One thing I’ve discovered about systemic racism in the reading and studying I’ve been doing the past several years, is that once you understand what it is, you can’t stop seeing it everywhere you go.
How racism and racial unrest can be dismissed as a thing of the past when it shows up in the crime log on the second page of my local newspaper where all the mug shots are of Black and brown faces.
How last fall a pair of my middle school students– a Black boy and a Latinx boy– shared a story about going to the local McDonald’s and being taunted by a man wearing a Confederate flag bandana on his head. How one of the boys shared that the driver of a pickup truck had shouted the “N” word at him while he was walking through town one day.
How my own children observe that the kids who ride the school buses (to and from the apartments) are the same kids who almost always buy lunch (at their school, 50 percent of students receive free and reduced cost lunches; more than 50 percent of the students are also identified as Hispanic, Black or Asian. These numbers are not coincidental).
How, not far from my house, there are still landmarks glorifying the Confederate states that fought a war based on their desire to continue enslaving Black people.
In 2020, I am still driving down a highway named after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee when I go to visit my sister. On that drive I pass Stonewall Golf Club and The Shops at Stonewall, a new shopping center anchored by a Wegman’s. The proximity to Bull Run and Manassas leave little ambiguity about which Stonewall– Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson– they’re referencing.
In an article in the Washington Post about the unfair property tax burden Black Americans bear, a Black Chicago resident described the so-called “Black Tax” he and other Black Americans pay throughout their lives.
“It’s almost like it’s in the soil. It stretches across the board. It’s not just real estate. It’s not just housing. It’s not just food deserts. It’s not just racism on the street. It’s not just that you can’t get a cab at night. It’s everything.”
It’s everything. It’s everywhere.
I’m more aware of the injustice right now. Not all of it, I’m certain. Not even most of it. But some of it at least. Enough that there’s no way I can put my blinders back on and unsee anything. There’s no way I can just go back to my comfortable life ignoring the weight of my privilege and the long arm of racism tapping my shoulder.
It creeps into places I, as a white person, assume it wouldn’t creep into- like groups dedicated to fighting it, for instance.
In the weeks after the Black Lives Matter protests in our area, a neighbor invited me to join a local social justice group on Facebook. I’ve never felt comfortable interacting with strangers on social media, so I rarely join groups online. I always feel awkward speaking out or commenting about topics among people I’ve never met, even if it’s a topic I’m interested in or know something about. But I’ve committed to social change and so joining the conversation in my community seemed like a logical step.
The voices on the page seemed like mine– maybe tentative, but also hopeful about the potential for real change. Feeling like there was momentum for meaningful action. There seemed to be a mix of people who were already seasoned activists and newbies like me. Posters shared resources and articles on social justice and antiracism; podcast and book recommendations, raised questions about local policing policies; and flagged group members on problematic businesses (including a local violin teacher who was preaching about white supremacy on a different Facebook group).
There were also multiple threads about school resource officers and whether and how they could be removed from public schools, a change advocated by the Black Lives Matter movement.
It was interesting to read the comments on these different posts. There was enthusiasm surrounding the sharing of new information and ideas– books, articles, videos– things that aided in learning about systemic racism. And the voices were supportive when discussing broad ideas of police reform and policy at a state level. But the tenor seemed to shift when the conversation turned toward what actions should be taken to change policy locally. It felt a little more personal. A little more defensive.
All that enthusiasm and support seemed to completely evaporate over disagreement on how local police and school administrators handled an incident on a middle school bus during which a Black child was attacked by a white child.
The Black child’s mother and a local NAACP representative say that a police report written weeks after the incident, which blames the Black child for the attack, was inaccurate.
Videos from press conferences by the local NAACP and the local police as well as articles about the initial incident and the controversy surrounding it were posted to the social justice page on Facebook. But rather than listening to the concerns raised by the mother and the NAACP representative, commenters began picking apart their assertions and discrediting them and their lived experiences. Rather than sparking a meaningful, productive conversation about potential racial bias and the intersection of policing and schools, the Black child was labeled a bully and he, his mother and the NAACP were accused of taking advantage of the current climate to further their own agenda.
Watching all of this play out, I began to understand just how thorny this whole process of fighting systemic racism is.
Witnessing the breakdown of the social justice group when faced with a social justice issue– that right there, that is why progress is so tiny and incremental. Because the systems hindering progress are so insidious. So baked into our assumptions and perceptions. The way we move about the world.
On the social justice page, commenters questioned whether this incident was a matter of social justice. They felt that “the real issue” was a climate of bullying, not one of racial profiling.
When the Black child, his mother and a local NAACP representative met with the police officer who wrote the report, they said they felt threatened during the meeting. When a body cam video was posted of the meeting, commenters defended the police officer’s professionalism, while discounting the women’s fear.
The NAACP rep responded to this on the page:
“I remind everyone here that only I can be the judge of whether I am made afraid of the tone and posturing of someone else …”
Exactly. Because we weren’t the ones in the room with the officer. We weren’t there. She was. So she’s the one who gets to say how it made her feel. Not us. And that shouldn’t need to be pointed out, but yet, here we are.
Through all of the back and forth– all these heated exchanges, all I kept thinking was that this is what Black people are talking about. This is why they’re so frustrated.
We (as in white people) are not listening. We (as in white people) are deciding what the real narrative is. We (as in white people) are defending the institutions rather than the individuals challenging the institutions.
This social justice forum was created, ostensibly, to address issues of social justice. Yet when presented with an issue of social justice- an inaccurate police report that those involved say was the result of racial profiling- members of the group insisted that the problem wasn’t the problem. They denied the lived experiences of the individuals who presented the problem, tried to poke holes in their claims and admonished them for inappropriately capitalizing on the outrage sparked by the killing of George Floyd.
When would be a more appropriate time to start a conversation about what systemic racism might look like in our community?
As white people, we don’t get to pick and choose what qualifies as an issue of social justice.
Systemic racism is systemic racism whether it’s a Black man being murdered in the street by a white police officer or a white police officer writing an inaccurate police report about a Black boy.
We don’t get to pick and choose who represents the best victim of social injustice. We don’t get to decide who is most eligible for equal treatment. The 14th Amendment establishes equal protection for all people.
So labeling a Black child with the word “bully” based on a potentially inaccurate police report shouldn’t make him any less eligible for equal protection.
If we are to change the climate, we are called to listen to the stories of people of color who say the way they were treated by our institutions was influenced by the color of their skin. Because people of color, not white people, are the experts on racial injustice.
We are called to listen. First and foremost.
Not listening while formulating your response. Not listening while taking personal offense. Not listening while seeking all the ways to invalidate the speaker.
Listening with open ears and open hearts.
We only make progress if we can hear the stories. We only make progress if we are able to love the storytellers even when their stories make us uncomfortable. We only make progress if we believe that they are deserving of equal justice.
But here we are, stalling on a conversation that’s barely started because the victim of the social injustice is being framed as a bully and the women raising the complaint are being accused of manipulating the narrative.
Really, I think, it’s that we are uncomfortable with the story and what it might mean about ourselves and the institutions we cherish.
And so we retreat into our shells and miss an opportunity for growth, for learning and for healing.
We’ve missed an opportunity to better understand how video evidence is reviewed and documented and who gets the final word on what was seen. We’ve missed an opportunity to review procedures for how minor witnesses are interviewed by law enforcement in schools or why minor witnesses are interviewed by law enforcement in schools for that matter. We’ve missed an opportunity to better understand how subtle and not-so-subtle body language and tone by a police officer might be interpreted by the people he meets with.
The children involved have not been served. We have not modeled how not to bully. We have not modeled how to restore justice. We have not modeled how to listen. We have not modeled how to come to a place of mutual humanity.
There’s been no resolution or restoration for the people involved in the incident. That community social justice page has been archived.
Here we are.
Stonewalled.
Nothing new in these parts.
During a walk through a state park with my parents a while back, I admired the old stone walls outlining the beautiful rolling meadows we traversed. It occurred to me these walls were more than likely constructed by enslaved people. The rural areas of Virginia have many stone walls like these still standing- all covered in moss and lichen. I had long admired their beauty- the way they blend into the landscape and develop this bucolic patina as they age. Now when I look at them, I think about the black hands that built them. I wonder about the men who labored on them. Where they came from, where they lived, how they were treated.
As we drove back home from the park that day along a ridgetop road lined with large houses behind wrought iron gates, I saw even more old stone walls. And we passed by workers in straw hats with sweat-drenched brown skin heaving large rocks on to new stone walls.
I wonder how much has really changed.
If we’re just letting the moss and lichen of empty words and promises obscure the real truth of the moment, which is that we’re all just more comfortable living behind our walls.