Will You Be There, Good 'White' People?

So already, over the last few weeks, I've been paying attention to the online aftermath of the latest deadly act of racial hatred in America, the shooting deaths of nine Black members of a prayer group meeting in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Some people have expressed their own thoughts and feelings; others have posted articles and columns offering others' thoughts and feelings; yet others have shared links to resources providing information about organizing and acting in response. 

In addition to trying to keep up with news reports and journalists' commentaries, I've also been paying a a great deal of attention to the Facebook page of Fanshen Cox, an educator-actress and former student who has dedicated herself personally and professionally to compelling people--us--to understand the always profound, sometimes insidious effects of "race" on each of us individually and all of us collectively, and then, on the basis of that understanding, to strive actively to create a just, peaceful America.

Urban Cusp's Photograph

The wrinkle for me personally has been that for a good part of the time period beginning on June 17, I was either in Singapore** or in transit between Singapore and the U.S.A. From June 25 on, the combination of intermittent wi-fi connectivity and the time zone difference made for a curious relationship with what people in America were posting online. Whenever I read any recent post in an in-progress discussion thread on Fanshen's page, I was certain I had missed some of the relevant posts preceding it. And despite my efforts to keep up with the unfolding national narrative, it was only yesterday that I learned about the church burnings that followed in the wake of the church shootings. It's been disconcerting to think about how easily I managed not to know about them.

But back to Fanshen herself. In addition to being an actress and educator, Fanshen is the creator and co-producer of One Drop of Love: A Daughter's Search for Her Father's Racial Approval. Through her play and her various other professional activities, she illuminates the history of "race" in America; firmly but compassionately urges people to acknowledge and explore how they have suffered and/or benefited from the systemic race-related oppression that continues to shape America; and then encourages people to act to end that systemic oppression. In the last months, Fanshen has been encouraging White people to grapple with their (our) privilege through both personal reflection and dialogue with others. 

And more recently, in the wake of the Charleston shootings, she has been actively encouraging the "good 'White' people" in her life--and that group includes me and a number of her other former teachers* at the Pilot School, the democratic alternative school at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School--to become genuinely and visibly active in the movement for the full equality of Black and Brown people. Specifically, she's been asking us to move beyond being "supporters" and "allies" of people of color, and to become instead marching activists and "co-conspirators."

She's doing the right thing in challenging us. But it's never comfortable to be challenged to step up and out; and she's getting bumped and bruised for her somewhat public, pointed calls to action.*** Some whose feathers she's ruffled have been making how she's asked us more important than what she's asked of us. But ruffled feathers are not broken wings: they tend to smooth themselves out. It's fine if Fanshen ruffles some feathers for a good cause. 

Still, just because she is bravely and deliberately galvanizing us and shepherding us in new directions doesn't mean that Fanshen--or anyone else, for that matter--has nothing more to think about and to learn. But I never doubt Fanshen's capacity to learn or to love. And I never doubt her commitment. 

To be honest, I am seldom asked to clarify and assert my beliefs and commitments, let alone challenged to act on them--and I suspect there are many like me in Greater Boston's wealthier zip codes. In groups that prize politeness, ripple-free harmony, and pleasantness over all else, authentic exchanges about misaligned words and actions are deliberately avoided. Thus for me, to have been called out at all, let alone to have been called out by name in public, and to have been called out by name in public by someone willing to identify herself as the one doing the calling out--it's the lack of anonymity in all of this that is so novel in this current online climate--has felt simultaneously awkward and momentous.**** Maybe, just maybe, I've thought to myself, at the insistence of Fanshen and others like her, we are on the brink of a new age of accountability in which we'll all learn to stretch beyond our comfort zones, excuses, and hypocrisies in order to do what is right.

So here's my personalized chronology of this series of events that's challenging all of us to walk our talk and take responsibility for being the people we claim to be. 

• On Wednesday, June 17, the nine Black Charleston churchgoers were shot and killed. It was three days after the CRLS Kimbrough Scholars Program teacher team had completed their Civil Rights history curriculum mapping for next year, and the course's theme--that America's racial past is manifest in America's racial present--was all too evident.

• On Thursday, June 18, Dylann Roof was arrested and charged with having committed the murders. When the press revealed that he maintained a racist web site, the connections between past and present were confirmed. 

• On Thursday, June 18, Fanshen posted a tweet by Rosa A. Clemente--I can't find the precise tweet that Fanshen posted, but its spirit and content were much like those of this other Clemente tweet Fanshen posted on the same day.

• Later on Thursday, June 18, I received an e-mail notification that Fanshen had tagged me and some other people in a comment that began with "Where's my Cambridge crew?" Looking at the discussion thread, I saw the above tweet and some others exhorting White people to do more than feel sad, sympathetic, or righteously angry on behalf of people of color. I also saw my name--and felt uncomfortable, publicly chastised for my silence, shamed. I momentarily bristled at the thought of needing to justify my not having been on Facebook as often as I usually am. But as I read on, I quickly I realized that Fanshen was asking me to do something quite specific and concrete: to stand up, to march, to be counted. Her clarity was helpful. And the stakes were too high for her not to ask insistently and personally. She was trusting that those she respected and loved would understand--and I've been a teacher for too long not to recognize the powerful combination of "loving" and "challenging." 

• A little later on Thursday, June 18, I responded to Fanshen: "Here I am! Off to Singapore, but will get moving when I'm back!" I wrote that response never having been brave enough to be much of a marcher in the past and not knowing where and how I could get moving; but I also could see that others were posting information that could help. I could figure out how to do this, then actually do it, I thought. Meanwhile, between Thursday, June 19 and Thursday, June 25, when I left for Singapore, I looked at Fanshen's Facebook page at least once a day to see who was saying what. 

• On Monday, June 22, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called for the confederate flag to cease to be displayed on South Carolina's government buildings. Maybe this really was a watershed moment, I thought. But I feared that retaliation would follow in wake of this announcement.  

• On Friday, June 26, while I was in transit to Singapore, Reverend Clementa Pinckney's funeral was held.  

• On Sunday, June 28 in Singapore, I read President Obama's eulogy for Clementa Pinckney online, watched videos of it, and read a few articles that others had posted on Facebook about the significance of Obama's response. Perhaps this latest terrible event and the response to it really was marking a turning point. It was strange to be in Singapore when all of this was happening back home.

• On Tuesday, June 30, still in Singapore, I received an e-mail notification that Fanshen had tagged me in another comment on Facebook; she was feeling shocked and profoundly let down by some of the responses from her Good 'White' People.

White fragility & privilege 101*****: 

I ask a group of 'white' friends who are frequently on social media - and most of whom are from the 'multicultural Mecca' of Cambridge, MA - to do more towards making things equitable for Black & Brown people.

They respond with:

1) telling me I didn't ask nicely or delicately enough and telling me how I should behave or ask so they feel more comfortable; and/or
2) challenging why I should get to tell them what to do; and/or
3) deflecting by making comparisons to other disenfranchised groups; and/or
4) saying they don't use social media for political purposes - only to post jokes or lighter fare (though their timelines speak otherwise); and/or
5) telling me I've caused damage to their reputations by 'calling them out' - when the true opportunity for damage presented itself in their responses; and/or
6) implying or stating that Black & Brown people need to do better for themselves; and/or
7) deflecting by not commenting on the article I posted or its contents; and/or
8) listing things they already do towards social justice; and/or
Worst of all...
9) crickets

Good 'White' people, how about if you try this response instead:

"Yes! I need to do more and I WILL do more because the discomfort I feel in this moment is tiny compared to the discomfort Black & Brown people live with every day."'

Because we know and love you, and we believe you and will hold you to it.

Initially, I was as surprised as she was by the responses she received. But then I recalled my own suspicions that some of the "good 'White' people" I know are too attached to, too proud of their reputations for being good White people.

I had to look up the word "crickets" in the slang dictionary to know that the silence of so many of us was among the many causes of Fanshen's pain. But I so appreciated that Fanshen had made clear the kind of response she was hoping for, along with the promise to trust in that response. As Switch authors Chip and Dan Heath might have put it, she was continuing to "shape the path."

• I responded on July 1 in Singapore but what was still June 30 in the USA; it took me a while to decide just what to say, and I worried that the 15-hour time difference between Los Angeles and Singapore would be mistaken for crickets. As I contemplated the discussion strand, a respected colleague of mine responded with an apology and a request for guidance. Her apology felt right to me, so I apologized and shared my own reaction and thoughts of the moment, captured in the adjacent screen shot.

So now it's late on July 6, and I'm in the final stages of writing this blog post. Unquestionably, Fanshen has led valiantly, responsibly, authentically, and kindly during this difficult and important moment. Still, from my vantage point as one nearing her sixtieth birthday, I believe that there are a few things worth her thinking about. So I'll write as if I'm talking to Fanshen directly:

• First of all, don't assume that all crickets are comments. It's hard to know for sure what silences mean. That said, you're probably right that most crickets are comments.  

• Understand that the topic of who should march for and with Black and Brown people has periodically been complicated by divergent opinions about whether the presence of White people supports or co-opts. A few months back, I read an article--or perhaps it was comments in response to an article--that questioned the participation of White people in Black Lives Matter events because they couldn't know firsthand the lived experience of Black people. Something else I read suggested that White participation shifted the attention from Black people to White People. So it's probable that some of the people you're addressing have heard mixed messages regarding their participation and have been struggling to know how to participate. The beauty of what you're doing is that you're making clear that you want White people to show up. You're making clear what role White people can play even though they can't know experientially what it is to live Black lives. You're offering your own coherent message to supersede the mixed media messages that might discourage White people from standing visibly with and/or for people of color. Thank you for that! 

• Finally, remember that you and I--you with your autobiographical show and vibrant online networks and I with my blog--are used to asserting our views and our lives in public. We're used to being confronted from time to time, and we have the thicker skins that go with that. Many of the people we know, especially if they're closer to my age than to yours, aren't nearly so accustomed to this, even though they participate in social media. That said, there's no reason you shouldn't use social media to ask important things of particular people at this critical moment--or any moment.

So I end this blog post with gratitude and hope. My former Pilot School dean Ray Shurtleff said it best when he posted a few minutes after I did on Fanshen's Facebook page: "Even at my age I'm still learning - from you and all of my students."

I'm especially grateful to Fanshen, who keeps bravely pushing us all toward worthy, difficult goals. And I'm also grateful to my online former Pilot School students (recently I've realized that they range in age from thirty-two to forty-five, the same ages I was when I was a Pilot School teacher) and my online Pilot School colleagues: without you and the other educators in my life, I wouldn't be part of any ongoing conversations about the events of the last weeks and months and the best ways to respond to them. Few non-educators in my predominantly White life are expecting me to do anything except know about these events. Yes, there's work to be done.

Finally, thanks to the many informational responses that Fanshen has received, I've joined the SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) network. Fanshen, you've gotten me moving if not yet marching. Yes, I will be there. I know you'll hold me to that.

* Technically, I never had Fanshen as a student in an English class. She was a senior during the 1987-8 school year, an established, positive student leader who played an important role in my Pilot School enculturation process during the first of my thirteen years as a Pilot School teacher. The Pilot School students frequently viewed  Pilot School staff members as "our teachers" and Pilot School graduates frequently viewed all Pilot staff members as "our teachers."
** I was off to do a week of workshops for teachers and teacher-leaders as part of ASCD Singapore's ongoing professional development program.
*** Fanshen is doing this on her private Facebook page rather on the One Drop of Love public Facebook page. She has lots of Facebook friends, however, not all of whom know one another, which leads to that "public" feeling. Before writing and posting this blog, I asked Fanshen's permission to write about, quote from, and photograph her Facebook page.
**** The only other time I've been challenged in this way was some years ago when I was on a Cambridge Forum panel with Katherine Paterson about how and whether religion could/should be taught in schools. When the moderator asked me if I believed in G-d, I realized how few people, even people who had known me well for years, had ever asked me that. I felt put on the spot, but I was also glad to answer, and I think others were glad I answered rather than avoided the question. 
***** I've added some blank lines to Fanshen's post to make it easier to read.