Ways to Peacefully and Effectively Counter Racism
Here are some tips to develop a strategy to support individuals and groups move through these kinds of challenges in a way that bridges people’s experience instead of creating greater division.
Love While Countering Racists: A True Story
By Ana Perez
At a recent training I was leading for an all queer and multiracial group, an older white man “John” took offense to my use of the word queer. As an icebreaker, I had asked the group to share in a pair, when did you first know you were queer? During the debrief, John took time to explain how the Q-word brought back painful memories of the many ways he was shamed growing up. As he explained, he got emotional and then said “using the Q-word is like using the N-word for me.” And he actually said the N-word.
The air in the room suddenly got heavy and many people shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The three black men in the group looked stunned, and the rest of the people of color in the circle turned to me to do something. The white man kept talking, completely unaware of that this micro-aggression had caused a change in the room. I waited for a white person to address what happened. But folks remained silent, so just as the next person began sharing, I stopped the process.
“I want to stop and check something out with you and the group. Is it ok if I do that?” I asked John and turned to the group to seek their approval. “John, thank you for sharing the impact that I had on you when I used the Q-word in this circle. I want to account to you for that. I also heard you use the N-word and I am wondering if you would be open to hearing the impact that that word could have had in the space?”
John looked at me lost and unsure. So I repeated myself. Before finishing a black man in the circle jumped in. He was angry and loving at the same time. He spoke about how hearing that word made him afraid that this was not a safe space for him. He shared that challenging the use of the word was necessary for him to remain open and hopeful. At a moment there were tears in his eyes. As John listened, his facial expression shifted from looking lost to looking mortified. Yet he stayed present and listened.
John accounted for having used the N-word. And a few other people shared the impact they experienced. To create closure I said, “the expectations we need to have are that we will screw up. We can lean into love and trust that each person here is deeply committed to justice, and stay engaged. Thank you all for being vulnerable and sharing your hearts to help us move forward. I asked the group: Is there someone here who is not ok, moving forward?”
A young Latino man spoke and said “I am not ok, but I am fine moving forward.”
I offered the option of finding a way to get feedback from the group and to organize another time when as a group they could go deeper on this.
It takes this level of vulnerability in all of our parts to step into the scary place of facing our blind spots and hearing corrective information that can help us to change. As equity warriors, whether we are leading a process, participating in a process, or if we are the person that put their foot in their mouth; we must have skills to align our thinking and feeling before acting. At a personal level, knowing how my body will react in a moment of stress and how to calm myself enough to think through my options and try to foresee the impact of those actions are crucial.
Here are some tips to develop a strategy to support individuals and groups move through these kinds of challenges in a way that bridges people’s experience instead of creating greater division.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
- Buckminster Fuller
Love While Countering Racists: A Facilitators Guide
By Ana Perez
Take Care of Yourself
Take a few deep breaths and ask yourself some questions:
Am I triggered right now? Can I bracket my trigger enough to show up strong for the group?
Do a quick triage of the group. Who could be most hurt by what just happened? What are their internal conditions? Have you seen this person deal with a similar situation before and how did they react? Are there any wild cannons in the room? Is there a white ally?
How much time can we re-allocate to manage this situation?
What are the competing issues, hurts, and emotions present?
Identify what needs to be named to have those most impacted feel heard by creating a safe space (but often deeply uncomfortable) for people to express their thoughts and feelings.
10 Steps to Facilitating Intervention
1. An open: Acknowledge to the group that discomfort is natural and needed when managing challenges across difference. And tell the group that you recommend slowing down the process to address what has emerged. Lower the expectations by naming your own vulnerability.
“Moments like this can derail the whole process, so let’s address it. The way I prepare, and how I ask groups to prepare for an equity session, is different than what we’ve planned today. Let’s see if by using some of our agreements we can hear the impact, account for behavior, and choose to continue.”
2. Seek permission: In my example, I did it by first acknowledging and accounting for the impact of my use of the Q-word and then naming the violation I heard the person make, and asking if he was willing to hear the impact.
3. Anticipate response: Don’t be afraid if one person starts to share the impact in a passionate manner and wait for a moment of pause to re-establish the expectations of how the conversation will unfold.
4. Check for agreement: “It feels like there are a lot of feelings about this issue. Is it ok if we put a pause to our agenda and take some time to work through this moment?”
5. Time: How much time will be spent on resolving the issue? Reach agreement.
6. Check-in with the group norms: For this process, we were using the VISIONS INC. Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Communications. We used: self-focus, notice intent and impact, and ok to disagree not ok to blame, shame or attack self or others.
7. Offer participants feedback: Interrupt and ask people to reframe their statements to “I statements” if anyone starts to point fingers or to assign meaning to people’s action.
8. Track and honor the time: Once the time is up, say: “The additional time we allocated is now over. I know this is the beginning of a conversation. I know that you all are committed to return to this conversation soon. For now, I am wondering if you are willing to continue with our agenda. Is there anyone here unwilling to continue with our agenda?
9. Consult with group leaders at the break: At the break, check in with the leaders and ask for feedback. Also, check in with the people most impacted and ask if they need anything else from you as the meeting facilitator.
10. Keep it empowering: Create a way for all participants to ask for what they need in order to continue to engage with the group in a healthy and empowering way. I pass around post-its and ask people to write feedback or ask for what else they would need. Collect them and give the feedback to the leaders and develop a plan to address the feedback.
Interrupt Dynamics
Addressing micro-aggressions is challenging in all environments, however in the spaces we create and invite others to participate in, it is our responsibility to build the skills necessary to step up and interrupt these dynamics. Letting comments or behaviors slip erodes the sense of safety and makes real connection across difference impossible. It re-enforces a sense of isolation and powerlessness by groups who are targets of oppression.
White Supremacy Culture
White supremacy culture is one that supports the idea that white people and the ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions of white people are superior to People of Color and their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions. This idea (or ideology) is the glue that binds together institutional policies and practices to create a national and global white supremacy system.
We all live in a white supremacy culture and it impacts all of us.
The purpose of white supremacy culture is to keep racism going. If we live in a culture that teaches us continually that white is better, then we all internalize that belief. Even as we claim we are not racist, we have been conditioned into the racist belief that white is better, which is the source of what many call implicit bias. This conditioning is so strong that children as young as the age of 3 understand that white is better and Black and Brown are at the bottom of the racial hierarchy.
A partial list of white supremacy characteristics includes...
Perfectionism
Either/or thinking
Right to comfort
A sense of urgency
Defensiveness
Quantity over quality
Worship of the written word
Belief in only one right way
Paternalism
Power hoarding
Fear of open conflict
Individualism
Belief that I’m the only one (who can do this right)
Belief that progress is more, bigger
Belief in objectivity
Truth and Reconciliation: How We Can Do It
By Joyce Johnson
Someone you love is dragged off jail. The perpetrators were let go. The courts fail you. There's two trials. The juries are all White. What do you do?
When the very churches, the houses where the love and equality and the justice and the righteousness, whatever denomination or the faith, the Jewish houses, the Christian houses, the Muslim houses, initially pull back?
What do you do?
That was the question we faced about 30 years ago.
And we grappled. We went through things many can only imagine.
What we came to is that first, we’ve got to keep going on.
Secondly, we had to create something new.
And that is what we're still faced with: Creating something new, another possibility because we knew deep down, no matter what was being said in the media or wherever else, whatever the legal institution said, we knew the truth.
Those who were giving their all were having their lives taken.
We knew that those who took the lives were also parts of the same thing that traps all of us. Hate, injustice.
We have to find a way out, for all of us, if there is any hope for our children. We know we have to create something new, and we're here to share that with you, and hopefully we'll all continue to create new things. Because there is a way to make a way out of no way.
What we did in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In 1979, we were organizing textile workers. It was an uphill struggle. We were having a march to promote that work. What we didn’t know is that the Greensboro police had put together a group for the specific purpose of coming to disrupt our march. Nazis took weapons out of the trunk of their cars and fired into the group of people who were gathered for the march.
Jim Waller was shot in the back and killed. Cesar Cauce was shot in the chest and killed. William Sampson was shot in the face. Sandy Smith was shot in the head and killed. And Michael Nathan was shot in the face as he was trying to render service to William Sampson.
All of this was videotaped and the shots were clear, broadcast on the television.
All of the shooters were later acquitted.
What does it take to confuse and frighten a community to the extent that it actually denies what it saw?
In 1999, we formed a local truth and reconciliation commission, inspired by the one shaping South Africa, post-apartheid.
We were, and continue to be, dedicated to carrying out the truth process, with the intent of actually promoting forgiveness and healing.
We brought affected parties together, the labor movement, the women’s movement, the civic minded and the religious groups to the table, to help foster the healing process. We brought former Nazis and Klansmen face to face with the relatives of their victims. We brought everyone together, to the table, to town hall meetings, to forums and events, to look at each other in the eyes. To listen to one another. To sit with each other in humanity, and in that humanity, find the common ground of compassion and forgiveness, to acknowledge the past, release it, and move on, without forgetting it.
Our hope is not to run from the past, but to face it, to really see the past, so yesterday will not be tomorrow.
This is how healing can happen. And this is how we can move on, in one place, together.
