Healing Requires Honesty
It’s time for a shift in the way we talk about racial bias. I want to challenge us to be more courageous and maximize the moment. We need to move beyond using unconscious bias as a default for classifying incidents of racial bias. I know this will ruffle some feathers. To show you that I’m willing to take my own advice, I’m issuing this challenge even though I used the default in a former article on Anti-Blackness. If we’re serious about uprooting racism and Anti-Black racism during this revolution, then we must speak truth to power. Racial healing requires raising…
We need to end Anti-Black racism, for real.
Summer of 2020, in cities around the world, people marched for #BlackLivesMatter. For the first time in the history of the United States, we witnessed a multicultural tapestry of people marching to support the end of oppression against Black people. It appeared that people were being true to “what they said on paper.” Folks changed their social media handles, companies made Black Lives Matter commitment statements, people boldly confronted their family members racist ideologies, millions of dollars poured into the Movement for Black Lives and national Black organizations. Articles and webinars about…
It’s been a week since the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capital and it still feels like the bad dream that we knew was coming. Failure to systemically act on the warnings from social justice prophets like Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Edward Said, Dolores Huerta, Yuri Kochiyama, Rabbi Joshua Heschel, Leonard Peltier and others continued to hollow out the soul of our nation. From this empty place two spiritual forces formed: solidarity movements for social justice and vigilante movements of White supremacy and conspiracy.
Both stormed the U.S. Capital. Each with a different approach.
Movements…
Ignoring Unjust Behaviors Keeps Oppression Alive
We’ve all been there before, you’ve witnessed an unjust act like racism and you want to interject with that powerful statement to change the status quo yet you find yourself silent, nodding, or laughing in complicity with the very action that you wanted to disrupt.
After the moment passes, you may find yourself immersed in feelings of shame and guilt and thinking “I cannot believe I did it again. Why didn’t I speak up?”
Recently, I’ve seen this type of behavior keep well-meaning individuals and organizations in a recursive loop of Conscious Collusion.
Unless…
We get to decide how we want to be in the world
Our internal and external world is shaped by the cumulative impact of our daily choices. Whether we achieve a socially just world hinges upon every citizen’s daily decisions. It depends upon how we use our power in any given moment. We always have power and choice. It’s up to us to decide if we want to use them.
Every day you get to choose to use your power to work towards a socially just world or stifle the development of it.
What is Power?
Power comes from within…
How to use DEI to disrupt, dismantle, and rebuild for social justice
2020 marks the year that we learn to live with each other as equals. It changes the argument to how do we co-create an oppression-free world where we treat each other with dignity. In his 1963 novel, The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin beckoned the US to think about the same challenge: how do we live together. On the novel’s second page, he penned these prophetic words from an old slave song, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!”
We’re now living…
As I reflect on my own life, stories from female friends and family, coaching anecdotes, and recent news, I’m finding an unfortunate but common trend: survivors of psychological violence. This type of violence is different from other types because it does not leave physical marks; however, it leaves scars that wounds one’s mental psyche far beyond the bruise of a physical scar. Psychological violence results from exposure to abusive behaviors such as gaslighting, psychological trauma, racism, sexism, name-calling, emotional withholding, verbal insults, and manipulation. Constant exposure to these behaviors lead to anxiety, diminished self-esteem, mental exhaustion, depression, ptsd, and other…
Supporting African-American Faculty, Staff, and Students in the Face of Racialized Political Microaggressions by Annice E. Fisher & Taris G. Mullins
(Reprint from NASPA Knowledge Communities Issue, Fall 2013)
Note: Although written 7 years ago, our analysis remains relevant to the current nature of Anti-Black racism. I hope this reprint motivates us to seriously use this moment to disrupt and end Anti-Black racism, once and for all.
The integration of equity, diversity, and inclusion in NASPA’s guiding principles conveys an imperative for higher education professionals. Through support, engagement, and advocacy for underrepresented populations, an inclusive campus environment can be created and nurtured. …
