anonymous cowgirl

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who was an advisor of one of my advisors, and therefore in a way my academic grandfather or great-uncle or something, was arrested in his own home for disorderly conduct. The details have been described in a number of places, and I won’t belabor them, but it looks like this: Dr. Gates and a friend came home from a trip, found his door jammed, had to force his way in. See note 1. A neighbor saw this, thought it looked suspicious and called the police. See note 2. The police show up, Dr. Gates showed his ID to prove he lived there, there were some words, Dr. Gates got arrested for disorderly conduct. See note 3. Media fury ensued.

• Note 1: A similar thing once happened to me and Lev, only I had to shimmy in through a high window. It made Lev love me even more. Also, we were house-sitting so it wasn’t our neighborhood, but we still didn’t get arrested.
• Note 2: It says something very profound both about race and about the state of our communities when a neighbor doesn’t even recognize another neighbor. Can we get a little Mr. Rogers in here? If you are reading this, do you know your neighbors? Have you knocked on their doors and introduced yourself? It’s never too late.
• Note 3: I think Thomas Kochman’s Black and White Styles in Conflict would be a great resource to shed some light on why this might have happened. It’s hard to quote from the book because without reading through all the disclaimers it seems like he’s making some pretty big generalizations, but if you will allow that cultural differences are not deterministic, then I’ll give it a go. One of the things he talks about is how emotion and energy are used in very different ways in Black and White cultural styles of communication. So White people often think Black people are getting way too excited and emotional about something, whereas for White people the proper way to approach a debate is calmly and dispassionately, because the White cultural belief is that emotion and reason are dichotomous and opposed to each other. Black people often read that approach from White people to indicate that they are not passionate at all about the topic they are discussing, that they don’t actually believe what they are saying or are apathetic about it. Black culture doesn’t contain the same dichotomy; rather, emotion and reason are both valid ways of knowing something, and should be used in combination to express a deeply-held belief. This not only would explain many inter-group stereotypes, but also might explain why the White police officer interpreted Dr. Gates’ response as “disorderly.” And what happens when cultural misunderstandings get compounded by all the issues that come along with unequal distribution of power (i.e. who’s got the handcuffs and the force of the law) is something like this.

Phillipe’s discussion on what happened to Henry Louis Gates Jr. is very insightful, and I’m gladly sending you his way (read his other posts too, they never fail to illuminate):

http://www.bahaithought.com/2009/07/i-am-henry-louis-gates-jr.html

But really the point of bringing all this up is to tie it back to where my head has been recently. I’ve been taking the FUNDAEC course, “Constructing a Conceptual Framework for Social Action,” mentioned previously in this blog, and we’ve been reflecting on concepts of the individual (in relation to the community and institutions) inherent in a number of social theories (e.g. socialism, anarchism, individualism), and then moved on to discussing the progress of humanity towards peace, and the requirements thereof. All in the second chapter. One of the points made in the text embodies an idea we tried to convey in our Race Unity and Racial Justice page: that the establishment of peace will require both unity and justice. While the course materials themselves are copyrighted, I want to share with you some of the notes I wrote in my submission to the forum:

“I remember a class I took in college called Peace Studies, and the professor pointed out that almost everyone wants peace: they want to live in safety and to ensure their children’s well-being. However, for some people, their vision of peace involves everyone on the “other side” being dead. [I'll add in this context, that for some people their vision of peace may involve neighborhoods and social circles where everyone looks just like them.] Peace is more than just disarmament or dominance, it is about wanting to live with others who are very different than you. To be able to do that, and to continue to want to do that despite the challenges that arise, would require a commitment to a greater principle. In my mind, this is why unity is essential – we have to remember that we were all created from the same dust, all came from the same Source, and that all are endowed with capacities and skills that we can only appreciate fully when we work together, in order to keep things from falling apart as soon as times get hard or challenges arise. It’s true on a smaller scale too: if you don’t have an essential sense of unity with your spouse, then the struggles that come along will turn you against each other; if you don’t have unity with your family, then challenges will lead to disengagement and estrangement; if you don’t have unity with your community, then scapegoating and blaming and antagonism will occur at the first sign of tests…”

“O CHILDREN OF MEN! Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. Such is My counsel to you, O concourse of light! Heed ye this counsel that ye may obtain the fruit of holiness from the tree of wondrous glory.” -Baha’u'llah

I guess the important thing to remember for me is that, as upset as I am about the behavior of the people involved in the story of Dr. Gates, they are still part of the community. The neighbor, the friend, the cop, Dr. Gates, they are all members of my community and I cannot turn my back on any of them. It is the recognition of our spiritual unity that will lead us to justice, and when justice is established, we will see the appearance of that spiritual unity in this physical realm.

• Postscript: Thanks to my sister’s journalistic skills, she’s informed me that the “neighbor” didn’t actually live in the neighborhood, but worked nearby. The details of her phone call to 911 have also been released.

Dear ones,

I’m writing to call your attention to the two new pages on our blog. To the right, you’ll see links to them. The first, “Life, Death, and the End of the World” is a collection of Baha’i quotes I quickly compiled for an interfaith panel where each of seven religious representatives were given ten minutes to explain the purpose of life, what happens when we die, and if and how the world will end. It was crazy fast and awesome.

The second, “Racial Unity and Racial Justice” links to the materials that Lev and I put together for the Green Acre Baha’i School Race Unity Day workshop in June. Feel free to download it and read through it, share it with others, send suggestions back to us, whatever. This is some rich material and it’s definitely worth exploring by yourself or in your community.

Love,
Negin

This video is a delightful exploration of how the face of our society is changing, as people break down the racial barriers and love each other! Check it out: Something Other Than . The last minute (of the 7:16) will make you fall in love too.

Dear ones,

Lev and I have been asked to help facilitate the annual Green Acre Race Unity day (I almost wrote Racy Unity – yikes! that’s something else entirely!) this year on June 6 at the bucolic campus in Eliot, Maine.

I’m pulling together some ideas now, and this blog entry serves two purposes:
1. As an invitation to all our beloved readers to come join us and share your brilliant insights! You can register for Green Acre here!
2. As a sounding board for some of the ideas we’ve been playing with. Here is the original blurb:
“Though the reality of the soul transcends race, our spiritual journey on this plane is shaped by racialized experiences. During this weekend we will examine findings from social science, the Baha’i Writings, and stories from our own communities, including children’s classes and junior youth activities, to better understand how we can build and maintain unity in our neighborhoods.”

Since we’ve written that, we’ve really wanted to highlight the idea of developing ourselves as human resources and the need to be in learning mode as we engage in the process of striving for race unity. Furthermore, I’m thinking about the difference between the questions raised by “racial equality” and “race unity” – racial equality as removing and avoiding disparities (a lack of negative) but racial unity as taking it to the next level – friendly interactions (a presence of positive).

Session 1:
A. The importance of this topic: “The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.” Baha’u'llah
B. Racial Equality
a. Reflection on Baha’i writings on justice, truth: “Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues.” -Abdu’l-Baha; “The light of men is justice; quench it not with the contrary winds of oppression and tyranny. The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among people.” -Baha’u'llah
b. Challenges re: power: e.g. majority-minority, Seguy and Dovidio’s work, money and media influence, privilege, health issues, disparities in the legal and criminal justice system, where are we now, etc (the social science)

Session 2:
C. Racial Unity
a. Reflection on Baha’i writings on fellowship, unity, love: “Consort with all the peoples, kindreds and religions of the world with the utmost truthfulness, uprightness, faithfulness, kindliness, good-will and friendliness.” Abdu’l-Baha
b. Challenges re: cultural differences: e.g. Joy Degruy-Leary’s work, Black and White styles in conflict book, pluralistic ignorance research, different cultural norms and practices such as use of first names and politeness, where are we now, etc (the social science)
D. The spiritual qualities needed for engaging in this process: A careful exploration.

Session 3:
Panel Discussion: something like “Taking a posture of learning about race unity” – but catchier …whom to invite?

Session 4:
Breakout groups/ Training to take concrete actions upon returning to our home communities: this is the central and most important part of the day! Putting what we’ve learned into practice. We’ve got some great ideas here…

More later, I’m in a meeting now…
Love
N

Around 1911 Abdu’l-Baha said, “When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love. Thoughts of war bring destruction to all harmony, well-being, restfulness and content. Thoughts of love are constructive of brotherhood, peace, friendship, and happiness.” (Paris Talks, p. 29)

In 2008, Keith Payne and B. Stewart put it this way, in their article “Bringing automatic stereotyping under control: Implementation intentions as efficient means of thought control.”:
“The authors tested the utility of implementation intentions – specific plans linking a behavioral opportunity to a specific response – in reducing automatic bias. In three experiments, automatic stereotyping was reduced when participants made an intention to think specific counter-stereotypical thoughts whenever they encountered a Black individual. The authors used two implicit tasks and process dissociation analysis, which allowed them to separate contributions of automatic and controlled thinking to task performance. Of importance, the reduction in stereotyping was driven by a change in automatic stereotyping and not controlled thinking. This benefit was acquired with little practice and generalized to novel faces. Thus, implementation intentions may be an effective and efficient means for controlling automatic aspects of thought.”
From October’s issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, volume 34, pp 1332-1345.

I just thought that was cool.

In February and March, two articles were published in two of the top psychology journals. They were both about interracial interactions, and each, by itself, made sense. Put side by side, however, there’s something else going on…and frankly, I need help figuring it out. So I call on you, dear readers, to let me know your thoughts on this.

I’ve put the full text of the abstracts at the bottom for your reference, copyright owned by the journals, mind you. I’ll summarize them here in my terms first:

1. “Expect the unexpected”: Robyn Mallett and colleagues found that White people tend to expect that interactions with Black people will go much worse than they actually do. (This is a forecasting error.) This happens because White people, preparing for an interracial interaction, focus on the differences between them and Black people, and if they are just told to focus on the similarities, then they expect (accurately) more pleasant interactions. (I don’t think they show data about expectations for Black participants.)

2. “Beyond Contact”: Tamar Seguy and colleagues (including Jack Dovidio – he’s good people) look at power and conversation topic preferences in interracial interactions: White people want to talk about similarities, Black people want to talk about differences. Actually, Black people also want to talk about similarities just as much as White people do, but they want to talk about power disparities way more than White people do. This is driven by motivation for change in group-based power. In fact, those who most wanted to talk about power disparities are: highly identified Black folks, and the race-conscious White folks (compared to others of their racial background). The ones who most wanted to talk about commonalities are highly identified White folks.

(more…)

Inspired by the live blogging efforts over at Baha’i Thought, and Phillipe’s writings on Two Americas and the different experience of Blacks and Whites in the U.S., I thought I’d post this. Ian Haney Lopez gave a talk at Tufts University on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008. The talk was entitled “Race and School Integration: A Critique of Colorblindness.” Dr. Lopez is a professor of Law at UC-Berkeley. The talk centered around the recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of race-blind policies, available at Findlaw.com: Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 case (June 2007).

In the Parents Involved case, the Supreme Court determined that using race as a criterion for determining which school a child will attend is unconstitutional, thereby upholding a long-standing legal idea: “Our constitution is colorblind.” This famous line was penned by Justice Harlan in his dissenting opinion in “Plessy v Ferguson,” and it has been used both for good and evil by all manner of folk.

There was no wifi connection at the auditorium, but I’ve uploaded my notes from the talk below the fold. Sorry if the notes are sloppy. I’ll try to go back through and link to relevant court cases with pull quotes later on. I’m actually thinking about throwing it all on a “Critique of Colorblindness” resource page. Stay tuned.

Lopez suggests that the ideology of “colorblindness” has actually paved the way for a new kind of racism. I’m especially intrigued by Lopez’s idea that colorblindness is used both as a shield to protect modern-day segregation, and as a sword to cut down more egalitarian measures. Lopez argued that the Court’s 2007 ruling in “Parents Involved” has effectively redefined racism for the national legal system. That is, as long as school administrators aren’t stupid enough to say, “I’m using this policy to keep the black kids out,” they’re completely protected by the constitution. To make policy that enables segregation, even on thinly veiled references to race will still be protected by the constitution. You know the references he’s talking about. “It’s so hard to teach those kids. They come from communities marred by a culture of failure, or an entitlement culture, or gang violence, or they don’t speak English.” As long as you don’t specifically say, “Black people,” or “Latinos,” you’re free and clear from a constitutional perspective. With this decision, the Court has embraced a colorblind view of the world that says, “Keep race out of your decision-making processes, and everything will be fine. If we don’t pay attention to race, these problems will go away.”

(more…)

In a whole blog full of beautiful posts, Blogwarrior Phillipe has just cast light on the Don Imus thing from a Bahá’í perspective on strength, nobility, and the station of African Americans:

What I concluded is that the excessive focus on how upsetting these kinds of statements are to African Americans is a way of saying that we are so fragile from the experience of racism in this country, that such comments are psychologically devastating to us, rather than simply offensive or annoying.

I’d recommend subscribing to his RSS feed, and I’ve added him to the blogroll on your right. There’s good food over there. I’ll close with another quote from Phillipe’s post, which references the Bahá’í belief that human beings have an immense capacity:

Every Black American, even on their worst day is living proof that we have survived the worst that white supremacy could throw at us… We are powerful (as all human beings are) because God made us that way.