Updated blog post title: So how do you talk about racism in a predominantly white institution?

Note: this post was originally titled, “So how do you talk about racism when there’s only one, or a few people of color?” The change reflects my decision to use systems centered language. There is, after all, a reason why there are (still) only a few.

First of all, this is a question of access and ability to thrive in many communities. When there’s only one or a few students, employees, or families of color, you have to recognize that that’s a result, not an inevitable fact. It’s the result of a system (of admissions or hiring) that is perfectly designed to achieve that under-representation. A system that is racist. Just look at the results. Are your hires/admissions currently and historically antiracist? If not, then: racist.

So. What to do? First of all, while you advocate for greater ethnoracial diversity throughout the admissions/hiring process (from active recruitment, to actual applicants, to resulting acceptances, to retained employees and students who are thriving), ask for clarification when code like “good fit” or “professional” is used to qualify some candidates (and disqualify others). Ask whether you’re admitting/requiring to remain who you’ve been institutionally, or to grow into who you can be. You don’t have to wait for training to change hiring and admissions now. (And when you do training, be the advocate for applying it in real-time while decisions are being made and no one “has time” to talk about equity and inclusion because you’re under deadline. Your colleagues will be irritated with you, but this is about changing systems, not just paying for an implicit bias workshop, and change requires that we change how we do when it matters, not just when it’s convenient.)

Meanwhile, you have this group in which there’s only one or a few people of color, and you know you need to talk about racism. My questions are:

• What do you expect people of color to do in these conversations?
• What do you expect white people to do?

Try to answer that honestly.

Tacitly, people of color, no matter how young, are often expected to carry the conversation. To be the voice of experience. To educate white people. To be “authentic” and “real.” To expose themselves unequally for the sake of white people, sometimes including their teachers and bosses.

So white people are supposed to be quiet and learn. Because you don’t have any experience. And this is not your place to speak (although it is a thing that white people will tell people of color that what happened to them wasn’t racist and that they shouldn’t “make everything about race” or “be so sensitive”).

But it is. A friend asked about my last post, about speaking up in townhalls about racism, wondering as a white person: but isn’t it wrong to presume to speak for black people and other people of color? To talk for them?

Absolutely. So don’t do that. Next question: But then, what is there to talk about?

Your experience. Your experience of privilege. Your experience of privilege in your life and community, in a world of unequal privilege and disadvantage.

I talk with groups all the time about the n-word and homophobic slurs. And to be clear: I do not identify as black or queer. I also do not commonly get identified as black or queer. So who am I to talk about the n-word? Some people would and have argued that it’s not my place.

It is definitely not my place to speak about what it’s like to be called those slurs. And I don’t. It is my place, I believe, to talk about what it’s like to be a person in the world where slurs that were invented to dehumanize do exactly that. Where some people use those slurs with the intent to degrade, others out of ignorance, others to seem cool, others when they lose their cool, others when they’re “just kidding” and think “it doesn’t mean anything,” others to reappropriate the language… meanwhile, the person sitting next to them hears exactly their intention, or something else. I have a lot to say about living in a world where these slurs may not directly target me, but my observation, my participation, my silence and my choice to be actively antiracist and antihomophobic matter.

Everyone needs to talk. If that’s hard at first, it’s partly because the norms of talking about racism are grounded in the expectations of white supremacist culture, and inflict a pretense of “reversed authority” on people of color: it’s a performative deference that, while it may be meant sincerely, nonetheless places the burden on people of color to enlighten white people.

So if you want to talk about racism, you need to cultivate and practice baseline fluency. Just like you wouldn’t ask kids to do calculus without a foundation in arithmetic and algebra, you can’t ask them to talk about racism without a foundation in race and diversity. And while research suggests that by age 5, kids of color raised by families of color are more likely to have been exposed to racial language than white kids raised by white families, this is not an invitation to stereotype. If kids of color are more culturally competent than white kids, it’s by necessity and for survival, not innate.

This means that you can’t just talk about racism. You have to name and just talk about race as fact. Ex. Shakespeare was a white playwright. Just like Toni Morrison was a black writer. These are just facts. Yes, in the beginning, my students thought that every time I pointed out that someone was white we were going to talk about how racist they were. It’s a process to undo the socialization of silence about whiteness, which ultimately empowers white supremacy. It’s also an act of equity to acknowledge that Shakespeare was racial too–not just “human.”

And you have to talk about race as an integral, and potentially fulfilling part of who we are. In his research on the correlation between racial identity and happiness for African-Americans, psychologist Stevie Yap theorizes that “blacks with a strong sense of racial identity may feel more connected to their racial group, which in turn makes them happy.” It turns out that belonging and perceptions of discrimination are critical mediators of life satisfaction. So if our conversations about race tend to focus predominantly or exclusively on racial discrimination and ignore racial identity as a factor in community and happiness, we’re disregarding a significant aspect of what race is, and potentially doing some damage to our students and colleagues (and not just those of color).

You also need to alleviate the burden of representation for everyone, including individuals whose identities, experiences and opinions are under-represented. How? Instead of just asking everyone what they think, ask everyone to imagine 4-6 possibilities of what people could think before they speak. This is practicing divergent thinking, and it’s also an act of equity. How so?

• The act of “saying what I think” requires that I feel safe enough, that it’s important enough and that I’m able enough to express myself in a way that you will receive. Those can be steep hurdles.
• Just expecting that once everyone shows up, all “we” have to do is be enriched by “others'” experiences (notice that “we” is really just referring to over-represented people) is not just putting a lot on whoever is seen as the “other”: it’s demanding labor that wasn’t part of the original agreement. (Honestly, I think some schools may need to rethink charging tuition to some students and start paying them for their consulting.) It’s encouraging intellectual laziness. And it’s an inaccurate and unhelpful interpretation of how “diversity works”: actually, diversity makes us smarter when everyone engages and thinks more actively; when the institution designs for equity and inclusion; and when we all grow in our cultural competency.

How to facilitate 4-6 possible perspectives?

• The key is to imagine what’s possible, not what they anyone actually thinks. No one is “speaking from the ‘I'” for this brainstorm. (Because as common and commonsense as that norm may be, it’s also a privilege of those who have evidence of their personal validation in the group. Here’s more on problematic discussion guidelines.)
• Ask the group to use “yes, and…” or “however” (more than once: keep adding to or flipping the previous thought).
• You can facilitate this aloud with the group and ask individuals to practice it on their own.
• There’s no need to stereotype who they think might think… it’s about generating possibilities of perspective (and not letting identity bound our presumptions).
• You don’t have to stop at 6. I find that at least 4-6 means that we have to get creative and go beyond the bounds of what we initially think/prefer to believe.

Finally, in this noncomprehensive but long post, when (actually, starting before) you talk about racism, it helps to activate people’s whole sense of themselves. I’ll just note two critical dimensions of self here:

• What they value. In their research on self-affirmation, conducted with seventh graders (see Whistling Vivaldi – Chapter 9, Section 7, by Claude Steele) and undergrads, Cohen, Garcia et al. found that writing “about a core personal value, an exercise that has been found in previous research to buffer minority students against the stress of being negatively stereotyped in school” improved black and Latino students’ grades for at least two years. Re-read that last sentence. The act of writing to themselves about a core value activated two years’ of protection against a pervasive implicit racial bias. (That said, I suggest you don’t stop there. Design the environment, not just the individuals, for justice.)
• That they are resilient. Dr. & Dr. Duke started out studying resilience in students with learning disabilities. Then 911 caused them to focus on resilience in children who live through trauma. The common factor was “a child’s sense of being part of a larger family.” The Dukes found that, “The most healthful narrative… is called the oscillating family narrative: ‘Dear, let me tell you, we’ve had ups and downs in our family. We built a family business. Your grandfather was a pillar of the community. Your mother was on the board of the hospital. But we also had setbacks. You had an uncle who was once arrested. We had a house burn down. Your father lost a job. But no matter what happened, we always stuck together as a family.'” What does this have to do with talking about racism with students and colleagues? I believe people need to know that they are connected, intimately and distantly, with others before them who have survived talking about and confronting racism. They are sitting in the room with people who are surviving and confronting racism right now. They are doing it themselves. Including the white people. They need to know that they are not alone, that they can do this, and that there is hope.

* Thanks to my colleagues SK, who always makes me think better and more; and to MRC for re-prompting this post.