A few months ago, I attended a summit of rural organizations and communities, all working to improve outcomes for children and youth along the cradle-to-career continuum. In my work, I help support six such communities focusing on early education outcomes across five states. They, along with several other contingents from communities around the country, were all invited to a couple half-day special sessions to focus on the importance of local stories/narratives for informing robust strategies. The thought is that, for any issue identified by the group working to improve outcomes, there are stories sitting with folks most impacted by those issues that might validate or refine the current understanding. I was invited to join the special sessions as an observer – not a facilitator, not a participant. I resisted an impulse in the group’s second session, and I left kind of kicking myself. Then, the next night, I was listening to The Inner Work of Racial Justice by Rhonda Magee on audio book, and I really kicked myself.
The situation: The group was sharing what they considered to be some of the lesser-known histories and narratives of the places where they lived and worked. It was a mixed group of about 40 people – mostly women and mostly White, with maybe 3-4 Latina and 5-6 Black participants. A white woman whom I know and work with conveyed the history of the rise of moonshine in Cocke County, Tennessee. She spoke with great pride about the county/region being the #1 supplier of elicit moonshine to the country during Prohibition, and she was met with general approbation as she lauded the resilience and ingenuity of her ancestors in the face of poverty and oppression. All totally fine. The thing is her offering entered into a vacuum, without other narratives to rub or bump up against – just the encouraging (or polite) nods of mostly white peers. The facilitators were running short on time and working to bring the day’s session to a close. The group did not have time for additional discussion of the narrative presented or other narratives from different perspectives.
My initial response: The first thing that came to mind for me was a line from Jay-Z’s “Justify My Thug”: “Mr. President, there’s drugs in our residence. Tell me what you want me to do. Come break bread with us.” He spoke of the influx of cocaine and emergence of its cheap derivative, crack, in impoverished Black neighborhoods in the 80s and early 90s. The influx coincided with the exit of investment and jobs, and it was followed quickly with the so-called “war on drugs,” which did not applaud the resilience and ingenuity of the Black men seeking to escape the grip of deep poverty and structural oppression through elicit enterprise. Instead, they were met with targeted policing and disparate and prejudicial sentencing guidelines which effectively removed millions of sons, brothers and fathers from their families in the course of a decade. Indeed, the practices continued well into the 21st century and continue in some states still. I thought all this, and yet I processed it silently in the back of the room. I was honoring my role as observer in the group. In the brief space between the woman’s comments and the facilitators’ transition to the end of the session I waited with bated breath for any of the other participants to build on, interrogate or otherwise engage with the narrative offered. I suspect they were all tired and anticipating the end of two days of deep teamwork.
My wish: I wish I had put my reaction into the space with the group, not to diminish or call into question the woman’s pride in the history of her hometown, just to juxtapose it to the stories that were not being told. I wonder if the group, especially its White members, would conjure similar feelings of adoration if presented with images of Black youth “pitching packs” on urban street corners and distributing cocaine across our country. [Pause: I’m loathe to perpetuate the stereotype of Black thugs selling drugs, so let’s be clear that rates of drug possession and use (marijuana for example) are similar while arrest rates are 4x higher for Blacks (in 2010)]. I’m curious if they would have praised equally the desperate and courageous stories of their Brown brothers and sisters who illegally cross our borders – as many of their White ancestors did to colonize a land freely inhabited by others, by the way – fleeing violence and systemic oppression. Would the group have recognized the shared humanity in the impulse to survive?
Why: Back to The Inner Work of Racial Justice. The author, Rhonda Magee, defines a term “race-text” as “racially coded messages about who belongs and who doesn’t.” She suggests, “Silence around what we know about race-text is harmful. Our blind spots make it hard to see that such biases actually bias our environments. It creates psychological comfort for those whose privileges are supported by the silence, and it creates vulnerability for those harmed by it.” I was silent in the midst of the race-text that day. The facilitators and the rest of the group were silent as well. We often talk about scarcity and abundance in the context of financial or material resources. I think scarcity mindsets also apply to narratives; people with privilege and power can implicitly and explicitly limit access to stories different from their own. There was an opportunity for the group to create a space of abundance, brimming with narratives of courageous and defiant acts of love and survival, a space where emotional discomfort was shifted and at least shared in equal measure by members of dominant and minoritized groups. Damn, I missed my chance! Ah, the growth opportunity! Alas, as a coach once shared with me, “you can only bring others as far along as you have traveled.” I am grateful for the journey. Consider this a postcard, my invitation to that group of leaders – and to you – to join me where I have traveled. Please leave your own postcards in the comments below. Where are you on your journey?
Hip Hop IllumiNation 