Life in Progress

I haven’t posted in a while because life was happening.  And sometimes when life happens it literally sits you down for a while and makes you pay attention.

So while regrouping from a fall down the stairs (I got hurt but didn’t break anything), here are some of the things that caught my attention.

RACISM is a LEARNED BEHAVIOR

Children are not born racist or hateful. They learn it – from adults.

Oakland’s MOCHA (Museum of Children’s Art) recently in a tug-of-war regarding plans for an exhibit of artwork created by children of Gaza. In an unbelievable stance of using the children as pawns for a greater political discussion, local voices debated whether to have the exhibit or cancel it. (this link is to just one of several stories about this issue: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/09/23/18691155.php) .   

Now come on people, these are children. The youngest one of them probably doesn’t even know what the debate is all about, but they know what they feel and at whose hands they feel it.

These children are victims of war. War is hell. War is violent. The art is gripping.  There is a touching watercolor of children with jump rope and dolls, and standing adjacent is someone with a missile and the trees are crying

Art is a proven healer for people suffering traumas.  There are communities nearby that if we asked those children to draw, I am willing to bet their drawings would be just as graphic.

These kids, near and far, should be the world’s hope for a better future; not the pawns for the next political move(ment). Those of us who want peace, can see that it’s not happening with my generation – do you think it may happen with the next? (see video clip of exhibit and background http://californiaschildren.typepad.com/californias-children/2011/09/oaklands-mocha-cancels-gaza-kids-art-exhibit-amid-protest.html)

As children, we select our friends because we have fun with them and back in my day those friends were our immediate neighbors. If we didn’t “like” them, we told our parents. And then our parents arranged for us to play with new “friends.” So the parents selected who we socialized with, or didn’t.

As a child most of my neighbors were white (there were only three black households in my neighborhood, and we all lived next door to each other). Before there was the term “play dates,” my mother arranged for me to play with black kids like me through our church and other outlets.

I had a diverse pool of friends. Then after “white flight” when all the white families and their kids moved away and all the Latino families moved in, life in the neighborhood became even more rich.

Also, a few weeks ago, I encountered a white man in his late 50s whose experience growing up was quite different. He now lives in a middle-class, high-density diverse Oakland neighborhood and works out at a popular and diverse San Leandro sports facility.

His hair is just long enough for me to know he isn’t a conformist. So imagine my surprise when he said that our conversation was the first time he had spoken with a black woman for longer than 10 minutes. True, he grew up in the “real” Midwest, but I still find it amazing that a mature man is just now having a 10-minute conversation with a black woman.

A few days ago I reflected on my pending 30-year college reunion. My college years at Northwestern University were not only when I refined my writing, but they also were when I learned about racial identity in society and what that meant for me.

I have to admit that as open as my childhood was and as exposed as I was to different races and classes (wealth) as a child, the circumstances at Northwestern, began to shape my preferences and show up as biases.

Back then in 1970s-80s Chicago, everything was polarized by seemingly race and class. Then, as if the Divine was intervening, my FIRST JOB after college involved directing multi-cultural programs with the Mid-Peninsula YWCA and sponsoring “unlearning racism classes.”

I remembered all of this about two weeks ago, when I hobbled to lunch to meet for the first time, two African American young ladies who grew up in Atlanta and recently graduated from college and arrived in the East Bay.

One is working at a community based organization that fights systemic racism and the other at an education institution that seeks equity. They asked “Ms. Grant, do you think those diversity workshops work?”

My answer, “In one hour or a session, you may not change someone’s prejudices, but you can actually frame the language and their approach to how they address these things. Racism is based often in ignorance and stereotypes. Those kinds of workshops provide the tools to question the behavior and belief system, or at the least how to ask a question without being insulting or stupid.”

For the past several years I have been asked to lead a “Diversity Dialogue” for the Chamber of Commerce Leadership Class. We explore all kinds of topics related to the “isms” that attach themselves to race, sex, and other categories and how those “isms” show up and correlate to leadership in community service, politics, and business. Year after year, it’s never the same outcome but always a good discussion.

So the other day, sitting down and paying attention, I thought, how ironic I will miss the Chamber of Commerce discussion this year because I will be at Northwestern University, the very place where all that showed up for me.  I went there to become a journalist, but what I got was the role of community builder and conflict resolver.