movable type

Rosa Parks is dead. The next generation of civil rights heroes must be white people.

This morning, I got an email about the death of Rosa Parks.

 

“I’m 46,” the man wrote. “It’s hard for me to imagine that only 50 years ago prejudice was so rampant. I feel good about the progress that’s been made, but I also know that prejudice is still alive: stagnant and dormant in some people and ‘in your face’ in others. As a modern civil people, we must continue to fight prejudice, stand up against intolerance, and educate our youth about the importance of acceptance.”

 

“Where are the heroes of today?” he continued. “We need another Rosa Parks. We need another Martin Luther King. We need to do a lot more than what we have been doing.”

 

What we actually need, I replied quietly, are more white people who are willing to be civil rights heroes.

 

We need white people to be as outraged about racism as people of color are. We need white people to realize that racism is not a black issue—it’s a white issue. We need white people to refuse to participate in a system that privileges them over fellow human beings. We need white people to actively, visibly, and publicly examine their own role in perpetuating racism in subtle and unconscious ways, acknowledge and own their part in the problem, verbalize the unearned privileges that accrue to them simply because of their skin color, and demand those same privileges for people of color.

 

Fighting racism isn’t only the job of people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. The next generation of civil rights activists in this nation must be white people who realize that winning this fight will be the result of individual, daily actions on their part, not grand pronouncements and history month celebrations.

 

In “The Color of Fear,” a remarkable film shown during the community dialogue program, Building Bridges, a young African-American man named Victor puts it this way: “Most of the lethal racism we face isn’t the KKK burning crosses; it comes from people who experience themselves as decent folk, moral churchgoers.” “Racism is so deep.” he continues, “that you don’t think about it. It is insidious. It is in the very air that you breathe. White people don’t talk about what it is to be white; they talk about the human experience. Because in the U.S., white is human.”

Some say we should live in a colorblind world—that we are all human, after all. But if we are unable to see race, we cannot see racism—and denial is not a strategy. After hearing Victor’s story in “The Color of Fear,” a white man named David asks, “How can I help you?” “Help me by understanding yourself and the invisible protection you have because of your color,” is the reply. There can be no progress on the issue of racism, Victor explains, “unless you’re willing to be changed by my experience as much as I’m changed every day by yours.”

 

As long as we wait for national heroes to emerge, nothing will change. As long as we relegate the solution to the very people we’ve oppressed in the first place, nothing will change. Unless we wake up every morning determined to eliminate racism even when that work is difficult, nothing will change. Many times, racism has existed around me, but I didn’t notice—because it didn’t affect me. It’s this subtle racism we must fight. And to fight it, we must see it, not minimize it.

 

If Rosa Parks had waited for a Bi-Partisan Task Force on Unilateral Bus Seating, she’d still be standing on that bus. Sometimes, we just need to act. But let’s not confuse movement with action. Being a strong white ally doesn’t mean that we should take over, assume we know what is best for people of color, or ask them to speak for their people. Rather, it means that we should find out about people of color by listening to their stories, teach our children about racism, talk to other white people about racism, interrupt racist jokes or comments, and stand by people of color—not just when it’s easy or convenient, but always.

 

As Nelson Mandela once said: “your smallness will not save the world.” To end racism, we must make bold strokes and be active anti-racists. We must acknowledge our unearned privileges, accept our own racism, and own this problem ourselves, each individual one of us.

 

The police officer who fingerprinted Rosa Parks after that fateful bus ride was named Drue Lackey. When asked to comment on Parks’ death, Lackey simply said that he had no problem with black people and that he was just doing his job. As long as we “just do our jobs,” racism will prevail.

Why don't we know who Tamika Huston is?

What do Dr. Mark Warschauer and Michelle Gibson have in common?

Let’s see.

Dr. Warschauer has written seven books, including Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide, which discusses “haves” and “have-nots” and how differential access to information technologies contributes to economic stratification.

Michelle Gibson has not written any books. In fact, she is one of those “have-nots” about which Dr. Warschauer writes.

Dr. Warschauer is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of California, Irvine, and has also taught at the University of Hawaii, Moscow Linguistic University, and Charles University in Prague.

Michelle Gibson works several jobs cleaning up human waste in nursing homes.

Dr. Warschauer's research focuses on the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT); the impact of ICT on literacy; and the relationship of ICT to institutional reform.

Michelle Gibson’s research focuses on having enough money to feed her children.

As noted on his website, Dr. Warschauer's personal interests include “bicycling, chess, water sports, and, of course, his family.”

Homeless, Michelle Gibson’s personal interests include finding a place for her family to live.

Dr. Warschauer is white. Michelle Gibson is black.

On August 8, 2003, Dr. Warschauer drove to work, forgetting that his son Michael was in the car.

On May 22, 2005, Michelle Gibson didn’t have a babysitter and did the only thing she knew to do: she left her son Devin in the car as she started her 16-hour shift at Mountain Trace Nursing Center.

What do Dr. Warschauer and Michelle Gibson have in common? They both killed their children. And that’s where the similarity ends.

Dr. Warschauer intended to drop his 10-month-old son at day care before going to work. Instead, he drove to his office and parked, leaving Mikey sleeping in his car seat in 80 degree weather. As Warschauer walked back from lunch, he spotted paramedics in the parking lot. Mikey was dead from heat stroke.

When Michelle Gibson checked on her 8-year-old son, he was also dead.

Prosecutors did not press charges against Dr. Warschauer, ruling the death accidental and his loss punishment enough. There was no doubt, they said, that Dr. Warschauer adored Mikey.

Michelle Gibson was charged with second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and felony child abuse. She and her grief remain in Jackson County Jail on a $100,000 bond. Why are we so quick to question whether she, like Warschauer, adored her son?

And why such disparity in treatment? Both babies are irretrievably dead. One parent was well-off, well-regarded, and white; the other poor, anonymous, and black. Both were sleep deprived. Both made disastrous judgments.

These deaths are a horrible tragedy. Is one criminal and one not? I don’t know. But I wonder why we are so quick to judge Michelle Gibson and so fast to pardon Dr. Warschauer. Didn’t both parents, both working hard and both exhausted, neglect their children? Is Michelle Gibson’s sorrow less sorrowful, her tragedy less tragic, her poor judgment poorer? Does our dismissal of her also point to an insidious pattern of privilege that disadvantages and even erases the dark-skinned and the poor?

Young women of color go missing in great numbers each year, yet our national attention is riveted on wealthy, white women: Elizabeth Smart the harpist, Chandra Levy the Capitol Hill intern, Jennifer Wilbanks the runaway bride. Why don’t we know the names of Tamika Huston, Tyesha Bell, or Alexis Patterson? They are missing like their white counterparts, but their names and stories are unknown. Why?

The leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S.is murder, disproportionately high for mothers of color, yet People magazine focuses on Laci Peterson and Lori Hacking and not their dark-skinned compatriots like Evelyn Hernandez, her pregnant torso also found in the San Francisco Bay.

Is it less important, less newsworthy, less relevant to lose people of color? Are minority victims, in effect, less human? Is their sorrow not as sorrowful, their tragedy not as tragic?

We tend to see people who are like us as three-dimensional, with detail and specificity afforded them: for example, you know much more about Dr. Warschauer than Michelle Gibson after reading this essay. Gibson remains one dimensional: faceless, she is just one poor and homeless single parent among many without the same level of specificity we give ourselves. She is the “other”; we can’t see ourselves in her story. In creating that distance, we ignore and disregard her, we de-humanize and erase her. We simply judge her.

Dr. Warschauer forgot Mikey because he was up late working on a research paper and was exhausted, he said. We can see ourselves in that story, we identify, we feel personally vulnerable: “if this smart, professional man could forget, maybe I could, too.”

But we must not only see ourselves in Warschauer’s story. We must also recognize part of ourselves in Gibson’s life, homeless and exhausted from manual labor in 16-hour shifts, unable to find a way out, without access to affordable childcare. We must not look away, rendering her existence as undifferentiated and one-dimensional.

Michelle Gibson, like Mark Warschauer, is a three-dimensional human being—not just a destitute, homeless, black woman with poor judgment. And until we know her story and can see ourselves in it in the same way we identify with Warschauer’s—until we can acknowledge that she has the same hopes and dreams as we do, and until we are as transformed by her experience as she is by trying to survive in our world—then she and others like her will never get our full attention and they will never get justice.

Be outraged by your own racism

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.” --Elie Wiesel

When my oldest daughter was in the first grade, she stopped me cold with just 16 words. “Mom,” she said as we stopped at a traffic light near Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, where we lived. "Why do you always lock the doors when a black man comes toward our car?"   

It’s not a story that I’m proud of – in fact, I’m utterly ashamed of it – but it’s an important story for me to acknowledge, own, and learn from. Her question was an honest one; as a six-year-old, she had no hidden agenda. She really wanted to know. My first reaction was to be defensive. “I don’t!,” I quickly announced, self-righteously. “Not every time, no it can’t be, I don’t, do I?,” I asked internally, my mind reeling with the implications. “No, you’re wrong, honey,” I wanted to say. “I don’t do that. That wouldn’t be right to do. I train people about racism. I have black friends. I used to watch the Cosby Show. I would never do that.”

But, while I could argue like the best defense attorney in the world, parsing the definition of “always,” in my heart of hearts, I knew she was right. I didn’t do it all the time, but I did it enough that she noticed. Actually, once was enough. And, truthfully, I knew that the black men outside my auto fortress knew it too; they heard the click. Always.

So, I didn’t lie to her and I didn’t try to minimize the small revolution that had taken place in that car that afternoon. Instead, we talked, as honestly as I would talk to an adult about these issues. I began that day, near Q Street, what has been a lifelong conversation for Emma about what racism is and how even people who mean well and know better can be racist and do things that perpetuate stereotypes. And how important it is to always be watchful, as she had been.

What I couldn’t bear was the thought that with that click, a whole universe of information had transferred to her, some silent and powerful and fast download that would change the way she sees the world, how she interacts with black men, what she passes along to others.

In a workshop that a colleague conducted once, a man was completing a written questionnaire about the kinds of messages that he heard growing up – from his parents, his school, his peers, the media. As he worked, he groaned every few minutes, as if in pain. When my colleague asked if she could help, he simply said, “it’s just that as I’m filling this out, I’m hearing my father’s voice tell me really awful and negative messages about groups of people.”

”Oh, my,” she responded. “That must be really painful to remember.”

“No,” he said, quietly and slowly. “That’s not the painful part. The painful part is that I can hear my own voice saying those same things to my kids.”

And so, like folktales and family recipes, we pass along this information – whether it is that black people are criminals, yuppies are shallow, Southerners are slow and stupid, Northerners are rude, lawyers are shifty, Gen X’ers are slackers, blondes are ditzy – whatever our particular brand of negative stereotyping (and whether we are using our voices or the mere click of a door lock), people around us are absorbing it like so many rambunctious and powerful memes, incorporating it silently (and probably unknowingly) into their bloodstream, having it impact not only their thinking, but also their actions, now and for years to come.

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

In a startling expose (well, startling to white viewers), ABC News reporter Diane Sawyer explored skin color prejudice in the U.S. with the help of two friends virtually identical in all respects but one—John is white, Glen is black. As they each separately try to buy a car, rent an apartment, respond to job listings, and shop, hidden cameras reveal that John is consistently welcomed and helped, while Glen is faced with higher prices, long waits, unfriendly salespeople, and closed doors. When interviewed for the film, Dr. Julianne Malveaux said that what is really needed is for white people to be as outraged by racism as black people are. And, if my door clicking shut is any indication, we need to be outraged by our own racism first.

~*~ A quote to remember ~*~

Last week’s 37days focused on the story of Kelli Davis, the high school senior whose picture was banned from her senior yearbook because she chose the tux rather than the drape for her photo. Here’s a quote from CNN from the man who upheld the principal’s decision to ban the photo: DAVID OWENS, CLAY COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT - “Her sexual preference is her sexual preference and that's OK, but the school shouldn't be the platform for her to make this statement.” There’s that word “preference” again. And I guess gay and lesbian people shouldn’t put photographs of their partners on their desks at work, either. I’ve sent Mr. Owens reading material on heterosexual privilege.

Be an effective ally for LGBT people

Read this if you’re interested in being a more effective advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. (http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=722)

These are some guidelines for people wanting to be allies for LGBT people. In today's world, LGBT issues are being discussed more than ever before. The discussions taking place in homes are often highly charged and emotional. This can be a scary topic and confusing to people on a very personal level. Being an ally is important, but it can be challenging. This list is by no means exhaustive, but provides a starting point. Add your own ideas and suggestions.

Don't assume heterosexuality. In our society, we generally assume that everyone we meet is heterosexual. Often people hide who they really are until they know they are safe to come 'out'.

Use gender neutral language when referring to someone's partner if you don't know the person well. In general, be aware of the gender language you use and the implications this language might have.

Educate yourself about LGBT issues. There are many resources available, reading lists and places to go for information. Don't be afraid to ask questions.

Explore ways to creatively integrate LGBT issues in your work. Establishing dialogue and educating about LGBT issues in the context of your other work can be a valuable process for everyone regardless of sexual orientation. Integration of LGBT issues into work you are doing instead of separating it out as a separate topic is an important strategy to establishing a safe place for people to talk about many issues in their lives.

Challenge stereotypes that people may have about LGBT as well as other people in our society. Challenge derogatory remarks and jokes made about any group of people. Avoid making those remarks yourself. Avoid reinforcing stereotypes and prejudices.

Examine the effect sexual orientation has on people's lives and development. Identify how race, religion, class, ability and gender intersect with sexual orientation and how multiple identities

Avoid the use of heterosexist language, such as making remarks implying that all people of the same gender date or marry members of the other gender.

Respect how people choose to name themselves. Most people with a same sex or bisexual orientation prefer to be called gay, lesbian, or bisexual rather than homosexual. 'Queer' is increasingly used by some gay, lesbian or bisexual people (especially in the younger generations), but don't use it unless you are clear that it is okay with that person. If you don't know how to identify a particular group, it's okay to ask. Don't expect members of any population that is a target of bias (e.g. gays, Jews, people of color, women, people with disabilities) to always be the 'experts" on issues pertaining to their particular identity group.

Avoid tokenizing or patronizing individuals from different groups.

Encourage and allow disagreement on topics of sexual identity and related civil rights. These issues are very highly charged and confusing. If there isn't some disagreement, it probably means people are tuned our or hiding their real feelings. Keep disagreement and discussion focused on principles and issues rather than personalities and keep disagreement respectful.

Remember that you are human. Allow yourself to not know everything, to make mistakes and to occasionally be insensitive. Avoid setting yourself up as an 'expert' unless you are one. Give yourself time to learn the issues and ask questions and to explore your own personal feelings. Ask for support if you are getting harassed or problems are surfacing related to your raising issues around sexual orientation. Don't isolate yourself in these kinds of situations and try to identify your supporters. You may be labeled as gay, lesbian or bisexual, whether you are or not. Use this opportunity to deepen your understanding of the power of homophobia and heterosexism. Make sure you are safe.

Prepare yourself for a journey of change and growth that will come by exploring sexual identityheterosexism and other issues of difference. This can be a painful, exciting and enlightening process and will help you to know yourself better. By learning and speaking out as an ally, you will be making the world a safer, more affirming place for all. Without knowing it, you may change or even save people's lives.

Choose the tuxedo

KELLI DAVIS, Class of 2005

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us." –Herman Hesse

Sometimes when I wake up too early and read the newspaper before having that first cup of coffee, and particularly when I see a headline like “Lesbian’s Picture in Tux Cut from Yearbook,” I get confused and wonder what year it is. Could this be a headline in 2005? I'm just so thankful that we've solved the Mideast crisis, world hunger, and the AIDS epidemic so we can turn our attention to more vital concerns like lesbians in tuxedos.

On February 24, 2005, in Clay County, Florida, county school officials backed the decision of Sam Ward, principal of Fleming Island High School to bar a picture of a girl dressed in a tuxedo from the high school yearbook. The principal is quoted as saying that he pulled the senior class picture because Kelli Davis was wearing boy's clothes.

Thank God. Otherwise, what's next? Girls playing softball, getting jobs, and voting? It's a slippery slope from shirts with collars to downright anarchy.

Officials at the school have said the picture was pulled because Davis didn’t follow the dress code. Among the items not permitted at Fleming Island High School:

• Sleepwear (i.e. pajamas, robes, bedroom slippers, etc.)
• Apparel with spaghetti straps.
• Shirts without sleeves. 
• All pants must be fastened at the top closure and worn at the waist. 
• Sweats are not to be worn to school. 
• Footwear of some type must be worn at all times. Shoes must have a strap across the back      of the heel or the shoe must have a 1" heel.

There is no mention of gender specific clothing or tuxedos. (I do wonder how many revolutions are started by teenagers in sweatpants with flat shoes who are wearing bathrobes, but that’s another discussion altogether.)

I can only hope that Kelli Davis’ tuxedo pants were buttoned at her waist, and that she had sleeves because evidently her grade point average of 4.0 isn’t enough. She has already lived though two years of vicious taunting from classmates about her sexual orientation—who would think the next round of abuse would come from the principal’s office?

When Kelli went to the photo studio with her mother to have her senior picture made, she had only two choices of outfits—either a black drape or a tuxedo top. As reported by Susan Armstrong in Folio Weekly, Kelli watched as a girl with orange spiked hair and ear- and lip-piercings adjusted the drape low between her breasts, barely covering her nipples.

A modest girl, Kelli didn’t want to expose her chest, so she chose the tuxedo top. The principal justified his decision to ban the photograph because Kelli’s picture was not “uniform.” Evidently, lip piercings and breast baring are. Spaghetti straps are verboten at Fleming, but girls are expected to have their picture snapped for time immemorial with a piece of sheeting draped around their chest like they’re just waking up in bed.

When you’re a senior, your picture in the yearbook is critical—through all eternity, this is how your classmates will remember you. If you’re not there, you’re forgotten. Kelli’s mother had to buy an ad for $1,000 in the back of the yearbook so Kelli’s picture could appear, over Principal Ward’s continued objection.

Let me be fair. Being a high school principal is one of the toughest jobs around. I have great admiration for people who manage that complexity and I try hard not to second guess their decisions. I know that creating a fair, accurate, and inclusive yearbook is hard. But as much as possible, shouldn’t the yearbook represent everyone at the school as they would like to be remembered?

Everyone at that school has a right to be fully who they are. The adults involved are falling all over themselves to avoid saying the “L” word and pretending that Kelli’s sexual orientation doesn’t have anything to do with their decision. I think it does, given some of their oblique references to it, though the ramifications are much larger than that.

Three years earlier, in Tampa's Robinson High School, Nikki Youngblood’s photograph in a suit and tie was also banned. Nikki remarked at the time that asking her to wear the drape would be like asking a boy to wear a dress. As reported by Mubarak Dahir, Robinson High’s attorney noted that “if the school had let Ms. Youngblood get away with wearing a coat and tie this year, then the next year, you might have 10 boys dressing as girls and vice versa.”

The absolute horror.

Evidently, that prospect is more shocking to these administrators than graduating seniors who can’t read and write, don’t know enough math to balance a checkbook, and who are doing drugs in the school bathrooms.

This is about more than lesbians in tuxedos—it’s about all kids—their gender identity, roles, and strictures. Nikki Youngblood and Kelli Davis aren’t in their yearbooks because they don’t conform to the outdated gender roles that we still expect kids of all sexual orientations to conform to. They are questioning what’s “appropriate” for men and women in our society—thank goodness. And the administrators of those two schools are also sending “a clear message that gays and lesbians are inappropriate misfits who should simply try to blend in,” says Dahir. “It’s no wonder the administrators at Robinson High and others like it around the country are so nervous and frightened by a 17-year-old girl in a coat and tie,” Dahir notes. “She threatens their entire sense of order in our post-modern world.”

Kelli Davis had searched long and hard to find just the right quote to go under her yearbook photo. It’s by German Nobel Prize-winning writer Hermann Hesse, who died in 1962: "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us."

Ironic, isn’t it?

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

I wish every girl in high school, straight or gay, would choose the tuxedo next year for their high school photo. In fact, I think I’ll start a “Girls in Tuxes” movement to make sure that happens.

 

More immediately, if this issue moves you, let the people at Fleming Island High Schoolknow how you feel about it. Here are email addresses – send a quick note to let them know we’re watching and we’re outraged:

            Fleming Island High School

Sam Ward, principal, sward@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Laura Johnson, vice principal,  ljohnson@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Dan Finley, Assistant Principal dfinley@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Thomas Pittman, Assistant Principal tpittman@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Deputy Fred Eckert, Youth Resource Officer fgeckert@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Clay County Commissioners commissioners@co.clay.fl.us

            Clay County School Board:

Carol Vallencourt CVallencourt@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Carol Studdard CStuddard@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Charles Van Zant, Jr. CEVanZant@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Wayne Bolla wbolla@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Lisa Graham LGraham@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Clay County Superintendent of Schools:

David L. Owens dowens@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

If you are involved in any way with a high school, pass along this list of questions suggested by the Southern Poverty Law Center to ensure that yearbooks are fair, accurate, and inclusive:

Yearbook Checkup (from www.tolerance.org)

• Look at the senior portraits. Are all girls and all boys dressed alike? If exceptions are allowed, what reasons can you identify?
• Review photo captions, cartoons and editorial comments. Do any of these elements demean certain groups or reinforce stereotypes? Is the humor harmless, or does it happen at someone's expense?
• Look closely at advertisements. Do any contain hurtful images, symbols or messages?
• How does the yearbook portray student couples? Does this coverage reflect the social reality at your school?
• How does the yearbook cover events and issues of the past school year? Do you think this coverage is fair or biased? Explain.
• Compare coverage of various sports teams and events. Which sports get the most coverage, and which get the least? What reasons can you offer?
• Compare coverage of athletics and other activities, such as academics, service projects and other interest groups. What patterns do you see?
• Are all the clubs at your school represented in the clubs section? If not, why do you think some are left out?
• Consider the "superlatives" categories and winners. What messages do these honors convey about the culture and values of your school?
• Examine the photographs of students acting goofy or just hanging out. Do the snapshots do a great job, a fair job or a poor job of representing the whole school community? Explain.
• How well does the yearbook staff reflect your school's cultural and social diversity? 

Why can't we have White History Month?

There is a petition being circulated on the Web that is addressed to “All Whites.” It has been signed by thousands of people, and reads in part: “We believe that if African Americans and now Hispanics can have their history month for their heritage, why can’t the White Americans have White history month? Wake up Americans before we become extinct! Please, sign my petition so that we can also have our White history month.”

This is an issue that surfaces every February, like clockwork, when Black History Month rolls around. I have the answer to the question: it is, quite simply, because every month is White History Month. 

When scholar Carter G. Woodson created what was then called Negro History Week in 1926, he hoped for the day when it no longer would be needed, when the contributions of people from various races, ethnicities and even genders would be taught fairly and properly. Woodson believed that Negro History Week would accomplish two things: build self-esteem among blacks and help eliminate prejudice among whites.

It was needed. As professor Yaw Boateng of Eastern Washington University reminds us, “between 1619 and 1926, African Americans and other peoples of African descent were classified as a race that had not made any contribution to human civilization; they were continually dehumanized and relegated to the position of non-citizens and often defined as fractions of humans. It is estimated that between 1890 and 1925, an African American was lynched every two and a half days. Peoples of African descent were visibly absent in any scholarship or intellectual discourse that dealt with human civilization.” This was the world in which Woodson lived.

But Woodson’s dream that Negro History Week would no longer be needed still isn’t a reality, nearly 80 years later. He dreamed of a day when every student's education would include such African-American figures as Crispus Attucks, who died in the Boston Massacre; Dr. Daniel Williams, who performed the world’s first open-heart surgery; Matthew A. Henson, who co-discovered the North Pole with Robert Peary, and Benjamin Banneker, the pioneer scientist who helped conduct the first survey of Washington. If you’re like me, those names weren’t mentioned in your history classes, and still aren’t today.

After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Black History Week was expanded into Black History month. I’ve heard people joke that February was chosen because it’s the shortest month. Cute. But no, that’s not the reason. It was chosen in part because the birthdays of slave abolitionists Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, as well as poet Langston Hughes and musician Eubie Blake, are in February. It’s also the month the NAACP was founded (in 1909) and the month that its co-founder, W.E.B. Dubois, was born (in 1868). On February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment granting blacks the right to vote was passed. February 25, 1870, the first black U.S. senator, Hiram Revels, took his oath of office. It was on February 1, 1960, that a group of black Greensboro, N.C., college students began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. February is an important month in Black history, though few of us in the White community know it. The intention of Black History Month was not to confine our study of Black history to those 28 days of February. Rather, Black History Month must be the climax of a study of the Black experience throughout the year.

So back to the question of the petitioners: why is there no White History Month? In the words of a Tulane University Black History Month website, a “White History Month is not needed because the contributions of whites are already acknowledged by society.” In other words, American history is white history, plain and simple. And as Thomas Sowell has written, “You cannot understand even your own history if that is the only history you know.”

Being white in the United States means that when my daughters attend school, the curricular materials they receive reflect the color of their skin; the same is not true for my African-American friends and colleagues. When my children hear about their national heritage or about “civilization,” they are shown that people of their color made it what it is; again, not so for the children of my African-American friends. Scholar Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley Colllege Center for Research on Women, listed these and other realities of what it means to be white in this country - simply conditions of daily experience which, as a white person, she once took for granted. Not only do “flesh” colored bandages match her skin color, she noted, but when she turns on the television or looks at the front page of the paper, she can see people of her race widely represented—and not just as criminals or sports figures. The same is not true for African-Americans.

Last year, the Long Beach Grunion announced that January 2004 would be the first annual “White History Month.” They reported that White History Month festivities would include mass viewings of the latest Pixar and Disney brand films, the NBC’s Frasier farewell season, wine-tastings, and free Jet Blue travel. “White Americans,” they reported, “are in a celebratory mood, eagerly anticipating their first month where they can finally pay respect to their culturally rich traditions and the lifetimes of all the white people who have made the world a better place to be white in.” It was written as satire, but truer words may never have been spoken than those last seven: a better place to be white in.

Let me change my answer to the opening question: we don’t need a White History Month - not because every month is White History Month, but because every year is White History Year. In fact, a colleague of mine put it even more aptly: “it’s even more than White History Year…it’s White History Life – just look at the names of bridges, mountain ranges, parks, universities, colleges, streets, cities, management styles and philosophies, pictures on money, constellations, the color of Santa Claus...”

Quick! Who were Otis Boykin, Garrett Morgan, Lewis Latimer, and Patricia Bath? If you don’t know, don’t tell me we don’t need Black History Month.

 

 

Otis Boykin (1920–1982) invented the electronic control devices for guided missiles, IBM computers, and the pacemaker. Garrett Morgan (1877–1963) invented the gas mask and the first traffic signal. Lewis Latimer (1848–1928) invented an important part of the light bulb — the carbon filament. Dr. Patricia E. Bath (1949–) invented a method of eye surgery that has helped many blind people to see.

Racism is subtle and insidious

It's hard to imagine that a city-wide celebration would perpetuate a stereotypical image of black people as cartoon savages scantily clad in loincloths and with bones through their hair. Yet when my family and I arrived at the Civic Center as part of the Downtown Countdown on New Year's Eve, we found exactly that.

Several murals in the arts and crafts area provided opportunities for kids to put their faces through holes, allowing their faces to appear as the faces of animals, for example. On one board featuring a jungle scene, there were two human characters-one a small, round, nearly naked brown man with a bone sticking through his hair. This type of stereotypical depiction of blacks as cartoon savages is unthinkable in the year 2005.

It is true that most American groups, especially racial minorities, have been the victims of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination at one time or another. Japanese Americans, for example, were vilified for decades after being depicted in Tojo caricatures after WWII, and Native Americans were (and are) often portrayed as drunks. As many of us know, white Southerners have experienced being depicted stereotypically also. But Blacks have been the victim of more racist caricatures than any other racial or ethnic group-at least twenty distinct caricatures exist, including Mammy, Black Sambo, and the Savage we saw at Asheville's Downtown Countdown. These images are offensive. They were meant to be offensive. They were meant to humiliate and dehumanize and legitimize patterns of prejudice discrimination, and segregation, though to many they may seem "harmless." Rejecting them doesn't mean falling prey to political correctness; rather, it means that as a community we are intentional and cognizant of the effects such images can have on all of us.

What is a stereotype? It's a fixed, commonly held notion or image of a person or group, based on an oversimplification of some observed or imagined trait of behavior or appearance. Most stereotypes tend to make us feel superior in some way to the person or group being stereotyped. In fact, negative stereotypes of a group of people can affect the way society views them, and change society's expectations of them. With enough exposure to a stereotype, society may come to view it as a reality rather than a chosen representation. Complacency to these sorts of stereotypical images is dangerous, as is exposing our children to them. Those who created the activities in the Civic Center didn't mean to offend - and therein lies the lesson: racism often isn't intentional, but subtle and insidious.

(This first appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times on Jan 10 2005)

Honor the difficulty

"We need to tell the truth about what is before we can talk about what should be."

I attended the MLK Prayer Breakfast in Asheville this January for the first time. ABC News reporter Michel Martin was the keynote speaker. Brilliant speech. I was inspired afterwards to commit to paper (or the web, as the case may be) a vision for Asheville to be a model community of diversity and inclusion and spent until wee hours of the morning creating a website (my first, still in draft form) as a holding place for information and resources as this vision takes shape.

Martin's speech was one of the best crafted I've heard in years. Several phrases and ideas resonated for me. "We tend to dumb down complex people like Martin Luther King, Jr.," she said, "we put gauze around them."

But racism and race in this country are difficult to talk about. Rather than dumb down the conversation, "why pretend that it's easy when we know that it's hard?," she asked. "Why not honor the diffculty by acknowledging how hard it is?"

Good questions.