Learning to Listen #10 - The Day You Begin

 This week I read "The Day You Begin" by Jacqueline Woodson. Jacqueline wrote that "[I wanted] to write about communities that were familiar to me and people that were familiar to me. I wanted to write about communities of color. I wanted to write about girls. I wanted to write about friendship and all of these things that I felt like were missing in a lot of the books that I read as a child."

"The day you begin to tell your stories..." This theme is a little heart-breaking for me, because it reminds me of the terrible white supremacy that has silenced so many people for so many centuries. This book tells the story of feeling left out or set aside because of differences - both general (language) and very, very specific (kimchi). The generality hurts because the differences are so common, and the specificity hurts because the differences are so real.

I am coming to understand that even without consciously silencing others, they have walked through my white world feeling less than, judged, and that silence is the only way to survive.They have seen my clothing, heard my language, watched my movies, ate my food, and felt that theirs ranked lower on an invisible (or perhaps very visible) cultural hierarchy.

This book is about empowering voices to begin to tell their stories, to help them know that we need variety in our tapestry, that the differences are what make life beautiful.

My heart hurts that this book needed to be written, but that hurt is minute compared to the hurt of the generations who have never felt they could share their stories and their lives. May this be a moment of true change.

"There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you."

"There will be times when the world feels like a place that you're standing all the way outside of."

"And all at once, in the room where no one else is quite like you, the world opens itself up a little wider to make some space for you."

"This is the day you begin to find the places inside your laughter and your lunches, your books, your travel and your stories, where every new friend has something a little like you - and something else so fabulously not quite like you at all."

Learning to Listen #9 - Me and White Supremacy

 This week I read "Me and White Supremacy." This book is the result of a 28-day Instagram challenge by author Layla F. Saad, who challenged white people to examine how we engage on a daily basis with racism. The book asks us to read about one aspect of racism and white supremacy each day, and then gives us a series of journaling points to consider.

What hit me about this read is how Layla was able to break down "racism" into so many different aspects - each one unique, challenging, and very, very real. Privilege, fragility, tone policing, silence, superiority, exceptionalism, colour-blindness, intersectionality, stereotypes, cultural appropriation, apathy, centering, tokenism, saviorism, optical allyship, calling out/in, feminism, leaders, friends, family, values, losing privilege - there is no way to avoid digging deep into how racism is embedded in our subconscious thought-process.

My eyes were opened to deeper levels of racism than I was previously aware of. Particularly the idea of White Centering, which is the unconscious idea that how we were raised is best and then all my worldviews are centered around that experience.

The thought that stuck with me in this book was "intent vs. impact." Most of the white people I know, including myself, fall into the "good intentions" category. What we say and do, we say and do with good intentions. We have purposely chosen values of equality, meaning that we desire that all are treated equal. But often the impact of what we say and do can cause deep pain. Sometimes we aren't even aware of the microaggressions or systemic racism around us - it is easy as white people to remain unaware since we are the benefactors of the privilege. We have to open our eyes to the impact around us, and truly listen to Black voices to understand their lived experience.

Here are a couple of passages in Layla's own words that sat deeply with me:

"The promise of Color Blindness (saying "I don't see color") is that if we stop seeing race, then racism goes away. That racism will go away not through awakening consciousness of privilege and racial harm, not through systemic and institutional change, not through addressing imbalances in power, not through making amends for historical and current-day harm, but instead by simply acting as if the social construct of race has no actual consequences - both for those with white privilege and those without."

"White centering is a natural consequence of white supremacy. If you unconsciously believe you are superior, then you will unconsciously believe that your worldview is the one that is superior, normal, right, and that it deserves to be at the center."

"To ask BIPOC to focus on gender before race is to ask them to put their different identities in a hierarchical order. But as a Black woman, I am not Black then woman. I am Black and woman. My womanness cannot erase by Blackness, and my Blackness cannot erase my womanness."

Learning to Listen #8 - Hair Love

 This week I read "Hair Love", a picture book inspired by the short film of the same name. In this book, a young Black girl talks about how much she loves her versatile hair and all the different things it can do. Her father is up to the challenge of trying to style it into the perfect hairdo.

As a white woman, I have recently become aware of how white our stores are in the hair products they carry. This was eye opening for me - that an entire section of the population can't walk into most stores and buy hair products designed for their hair. It's interesting to me how many of the "big" racist actions don't surprise me, but something small like this I never considered.

As an educator, I try to make sure I have a wide range of representation in the stories I share in class. One of the paths I'm walking is trying to understand how to make sure that I'm not making a token out of the stories, that I'm choosing stories by Own Voices, and that they are not just Black stories about Black issues, but sometimes they are just stories that also happen to have BIPOC characters.

But the charm of this story put a smile on my face. I have a daughter and I just saw so much of my own girl in the lead character. I recognized the imagination and tenacity and love of hair and fashion. After three boys, I struggled to figure out how to french braid her hair. And as a young girl with a thick mass of red hair, I remember the struggles to get it to do anything at all (truly - I was 30 before I found a stylist who knew how to cut my hair and finally let me love it for what it could be).

Reading this story is a lesson for me in seeing stories as stories, and that I hope we are moving in the direction of not needing to search so long for stories with BIPOC characters. It reminded me of earlier this year when I was using the popular teaching app Kahoot to make quizzes for my students. The topic was learning body parts in French, and each slide needed to have a picture of a body part. I wanted to make sure there was representation of all people, but a simple search for "eyes" led to pages and pages of white people's eyes. Same for ears, legs, feet, noses, arms... It required a specific search of "Black" or "Asian" to bring more varied search results, but the selection was severely limited. I immediately looked for how to send an email to the company, bringing the search results to their attention and asking for change.

I teach French. I have the privilege of being able to teach Global citizenship through my class, and to help my tiny town see further than their own front porch. There are times when I can teach real lessons in this area. But there are also times when I can just tell a charming story and let it be just that.

From the book:

"My name is Zuri, and I have hair that has a mind of its own. It kinks, coils, and curls every which way."

"Daddy tells me it is beautiful. That makes me proud. I love that my hair lets me be me!"

Learning to Listen #7 - How to Be an Anti-Racist

 This week I read "How to be an antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi. In this book, the author takes the reader through how many different ideas intersect with racism, including power, biology, culture, behaviour, class, gender, failure, success, and more. It is filled with Kendi's own personal journey to become antiracist, as well as a thorough collection of historical anecdotes, stories, and facts.

Two ideas have stuck with me above the rest. The first is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can think something, say something, or do something that is racist in one situation, and then think, say or do something antiracist the next. Kendi separates the action from being - racist is not something you are, but something you do. This thought is important because it both alleviates the label (which can cause people to stick in the mud) and gives a more true picture of the complexity of racial realities.

The second idea is related to our history of dealing with racism - ideologies and policies that have focused on one of three areas: segregation, assimilation, or antiracism. This idea has been pivotal in my learning this week. I have found this to be a simple lens with which to judge my own thoughts and actions, and those of others around me, or policies, or systems, or really anything. In short, segregation is when we decide that the races are just too different and should not be together. Assimilation is when we decide that one race and culture should be given up in favour of another. Segregation and assimilation are necessarily tied to hierarchy. It requires that one race and culture is placed above the other, that is it more desirable, more profitable, more civilized, more attractive, etc. Antiracism, however, is the idea that all racial groups are equal, that the differences are not better or worse, and that no changes are necessary.

Kendi takes the opposite view of Ijeoma Oluo (So You Want to Talk About Race) in his definition of racism. He rejects the idea that racism must also include power, and so he affirms that Black people can indeed be racist even in a White power society. Reading both sides of this argument was interesting, and gave me pause to really consider what both these passionate authors have to say on the subject. Truly, as we are learning, it is a messy topic, but we must not be afraid of the mess.

Finally, here are some of Kendi's own words:

(on education)

"What if these well-meaning efforts at closing the achievement gap have been opening the door to racist ideas? What if different environments lead to different kids of achievement rather than different levels of achievement? What if the intellect of a low-testing Black child in a poor Black school is different from - and not inferior to - the intellect of a high-testing White child in a rich White school? What if we measured intelligence by how knowledgeable individuals are about their own environments? What if we measured intellect by an individuals' desire to know? What if we realized the best way to ensure an effective educational system is not by standardizing our curricula and tests but by standardizing the opportunities available to all students?"

"Either racist policies or Black inferiority explains why White people are wealthier, healthier, and more powerful than Dark people today."

"Institutional power" or "systemic racism" or "structural power" is the policy making and managing power of people, in groups, or individually. When someone says Black people can't be racist because Black people don't have "institutional power" they are flouting reality. The powerless defense strips Black policymakers and managers of all their power...like every other racist idea, the powerless defense underestimates Black people and overestimates White people. It erases the small amount of Black power and expands the already expansive reach of White power."

Learning to Listen #6 - Long Way Down

 This week I read "Long Way Down" by Jason Reynolds. This is not a book about racism or privilege, in the traditional sense that we see this day. It is fictional, poetic telling of a teen holding the cold handle of a gun as he contemplates "the rules" of retribution for his brother's murder. He is descending into darkness as he descends in an elevator.

This is a book by a Black author. I am trying to move past reading books by white men and white women about white stories. This is my journey as I unlearn and relearn things I don't know anything about. This is coming to terms with realities that exist beyond my scope of understanding.

Instead of including an excerpt from the book, I have included the author's acknowledgement. In reading the acknowledgment I was moved to see there is truth there. Reading it feels like reading a language that is not English, that I do not speak, a secret code in a culture removed.

The author does not have a sad past like you might assume: a Black author writing about hate and crime and tragedy because he has lived a life of hate and crime and tragedy (oh the pain of white privilege, that scalding spotlight on my skin); but he accesses the real emotion behind it all. He shines a light on something real that I can never really know but I need to.

Learning to Listen #5 - The Color of Law

 This week I read excerpts from "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein. (Please note that this author is white). It's a dense read with lots of legal references, but chunked into pieces that make it easy to read shorter excerpts and still understand the concepts.

The subtitle of the book is "A forgotten history of how our government segregated America", and certainly my eyes were opened to how legals systems have been unjustly used and even abused in order to prevent Black and people of colour from advancing economically in America.

A few examples:

- the Fair Labor Standards Act established minimum wages, but excluded industries in which African Americans predominated (like agriculture).

- Cities created laws forbidding white people and black people from living in the same neighbourhoods

- the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages for African Americans in designated white (wealthier) neighbourhoods

- As a response to the Supreme court striking down laws of racial segregation in neighbourhoods, cities tried to bypass it by creating zoning laws based on racial habits, which reinforced racial segregation under the table

I was also struck by the amount of regression these laws created. There are many examples around the turn of the century where desegregation was beginning to finally happen naturally. In fact, when zoning laws were brought in, it created more havoc in some areas that were integrated and now suddenly trying to figure out if they were allowed to live in their house any more (white and Blacks). Phrases like "the progress came to an end when..." and "approved the implementation of..." and "it's time to start..." I started to understand how local and federal governments with personal agendas used their power within the legal system to implement new forms of oppression once slavery was outlawed.

This is a good place to learn about how deeply systemic racism runs. It discusses why the failures of most civil rights laws are not in concept, but in implementations and enforcement. It lays bare the realities of generational economic class, and why we don't generally rise above that which our parents had. And it uncovers dark stories of personal oppression and struggles, of both Black Americans and their white friends and neighbours who tried to stand up for them. (Like the Bradens, who bought their Black friends', the Wades, a house in a middle income White neighbourhood because no one would sell their house to a Black family. But then Carl Braden was sentenced to 15 years in prison for "related" charges.)

We have a lot of history to undo, and sometimes it seems that one person fighting against government power can be exhausting. But it's important to know the beast with which you are fighting, so we can learn how to finally slay it.

Learning to Listen #4 - Broken Promises

 This week I watched the Documentary Broken Promises: The High Arctic Relocation. It’s a short NFB film available to watch online for free. It concerns an alarming part of Canadian history in which Inuit families were “selected” to go inhabit the far northern reaches of Canada to help maintain sovereignty of the north against the US and Russia, in the 1950s.

They were promised a way to return to living off the land. They were promised it was a land of plenty. They were promised they could return if they did not like it.

Instead, they were dropped in a frozen wasteland, purposely far from military bases so as not to encourage dependence or handouts. They had nothing with which to build and food was scarce. And when they asked to come home, they were told they had to pay their own way, but they had no money. Government reports of success were falsified. It took 30 years before they were offered passage home.

The interviews with the survivors are heartbreaking. This is the kind of Canadian history we don’t teach in school. There were all sorts of political and economic motivations and none of the decisions involved those who were made to go.

As I struggle to define for myself what Canada is, these stories are necessary to gather and understand. My grandfather spent his career offering health services in our northern lands and often had stories of the Inuit people he met. His home was filled with works of art, gifts from the Inuit people for his work. I feel drawn to know more about this land which called to him. Northern Canada is a great mystery to me, and unlocking its beauty, history and stories is something which calls to me.

This is just one story about 15 Inuit families - just a small pocket of people, but it signifies a larger untold story that must be uncovered.