Top 5 contributions Antiracism offers the Immigrant Rights and Immigrant Integration movements

For the last year, Crossroads colleagues at ERAC/Ce (Eliminating Racism and Claiming/Celebrating Equality) in Kalamazoo, MI have been intentionally working with folks in the immigrants rights and immigrant integration movements. From this collaboration come these five insights regarding the contribution antiracism offers these movements.

1. The antiracism analysis goes beyond the Black/White binary and aims to build multi-racial coalitions.

Conversations about race and racism in the U.S. are often dichotomous, inclusive only of White dominant and African-American cultural values. An antiracism lens invites those of us who work to welcome immigrants to understand the ways in which all immigrants become racialized when they arrive here according to the U.S. race construct. There are typically six racial groups in the U.S. – Arab, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latino, Native American, African American, and White. Immigrants may or may not understand how they are viewed in the U.S. compared to in their home country, but there are very real ways in which their race affects how they are treated and how much access they get to institutions and the resources necessary for life. An antiracism analysis also reminds many of us that we are not all immigrants, which you often hear within the immigrant rights and integration movement. The founding of the U.S. began with the genocide of Native Indian peoples who originally lived on this land. What’s more, there have been economic and political strategies throughout history that have been designed to steal land and resources from and invisiblize Indian people and Indian country.

2. Antiracism teaches White people, including White immigrant allies and advocates, that racism is not about blame.

None of us were around when racism was established in this country over 500 years ago. Many conversations about race and racism go badly because we aren’t taught how to have productive dialogue about these often-painful topics. We need a common language, more complete awareness of history, and an understanding that racism isn’t any one person’s fault (at least not anyone living today). And yet we are all responsible for the dismantling of it. Racism dehumanizes us all and antiracism helps White people as well as People of Color find their self-interest in the work. This analysis can help White U.S.-born immigrant advocates and allies approach their work from a place of solidarity with immigrants and other People of Color instead of paternalism (wanting to “help, fix, and save” immigrants). It also reminds us that racism is more than just individual race prejudice. We must also examine how U.S. systems and institutions were built for White people, by White people, and in large part continue to serve White society better. Instead of focusing narrowly on a particular person’s attitudes and actions about different racial groups, antiracism asks the question: how is a particular White dominant culture value, practice, policy, or law working to maintain the supremacy of Whiteness?

3. Antiracism work is collaborative and always informed by/centered around anti-oppressive values.

Antiracism move us from the White dominant culture values like scarcity, either/or thinking, individualism/competition, and secrecy toward the antiracist/anti-oppressive values like an abundant worldview, both/and thinking, collective action, and transparency. Further, antiracism seeks to dismantle the silo-ing of and competition among social justice movements (aka the “Oppression Olympics”), which has been established through the divide and conquer strategies of our colonial and neo-colonial history.  What if oppressed groups starting working together – sharing knowledge, wisdom, resources, and tools? What if we all knew there is enough to go around and that we truly are stronger together? What if as resisters of oppression we began working cooperatively to co-create a country that welcomes and celebrates all?

4. Antiracism builds upon intersectionality – the understanding that we all have multiple identities.

Antiracism understands that racism is a system of oppression linked to other systems of oppression that robs each of us of our full humanity and impairs our ability to create just and sustainable community with one another both locally and globally. Racism is not the only “ism” and antiracism doesn’t ask us to drop our other identities in order to talk about race and racism. We can use our other experience around privilege and/or oppression as a window, not a wall. While it isn’t helpful to talk exclusively about racism, it is important to talk explicitly about racism. We must ask: how is race compounding upon all other identities (such as national origin and immigration status)?

5. Antiracism sees immigrant rights and immigrant integration (or welcome work) as resistance to oppression and offers a way of changing systems that have historically kept immigrants from being able to successfully integrate into their adopted hometowns.

The focus on creating welcoming receiving communities is approachable by many and can lead into deeper conversations of what it truly means to be welcoming — both in terms of individual and collective attitudes and actions AND how institutions are or aren’t effectively serving immigrants and why. Addressing national origin, culture, language, race, and documentation status-based prejudice is important and antiracism invites us to go deeper and address how immigrants experience systems and institutions (i.e.: hospitals and schools).  Doing the work of building welcoming communities is in itself an act of resistance to the historic realities of racism’s systemic and structural oppression.

Attitude or bias changing work is important and can be life-altering for both immigrants and U.S-born residents. And yet antiracism would posit that prejudice-reducing work can sometimes be masked as immigrant integration work. A school or local municipality can pass a “welcoming resolution” or proclamation, claiming to be a welcoming place to immigrants, but not actually become accountable to what that means on real and tangible levels. For example, how does a documented or undocumented farmworker from Guatemala or a Sudanese refugee experience a hospital or school or city hall when they walk through the door? In addition to changing receiving community members’ hearts and minds about immigrants (i.e.: help people see immigrants as contributors rather than “drainers”), we need an antiracism analysis grounded in the historical context of race and racism in the U.S. These two forms of resistance together can create a more inclusive, equitable, and welcoming country. 

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About the writers:

Lillie Wolff is one of two Co-Executive Directors of ERAC/Ce (Eliminating Racism and Claiming/Celebrating Equality) and a Core Organizer/Trainer for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training. Prior to working with ERAC/Ce and Crossroads, Lillie spent seven years organizing around farmworker and immigrant rights and inclusion. Lillie is passionate about the intersections of social justice, ecological justice, and art, and has served on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design (ISLAND) since 2009. She earned a BA in Human Development and Social Relations from Kalamazoo College in 2004. Lillie enjoys dancing, biking, gardening, spending time in nature, and preparing and eating communal meals with her wonderful anti-oppressive community.

Jo Ann Mundy is one of two co- Executive Directors of ERAC/Ce (Eliminating Racism and Claiming/Celebrating Equality), and a Core Organizer-Trainer for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training, a national partner working collaboratively with ERAC/Ce toward the institutionalization of racial justice in public and private institutions throughout southwest Michigan. Currently Jo Ann serves on the boards of Crossroads and the People’s Food Coop. As a founder mentor of the NIA Project, Jo Ann encourages the celebration of identity, purpose and sisterhood in adolescent women of color. Additionally, Jo Ann is a founding member of the Three Rivers Area Faith Community (TRAFC), an ecumenical faith-based social justice network of churches striving to build a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-generational anti-racist faith community in Three Rivers, MI where she completed her doctoral thesis Sacred Actions to Bring Racial Reconciliation. Enjoying over 25 years of pastoral ministry, Jo Ann currently serves as pastor of On Common Ground of Three Rivers Michigan. Jo Ann enjoys reading, music, her guitars and computers and, most of all, the young people in her life.

Five Reminders and Reflections from the White Privilege Conference

Abbi Heimach has a B.A. from the College of Wooster in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Religious Studies. After a year teaching elementary special education, she worked in young adult related ministry at the Presbyterian Mission Agency. Currently, Abbi is working on her Masters of Divinity at McCormick Theological Seminary. She is an intern for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training, a member of the National Committee of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, and is pursuing ordination in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). In her free time, you can find her dancing and cooking vegan food.

At the end of March, I traveled to Madison, Wisconsin for the White Privilege Conference (WPC). If you’ve never been to WPC before or never heard of it, WPC is an annual conference that promotes racial equity and justice through educational plenaries and workshops, caucusing, and networking. As a first time attendee, it was refreshing to be surrounded by activists, scholars and students learning together for a common cause. I left the experience filled with hope and encouragement from the connections I made and tools I learned, but I also encountered frustrations and challenges. To continue on the journey for racial justice, here are some “reminders and reflections” that I learned from my experiences at WPC—all impacted by my own personal journey to better understand my white privilege and the ways white supremacy works to perpetuate our deeply racist world.

1) Despite our best intentions, white supremacy can still be present. My group arrived a little late, and as we settled in collecting our registration materials, we sat down to figure out which workshops we wanted to attend. There were so many interesting ones! By the time we decided where we wanted to go and walked to the assigned rooms, we discovered that most of the workshops were already filled. WPC had its most attendees yet, which is great, but what resulted was a competition to get to your top workshop choice. People were placing their belongings in rooms and leaving to save spots; people rushed from workshop to workshop with an unnecessary sense of urgency so they could win a limited seat. Even in a workshop, white participants continued to dominate the speaking space. Competition seemed to develop over who could be the most inclusive, or claim to know the most about how oppression works. I witnessed individuals responding harmfully to people who spoke up in the sessions. Although it is inevitable that each of us will make mistakes or find ourselves ignorant to someone’s experiences of oppression, responding with hate will not heal relationships and work for equity. Experiencing discomfort is an important way to learn, but humiliating someone can cause a scar that can prevent that person from learning and improving upon a mistake. Competition prevents us from collaborating. Rushing excessively inhibits our ability to notice who is excluded, and an unhealthy environment as such can contribute to perfectionism, which is unrealistic and over-burdening.

2) Equality is different from Equity. One of the workshops I attended had helpful teaching techniques for learning about individuals’ diverse contexts and identifying power roles. Throughout the 90-minute session, they had us frequently switching groups, sharing stories, finishing sentence prompts, and listening intentionally while not responding to our fellow group members (so as to allow a completely equal sharing atmosphere) all in a strictly calculated timeframe. In any group of people there are those who have a lot to say, and those who take their time to speak or aren’t as comfortable speaking. By setting a timer for an individual’s sharing time, each person can have an equal amount of time to share—stopping those who share too much and encouraging those who don’t speak much to share more. Although good in theory, there are a number of problematic consequences. This process failed to recognize how a community of people contribute to building an environment that helps people feel comfortable enough to share their stories. Also, people process information at different paces. Not everyone can quickly share a story or move on abruptly after someone exposed the depth of her soul. In fact, it can be harmful to force people to speak. What is equal is not always equitable. Because we all work differently and have a variety of experiences, we should prioritize fairness over equality in pursuing racial justice.

3). Brave space instead of safe space. I was in a workshop led by white antiracist activist Shelly Tochluk where a woman of color brought up that she cringes at the thought of creating “safe space”. This was eye-opening for me because I thought this is what we all should be striving for within group settings, educational environments, worship spaces, etc. She explained that “safe” means something different for everyone and often white people are the ones naming whether or not a space is safe. Shelly introduced that Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens write about working towards “brave space.” Whenever we are in environments that require us to build community, share stories, or become vulnerable, it requires courage and bravery. I find this to be an extremely helpful concept and reminder.

4). The importance of race-based caucusing. Since interning with Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training, I’ve learned about the importance of caucusing. To caucus is to spend regular time from organizing work to reflect upon internalized racial inferiority and internalized racial superiority in separate groups for people of color and white people. These groups are a way of checking ourselves, reflecting and improving, forgiving and inviting. Later, coming together whole group with people of color and white people and sharing that we did our work is a way of holding each other accountable and moving forward. WPC reminded me how vital caucusing is to the movement. My white caucus exhibited the beautiful and painful journey justice is, how racism scars everyone, and how as white people who benefit from oppression, we have a responsibility to turn the trajectory, to break the pattern, to step up and work towards overturning the white supremacist foundations of our society.

5). And lastly, WPC reminded me that it’s not about me, but us. Caucusing is not just about the internal work that we do, but especially for the group work we need. As a white person I have to remember that even though realizing the ways I contribute to oppression is painful as an individual, working towards racial equity and justice requires me to set aside my personal desire for comfort and perfectionism (manifestations of white supremacy) and join in the collective movement. We all will make mistakes and that is part of the journey—of discerning difficult solutions, of loving each other despite our brokenness, of knowing that the world must not stay the way it is.

Engaging Our Humanity

Lillie Wolff is one of two Co-Executive Directors of ERAC/Ce (Eliminating Racism and Claiming/Celebrating Equality) and a Core Organizer/Trainer for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training. Lillie is bilingual in English and Spanish and prior to working with ERAC/Ce and Crossroads spent seven years organizing around farmworker and immigrant rights and inclusion. Lillie is passionate about the intersections of social justice, ecological justice, and art, and has served on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design (ISLAND) since 2009. She earned a BA in Human Development and Social Relations from Kalamazoo College in 2004. Lillie enjoys dancing, biking, gardening, spending time in nature, and preparing and eating communal meals with her wonderful anti-oppressive community.

As a white antiracist organizer and trainer, I am on a journey toward understanding my relationship with privilege and oppression. Privilege and oppression are two sides of the same coin. In Privilege, Power, and Difference, Allan Johnson explains that the “isms” – sexism, heterosexism, ableism, racism – affect more than women, LGBTQI people, people with disabilities, and people of color.  They affect everyone. It is impossible to live in a world that generates so much injustice and suffering without being inextricably linked to it. Everyone has a race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status. We all figure in the differences that privilege and oppression are about.

Johnson suggests that the greatest barrier to change is that dominant groups don’t see the trouble of our society as their trouble, and as a result, don’t feel obligated to do something about it. This may be because we don’t even know the trouble exists, we don’t have to see it as our trouble, because we see it as a personal rather than systemic problem, because we’re reluctant to give up privilege, or afraid of what will happen if we acknowledge the reality of privilege and oppression.

Systems of privilege make privilege invisible and those who are part of the dominant white culture in the U.S. are taught to deny and minimize oppression. White people are taught to be “colorblind,” to believe that since Barak Obama is president we must be “post-racial.” Those of us who are white are socialized to blame the victim, call it something else, assume everyone prefers things the way they are. We mistake intentions with consequences, attribute oppression to others, and balance the oppression of others with our own (note: the goal is not to play the Oppression Olympics).  While it may feel good in an anesthetic kind of way to believe that we are “post-racial,” the truth is that we have all inherited a material reality based on 500 years of shared history.

What if we all started thinking about the trouble of systemic racism as everyone’s responsibility and nobody’s fault? What if we told each other and ourselves that it’s not about blame and that feeling guilty about racism is actually not helpful. It’s easy to fall into the trap of guilt, as many of us have been taught to see the world through an individualistic lens that reduces everything to individual good or bad intentions. We all want to be good people. A powerful and liberating alternative lies, however, in the fact that we’re all always participating in something larger than ourselves — social systems.

To understand our relationship to privilege and oppression, we have to look at what we’re participating in and how we participate in it. For example, if a white male professor takes the students in his class who look like him more seriously, he isn’t necessarily being intentionally sexist or racist, but may be participating in and perpetuating patterns of white and male privilege. He doesn’t have to be a bad person to participate in an education system that produces oppressive outcomes – it’s simply how the system is set up to function.

The only way to change oppressive outcomes is to change our systems and institutions. If we have a vision of what we want the world to be, we have to create paths that lead in that direction. We have to do more than just hope, dream and pray – certainly more than simply take the path of least resistance. We must become aware of our biases, which we all have, and we must understand that racism is about more than just prejudice. It’s about power and privilege – it’s about who gets access to and who has control of the systems and institutions that distribute the resources necessary for life.

If racism is not about individual actions or beliefs, and is about systems and structures, the solution must be systemic and structured. If privilege is rooted in systems like families, schools, places of worship and employment, change isn’t simply a matter of changing people. The solution also has to include entire systems whose paths of least resistance shape how we all feel, think, and behave as individuals, and how we see one another and ourselves.

Thankfully, there is a growing national movement in which people of color and white people are gaining an analysis, a language system, organizing tools, and a more complete understanding of history – the history of oppression and the corresponding acts of resistance.  Since racism isn’t just a trouble of the past, resistance, like that of the Underground Railroad, requires broad base participation here and now. We must resist the path of least resistance. We must find our way to the path of greatest resistance — the path of dismantling racism. It’s a big task, a generational one, which can feel overwhelming. But things can change, they have and will continue to change, and none of us are alone. There is room for everyone in this movement.

Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training, along with its regional organizing partners like ERAC/Ce (Eliminating Racism and Claiming/Celebrating Equality) in Southwest Michigan, are facilitating trainings and building transformation teams to help people of color, white people, and entire institutions claim an anti-racist identity.  A growing number of people around the country are learning how to honestly and accurately name our troubles. We are learning new ways of being in relationship with each other and ourselves, which are grounded in anti-oppressive, life-giving values. We are committing to a life-long journey of reclaiming and engaging our full humanity in ways we never dreamed.

How I Became a Critical Apologist for Antiracism?

Jo Ann Mundy is one of two co-Executive Directors of ERAC/Ce (Eliminating Racism and Claiming/Celebrating Equality), and a Core Organizer-Trainer for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training, a national partner working collaboratively with ERAC/Ce toward the institutionalization of racial justice in public and private institutions throughout southwest Michigan. Currently Jo Ann serves on the boards of Crossroads and the People’s Food Coop. As a founder mentor of the NIA Project, Jo Ann encourages the celebration of identity, purpose and sisterhood in adolescent women of color. Additionally, Jo Ann is a founding member of the Three Rivers Area Faith Community (TRAFC), an ecumenical faith-based social justice network of churches striving to build a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-generational anti-racist faith community in Three Rivers, MI where she completed her doctoral thesis Sacred Actions to Bring Racial Reconciliation. Enjoying over 25 years of pastoral ministry, Jo Ann currently serves as pastor of On Common Ground of Three Rivers Michigan. Jo Ann enjoys reading, music, her guitars and computers and, most of all, the young people in her life.

Several years ago when I began developing my antiracist organizing identity, I sometimes found it difficult to build relationships with other People of Color. I was always getting into my own way. One time I was tripping up attempting to build relationship with a Native American, another time I “stepped in a pile” with an Asian American, another time I was told by a Latina organizer, her community did not need my “help”. On another occasion, I was informed my willingness to speak-up for others felt abusive, and since I know myself to be particularly “helpful” this assessment caused me great pause.

As I began a season of self-reflection, I asked antiracism elders in our racial identity caucus why I seemed to be the recipient of disdain from other people of color groups. Here I was trying on my new antiracism identity, bringing my outsized, first-born, degreed self into the anti-oppression conversation and being met with cynicism and contempt. I began asking myself, “Why were so many not welcoming me with open arms?” “What could I do to be more effective?” my answer came swiftly: become a critical apologist. I recognize some may be unfamiliar with who are and what do apologists do so a bit of context is necessary before going any further. Literally, apologists were and are those people who take on the task of offering an argument in defense of something controversial or unpopular because they believe it to be true and misunderstood. In a myriad of ways, apologists give witness to their convictions by arguing, advocating, taking a stand, and sometimes embodying them. Critical apologists push their advocacy further by exposing the social conditions that make their bearing witness to an alternate narrative or to a counter cultural set of convictions necessary. This of course is my conception of what a critical apologist is and does but one that opened the way to stronger relationships with other people of color.

History is most often the best teacher. Many people of color groups – Asian American, Latinos/as, Native American, Arab and Middle Eastern – experience the dominant narrative of the US as existing in a Black/White racial paradigm. Our schools provide limited education with respect to the historic colonialization of the people of the Americas, South East Asia, and more recently the Middle East. Members of these communities know their own history and to be told their stories must be made to fit into the commonly understood Black/White racial paradigm of the United States is profoundly dehumanizing. Native Americans, Asian Americans and Latino/as are constantly experiencing their history, social and statistical reality as “insignificant” in the context of the United States in comparison to African-Americans. Even more recent African immigrants detest the ever-present assumption that they fit into the African-American narrative. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks of this in her TED Talk – the Danger of a Single Story. The hidden implication is power continues to be held by those who create and maintain “the story”, who tells the story and where and when the story gets told.

So, heeding the wise counsel of an Asian American woman, I learned to be a critical apologist. In claiming this identity I learned my way into the task of building solidarity across the chasms built by racism and its binary. As a critical apologist I give witness with my lips and my life to the countercultural conviction that together we are stronger. This has been the most liberating, empowering, grace-filled, and humanizing experience of my life.

LESSONS LEARNED

Photo by B. Jo Ann Mundy

Demonstrating humility and respect matters. As a critical apologist I recognize that dehumanization all people of color experience as a result of racism and I acknowledge the power dynamics that minimize the stories of oppression of some while elevating the stories of others. I acknowledge this minimizing as morally wrong, and I commit to act in a way that demonstrates respect for the individual stories and histories of other people of color communities. And then, (if I’m on my game) I shut up and listen. I demonstrate respect by listening without interrupting, and certainly not arguing over details. I choose to show consideration for another point of view.

Learning to listen well is critical. We demonstrate “we are not know it all’s” and have something to learn. That our experience is not the only, chief, best, or fill in any other “comparative” analysis noun. When I am successful in this, I learn. I learn to appreciate the struggle of other communities. I learn we all have a story to tell. I learn we all have success and challenges. I learn even more effective ways and methods for disarming systemic and institutional racism, and dismantling structural oppression. And I learn to be a more effective critical apologist for the antiracism values around which we organize our work; cooperation & collaboration, in particular.

Photo by B. Jo Ann Mundy

This way of demonstrating humility and respect through deep listening re-humanizes us and acknowledges the humanity of others. I find tender places in my heart, and the hearts of others. I allow myself to be touched by another and allow my soul to connect with the humanity of another. It builds deep empathy. This simple yet powerful act validates the other. Listening authenticates and affirms the humanity of the other, and in this way builds power.

Claiming our histories. In the telling and hearing of one another experiences and histories, we develop the potential to begin to see our collective interest and invite one another into our larger stories. In this way we can begin to gain a clearer and fuller perspective and focus our collective power. It is empowering to understand we are not alone in our struggle. Many, many others have experienced what we have experienced. Our particular stories are not the same, yet they are similar. As we understand we are not alone, we build power through aligning our efforts.

Building solidarity and inclusion is different from becoming an ally. Being an ally is based on what I can do for you, building solidarity is what we can do together creating ever widening circles of inclusion.

Acknowledges the complexity of structural oppression. The framework of the Black/White racial binary paradigm constricts us from understanding the fullness, dynamic and complexity of structural oppression. In order to be effective at dismantling racism, it is imperative that we understand the complexity of structural oppression. Minimizing and marginalizing the reality of the racist oppression experienced by those who are not African-American is like leaving out 3/5s of the construct and this will never lead us to effective solutions that challenge White supremacy!

SEEING THE CONNECTIONS

In my experience the social justice movement and individuals within it, have been harmed by the Black/White racial binary paradigm. So I will give witness to this countercultural conviction and I will offer a critical apologetic at every turn in order to make us all stronger together.

Unjust immigration polices are impacting more people than just Mexicans. Alarming deportation rates and the shattered families left in the wake of the popular immigration story is harming all of our communities. All of our communities are impacted by the notion that some people don’t belong here. We all have a stake in immigration reform.

“Stop and Frisk,” “Stand Your Ground,” and the Prison Industrial Complex are not just about Black bodies. All of us; Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and African-Americans experience the criminalization of our bodies. These laws and institutions are a threat to all of us.

The Black/White racial binary paradigm does not serve us individually, institutionally, or culturally. Rather it serves the dominant culture as one of the most efficient, disempowering and disorganizing processes. In my mind it is the most destructive of strategies. If we developed the capacity to hear the story of another, we will become more effective organizers.

 

 

What does Antiracism have to do with Racial Equity?

Joy Bailey has been the Director of Organizing and Training for Crossroads since 2011 and has been a Core/Organizer Trainer since 2008. Formerly, Joy taught high school Spanish for six years in Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) and also taught courses on race and racism in education at WMU. Joy has been doing local antiracism organizing in Kalamazoo Public Schools since 2001.

I was recently asked what I thought the difference was between antiracism and racial equity.  Frankly, I often use these terms interchangeably and don’t see much difference.  If I had to parse them out, I would say racial equity is about creating policies, practices, and structures that deliver equitable, not necessarily equal, treatment to all. It means actualizing shared power and decision-making that is just and fair. The Center for Assessment and Policy Development defines racial equity this way:

Racial equity is the condition that would be achieved if one’s racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares. When we use the term, we are thinking about racial equity as one part of racial justice, and thus we also include work to address root causes of inequities not just their manifestation. This includes elimination of policies, practices, attitudes and cultural messages that reinforce differential outcomes by race or fail to eliminate them.[1]

I would say that racial equity is a component of antiracism.  The term antiracism encompasses a systemic analysis of racism that includes historical, sociological, economic and political frameworks.  It includes a response to racism that involves action and organizing strategically.  For us at Crossroads, it means applying a systemic analysis of racism to our institutions and then organizing collectively to transform them into more racially equitable and multicultural institutions.  We understand that for a single institution to be transformed, we will have to transform all other institutions and systems with which it is interconnected as well.  The interconnected web of institutions and systems producing racist outcomes is often called structural or systemic racism, which antiracism seeks to eliminate.  As defined by National Antiracism Council International Perspectives: Women and Global Solidarity, “Anti-racism is the active process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies and practices and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably.”[2]

Now, some people Crossroads organizers encounter will ask why we use the term antiracism when, “it is so negative.” We might hear, “It turns people off and sounds like you are blaming individuals, ” or, “Why not say what you are for rather than what you are against?” While it is true that we must say what we stand for, providing hope and vision, and not simply point out what is wrong and unjust in the world we do not think that the term antiracism is negative nor individualistic.

If we think about other uses of the prefix anti-, e.g. anti freeze; antibiotic; antiviral; antiparasitic; antifungal; antimalarial; antipsychotic; antidepressant; antiviolence; etc., we see that this prefix is especially common in the practice of medicine and that it points to an intervention aimed at curing or preventing systemic conditions.  This is a clue regarding the way Crossroads uses the term antiracism. It suggests activity that is curative and preventive in relation to the systemic damage wrought by racism.

Crossroads organizer James Addington likes to say, antiracism as an intervention includes the reparation of community. The term antiracism is especially relevant in reference to collective, collaborative action. While individuals can certainly be antiracist, their antiracism is especially relevant in common cause with others.  Antiracism in this sense is about the reparation of the fabric of community and the role that institutions can play in that process. It is about calling institutions into an accountable relationship with communities. It is about restoring and shaping sustainable community life; life that is diverse, resilient and regenerative. It is about healthy, life giving community.

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[1] http://racialequitytools.org/glossary#racial-equity

[2] http://www.ucalgary.ca/cared/antiracismdefined

Antiracism Intervention: Crossroads Contribution to the Racial Justice Movement

Joy Bailey has been the Director of Organizing and Training for Crossroads since 2011 and has been a Core/Organizer Trainer since 2008.  Formerly, Joy taught high school Spanish for six years in Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) and also taught courses on race and racism in education at WMU. Joy has been doing local antiracism organizing in Kalamazoo Public Schools since 2001.

“A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As we enter the month of February, Black History Month, which follows on the heels of MLK DAY, I have been reflecting on the accomplishments of Dr. King and others in the Civil Rights Movement.  This year we will celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, yet I am mindful of how far we still have to go towards racial justice. Racism continues to permeate every facet of our society.  It impacts individual People of Color struggling against racial micro-aggressions and individual White people who continue to reap the benefits of White privilege and White supremacy.  Racism also manifests in our society’s culture at large, imposing dominant White cultural ways of being on everyone and distorting, discrediting and destroying People of Color cultures while simultaneously appropriating them.  Finally, racism continues to get lived out in the policies, practices and structures of our institutions as evidenced by outcomes like the Achievement Gap in education (more aptly called the Opportunity Gap) and health disparities.

Crossroads organizer and trainer James Addington likens the ever-present and simultaneous manifestations of individual, cultural and institutional racism to an electromagnetic force field that is very difficult to penetrate.  He shares a story of a friend of his who found herself in a meeting where she was the only Person of Color and the only woman.  She, for the life of her, could not make herself heard.  No matter how hard she tried to bring her voice to the table, she was continually ignored and dismissed, or someone else got credit for her ideas.  She described the experience as similar to being surrounded by a force field from which she couldn’t break free.

The metaphor of racism as an electromagnetic force field is powerful because once the problem is identified then we can begin working toward a solution.   Racism is a structural problem that requires a structural solution.  There needs to be an injection or intervention into the force field of racism that will weaken its power over us; that will heal us and restore community.  Since there are at least three ways racism manifests itself, individually, culturally and institutionally, there are at least three ways to apply an intervention.

Some racial justice activists and organizations utilize individual interventions.  Generative Somatics is an organization that makes a distinction between oppression and suffering, that the former is externally created and the latter is internal.  They argue that many organizers for social justice tend to focus on systemic oppression and neglect self-care. They argue that committing to practices that acknowledge and interrupt “conditioned tendencies” developed in response to stress and trauma, can open us up to more healthy and appropriate ways to respond to individual suffering and more effectively struggle to end racial and other oppressions.

Other organizations challenge cultural racism in our society.  For example, Race Forward does a tremendous job of shifting worldviews and language around race and racism in the media.  Their Drop The I-Word campaign is just one example of the many ways Race Forward strives to generate a cultural shift in the way our society thinks and talks about race and racism. Oyate is a Native organization that sells books and provides trainings and reviews in order to ensure that Native lives and histories are portrayed with honesty and integrity. 18 Million Rising is another organization that challenges cultural racism by exposing and debunking cultural stereotypes through focused campaigns like #NotYourAsianSidekick.

Crossroads applies our intervention into the force field of racism at the institutional level.  We don’t think that an institutional approach is the only or even the best way to eliminate racism, but it is a necessary component to racial justice.  It is what we, as Crossroads, offer to the movement.  Of course we also address individual and cultural racism, but we do so in the context of institutions and systemic racism. Part of the reason we choose to focus on an institutional intervention is because institutions are where individuals and culture come together.  Institutions are made up of people who make decisions and enforce policies and procedures and our society’s cultural values and practices get lived out in our institutions.  Our institutions also create, manage and distribute the resources necessary for life.  As Robette Dias, Crossroads’ Executive Director, likes to put it, we have replaced the life sustaining nature of the land with institutions.  Today, people in the U.S. gain access to the stuff of life through accessing institutions.  The problem is that our institutions don’t create, manage and distribute resources equitably to all people and all living beings.

The injection Crossroads offers to diffuse the force field of racism is an antiracism intervention.  Our method of intervening and disrupting uses a variety of organizing strategies, workshops and organizational development tools to transform institutions into antiracist multicultural institutions that are life giving for all.  To learn more about Crossroads’ antiracism intervention in institutions go to www.crossroadsantiracism.org or call us at 708-503-0804.

Let Us Not Stand Silent

A native of Puerto Rico, Jessica Vazquez Torres identifies as a “1.5 generation Queer ESL Latina of Puerto Rican descent.” She works as a consultant and core/organizer trainer for Crossroads. Jessica holds a BA in Criminal Justice and Masters degrees in Theological Studies and Divinity. She lives in GA with her spouse and two Shih-Tzu’s.

Bearing the weight of truth that challenges human assumptions is something Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did well.  If the photos and grainy videos show the whole story, he was a man who could stand in the face of great and difficult problems with aplomb, and speak with passionate certainty about grim reality and hope.

In the United States we have done Dr. King a great disservice by imprisoning him to one speech, a marvelous and uplifting speech about a dream, but nonetheless one that obfuscates his evolution as a nonviolent resister and thinker.

Exactly one year before his assassination, April 4, 1967, from the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York, Dr. King spoke at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam calling for an end to the war and articulating the implications of failing to take such a bold step. He titled his remarks, “A Time to Break Silence.”

Dr. King’s journey to this powerful speech was a difficult one.  The movement he was leading appeared to be unraveling. There was tension and dissent among the ranks over whether or not the struggle for African-American civil and economic rights should be connected to the struggle to end U.S. military operations in Vietnam.

Close allies like Whitney Young were concerned that to take on Vietnam was to jeopardize all the work they had done on behalf of African-Americans.  Younger movement leaders like Stokely Carmichael were also challenging the core principles of the civil rights movement as articulated by King.  In their frustration at the slow pace of change, significant members of the younger generation of civil right organizers and revolutionaries were abandoning the idea that non-violence could bring change.  While chanting “Black Power,” Carmichael and other emerging civil rights leaders were calling for armed confrontation of racist Whites, the use of violence when necessary, and Black separatism.

Those concerned with preserving the focus of the civil rights movement of issues of race primarily and class secondarily, pleaded with Dr. King to remain silent.  Those concerned with the disproportionate drafting and loss of African-American men in the war and the U.S. efforts to disrupt the movement for self-determination in Vietnam pleaded with Dr. King to speak.

In between these two pulls Dr. King struggled until the harrowing images from Vietnam, the piled bodies of U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese women and children, and the obvious links between war, poverty, and racism could not be avoided anymore. Early in his speech at Riverside Church King offers this confession, “Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart.”[1] He then follows this acknowledgment with a powerful and urgent plea for the soul of his nation.

“We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.  Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message — of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”[2]

No longer able to ignore the links between war, poverty and racism nor the movement of the Spirit of the God in whom he believed, King begins to push the civil rights movement in a radically different direction.  Resting in his conviction that the Creator desired a reordering of society, King challenged his nation and those gathered at Riverside Church to find the moral courage to make a choice: “These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”[3]

Dr. King knew that when he linked the struggle for civil rights with the struggles against poverty and war, he would bring discomfort into his life.  He knew that when he began to name the unholy trinity of U.S. materialism, militarism, and systemic racism people would resist.  But he also knew there was no alternative.  He knew that for freedom to ring in every mountain, valley, and corner of his beloved nation, he had to link these social sins.  And so must we.

The dream of Dr. King we love to cite will remain an elusive fantasy until we too link systemic racism with corporate greed, militarism, and the rampant materialism of our times.  In the last month alone our congress has acted not to extend unemployment benefits for millions of Americans while also ensuring corporations can continue to profit as the poor and vulnerable struggle.  Homeless shelters are filled with women, children, and men.  Those seeking jobs have stopped searching, resigning themselves to permanent unemployed status which means they are of no account.  Our public school systems are failing to educate the poorest and criminalizing those who fail to conform to our common core curriculums.  Our prisons are filled to the brim with non-violent offenders who are not being rehabilitated while the companies that own the prisons revive de-facto forms of Jim Crow.   And all along the stock market thrives.

Bringing about, working toward, honoring the dream of Dr. King demands that we see the connections linking systemic forms of oppression.  It demands that we speak out when it is unpopular; that we take stands not just on matters of racial discrimination but against xenophobic and homophobic legislation as well as the military and prison industrial complexes that destroy life.

Do we have it in us to speak? Do we have it in us to protest? Do we have it in us to raise our collective voice to speak out against systemic forms of oppressions like racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism, just to name a few, especially when part of speaking out is naming our complicity in this social ills and oppressions?

Dr. King said toward the beginning of this powerful speech, “the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony“[4] because “the human spirit [moves with] great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty.”[5]

Let us not be mesmerized by the conundrums we face.  At stake is the soul of this nation. Let us not stand silent.

[1] Martin Luther King and James Melvin Washington, I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World ([San Francisco]: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), page 136.

[2] Ibid, page 151.

[3] Ibid, page 153.

[4] Ibid, page 136.

[5] Ibid, page 136.

Analyzing & Understanding Crossroads: An Introduction to Systemic Antiracism by Robette Dias

Robette has been Executive Co-Director and a Core Organizer/Trainer since 2002. Prior to that she was an antiracism program coordinator for the Unitarian Universalist Association’s (UUA) Faith In Action Department, providing training, technical support and advocacy for the Journey Toward Wholeness antiracism initiative. As a Karuk Indian, Robette brings a specifically indigenous perspective to antiracism organizing. She is a founding member and past president of Diverse & Revolutionary UU Multicultural Ministries (DRUUMM), the continental support and advocacy organization for UUA People of Color. She is currently Board President of Oyate, a Native American resource and advocacy organization.

Readers who have recently attended a Crossroads “Analysis Workshop” may recognize the title of this post as a riff on the name of that workshop. If people know anything about Crossroads its usually that we do workshops that teach people about racism. And it’s true, we pride ourselves on our ability to break down racism with razor sharp, laser directed and sometimes mind-blowing presentations AND we do so much more than that! The challenge of living in a world that invites a power analysis of racism at every turn is that you can’t just switch it off! Because we encounter racial injustice and racial disparities around every corner, we are highly motivated to apply that analysis and work with “institutional perpetrators” to find solutions that will lead to social transformation. Well, that was a pretty heady mouthful! What does that mean?

Who IS the real Crossroads then?

The Crossroads of today has to be understood in the context of our origins.  We are still that Crossroads of 1986 AND we are also an evolving, complex, and transforming Crossroads. Launching the Crossroads blog on the week in which we remember the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is quite intentional. It is a nod of gratitude to the Crossroads founders who participated in the Civil Rights Movement and who wanted to make sure the Movement was kept alive in religious communities. We continue to be inspired by the life-long commitments to racial justice of our founders and the early builders of Crossroads Ministry: Joe Barndt, Susan Birkelo, Susan and Chuck Ruehle, Victor Rodriguez, and Melvin Hoover. They are the foundation of Crossroads and they opened the space from which the Crossroads of today emerges.

Sometimes that space has been contested space, make no mistake. It wasn’t easy transitioning from an organization with a strong Civil Rights identity and orientation to an organization focused on racial justice more broadly. We are clear that People of Color continue to struggle for civil rights and equal access and control of the public institutions in the United States, but we are also clear that racial justice includes the sovereignty movements of Indigenous Peoples, and the anti-colonial movements of People of Color under direct and neo-colonial domination by the US. We know that racial justice has to be tied to revolutionizing our economic system because the exploitation of People of Color and poor White People is what fuels U.S. capitalism.

It also wasn’t easy transitioning from our Protestant Christian origins. Christianity, the way our founders understand it, is the path to restoring a human family deeply divided by racism and other systems of oppression.  The diversity of spiritual and humanist traditions that exist in Crossroads today share a similar ethos, and may express it in radically different ways. It is not just a divide in the human family needing restoration, but the alienation from creation as the source of all life (which some may refer to as the Sacred or Spirit) that needs to be healed.

The guiding principle transforming Crossroads today is accountability to People of Color. It manifests in our current leadership: five Women of Color and one White Woman comprise the salaried and contract staff of Crossroads, our board is 75% People of Color, 40% of our 23 contract organizer/trainers are People of Color.  More than a numbers game (as some of our trainers remind us, the plantation was a diverse workplace too), accountability to People of Color has led us to articulate a radically inclusive power analysis of racism and to invest in what we call Regional Organizing. That is, institutional organizing grounded in geographically identified communities in order to be in direct relationship with the Communities of Color for whom racism is a life and death reality.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Creating this blog is a commitment to transparency and nurturing the Crossroads learning community. It’s an invitation to Analyzing & Understanding racism today and exploring Antiracist Interventions. Clear, deep analysis of the power dynamics of white supremacy has always been key to successful, effective resistance. Analyzing & Understanding racism today is as important as ever. There are more ways to criminalize and exploit People of Color now that at any other time in our country’s history.

• More Men of Color are incarcerated now than were ever enslaved by the institution of Chattel Slavery and under Jim Crow. There are more Black and Brown men in prison than in college, and with the expansion of the criminal industrial complex and privatization of prisons, a large and profitable sector of the US economy thrives while Communities of Color are decimated.
• The US economy is sustained by the labor of undocumented workers. The deportation of those workers, which is higher than ever, is tearing apart families and lives.
• American Indian families opposing the adoption of their children by non-Indians have been arrested for obstruction of justice, contempt of court, even kidnapping. Indian families are expected to stand by and watch as state troopers remove their children from their homes. Meanwhile, non-Indian men who rape Indian women go unpunished and walk free to perpetrate their crimes with impunity due to issues of convoluted legal jurisdictions.
• Past racial justice accomplishments are being gutted: everything from voting rights to affirmative action.
• Even the growing wealth divide is highly racialized and highly gendered. At the prime age of income potential, Women of Color continue to have negative wealth while their White sisters median is $42,000.
• Racialized health disparities continue to manifest while study after study confirm racism is bad for the health of People of Color.

Yes, the work of antiracism, the work of Crossroads is needed now more than ever! So…I invite you. Read the blog; get to know us more deeply, get to know about racism and antiracism in all its complexity. Apply the Analysis and let us hear from you!