Posts Tagged ‘racial discrimination’

The Good New Song—Tradition Gently Reinforces Racism at UVA

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2017

At UVA, “The Good Ole Song” is a stealth weapon. We need a new song.

That good old song of Wah-hoo-wah—we’ll sing it o’er and o’er
It cheers our hearts and warms our blood to hear them shout and roar
We come from old Virginia, where all is bright and gay
Let’s all join hands and give a yell for the dear old UVA.

Lyrics to ” The Good Ole Song” the defacto alma mater song of UVA

It’s a heart-warming tradition for many members of the University of Virginia community attending school events to congregate, grab the shoulders of the person next to her or him and sing the “Good Ole Song.” Set to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, singing the song was a comforting ritual at the Taking Back the Lawn Vigil held on the Lawn of the University last week. Thousands from the University and Charlottesville gathered as a way of countering the violent presence of the white supremacist groups that invaded the University grounds on August 11 and 12. I was not at the vigil and so I am certain that the power of the being there was even greater than that which I experienced as an observer. But I watched lots of video and every time I heard the Good Ole Song, I cringed.

It’s not that it’s a bad tune. The problem is that it’s also a stealth weapon. In the aftermath of the violence that left three people dead in Charlottesville, alumnae Jia Tolentino opined in her The New Yorker Magazine column that idyllic Southern liberal Charlottesville and UVA were prime targets for a white supremacist outburst. On the surface, it’s obvious: find the blue oasis in a predominantly right leaning state (only Northern Virginia and Charlottesville-Albemarle County prevent Virginia from being an overwhelmingly conservative voting bloc), add a controversy about removing the traditional Robert E. Lee monument and voila! That oasis becomes the proof of concept for how the extreme right wing, white supremacist movement can overcome the libs. Tolentino argues, however, that Charlottesville was also attractive because its pristine veneer concealed a tradition of racism and bigotry stretching back many decades. Gentility and political correctness simply concealed–and stoked–the growing white discontent that spawned the racist-fueled demonstration and violence.

As heartwarming as it may be for many, the Good Ole Song illustrates the dilemma posed by looking to the past for comfort and cohesion while living in the present in a new—and much more diverse—community. I think I cringed at the song because I don’t “…come from old Virginia,” and as I see it, all is far from “bright and gay.” People studying and working at UVA come from all over the U.S., and from around the globe. We’re not from old Virginia. Moreover, both the violence last weekend and the broader historical record of racial injustice in Charlottesville and Virginia demonstrate that there is significant racial and cultural discord here. Don’t get me wrong, this is a thoroughly beautiful place, with stunning land and extraordinarily warm, thoughtful, and resilient people. But niceness need not diminish the capacity to acknowledge suffering in a community. And in the work I have undertaken on leveraging difference and weirdness, oblivious contentment and deep suffering frequently co-exist.

Creating a truly diverse and inclusive community requires the willingness and discipline to see the differences that matter in that community and to engage when those differences create tension and discord.  Pretending that we are all feel as happy and harmonious as the most content among us can alienate and marginalize and people who, by virtue of their difference, live an oppressive reality in that community. Excessive nicety in the service of avoiding facing the realities of social injustice is  morally and ethically wrong. Most of us—myself included—do it.  But such nicety also poses a very pragmatic problem. Avoiding disengagement makes a community vulnerable in exactly the way Charlottesville became vulnerable to white supremacist violence.

Many of the white supremacists came to Charlottesville to “take back” a fantasy. They were obsessed with a time and a place in which white people were the only people that mattered and the thought of having to co-exist with Jews and blacks and immigrants was an abomination. The veneer of places like Charlottesville created structure and practices like segregation that fueled that fantasy. Symbols of white maleness—those confederate statues—became tangible reminders that white people were all that mattered in these diverse communities. But this fantasy makes the dominant white group myopic and fragile. White people have never been alone. They have always lived side by side with communities of people who were different from them by race, culture, and history.  Often, those communities were oppressed and disempowered as a result of actions undertaken in the name of whiteness. When empowered citizens of color spoke up and questioned the status quo, the fragile fringes of the white community—white supremacists–experienced those new voices as weapons assaulting their very existence.

It doesn’t have to be this way. If communities are willing to shake off habits of avoidance and authentically engage in inclusive practices, they become more resilient. Personal and collective wounds can be healed through dialogue, reconciliation, and actions that make amends for wrongdoing.

At UVA, we need a new song. It should be one that acknowledges the past and present experiences of diverse community members. It should support and encourage us to be in communication, to use our voices to learn with one another. It should buck us up so that when we enter into conflict—whether minor disagreements or deep-seated struggles—we are skillful, courageous and compassionate toward our fellow community members. The Good Ole Song can’t serve this purpose because it was not written for me, nor was it written for the women of UVA. Nor the people of color at UVA.  Nor the people at UVA from countries around the world. Nor the LGBTQ community (as evidenced by the homophobic “not gay” chants that have been shouted at sporting events). None of this makes the song bad. It’s simply no longer adequate. We need another song.

How I Learned To Be Black (Part I)

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

(This is the first of a five part series of unconventional reflections on race)

Lesson One: How I Discovered I am More than Just Black

I gave an informal talk last month to a group of leaders on what I have learned about myself and my leadership over the past seven years. I reflected on how I have used the tools and techniques I learned from attending leadership seminars facilitated by Learning as Leadership (LaL), a San Rafael, California-based leadership development organization. There, I participated with managers and executives from all over the world to learn how to grapple with my unproductive habits and behaviors and how to institute new ones.

On this day, I was inspired to talk about being black. I was one of only a handful of black people in this largely white gathering, but this was important, I thought. I had always taken comfort in the fact that I’m a black man. Even though being black in the U.S. is challenging, seeing myself that way has provided a source of clarity. When I needed that boost of self-confidence, I could remind myself that I was an intelligent and strong black person. When I needed social support, I knew I could rely on other black folks—even those I didn’t know—to offer it. When unjust events happened to me, I could explain them as a consequence of the intentional and unintentional racial bias that permeates this country.

But the comfort of my blackness has also held me back. When I undertook this leadership training, I entered with the goal of deepening my understanding of myself and of diversity. I expected the exercises and reflections to help me with this. To my surprise, though, over the course of the 12 months in which I participated, race came up infrequently. I found myself much more preoccupied with new concepts like “desired image” which captures behaviors I’ve taken up—both consciously and unconsciously—to try to get others to see me in a particular light. Or the “driving idea” or prevailing anxiety I hold that deep down, I’m really a fraud and not as capable or competent as I think, and worried that others will figure it out and I will be exposed. This was very weird stuff that may have been affecting me in my work and my relationships. With these kinds of things on the table, race fell into the background for me, important, but not central. Had being focused on myself racially kept me from attending to these other really important issues?

The real “aha” emerged when I learned about my “mattress.” That is the term for the psychological habit of preparing ourselves for failure in the activities we undertake. In short, we all have ways of thinking that protect us from the painful thoughts and feelings that emerge when we fail at something we really want to succeed at. A mattress, like a soft landing surface, does just that. One of my stronger mattresses is that that the odds were so stacked against me because of my race that I just couldn’t succeed this time. In fact sometimes this is true and sometimes it isn’t. At times, I am the victim of systemic biases that favor others and disadvantage me. And sometimes I just didn’t prepare well enough. And sometimes (heaven forbid) I’m just not good enough. The beauty of the mattress is that these more ego-based, painful options disappear in the outrage of the blanket assertion that I could have been successful if factors outside my control weren’t conspiring against me. In other words, “it’s not me, it’s you. Or him. Or them. Or the system.

My insight that I have these habits does not negate the fact that real discrimination happens and that I and other black people suffer when it does. For me, that is a fact of life and if you don’t believe it, I have a long list of resources to help you with that one. What I realized was that I was not always skilled at knowing when the real discrimination was happening (and needs to be fought) and when I was protecting myself from feeling pain that had little, if anything, to do with my race. This was not about “playing race cards” or any other such nonsense. It was about learning to be skillful in separating my authentic but incorrect belief that I was suffering because of discrimination from really suffering from discrimination.

I felt like I was beginning to have an experience of myself as larger that only being a member of my racial group. I realized that with expanding and deeper understand of history and culture, my blackness was becoming a huge and nourishing vessel in which to live. And as I said, it helped me in many ways. What I was beginning to explore was that there may have been an even larger, more nourishing vessel in which I was embedded. I was beginning to understand in a much more profound way that I was more than my race. That was lesson one in learning to be black.

Why We Still Need Racial Tension

Monday, August 1st, 2011

Reading Amy Ta’s “Race, Rage and Reality in America” article on NPR.com was intriguing as authors Ellis Cose and Eugene Robinson discussed their books outlining 2011 perspectives on race and racism in the U.S. But as is so often the case, the really interesting stuff was in the back and forth of the comments that followed the article. There were a variety of arguments being wagered—most passionate, many hard to follow and others even harder to take seriously. Most ironic in all of it was the incongruence between the rhetoric of those who declared that race was no longer important, and the vitriol with which they proclaimed it. The commenters “doth protest too much, methinks.” This disconnect between message and delivery reinforces the fact that in the midst of the traditional race debate, we’ve begun to forget why racial dialogue is really important.

The tensions surfaced by race talk actually represent our struggle with inequality, discrimination, and privilege in our modern society. Race talk in the U.S. is, in part, dialogue about dealing with the plight of an historically significant minority population and the ongoing impact of many decades of discrimination. We could have similar conversations about indigenous people in the U.S. (as one commenter noted) or about gender, or immigration. Each of these conversations is unique as the issues that arise have unique origins and present-day dynamics. The black-white race discussion has had particular heat about it for many reasons and has served as a focal laboratory for this most critical societal conversation.

But the critical conversation is not really just about black and white people. Whether the race problem is solved or not is not the only thing at stake in race dialogue. It is also a conversation about how we come to terms as a society in dealing with injustice, discrimination, privilege, and forgiveness. The issue of black-white race differences may someday fade into the background of society. Racial difference may someday no longer dictate how we live with one another. That was certainly Martin Luther King’s dream. But that does not mean that we will not still be challenged in how we deal with inequality and inequity. I think it unlikely that all bias and unfairness will somehow be eradicated. History suggests that the odds of that are not in our favor. So for today, we would do well to remain engaged in racial dialogue as a way of continuing to learn about ourselves and our society.