Building Bridges!

Building partnerships between communities.

Learning to share the space we all live in.

This is what I get to do! :)

Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Examine your privilege.

The link above brings you to 3 things: the first is Peggy McIntosh's famous article on White Privilege; the second is a guide for White people on how to personally respond to racism written by damali ayo; and the last is an essay taken from Robert Jensen's book The Heart of Whiteness.

Jensen's book is INCREDIBLE. It was one of the things that really pushed me into anti-racist work and made me realize what my role in racism and oppression is. It's a short book, and I remember sitting down one night and working my way through it. I was crying by the end, overwhelmed by a sense of guilt after realizing that I had a lot of racist thoughts and internalized superiority floating around inside me that I'd never before been aware of. In fact, this was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing as "internalized superiority". Five years of social work education and degrees, and the idea had not so much as been hinted at!

So this 'white guilt' that was suddenly hanging over my head - what was that rooted in? Was this a personal epiphany? Had my family or society told me along the way that I should have guilt for not only our history, but our present situation? I've tried to figure this out, and it's really difficult to discern where the roots lie. I wouldn't say that white guilt is an institutionally supported feeling - certainly, most of the institutions in this country are built up to make White folks feel more comfortable with themselves.  And my family doesn't really talk about issues of race and oppression around the dinner table. I've concluded that the standards I and my education have placed on myself, along with those expectations of my peers to be good, kind, and fair, create dissonance with those pieces of my inner racist self. I know that I've had conversations with people of color who also struggle to understand where this sense of "white guilt" comes from.

In the end, I don't think it's a hugely productive emotion. It can serve as a motivator to push past it, but what you move past the guilt into depends on how uncomfortable you want to be. It's easy to push past the guilt - or rather, deny the guilt - and go back to blissful ignorance. It's harder to push past the guilt into a deeper understanding of oneself and one's role in a generally oppressive system. This is what I'm constantly striving for.

Miami Police Dept. - "on the hunt"?

These two articles I just read make me want to curl up in a ball and pretend like I don't live in America anymore. These are scary, scary times my friends.



Abortion is essentially illegal in South Dakota as of today.


And Miami cops are just killing Black men left and right - and calling it a "hunt".


"We hunt," says one police officer. "Our guys were proactively going out there, like predators," said another. These comments were made in the midst of a chain of fatal shootings that left 7 African-American men dead at the hands of Miami law enforcement. All of the officers responsible for these deaths are Latino. So what, if any, influence did race have on this string of tragedies?


If you ask the police department, they'd say none. While they view the deaths of these men as unfortunate, they don't agree that there is any racial motivation.  The public and the families of the victims, however, strongly disagree.  There have been a number of protests and pending court cases in response to the fatal shootings, but the police chief continues to defend his department.


This awful situation may serve to shed light on racial tensions and law enforcement.  There, sadly, is no short supply of stories to choose from: Oscar Grant in California, Danroy Henry in New York, and Michael Pleasance in Chicago, for example. It is easy to talk about the issue of police brutality in communities of color when another person dies, but a more sustainable conversation must take place if there is any hope of changing the cycle of violence.



Forward widely, spread some outrage.  
Speak out if you are so inclined (please be so inclined).

Can we map attitudes and stereotypes?

I stumbled upon this "map of stereotypes" on the internet recently. It was meant, I'm assuming, as a light-hearted look at the stereotypes WE hold about different parts of the country. It left me wondering though - who is the WE?

I started to think how this map might look like and what it might mean depending on who drew it. If it was written by a person of color, might it be different? Would history play a role?

If it was a White person that made this map, then the reference to "fried chicken" and "yes sir & yes ma'am" might allude to commonly held racist beliefs about Black individuals.

I believe that it would be extremely different  for a Black person (what stereotypes would the South hold?) or a Latino or Latina author (I'd like to see what they'd write for Arizona....and what about those 22 states that have copied SB1070?).  Imagine what the map would look like from a Native American perspective?


It seems that it's easy to joke around and poke fun at stereotypes when you are the one holding many, the one that maybe doesn't come into contact with others' stereotypes about yourself or your community on a daily basis. I created the map below of the stereotypes I hold; this is an exercise in becoming aware of what biases and beliefs I hold, not a statement that they are correct or founded!

Okay - couple of things here:

1. Just realized that I am no longer good at geography...what happened?
2. There's whole parts of the country that I don't even think about. i.e., the "Bible Belt" (how I view it)
3. I have a lot of stereotypes about New England and Massachusetts in general, because I grew up there. I found that although MA is a liberal state in many ways, my area of the state is extremely conservative. I hold lots of stereotypes about the southcoast of MA in particular, including that all the men are fishermen who are addicted to drugs. This is a crazy generalization, and it tends to discount the heritage of my community as well as all of the individuals that certainly don't use drugs. This stereotype is borne of my personal experiences - I knew and dated quite a few of those substance using sailors - and it's left me bitter in some way and cynical about my hometown. So this is how a lot of stereotypes begin, right? Taking one personal experience and generalizing it to a much larger group of people? And of course, this stereotype is based in some kernel of truth - that my hometown is the heroin capital of the northeast - and that's what often confuses the issue of stereotypes. What comes first - the statistics, or the stigma?
4. I have a really negative view of this country. I usually don't feel any sort of patriotism, and that's not something I'm proud of. I do think there are things to be proud of here, it's just hard to remember them when I've based my career on working to solve some of the (many) major problems the US faces. 

Ideas of Beauty

Here is one of the latest crazes with pre-teen girls - the Liv Dolls.

The basic gist is that there are 4 dolls, each with it's own personality. The commercial shows 4 friends and their doll counterparts. Three of the friends are White, and one is Black.  The Black girl in the commercial has deep brown skin, brown eyes, and natural hair. But when she is transformed into a doll that is supposed to be a representation of her - all of a sudden she has light skin, straight hair, and green eyes (see above picture - she's the doll on the right). 

I first became aware of these dolls when I saw a commercial a few weeks ago on a Saturday morning. It caught my attention with this line: "Don't you want fabulous hair like the Liv dolls? They have the most beautiful hair!" The four dolls that were shown as the voiceover went on had long, straight hair. Subtle messages that this is the only type of hair that is beautiful are hurtful - what about all the girls who don't have long straight hair? Is their hair ugly in comparison?

I'm sensitive to this issue because my feelings about my messy, curly hair have changed back and forth over the years. When I was in middle- and high-school, I hated my curly hair. All of the popular girls had straight hair, so I ironed it til it was pin straight every day for 5 years.  I always received compliments on my hair if it was straight, but never if it was curly - and I got the message loud and clear about what was "pretty" and what wasn't. I started to embrace my curls in college, but would often straighten my hair as my boyfriend at the time told me I was prettier that way (awful!). And over the past two years, I've moved to the other extreme: I will only wear my hair curly, in protest of the standard of beauty that was always pushed on me. But is this any better? I now feel like I can't straighten my hair if I'm in the mood for a change, as if I wouldn't be authentic if I did. It reminds me of conversations I've heard in class about hair, especially in the Black community. I've heard lots of comments from women that they only seek out other Black women for friendship who keep their hair natural; part of me can understand why, but part of me feels that judging someone based on their chosen hairstyle is just reinforcing all of the negative messages women receive. If a Black woman chooses to relax her hair, does that make her less Black in their eyes? It's a conversation I've never had with anyone, but I think there's a lot of overlap between gender and racial ideals of beauty and the underlying beliefs/messages.

American standards of beauty are often culturally based and have far-reaching historical roots. Our hair texture, skin color, body shape, and body size are all held up to a standard that is portrayed over and over again. Although the commercial bothered me because I have curly hair, I am still able to easily find people to identify with and when I was young I had dolls that shared some of my characteristics.  What about individuals who are exposed day in and day out - on TV, the news, magazines, movies, clothing ads, commercials, the toy aisle - to people that look nothing like them, and then are told that those are the beautiful people? What does it mean to watch a commercial where maybe you do identify with one of the girls, only to see her morphed into a doll where all of the features you identified with were changed?

We are teaching children so much from such a young age, and the messages we are reinforcing are often hurtful, detrimental to one's self-esteem, and racist.

a bit of spoken word for tonight

"willing to die to become a student"....this breaks my heart into a million pieces.

"Why should Chicanos have to die to win the approval of this society?"

"I wanna break tradition - the mentiras my parents told me, about gringos, negros, chinos...smashing it against the ground like coconuts..."

History continues...the genocide of culture and potential and experience in this country is shameful, so shameful.

Childhood throwback...

Old-school racist cartoons...sorry Bugs Bunny.

I actually just bought a cheap dvd at Target of "classic cartoons" because I grew up watching Betty Boop (my first car's 'name' was Betty...yep).  I haven't watched it yet but I'll be sure to report back on whether or not there were any crazy racial undercurrents to Daffy & Popeye. Wouldn't be surprised.

...ouch. If you would like to further challenge your faith in humanity, just read the comments on this video's page.

This is one of the many overt ways that internalized oppression and superiority become ingrained in our society from an early age. When the public becomes aware of a particularly racist or otherwise prejudice clip through an article like the one above, there is often condemnation of how terrible it is.  Many times there is an assumption that things have gotten better that goes along with that condemnation. 

If the public were truly concerned over the way overt and covert ISMs are affecting themselves and their children, they would look at this old cartoon and then make the jump to examining current children's television through that same lens. Unfortunately, this often does not happen.