Yet another news report of police killing a black man. It's unacceptable!
We have a race problem in our country. It is difficult, nuanced, confusing, saddening, infuriating and complicated...and it needs to stop.
The "race problem" is just one of many problems in our country that needs addressing. it represents just one symptom of a larger issue that we all face - how we deal with power. The same problem is reflected in other issues, like The Gender Struggle.
The Race struggle and The Gender struggle are similar, but not the same. The "boys will be boys" reflection of the rape culture in our country, the degradation of women and their continued oppression in the workforce, in churches, in education and in larger society reflects a similar struggle with the race issue in America. It is not unique to our country. This same problem of dealing with power exists around our world. The group with power exerts their power over the group without power in ways that are dehumanizing, degrading and debilitating. History teaches us that when you continually remove the voice of the oppressed, violence becomes a natural outcome to the oppressed. This is not to say violence is acceptable by any means, but when all other means of protest are removed, overthrow of the majority power becomes the only way forward. Sadly, many overthrows reverse the power dynamic but don't solve the problem. They just replicate it!
So, when people respond with criticism, judgment and death threats to Colin Kaepernick and others taking a knee in protest, they silence a means of protesting an injustice. In so doing, they remove another voice of non-violence leading to what feels like an inevitable conclusion which we saw play out in Charlotte, North Carolina this week.
This conclusion is hinted at in an old song sung by Miriam Makeba and written by Jeremy Taylor about the race struggle in South Africa during the Apartheid era. It's called A Piece of Ground. The last verse reads as a warning:
White man don't sleep long and don't sleep too deep
Or your life and your possessions, how long will you keep
For I've heard a rumor that's running around
That the black man's demanding his own piece of ground
His own piece of ground.
When Kaepernick kneels...
When unarmed black men raise their hands when confronted by police...
When people march with slogans and upraised hands...
When black people die in the streets for doing what is normal...
When Standing Rock Sioux tribe stop a pipeline...
It is a protest demanding a piece of ground that is rightfully theirs. A piece of ground stolen from them by oppressors.
The oppression needs to stop!
This is my attempt to begin that process.We need to find a way to address this power struggle and find ways forward where power is shared, and the oppressed become free. There are many ways to do this, in personal and corporate ways. The key is to begin. The road is hard, filled with missteps, mistakes, and setbacks. But begin we must, because the cycle of abuse of power needs to stop.
An Attempted Scope of the Problem
Below is an attempt to provide a scope of the problem. First a disclaimer. I am not a professor of ethics, or an expert on race relations or any of those things. I freely admit my own lack of knowledge in this space. So this attempt is to open a dialogue. I want your feedback and your engagement. I am open to criticism, feedback, dialogue and input. I want to learn...together with you how to overcome this cycle and put an end to oppression of people whether it be by race, gender, orientation or other labels meant to create separation.
1. Own your story
Color blind is not the way to be. We each have a story of who we are, and that story includes our color. Own it. Share it. Make sense of it. For those wondering, I am a white, married male with two sons. I grew up in South Africa during Apartheid years and now live in America. I am white, privileged and imbued with power I did not earn. My suffering pails in comparison to the day to day degradation of those who are not white males. Knowing where I am in the cycle helps me know what I need to do. Owning your story is a good step. To own your story, you need to know it.
Part of the problem I believe we face in the race struggle and other issues related to power is that the goal is unclear. What does success look like in order to win this fight? I know the quick answer is equality but what does that look like. For example, some would claim that women are equal to men in our society today because women can vote or women can work or women can lead etc. Whenever the metric they have decided is the struggles goal has been met, equality is assumed and success is declared. But ask most women today if they feel equality has been met and you will find disagreement. The same is true for the Race Struggle, LGBTQ struggle and other power struggles.
A large part of this is because the people with power are the ones deciding what the goal for success is. Seldom is the goal set by the oppressed. So, a necessary step for us to succeed is defining the goal of success. That definition must include and in many cases be led and decided by the oppressed, not the oppressor.
3. Understand The Privilege and Guilt of Power
White privilge, Male Privilege, or another other form of privilege needs to be understood. My wife and I have begun a series of discussions with our boys using movies and news as a launching point to talk to our boys about the privilege they have. For example, we discussed the freedom they have to walk on the streets, and not be stopped by police because they are white. They could not understand it at first until we explained the sometimes daily experience of black children being stopped and questioned for no explicit reason other than being black and profiled as a potential threat.
There are ways to discover privilege and we need to learn about those. There are classes to take, books to read, people to talk to about what sort of privilege you have.
There also needs to be a caution from operating out of power guilt. For example, much is written about white guilt and how it subverts and damages the struggle to overcome racism. Power guilt does not help the process and needs to be understood and overcome too.
4. Understand The Victimization and Victimhood of Powerlessness
I use the term "victimhood" in two ways. The first way is to understand how the powerless are victimized for being who they are. Blacks being stopped for being black is one example. Women being sexualized is another. This means listening intently as a person of privilege and courage as a person of oppression. It means finding the ways to talk and learn from each other.
The second way I use the term victimhood is for the oppressed person to resist the urge to allow their oppression to be used by them to gain privilege. I say this hesitantly, because as a person of power I do not, dare I say should not, be declaring what the oppressed do or don't do. Rather I will let Booker T. Washington speak to what I mean from his book My Larger Education:
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” (p. 118)
Victimization and Victimhood must both be understood in our efforts to overcome the power struggles in our world.
5. Understand The Relationship Between Power and Powerlessness
Of course, knowing your place in the struggle is only a step. Knowing the relationship between these states and how they enforce, reinforce, influence, depend on, and can dismantle one another is essential to moving forward. This means talking together...a lot. It means hard uncomfortable conversations where anger, hurt, grievance, forgiveness and pain are all possible. But its worth it because it means we can find a way forward.
6. Education
As we learn together about our stories, the goal, the relationship of power and powerlessness we can begin to educate each other on a way forward. Once the education begins, now we can begin to discuss strategies and solutions, tactics and programs. Without the earlier foundations, misunderstanding will happen. Even with the foundations, misunderstanding will happen. My point in talking about education here, is not to learn our stories, or the issues of power and powerlessness but instead for us to begin the process if educating ourselves around solutions and strategies for success. When the powerless are able to speak into the situation and the powerful are able to listen, education of solutions can begin. Sadly, many programs on race relations don't get this far. We cannot rush to solutions, but when we get to this space it is amazing to see how solutions can grab hold and make a difference.
7. Engagement
After education comes engagement. This means action...taking a knee, raising a fist, standing in silence, casting the vote and a hundred other potential action steps that could be made. Engagement takes courage. Engagement takes effort. Engagement takes commitment. But, we can do it.
8. Evaluation
Of course, evaluating our progress, admitting setbacks and failures, and celebrating successes is essential. We need to constantly evaluate our work because we tend to slide towards division not unity. Power is insidious and creeps always towards oppression of the "other". Evaluation means looking back at what we've achieved and seeing how to do better. It means looking at the now and seeing if we need to course correct. It means looking at the future to watch out for future failures and regressions.
A First Step - Humility
This far too lengthy blog ends with what I believe is a first step...humility. I will blog about what I mean by this in a future post, but humility I believe is the first step that needs to be taken to begin this scope. Humility is the key to knowing your story and then owning your story.
So, let's begin...tell me what you think.
