The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Time for honest, heartfelt talk on racism
The killing of George Floyd has ignited calls for Americans to start seriously discussing racism in this country.
But those who are deep into the work of dismantling racism know that it’s long past time for the conversation, and that one more African American killed by police or others won’t necessarily inspire white people to examine how they need to change.
Addys Castillo is executive director of the Citywide Youth Coalition and a founding organizer with the Elm City-Undoing Racism Organizing Collective, which holds anti-racism training sessions. She believes Floyd’s killing and the protests that have followed have created “the perfect storm for a revolution to really take place” in how Americans look at and talk about race and the “systemic way in which people of color have been treated in this country.”
It won’t be helpful, however, unless there’s
agreement on what the problem is and people are will to do the work “that is bringing humanity back into the equation,” she said. Just as an illness can’t be treated until it’s correctly diagnosed, racism can’t be discussed constructively until people agree on what the problem is.
“There’s never a space for that conversation. There’s never a concrete definition, and it’s by design that we have a collective confusion about what is race and what is racism,” said Castillo, who describes herself as Afro Boricua, after the native people of Puerto Rico.
“We are finally bringing out of the closet what we’ve been afraid to talk about,” Castillo said. “It’s really about whiteness in America and what that means. The opportunity is missed about how race and racism is really dehumanizing them.”
White people who recognize structural racism in society and their own attitudes need to do the work of talking to their family members and friends. “It’s white people’s job to get other white people on board. It’s not my job to tell white people racism exists,” Castillo said. “I can’t get to your family, but you can.” The conversation needs to be held, but “you have to have grace,” she said.
“In order for us to capitalize on this movement right now … we have to be in relationship, but we have to be willing to have the conversation that we’ve been hiding from,” she said.
Ala Ochumare is an anti-racism organizer and founder of Black Lives
Matter New Haven, as well as youth coordinator for the New Haven Pride Center. It was she who took the lead in the May 31 protest march when there appeared to be no other organizer. More than a thousand people walked onto Interstate 95 and then to the police station in a mostly peaceful demonstration.
“I’m a staple in this community and I’ve earned the trust,” Ochumare said of her ability to lead peaceful demonstrations. “If you work with me, I’m very inclusive. I’ll tell you off if you need to be told off but I’ll also bring you back in.”
Ochumare said antiracism training involves teaching people “to actively work against perpetuating racism” and to help white people understand “what racism is and how to identify it.”
Part of that is making room “to allow black and queer and brown folks to enter into leadership positions and positions of power,” she said. “Also, back them up when they’re in those positions.”
The Rev. Kyle Pedersen, an Episcopal deacon at Trinity Church on the Green and director of the Connecticut Mental Health Center Foundation, also is a trainer with Elm CityUROC. As a white man, he agreed to be interviewed only after consulting with Castillo and Ochumare. For him, collaborating with people of color is essential.
“Never move alone. That is definitely something I’ve learned as a white person dealing with anti-racism,” Pedersen said. “It’s not about what I think about this. It’s about what I understand the movement of black people and people of color [to be]and following that movement.”
Whiteness, Pedersen has
learned, is bound up in individualism. Becoming actively anti-racist is “a reorienting of how we understand our place in the world. I’m not the center of the world. I’m part of a larger world and I’m making decisions accordingly,” he said. “It’s probably the hardest work we have to do as white people.”
The danger for white people is if they believe they don’t have work to do, who protest George Floyd’s death but don’t act to undo the racist structures of society. “I’m the good white person, the righteously indignant white person,” Pedersen said whites may tell themselves. “That attitude can push us away from other white people with whom we need to work if we want change.”
As members of American society, white people carry privileges they cannot shed and must own, he said. Just as people of color have internalized racial inferiority, whites have internalized racial superiority, he said.
“We’re all being profiled all the time. We just don’t know it as people who are white,” he said. “We’re expected to do and be certain things. … We hold each other to certain standards. … If you’re white in this country you should be succeeding.” Poor whites are labeled as “white trash” or “trailer trash,” he said.
The work for whites is to educate other white people, “and not just white people we get along with. We need to find ways to talk to all white people,” Pedersen said. But it’s important not to do it in a way that makes people feel judged. Pedersen calls that “not calling out but calling in.”
Pedersen said helping free people of color from “the long history of oppression
… will also lead to our freedom” because whites suffer from racial divide, as well.
“The rates of suicide and depression among white people [are] skyrocketing,” Pedersen said. “One of the dimensions of white superiority culture is to strive toward perfectionism. … If we look at it closely, we will understand that we are also being impacted by the effects of racism.”
George Floyd’s name has joined Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Ahmaud Arbery on the lengthening list of black men killed by police or others. Then there are the names that go unreported, or don’t produce nationwide protests.
One of those is Breonna Taylor.
On March 13, Louisville police entered the home of Taylor, an emergency medical technician, on a no-knock search warrant, according to her family’s attorney. When her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot an officer in the leg, believing the police to be intruders, they shot Taylor, who was asleep, eight times, killing her. Unlike Floyd’s killers, the police who shot Taylor have not been charged.
“There’s been no real national coverage of her story and certainly no mass mobilization around her killing or discussion even about no-knock warrants,” said Crystal Hayes, an assistant professor in Sacred Heart University’s School of Social Work who co-teaches a course in antiracism with Jill Manit, also an assistant professor. Hayes is black; Manit is white.
“We also need to remember that black women are also victims of police violence in this country,” Hayes said.