deep enough to question? I'm talking to you.
I have a wealth of second-hand racism experience that most of my white friends don't have because my family is biracial. This doesn't mean that I'm a better white person than any other, and it doesn't mean that I'm less of a beneficiary of my whiteness, or less guilty of contributing to structural racism. It just means that I am more acutely aware of the silliness of the well intentioned but ignorant claim of colorblindness, and they way in which race affects the daily, no, hourly, experience of black people just trying to go about their lives like everyone else. I've tried to write pieces describing what it's like to visit Trader Joe's or the carwash with black members of my family on any given day of the week, but I just come across as angry and bitter and I overuse the word "stupid." Hopefully this will be more productive.
With every book I read, every article I collect, and every song, speech and podcast I listen to on issues surrounding race (which are a lot), I get more and more fired up, always intending to figure out something I can do, other than exercise complacency, or worse complicity, by remaining silent. I actually don't have any brilliant ideas at the moment, in case you thought this might end with one. But continuing to do nothing other than engaging in a nightly mutual rant with my spouse is starting to feel like complacency. And so here I am, prompted by an inspiring interview with Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, who responds to the question "What can people do?" by outlining two important steps in being an ally:
Step 1:
"The first step is saying 'I am willing to be awake.' That I'm not going to tell myself the same old stories or be lulled to sleep by the mainstream media. I am willing to wake up to our current racial reality, our current political and economic realities... and I'm also willing to acknowledge my own complicity in the system. We're all complicit...if you've been born in the United States or lived for any significant period of time here you have within you conscious and unconscious stereotypes, biases, and varying degrees of privilege...we're all complicit and we all benefit in various ways from turning away and being in denial."
Step 2:
"We all have a role to play. All of our talents, our creativity, can be brought to bear. And I think it's up to us to become fully honest with ourselves and act with greater boldness and courage and creativity than we have in the past. Failure to act is a choice in itself."
Never mind that I teach about racism in my Communication courses made up of roughly 150 college students each semester. It's not enough, plus at least 30% of them aren't listening during any given lecture. In following the advice above, I plan to contribute more by using my secondary skill, writing, to inspire others toward change in both attitude and actions. Through this blog I intend to creatively discuss and share ideas, some better than others, related to how white people like me might become allies to people of color as we strive together for a more just and civil country. My posts will ask you, my white friends specifically, to think about your role in our current system of institutionalized racism, understand your own (warning: trigger phrase) white privilege, and consider that you could be doing more. I'll save you time by researching sources of good information, sharing and summarizing them, and I'll challenge you to pass it on.
I invite you to join me by reading and considering these ideas, so that you, too, are doing something instead of nothing.
My first share is the podcast I mentioned above (which I listened to while working out at the gym- a topic I'll address in a future post called White Space). In the podcast On Being, Krista Tippett interviews author Michelle Alexander, asking the author to not only describe the topic of her book, The New Jim Crow, but to engage in a dialogue about how we can be better humans. Throughout the interview, Michelle Alexander offers multiple quote-ables, like those I copied above. Here are other important take-aways I'd like to share with you:
- Most of us are vaguely aware of the topic of mass incarceration, but here's a fact I learned in the podcast that gave me pause: Heterogenous cultures are the most punitive cultures. Meaning, cultures comprised of a variety of people from a multitude of backgrounds tend to use a more punishment-based model of law enforcement than homogenous cultures. This rings true of my travels to places like Japan, a highly homogenous culture, where people engage in self-punishment, such as shame and self banishment, for violation of social rules. In general, less punitive models are more effective (if the goal is abiding by the rules). As most parents know, punitive forms of rule enforcement are effective short term, but create more anti-social behavior in the long run. Michelle Alexander outlines how the Drug War and the resulting mass incarceration of black citizens (which she coins "The New Jim Crow") is a systematic method of disempowering people of color by removing their rights after minor offenses such as carrying marijuana. Here's how: After being released from prison, felons are not allowed to vote, serve on juries, be free of discrimination in jobs and housing, or have equal access to education, which are the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement. In short, after being incarcerated a person is, in the author's words, "relegated to a permanent second class status." When the number of people arrested and incarcerated is disproportionately black, this is institutionalized racism.
- What basis do we have for arguing that the numbers of arrests and incarcerations are disproportionately black? First, African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites, yet the rate of incarceration is not tied to the rate of crime. Meaning, people of color are swept into the criminal justice system at higher rates, which do not parallel any higher rates of illegal activity by their race.
Drug Sentencing Disparities:
- About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug
- 5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites
- African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.
- African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months).
If you have an hour and a half, listen to the entire podcast of the interview with author Michelle Alexander here: http://bit.ly/1SBLfRZ.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your feedback.
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