yep. we’ll stay on the edges because that is where both of us feel more comfortable at generally all times for walks, and doubly so because pandemic, and we’ll be masked because again pandemic.
But also, if people like us are seen, who generally are coded as ‘not worth my notice’ by authority figures, my hope is that folks who are telling others to board things up will be able to see themselves there, not the unknown and unpredictable other who needs to be protected against (the don’t try to convince the person, convince the person beside them). I haven’t decided whether to push that with a sundress, or be more practical and jeaned. Comfortable shoes regardless.
I hate that when I hear a loud BANG in the middle of the night, and the power blows, and then I hear sirens, my brain now automatically goes to “unrest” and not “a transformer in my neighborhood must have blown.” I see on my neighborhood groups, and from a nearby friend who checked in, that I am not the only one who thought that.
We have someone pretty high up in my company who is African American, and she sent out an email to our team basically admitting that she is not OK, and that it’s OK if we are not OK, and sent out links to our EAP if that’s a thing we feel we might need. This isn’t someone I have regular contact with and she is like 3 levels above me so I didn’t feel comfortable reaching out. Maybe I should have. What does one say to someone on the executive leadership team that you don’t actually know?
I… am realizing that I cannot think of very many African American co-workers that I have? Though we have other POC - largely Asian and Latinx. Hm.
A neighbor mentioned concern for my mil undergoing medical care and that there will be a spike in covid due to the protests putting my mother in law more at risk. While I share that concern, I assertively turned the conversation back to the reason for the protest, and the conversation actually went pretty well.
There’s an increase in protesters, police, and armed white supremacists tonight. I’m monitoring one of my groups that keeps updating with both police scanner info and on the ground info, but there’s nothing that I can do tonight.
Multiple police officers posed with white supremacists for pics last night, I can start a new letter draft.
I can finish putting my new computer together and distract myself from getting too invested in the feed.
I am Black but I am African and I don’t live in the US anymore. I lived in there for a few years and it was a shock. I think I never realized what it meant to be Black until then. However I was in graduate school in a prestigious IT school where there were Not a single AA in a cohort of hundreds. I’m from one of the poorest countries in Africa but I have never been told that I am inferior to a White person so I have not experienced that kind of segregation and prejudice just … you know plain racism that I impute to people’s ignorance.
I think this community is more welcoming than the Other Place for example but I can attest it’s lonely to always be so few of us. I’m used to it as a Black female software engineer. I don’t know if we have any other Black. The reality also is that most African Americans don’t have access to places like these. Until that changes you won’t have more Blacks in communities like these. When you are struggling daily, living paycheck to paycheck and marginalized, it’s hard to think about financial independence / education.
More than that, what breaks my heart with the African Americans that most are not aware of all that America can offer. I taught a summer programming workshop in NYC to high school girls and it’s like there were those Black girls who knew nothing about all the ressources available to them. They didn’t have access to Internet or a computer. If they did, they didn’t know of the scholarships they could apply to. They feared applying to elite schools. They were resigned to an ‘okay’ life at that age!! Not because it was what they wanted but because they didn’t know or believe they could do better. On the other hand, the white girls were so ambitious and eager to go to Ivy League schools, create businesses , be the next Tim Cook or Jeff Bezos, succeed. In the middle there were the Latino girls and the Asians who didn’t have much as well but were not afraid to dream and knew that with hard work, they could do better than their parents. It was sad to see what centuries of slavery, systematic segregation and racism have done to the moral of those Black kids. I used to go to the bathroom and cry whenever I got one of the girls to code an app and see the light in her eyes and the realization that she could make something. It was also empowering for them to see someone like them, a Black female engineer who went to a school they’d never dreamed of applying to. All this to say that there’s still a long way to go until you have inclusion and diversity everywhere.
However I am in awe of what you guys are all doing to get there. If we can have more places like this corner of the internet and more kids like @Smacky ´s we’ll go far.
I appreciate hearing your perspectives, @GeekyGirl. What concrete actions and changes do you think would help with the racial situation in North America?
My friend has started writing daily letters to our municipal, provincial, and federal representatives. By letters I mean emails, of course. This morning I wrote a politely worded and viciously pointed email to the key people on my city’s council asking for the demilitarization of the police. It was fun. I don’t know if daily letters are a thing, but I plan on writing more. It will probably do nothing but maybe it will slightly tip the scales, over time?
I can’t get over the folks on LinkedIn or IG (and I assume fb but luckily I haven’t come across it there) who are replying to people’s lived stories with variants of 'Saddens me to hear that someone could be treated like this just because of the colour of his skin." or “It’s so sad to hear/hard to believe that in 2020…”.
Hard to believe? how many stories have you ignored up to this point and how filtered is your bubble that you’ve never come across this before?
“someone could be treated like that”? nice to take that person’s lived experience and make it a hypothetical thought experiment and the primary impact is that you are sad.
And then the person who asked for a list of the actions Black people want to see happen. Because random Black person speaks for all Black people and owes you a reply when you could just drop that question into google and see 1000s of people who have answered that already.
And the people who are grumpy on IG because the people they just followed in the past week put up a post saying ‘hey, thanks for following, but you had better realize that I see what you’re doing, and I’m not just here to be the Black person you follow on IG to make you feel less complicit.’
ETA: I remember the fb thing - a person who decided to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” instead of something by an actual POC with a POC pov.
ETA2: or you know, something by a POC who is alive and could use the book sale. I have replied suggesting that maybe a white woman born in Alabama in the 1920s is not the only place to look for insight.
I have seen a lot of Black people on Twitter upset because apparently the Help was the most viewed movie on Netflix this week. Also the push for people to read White Fragility when it is written by a white author when there are so many books on the subject by Black people.
We just watched Just Mercy, and one of the recurring jokes was that everyone kept suggesting that the civil rights lawyer visit the Mockingbird museum even as they resist the civil rights lawyer’s attempt to bring justice for a wrongfully accused Black man.
Oof. That’s probably the book I’ve seen the most people actually buy or put library holds on. It was on my eventually list, but didn’t research the author at all.
I’ve read the book and found it useful for me (a white person), but can totally understand why this would rub people the wrong way. I’ve since bought a number of books on racism by Black authors and will continue by education by listening to Black voices.
My friend is protesting today in grad school town with a history of especially shitty police (plus he’s black). They’ve spent the whole week fortifying the police station and pulling out riot gear. I know they’re doing this to intimidate people into not protesting, but even though I understand that, it’s still working on me. I told him to text me when it’s over but I’m going to fret about it until then.
I’m probably going to a specifically smaller and shorter and closer protest rather than the big one at the city center with the more militant rhetoric. It’s organized by teens to defund a suburban police department so still a great place to lend support.
In its defense, I think White Fragility is intended to be a White person explaining the White experience and White discomfort to fellow white people as well as how to overcome that to be a better ally. I think there’s use for this book as well as for other “intro” books. There is also a useful exploration of what it means to be “White”, or rather why White people have the privilege to not have to think about what it means to be “White”. I think it has value in its own way and isn’t intended to be on the topic or nor a substitute for understanding what Black folks are experiencing.
It obviously shouldn’t be the SOLE book to be read by a person seeking to gain understanding and of course should be complemented with voices from actually Black authors.
