Overcoming racism through listening
How two Mac profs and one honest citizen opened the door to understanding
She stood tall, at the front of the classroom, her white and silver-grey bobbed hair gesticulating as the words poured out like molten lava, affecting everyone seated and standing.
Before her stood Dr. George Breckenridge, retired political science professor from McMaster and Dr. Ameil Joseph, current professor in the department of Social Work at McMaster who had finished his Trump Talk (a free public lecture series at McMaster’s Centre for Continuing Education in downtown Hamilton) on The Realities of Racism and Resistance. He had opened the floor to questions from his audience.
A week ago Professor Breckenridge had painted a picture of the ‘browning’ of North America. Dr. Joseph elaborated on that theme by bluntly stating that the world is indeed not Caucasian by any means, but that white superiority has been long assumed from the north European interlopers. The notion of superiority of one race over another race; one culture over another culture has been evolutionary and ingrained into the very pores of our white ancestors.
Dr. Joseph spoke with a clear vision on the topic, with an insider’s knowledge of the subject matter and in 2018 his revelations revealed unspoken ugliness staring back at all of us in the mirror.
As a person of colour in Hamilton, teaching and researching racism in the many forms that it inhabits, he listed his daily concerns: harassment, abusive emails and letters, physical harm, threats to himself and family, torching his family home, and death.
This is not what the typical middle class white individual would have to deal with in the course of their day. But since the fall of 2015, this is what his life has become.
To understand how racism evolved in North America required a history primer of both countries, but suffice to say that at some point the conqueror had to establish boundaries to preserve and protect and needed an enemy. Instead of assimilation, the historical method was to continue the European way.
Back to the unnamed woman standing before a largely, white, middle-class congregation of her peers. She faced Dr. Joseph and Dr. Breckenridge and proudly spoke of her white privilege, her middle-class comfort and her accepted values. “I am not a prejudiced person,” she stated.
All of that rang true for the assembled crowd. When she admitted she was afraid of ‘the browning’ of her city, the silence in the room was deafening! Acknowledging that albatross was emotionally draining. The question had been raised and one, slightly aged woman stood bravely and confronted it. She said what probably a majority of the audience was thinking. She was uncomfortable with the stark realization that had been just presented to her by an erudite, learned individual who happened to be a person of colour. She went on to say that she resided on Locke Street, where the “Ungovernables” recently vandalized cars and businesses and for the first time she felt unsafe. She wanted a police presence. She wanted her way of life protected. She cared about herself first and foremost.
The climax was shocking. This privileged, white woman thanked the speakers! She humbly expressed that she could never have experienced what Dr. Joseph lives through daily. Without acknowledging the people in the room, she admitted that the racism was latently in her. The apology was profound, it was moving, and the applause from the audience erupted spontaneously!