My Path to Trying to Be an Anti-Racist activist Part II
My Path to Trying to Be an Anti-Racist activist Part II
In 1966, I entered graduate school at the University of Chicago. This was right after Martin Luther King Jr.’s failed attempt at desegregating Chicago housing. As King later reported “Bottles and bricks were thrown at us; we were often beaten… I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I had never seen, even in Mississippi, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as in Chicago.” Chicago was even more segregated than NYC.
I am sure I missed a lot of what was happening in Black communities as a grad student at a university encroaching on adjoining Black neighborhoods. The next few years were a blur as I became increasingly radicalized and also overwhelmed. What’s relevant here are my first encounters with the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, and especially his epic Black Reconstruction, in a movement study group. I was introduced to the concept of “white privilege”—an outgrowth of what Du Bois called the “psychological wages of whiteness”. I was fortunate enough to introduce Muhammad Ali at an antiwar rally after he enunciated the racial component of the American war in Vietnam. The genocidal nature of the war became clear to me when I attended the second session of the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal in Copenhagen in 1967. I heard testimony about torture, the use of the deadly Agent Orange, and more. The US was fighting a racist war.
The political question then confronting white activists was how to respond to the rise of Black power. Desire for Black self-reliance and anger at whites were encapsulated in the move toward Black power, which seemed naturally to flow out of the Southern experience combined with the recent success of African liberation and decolonization movements. Basic questions were being raised about the motivation for white participation in the civil rights movement. Had it represented an unconscious desire to replay the traditional Black-white relationship, in which white assumptions and verbalistics allowed Whites to maintain control? Or did whites desire approval from Blacks, craving gratitude from the oppressed as self-affirmation? Were whites escaping from their 'own' communities, their 'own' issues? Was the motivation merely liberal guilt in one of its many guises, the fruit of fighting 'someone else's' causes? Or was the tempest also the inevitable friction of two different cultures confronting each other with power relationships up for grabs? Or all of the above?
One way the people I was working with tried to resolve the challenge of Black power was through unbridled support for the Black Panther Party (BPP). The BPP, while a Black-led group, was not a Black separatist group; it had a class analysis, and in Chicago initiated the idea (later adopted by Jesse Jackson) of a Rainbow Coalition of different racial groups. In fact, the BPP often got into confrontations (sometimes provoked by police) with more nationalist groups. This illustrated the point that following Black leadership, however was not so simple, in that it assumed agreement among Blacks—even Black radicals-- that didn’t always exist.
What of “identity” politics, a concept popularized by the Black feminists of the Combahee River Collective in the 1970s? Many leftists lament that identity politics—e.g., focused on race or gender--has come to replace a more general ‘class” politics. It is, true that racial identity—or gender identity—does not guarantee progressive or anti-racist politics. Yet in a world where oppression is often identity-based—and where anti-Blackness has been central to US culture and politics-- identities cannot be wished away; they must be worked through and negotiated. Since in our society class and race are so intertwined; we must be tuned into how race and class complicate each other to have any shot at moving forward. The Combahee Collective, as well as Kimberlé Crenshaw, developed the idea of intersectionality of ‘identities’ to deepen understanding of how multiple identities define our lives and to recover and highlight the role of Black women in social justice work.
After the turmoil of the ‘60s and ‘70s, while remaining politically active, my main focus was on earning a living and on my family. I continued to read Black history and follow Black politics as the backlash against the Black freedom movement gained steam under Nixon and then Reagan. Coded ‘dog whistle’ racism replaced the openly racist language of the Jim Crow era while the reforms of the ‘60s were systematically undermined. The public sector was stigmatized as “Black” space and was defunded and delegitimized.
After working as a computer programmer for years, I became a high school Social Studies teacher in 1993. I saw how academic tracking, disproportionate discipline policies, the scarcity of teachers of color failed Black and Brown students. After I taught high school, I became Director of UNC-Chapel Hill Teaching Fellows in 1999—a teacher training program--I had the opportunity, along with dedicated college students, to organize an annual Let’s Talk RACE conference. This helped me engage with the rich understandings of Black and Latinx educators who came to speak at our conferences. I saw “culturally responsive” teaching as a further development of ideas that I had long grappled with. I also worked with others to challenge the test regimen that has come to dominate our public schools. This led local work around connected issues such as the drug war, the school-to-prison pipeline, mass incarceration, the housing crisis, the attack on immigrants, and other efforts to control and punish Black and Brown communities.
The emergence of the Black Lives Matter Movement in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin led to an explosion of anti-racist activity. Much of this activity culminated in the widespread response to George Floyd’s murder last summer. This has opened up new space for anti-racist organizing and reinvigorated me in retirement. Anti-racist ideas marginalized for years have now entered the mainstream. My work with we are are for the last few years has deepened my understanding of racism, sharpened my ideas for opposing it, and inspired me to do more. The goal is to listen with an open heart and mind to the voices of BIPOC and engage my whole self in the work, without arrogance or the need to control. Like others, I still have a ways to go, but I am encouraged even in the face of an aggressive white supremacist movement to keep at it. Otherwise, our democracy and our nation are lost.
This has been Part II of an essay series by Mr. Howie about his journey to anti-racism education.
Are you an educator, parent/caregiver, or student interested in contributing to the blog? We are now accepting submissions for the spring and summer. Please email your interests or questions to sarajanee@weare-nc.org.