According to Miller, when a relationship is growth-producing, it results in five good things: increased zest, a sense of empowerment, greater knowledge, an increased sense of self-worth, and a desire for more connection. In interviews done with White teachers who were leading discussions with others about racism, there was abundant evidence of these benefits. Said one, “The thing that’s happened for me is that I’m no longer afraid to bring [race] up. I look to bring it up; I love bringing it up.” This educator now brings these issues up regularly with her colleagues, and they, like she, seem to feel liberated by the opportunity for dialogue. Describing a discussion group in which participants talked about racial issues, she said, “It was such a rich conversation and it just flowed the whole time. It was exciting to be a part of it. Everybody contributed and everybody felt the energy and the desire.”
Another participant described the process of sharing the new information she had learned with her adult son and said, “There’s a lot of energy that’s going on in all sorts of ways. It feels wonderful.” Yet another described her own exploration of racial issues as “renewal at midlife.” The increased self-knowledge she experienced was apparent as she said, “I’m continuing to go down the path of discovery for myself about what I think and what I believe and the influences I’ve had in my life.… It impacts me almost every moment of my waking hours.” These benefits of self-discovery are made available to them as the silence about racism is broken.
It is important to say that even as good things are generated, the growth process is not painless. One of the White teachers interviewed described the early phase of her exploration of racism as “hell,” a state of constant dissonance. Another commented, “I get really scared at some of the things that come up. And I’ve never been so nervous in my life as I have been facilitating that antiracist study group.” A third said, “How do I feel about the fact that I might be influencing large groups of people? Well, in a way, I’m proud of it. I’m scared about it [too] because it puts me out in the forefront. It’s a vulnerable position.” The fear is still there, but these pioneers are learning to push past it.8
Finding Courage for Social Change
Breaking the silence undoubtedly requires courage. How can we find the courage we need? This is a question I ask myself a lot, because I too struggle with fear. I am aware of my own vulnerability even as I write this book. What will writing it mean for my life? Will it make me a target for attack? How will readers respond to what I have to say? Have I really said anything helpful? Silence feels safer, but in the long run, I know that it is not. So I, like so many others, need courage.
I look for it in the lives of others, seeking role models for how to be an effective agent of change. As a person of faith, I find that the Bible is an important source of inspiration for me. It is full of stories of change agents whose lives inspire me. Moses and Esther are two favorites. Because I am a Black woman, I am particularly interested in the lives of other Black women who have been agents of change. I find strength in learning about the lives of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Angela Davis, to name a few. I also want to know about the lives of my White allies, past and present: Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Clarence Jordan, Virginia Foster Durr, Lois Stalvey, Mab Segrest, Bill Bradley, Morris Dees, Gloria Steinem, for example. What about Black men and other men and women of color, Asian, Latinx, Native? W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Derald Wing Sue, Maxine Hong Kingston, Cesar Chavez, Wilma Mankiller, Joel Spring, Mitsuye Yamada, Gloria Anzaldúa? Yes, those examples and many unnamed others are important, too. I am still filling in the gaps in my education as quickly as I can.
I have heard many people say, “But I don’t know enough! I don’t even recognize most of those names. I don’t have enough of the facts to be able to speak up about racism or anything else!” They are not alone. We have all been miseducated in this regard. Educating ourselves and others is an essential step in the process of change. Few of us have been taught to think critically about issues of social injustice. We have been taught not to notice or to accept our present situation as a given, “the way it is.” But we can learn the history we were not taught, we can watch the documentaries we never saw in school, and we can read about the lives of change agents, past and present. We can discover another way. We are surrounded by a “cloud of witnesses” who will give us courage if we let them.
Do you feel overwhelmed by the task? When my students begin to recognize the pervasiveness of racism in the culture and our institutions, they begin to despair, feeling powerless to effect change. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, too. The antidote I have found is to focus on my own sphere of influence. I can’t fix everything, but some things are within my control. While many people experience themselves as powerless, everyone has some sphere of influence in which they can work for change, even if it is just in their own personal network of family and friends. Ask yourself, “Whose lives do I affect and how? What power and authority do I wield in the world? What meetings do I attend? Who do I talk to in the course of a day?” Identify your strengths and use them.
If you are a parent, what conversations have you had with your children about these issues? What books are sitting on their bookshelves? Do you know what discussions are taking place at your child’s school? If you are a teacher, what dialogue is taking place in your classroom? Regardless of your subject matter, there are ways to engage students in critical thinking about racism that are relevant to your discipline. Have you considered what they might be? If you like to write letters to friends, have you written any letters to the editor, adding to the public discourse about dismantling racism? Have you written to broadcasters protesting programming that reinforces racial stereotypes? If you are an extrovert, have you used your people skills to gather others together for dialogue about racism? If you are an athlete, what language and behavior do you model in the locker room? If you are a board member, what questions do you raise at the meetings? Who sits on the board with you? What values and perspectives are represented there? If you are an employer, who is missing from your work force? What are you doing about it?
“What if I make a mistake?” you may be thinking. “Racism is a volatile issue, and I don’t want to say or do the wrong thing.” In almost forty years of teaching and leading workshops about racism, I have made many mistakes. I have found that a sincere apology and a genuine desire to learn from one’s mistakes are usually rewarded with forgiveness. If we wait for perfection, we will never break the silence. The cycle of racism will continue uninterrupted.
We all want to do the right thing, but each of us must determine what our own right thing is. The right thing for me, writing this book, may not be the right thing for you. Parker Palmer offers this wisdom about doing the “right thing”: “Right action requires only that we respond faithfully to our own inner truth and to the truth around us.… If an action is rightly taken, taken with integrity, its outcomes will achieve whatever is possible—which is the best that anyone can do.”9
You may be saying, “I am a change agent. I am always the one who speaks up at the meetings, but I’m tired. How do I keep going?” This is an important question, because a genuine commitment to interrupting racism is a long-term commitment. How can we sustain ourselves for the long haul? One thing I have learned is that we need a community of support. We all need community to give us energy, to strengthen our voices, and to offer constructive criticism when we stray off course. We need to speak up against racism and other forms of oppression, but we do not have to speak alone. Look for like-minded others. Organize a meeting for friends or colleagues concerned about racial issues. Someone else will come. Attend the meetings others have organized. Share your vision. Others will be drawn to you. Your circle of support does not have to be big. It may be only two or three other people with whom you can share the frustrations of those meetings and the joys of even the smallest victories. Even those who seem to be solo warr
iors have a support network somewhere. It is essential. If you don’t have such a network now, start thinking about how to create one. In the meantime, learn more about that cloud of witnesses. Knowing that history can sustain you as well.
We all have a sphere of influence. Each of us needs to find our own sources of courage so that we will begin to speak. There are many problems to address, and we cannot avoid them indefinitely. We cannot continue to be silent. We must begin to speak, knowing that words alone are insufficient. But I have seen that meaningful dialogue can lead to effective action. Change is possible.
EPILOGUE
Signs of Hope, Sites of Progress
AS I WAS WRITING THE PROLOGUE FOR THE TWENTIETH-ANNIVERSARY edition of this book, I was struck by how much bad news there was in it. The events of the last two decades (1997–2017) have done little to improve the quality of life for those most negatively impacted by the structural racism of our society. Recognizing and acknowledging the persistence of residential and school segregation; the economic inequality that grows from limited access to socioeconomically diverse social networks and high-quality education as well as continued discrimination in the workplace; and the stranglehold of mass incarceration, unequal justice, and growing voter disenfranchisement left me feeling disheartened. But I am an optimist by nature and I have lived long enough to know that meaningful change is possible. I was determined not to give in to a sense of despair but rather to actively seek out signs of hope—stories of people making a difference and promising practices that could move others to meaningful action. I found that these signs of hope are everywhere. I found them daily on my Twitter feed, in the conversations I had as I traveled around the country doing my speaking engagements, and in some of the materials I read in preparation for the book. My intention in this epilogue is to share some of what I found in hopes that the examples will uplift you as they uplifted me.
When I was growing up in the Northeast and the cold of winter was dragging on for what seemed like far too long, I was always excited by the first signs of spring—the sighting of a robin in the yard or an early crocus pushing up through melting snow. Such evidence of spring coming always lifted my spirits. I believe deeply that the winter of the social-political climate of 2017—the time at which I am writing this epilogue—can give way to spring, but it is the collective actions of people committed to social justice that will bring about the thaw. Here are some of the signs of hope—both large and small—that I have found in the journey of writing this new edition.
In March 2016 I was in Texas, speaking on the campus of Texas A&M. By coincidence, a few weeks before I arrived there had been a racial incident. A group of Black teenagers from an urban high school in Texas were touring the campus. During the tour they were approached by a small group of students who yelled racial slurs at them and told them to go back where they came from. “What’s hopeful about that?” you might be asking yourself. Nothing. What gave me hope is what happened next. The student body president, a young White man named Joseph Benigno, a member of the Class of 2016, issued a statement on YouTube, just three and a half minutes long but clear, concise, and courageous.1 He began by challenging those who were trying to deny that the incident had happened, implicitly or directly accusing the students and their chaperones of fabricating the story, to do one thing: “Stop!” “An attitude of denial is dangerous,” he said, recognizing that “it inhibits our ability to learn from what happened.” Then, acknowledging that he himself had been silent in the face of racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes and passing comments, often made behind closed doors, he made clear that his and others’ silence gave permission for the hateful remarks to be made publicly. “I feel that silence in response to these comments camouflages the genuinely hateful and empowers them in the development of their beliefs.… Our silence fosters hate. Our silence enables the hateful to feel comfortable and welcome,” he said, urging his fellow students to join him in taking responsibility for making a change. I was very impressed with it. This student government president clearly recognized his sphere of influence, and he was using it effectively. With the power of social media, he was able to amplify his message in a powerful way. His example of leadership was for me a sign of hope.
Another hopeful glimmer came to me in my adopted hometown of Atlanta. The Atlanta Friendship Initiative (AFI) was started in the fall of 2016 by two business leaders in Atlanta, Bill Nordmark, who is White, and John Grant, who is Black.2 It was Bill’s idea. He was at a meeting of the Rotary Club of Atlanta when he heard philanthropist and retired Georgia-Pacific CEO Pete Correll talking about racial issues that still plague the city. Troubled by what he heard, Bill decided to do something. He reached out to John, with whom he was only casually acquainted, and asked if they could take their acquaintanceship to the next level and become friends as the first step toward his vision of the Atlanta Friendship Initiative. Bill explained the concept—to pair up two people from different racial or ethnic backgrounds and have them become friends. The pairs would agree to get together at least once a quarter, and once a year they would bring their families together in fellowship. John’s response was immediately positive. In an interview with the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the two men recalled that first meeting and its impact:
“John didn’t even blink.… He said, ‘I’m in. Bill, I feel God’s hand in what you’re saying today, and I’m in.’ I said, ‘Take another day or two to think about this.’ He looked at me and said, ‘What don’t you understand about “I’m in”?’ I knew then that this was a friendship I wanted forever.” Since that visit in September, Grant said, “We have been talking almost every day.” They also have been reaching out to other “friends” to join their cause. “It’s refreshing to see the responses,” Grant said. “To a person, no one has said no. The responses have been ‘thank you for doing this.’”3
In the first three months of the initiative, eighty friendship pairs have been formed across lines of racial, gender, and/or ethnic difference. The AFI is apolitical, but I know from my own experience (I have a friendship partner) that the pairs cross political party lines as well. Can new cross-racial friendships change the racial climate of a city or the structural racism that is baked into its historical foundation and the map of its neighborhoods? There’s no guarantee that it will, but it could. Institutional policies and practices are created and carried out by individuals, and when those individuals have homogeneous social networks, they too often lack empathy for those whose lives are outside their own frame of reference. I believe opening social networks and closing the empathy gap is a step toward bringing about positive change.
In February 2017 the first gathering of the newly formed friendship pairs took place, and several partners spoke to those present about the personal impact of their new relationships and the richness of their conversations. For example, two men, one Black and one White, natives of the same city, found that their early lives in their community were separated not only by race but also by class. The Black partner, who grew up in a low-income Black neighborhood, said with feeling about his partner from an affluent White family, “I’ve learned a lot. It’s helped me get past that chip on my shoulder.” His White partner agreed, “We started with race, but that has led to very rich conversations.” Another pair is meeting monthly, and after sharing how much they were enjoying those meetings, they said to the group, “Now what’s our homework?” While the AFI does not yet (and may never) have a specific action agenda, the cofounders believe that the pairs, all community leaders in their own social networks, will find ways to work together in coalition for the betterment of the community. As John Grant has said, “Friendships can change a lot of things.” Says Bill Nordmark, “We hope it doesn’t stay in Atlanta,” expecting that the AFI will be replicated in other communities, and it seems that has already begun to happen as he is receiving inquiries from around the country about how to start similar programs.
A community initiative that has at least twenty years of history behin
d it can be found in the community of South Orange / Maplewood, New Jersey. Two neighboring towns that twenty years ago were faced with the specter of “white flight,” turning what was an integrated suburb into a racially segregated one, formed the Community Coalition on Race with this mission statement: “To achieve and sustain the benefits of a thriving, racially integrated and truly inclusive community that serves as a model for the nation.”4 Collectively, they were successful in curbing the “white flight” phenomenon and have maintained a very diverse community. Their challenge now is to keep it affordable for all who live there, as they are attracting more high-income White New Yorkers who are drawn to the suburban diversity they offer, and housing prices are now escalating.
I had the privilege of speaking in South Orange / Maplewood in 1999 and returned to speak again in May 2016, and I was greeted that evening by a standing-room-only crowd that was truly racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse, young and old, ready to engage in dialogue about this effort to be a truly inclusive community. It was quite inspiring to see! I am sure it is not perfect. In fact, while I was visiting, I learned that there had been a few recent race-related incidents in the schools, a reminder to the Community Coalition that the work is not done but has to be revisited continually, particularly as new families come into the community. The most hopeful thing is that there is a community of committed citizens still doing that work. Twenty years later, they know that persistence is important!
In early 2016 I was contacted by Barry Yeoman, a journalist working on a story about conversation across racial lines. His topic was something called The Welcome Table. I didn’t know what it was then, but I was delighted to find out that it was a signature program of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi. The institute has an inspiring vision statement:
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 38
