racism (Page 4)

This past weekend, Shay Stewart-Bouley (aka “Black Girl In Maine“) was co-facilitating a discussion about cross-racial communication with her colleague and friend, Debbie Irving. A white man arrived at the event with the intention of stirring things up, believing his point would not be well-received. You can read more about the event, and what happened, here, and about Shay’s response here. The fact is, every time Shay speaks out about racism, she is putting herself in harm’s way. This is not an exaggeration. It’s not just uncomfortable work, it’s dangerous. She gets death threats regularly.Read More →

One of the reasons I love Quakers is without doing it perfectly, we try to live by Jesus’ example. I was recently reading a “minute” from New England Yearly Meeting, 2016 that I want to share. From, https://neym.org/news/2016-yearly-meeting-minute-white-supremacy:
“This minute is an important instance of speaking Truth to power. This minute represents the hard truth of Friends of color. The largely white Yearly Meeting is the power that needs to receive this Truth.Read More →

To my white friends: please listen closely to your inner voices. Please notice if you — even for a millisecond — have a flash of a thought of “they must’ve done something wrong/illegal” when you hear about the number of times people of color are hassled by the police.Read More →

The part of my racism story I want to share now is from 2007, though it includes a reference to the experiences I shared in my racism story, part 1 (or, “will you be my black friend?”). It’s my hope that my friends and peers who are white might read my stories and consider their own experiences as people in America who identify as white; who, therefore, benefit from the racist structures of our society. I have found it helpful over the years to get honest with myself about the flickering but problematic background thought processes that have blocked me from authentic relationships with people of color:
“she’s Black, she’s Black, she’s BLAAAAACK!”
“She’s Black, she’s Black, she’s BLAAAAACK!” was just about all my brain could handle. Maintaining a simple and polite conversation was barely possible. No matter how much we had in common, no matter how likely a future friendship, I could think of nothing but that amazing dark skin, the transcendent hair texture, and my entire personal history of race relationships. Oh, how I wanted to prove to this woman that I was not like just any white woman! I knew, of course, it was just this level of self-consciousness that would make me utterly annoying to her. But, I just couldn’t help myself.
Helping myself, though, is really what race relations is about for me these days. I do care about the greater socio-political issues (shocking disregard for people’s lives all across the continent of Africa, overt brutality in our country, job discrimination, and of course the list goes on). However, my personal journey with racism now centers around me, my husband, and most of all, my daughter…
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