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Trust white people...

12/4/2014

10 Comments

 
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by Kelly McGowan

... to act accordingly. Without persistent intervention, we are very well trained to do so.

The interview video of Darren Wilson is a stark reminder. The child (he invited us into the psyche of his 5 year old self) was clearly raised to be white and encouraged to adopt all the co-occurring neurosis ~ by the look of things, under threat of violence.

While failing to indict Wilson is another harsh indignity for Brown’s family and community, his conviction would not be enough to transform the treatment of black youth by white police. Period.

About the time that I met Allen, I started to frame social injustices just like that with no forward movement. After 20 some years of organizing for just HIV and drug policy, small gains no longer felt like building the bridge as we walk it.

A few years later, Tuesday and I entered the inquiry that launched this blog, What is the next conversation in social justice activism? This small opening was born of a deep desire to get unstuck after decades of anti-oppression trainings and campaign-based activism proved to be not enough to end institutional violence against people of color, even within the social justice organizations that we had created.

In the light of the organizing around Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland… it’s time for a new question. It needs to be something about what it will take for white America to really see what's going on right in front of us.

Through Allen, I was able to hear early #blacklivesmatters activists tell the story of the formation and experience of the first ride to Ferguson. They are bold, decentralized, networked. They center healing and understand complexity. Their messages are heartfelt, grounded in legacy with enough analysis to add precision. Their tactics are grassroots, high tech, media savvy and effective.

It sounds a bit like the best of Occupy, but there are very core differences: The originators are young, black, brown, feminist and queer and intersectionality is both lived (personal) and understood strategically (political). And so many others are following them.

We often are invited to gape at Wilson-style backwardness (“it looks like a demon”) and rarely hear a collective gasp about the more subtle manifestations of middle and upper class whiteness training. The liberal version showed up at Occupy where the white and educated spoke loudly and authoritatively about anti-oppression theory while, too often, not being able to see, hear or work with the people of color standing next to them, especially when they were poor and/or without college education.

There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black kids for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people… [who own] their actions. Not even their actions. The actions of your dad."         Chris Rock, New York Magazine, December 2014

Looking into Wilson's baby blues is a but for the grace of god go I kind of experience. Due to consistent and multi-level interventions ~ church, school, family and, perhaps most transformative, from people of color on the frontlines ~ I have come to see a nephew or a friend when I look at Mike Brown. Brother Wilson was trained otherwise. As a result of almost 30 years in grassroots driven HIV and drug policy work, when I look at #blacklivesmatters activists, I have learned to see teachers, political allies, friends and leaders. Anti-oppression training and its analysis of victimization made me smarter, but it did not give me this point of view. Learning to show up without all the answers did.

The bottom line is, I don’t trust white people to lead when transformative change is what is needed. It’s just not possible for us to understand the whole as individuals or as leadership teams, collectives, board of directors, etc. We still have a lot of learning to do about being nicer to people and tougher on systems.

I very much trust #blacklivesmatters to move us forward. They see so much about us all. And to transform things, my gut tells me we still need to figure out how to stand together and ask:

Look at this mess, what are we going to do about it?


#powerbeyondprivilege
#transformnotregulate
#analysisisnotrelationship
#thinkingtogether


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Being very nice to my nieces and nephew, teachers and future leaders all
10 Comments
Adrienne Bradley
12/4/2014 07:51:42 am

Beautifully said.

Reply
gail jacob
12/4/2014 08:03:03 am

Yes. Thank you, Kelly.

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Chris Corrigan link
12/4/2014 11:56:04 am

You simply cannot teach people to think differently. You can only put them into contexts in which they need to work together differently and the brain will do the rest. Kelly alludes to this beautifully in her piece where she talks about all of her learning to shift her viewpoint coming from working together rather than an intellectual analysis of how she should think differently. Find all kinds of places where people can do work together regardless of whether it's related to social justice and change work. Creating containers for the interaction of interdependence is what creates a change in thinking and it has a permanent effect because it actually rewires human brains.

Reply
Kelly McGpowan
12/5/2014 01:18:11 am

Yes! It's what Tuesday talks about in Shared Work.

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eileen reed
12/5/2014 01:20:03 am

Kelly,
as my kids would say "I am lovin this" conversation. Thanks

Reply
Kelly McGowan
12/5/2014 01:32:24 am

Thanks Adrienne, gail and eileen!

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Kelly McGowan
12/5/2014 02:27:35 am

I would like to honor my dear friend, love, sister, teacher and transgender AIDS activist Chloe Dzubilo's on her birthday. She would be 54. These words came to me today through an article from 2006 that was posted on World AIDS Day, Dec 1, 2014. They speaks to the heart of what this work is all about:
"I want to embrace everyone no matter what. ‘Political’ for me is when I walk out of my house. If I can make an impact with my allies who share my views and/or pose questions to people, then that is maybe the best I can do politically. Love seems to be political to me these days, and has for many years. That loving somebody is so political,” she says, “is such a heartbreaking truth.”

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gail jacob
12/8/2014 04:56:34 am

These words of yours in particular spoke to me: "I have come to see a nephew or a friend when I look at Mike Brown….when I look at #blacklivesmatters activists, I have learned to see teachers, political allies, friends and leaders. Anti-oppression training and its analysis of victimization made me smarter, but it did not give me this point of view. Learning to show up without all the answers did.”

I feel old, these days, having been a teen during passage of the major civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1968, having spent my whole adult life trying to understand oppression and working for social justice. I bow to my younger friends and daughter for analyses of intersectionality and theoretical frameworks. What I know to be true in my life in the midwest is that social segregation is almost a hundred percent. White people mostly know people like ourselves. While many of us care about “all people” it is mostly an abstract concept. Until we come to see Mike Brown as a friend or family member. Until we feel it urgently and personally. Maybe there are other ways, but the key for me is to find ways to be in relationship to each other and as you say, Kelly, keep showing up without the answers.

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kelly link
12/4/2017 10:30:46 am

gail jacob ~ you and your Madison crew are such an inspiration! You have consciously entered the great undoing of social segregation in the most beautiful way. love love love. teach the world your story!

Reply
Tony McGowan
12/10/2014 05:59:17 am

Well put Kelly.
Love, brother Tony

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    Three friends and colleagues  - Allen Frimpong, Kelly McGowan, and Tuesday Ryan-Hart - writing about our learning as we create and participate in the next conversations in social justice.

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