The Crazy Making Disease

Katrina-ism: Hurricane Katrina and Racism

Background of the Center for the Healing of Racism (CFHR), Houston, Texas:
DISEMBARKING
ON THE “DOWN LOW” ASSESSMENT
WHAT WENT FIRST THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG?: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CRITIQUE ON WHITE RACISM
The People of Hurt Hurt People
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
PRE/POST ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Grades 4-5
PRE/POST ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Grades 6-8
PRE/POST ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Grades 9-12
PRE/POST ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Adults in the Community
PRE/POST ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS College Students
PRE/POST ASSESSMENT GRADES K-3
Uncritical Inference Test (Assessment)
SHOOT THE MOON EXERCISE©
Lessons from The Snow Walker (DVD)
STEREOTYPES: LET’S GET ON THE SAME PAGE
STEREOTYPES OF LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL AGAINST PERSONS OF COLOR
PRE/POST ASSESSMENT (THE STORY OF THE TWO GROUPS)
VALUE RANKING

Background of the Center for the Healing of Racism (CFHR), Houston, Texas:

The mission statement of the CFHR is “to serve as a catalyst for the healing of racism through education and individual empowerment.”

The CFHR has been cited as one of the “best practices” in President Clinton’s Initiative on Race, conducted in 1997-98. In addition to this, CHR has also been pointed to by the Center for Living Democracy as one of the main resources for providing practical help for conducting dialogues on race in our nation.

The CFHR has three core beliefs: the human race is essentially one, racism is a learned behavior and it can be unlearned, and dialogue and education are powerful tools for healing.

CFHR has been in existence for seventeen years and is a non-profit 501© 3 organization. Its main community and educational program is Dialogue:Racism conducted for the public three times a year; it is held over a nine-week period or in intensive weekend workshops.

CFHR also conducts workshops, seminars, and public education presentations for a diverse array of community groups and professional organizations. For example, CHR is currently working with the Houston Community College system (the second biggest community college system in the nation) to train its staff around racism, sexism, homophobia, stereotypes, and xenophobia.

CFHR has been endorsed and has as its clients: M.D. Anderson Hospital, Dominican Sisters, Houston Community College System, Congressional Recognition: Sheila Jackson Lee, Deloitte Touche: Asian Resource Group, University of Houston, Rice University, St. Agnes Academy, H.E.B., Shell Oil: South Asian Leaders of Tomorrow, James Byrd Jr.Foundation, The Center for Living Democracy, Arab-American Cultural Center, MHMR of Harris County, President Clinton’s Initiative on Race, UTMB, and Communities in Schools.

For more info you can visit www.centerhealingracism.org

DISEMBARKING 9/05/05

Galveston, Texas---Pulling into Galveston is like pulling into the end of the earth. Earth meets water; body meets soul; skin meets feather. The spirit of the crow and gull is the center of the universe behind a dumpster. Suddenly my perspective has changed. Here, the homeless are just as needy, just as “homeless”, surrounded only by the sun’s aimlessness paradise, surreal.

I meet a clump of homeless men in the library parking lot. We share some stories of common rootlessness. I tell them I’m from Austin, and was once homeless there. I tell them that Austin is “homeless friendly,” and ask how it is here in Galveston. Well, how is it? One old guy, a Vet, gives me a short telling about how hard it’s been on homeless Vets, including him. How they’ve been neglected, and have to scrimp to find help. His story speaks of his feeling a despairing betrayal by a country he served in the military. I’m sure this is a story that is a very real experience for many Vets. Why should people gave up part of their life to fight to defend their nation have to jump through so many hoops only to get the care and support that is due each human being.

Another, Roach, speaks of his creation of an artificial paradise to exist; he started with hard drugs and went “natural,” and for him this is the only way to go. Go with weed, he insists. He was born here and he’s still homeless, he says to me, disdainfully.

They talk some more and tell me “BOI” is best. “BOI” stands for “born on the island.” Interesting how wherever you travel there is a special language of division and superiority. Here, if you’re born on the island you attain a higher status. Oh, the walls we build with our words and thoughts. Those who ‘got here as fast as they could’ we’re the next best thing, and those others, well, forget about them.

I say goodbye and walk into the library and find the Computer Lab. As I got online I heard folks talking around me about Katrina in New Orleans. I knew about the devastation, but now it begins to seep into my wakefulness. People are online trying to link up with others and find out about resources. Later, someone tells me that about a thousand folks are supposed to be on the island after being displaced by the storm. The papers tell their stories, and tell us about the slowness of response time in helping the victims.

How would a theological anthropologist see this current crisis? Well, here’s just one perspective.

For Pamela and I, it’s fascinating that people who lived below sealevel in New Orleans would come to Galveston. Galveston, of course, has had its share of storms. Perhaps after crisis, one seeks a familiar atmosphere. And for most people, there was little choice about where they went anyway.

The other piece of this for us is the justice piece. Katrina’s raging, vaporous attack has hit the poor and persons of color the hardest. The “power people” or “people of privilege” often have the better resources and connections to get out sooner. The papers speak of how slow the response time was to evacuate the poorer denizens of New Orleans’s city streets and houses. This, it seems to me, is the class-consciousness side of a natural disaster.

A terrorist attack or a meltdown at a nuclear garbage dump is also a disaster, and needs a well-thought out plan for escape. Environmental racism is evident when we note how many of these very dangerous facilities are built near poorer communities and where people of the non-dominant group live; the power structure of the Domination System knows it has the upper hand until, as has happened in some instances, the poorer folks have united in solidarity. Often this is because one courageous person begins to find her voice.

Another observation strikes home to me. This is the irony of natural crises, and its juxtaposition to business as usual. Galveston (as has Houston, San Antonio, and other cities) has hospitably opened its doors to the refugees from Katrina. Individuals, faith communities, and other civic groups have responded with concern and tangible aid. One man sitting in the washateria told me that everything was going ok with FEMA, and that he was being taken care of. Americans, as a whole, seem to have a gift for taking care of the world, but it has both a bitter and sweet side.

“Taking care of,” can also mean controlling, dominating, leveraging our own agenda over others whom we deem weaker or inferior than us. Or it can mean obtaining what they have (does oil sound famililar?) under the guise of good will. It can mean going into Iraq and trying to set up a democracy with those we have chosen to be leaders, and capitalizing on the rebuilding of a beaten nation, not to mention the risks of death, injury, and mental anguish taken on by our own soldiers.

So I have to wonder what motives people have in helping others. Maybe I’m just too cynical. But as I reflect on my own motives for helping others, it was often to make me more righteous in my own eyes, to appease my guilty conscience, or just to make me feel better about who I am. For some, it may mean finding a reward in the next life.

Why is it that in ordinary life, those “others”, we know, the “your kind not permitted here,” are cordoned off by our fear, our misunderstanding, and our ignorance. Many of us who look like me (white male) don’t even interact with those who are different on a daily basis; in fact, we can choose much of the time to be with those who look like us, talk like us, think like us, etc. It’s safe, less scary, and less precarious to our sense of self-identity and privilege to do so. We can pretend “they” don’t exist; afterall, we live in our world, and they live in their world, right?

At least on the surface, a crisis opens up a hand to respond in a way that we wish we could be like all the time, but can’t seem to find the will or the way to do so. Yet, there are also amazing stories where people with open hearts transcend the color of skin or their brand of religion, and reach out to others in need. In actuality we are reaching out to ourselves because God is actually in each one of us; at the very least we can say that we could possibly “see” divinity in the stranger in desperate need.

The second day Pam and I were here our electricity went out due to a mistake. We had put in an order early to make sure it was on, but the apartment management somehow circumvented this, having it shut off, and we had to put in another order. They told us it would take from a day to two days to get it restored. It was very hot, the kind of tropical, wet heat that Galveston breathes. No lights, no fridge, no AC. I guess I’m an American now at heart. Truly, life is a beach.

I need to face the fact that a large part of my life has been based on getting my own needs met, an essentially selfish way of living. I’ve been trained in this way of materialism, like a dolphin who gets fish for rewards after doing all the right tricks. Linda McQuaig writes in her book All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism, “The central character in economics is Homo Economicus, the human prototype, who is pretty much just a walking set of insatiable material desires. He uses his rational abilities to ensure the satisfaction of all his wants, which are the key to his motivation. And he isn’t considered some weirdo; the whole point of him is that he represents traits basic to all of us—Homo Economicus ‘R’ Us, as it were” (cited by Thomas King (2003). The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, p. 28). Yeah, that fits.

Pam shared with me that we were living like most of the world. This didn’t ease my mind much, but in fact I got angrier, and more irritable. I slipped into a very negative way of thinking. On one of the mornings, when I figured out that God wasn’t necessarily just going to restore the AC for me because of my whining, I resorted to reading Philippians 2 where it told me to “rejoice always.” Paul had the audacity to write it twice! But it wasn’t this that got me to listen. The verses go on to say that rejoicing is the best option because “The Lord is near.” I saw this means God is near, in the chamber of my heart, in my spirit, in the negative attitudes, and in my darkest moods of depression, anger and resentment. God doesn’t leave just because I’m feeling particularly unpleasant one hour or the next. What kind of constancy would this be? God’s consistency and essence is in all beings.

As I meditated on this, I began to put our situation into perspective. The evacuees from New Orleans had lost homes, loved ones, pets, sentimental items, their own “place” of living and being, and their city. I had to ask myself “what’s really important?” God is always here, now. Maybe the most important thing in any crisis is how do I care for myself? What comes up for me in unexpected situations in life? How do I look at my dark and light essences in those times? What I do with these affects how I relate to others. To use some recovery jargon, I have a choice to ‘feed the good dog or the bad one.’

There are always choices to encounter in the flow of life’s experiences. Do my choices coincide with the Master Stories of many wisdom writings? Is my minor story being changed, shaped, played with, like the water shifting the sand as it laps the shore? My sense of trust for self, my beloved (s) and God leads to more understanding, and without understanding I can’t fully love.*

*(“God, oh God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I am just one of the many human survivors also seeking a way out of artificial paradise. For a thousand generations, people have tackled the solomonic quest of finding it. Siddhartha lived in the forest to seek it in the sensual, and he went to his courtesan to find it in sexuality. Solomon sought it in the multi-colored experiential slot machine of life; he looked for a paradise that yielded wisdom, and found some of it, but apparently not all. God, I find myself stuck in a place where my soul never seems satisfied, and I feel the tug of emptiness, and craving for something more. I want to be seen as “spiritual” and as a “pilgrim” but this also is a part of my own artificial paradise. I sat in judgment of Roach because he chose weed, his natural paradise. I think of all great sages, gurus and prophets, who brought a radical way to live, to think, to feel, to speak, and to contemplate. Living this way always contains life and death, suffering and enlightenment. It’s possible to look pain in the eyes, see it’s existence, then let it go; from this we may choose to show compassion to all life around us, and breathe our thoughts into healing energy.

“Dear, compassionate Lover, let me live out this truth, because I’m like the thief next to you, and Paradise is right next to me, no, it’s right inside me, today, now. You are nearer to me than the words of my own mouth, the insanity of my own thoughts. You are more honest than my rationalizations; you are more true than my self-deceptions. Let me always know that my feelings are the waves on the bay, but what is real, permanent, genuine, and sure is the water beneath. The water beneath the waves holds them up; it holds up the fluctuating surf, and the ephemeral bubbles of the churning breakers. You are that source of life, the water of life, the ocean of pure existence. As I sit on the beach, I listen to the water, and I’m at peace”).

CB: disembar.kng (9/05/05)

ON THE “DOWN LOW” ASSESSMENT

Date:___________No:______E:_________________Age:_______Sex:_______
Check a number on this scale about how you are thinking right now about the following groups:

Gays

GOOD ____ ____ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ BAD
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Latino Americans

BEAUTFUL ____ ____ ___ ____ ____ ___ ___ UGLYs
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

White Americans

TOLERRANT
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ CLOSED-MINDED
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Asian Americans

SMART ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ STUPID
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

African Americans

STRONG___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ WEAK
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Lesbians

CARING ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ UN-CARING
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Muslims

VIOLENT ____ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ PEACELOVING
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

WHAT WENT FIRST THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG?: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CRITIQUE ON WHITE RACISM

By Christopher Bear Beam

Let me begin by saying that diversity is a good word. It ain’t a bad, nine-letter one. But just as the word racism can’t possibly define one individual, neither does diversity capture a comprehensive meaning of racial identity or the illness of racism, or the re-learning of who we are as persons.. Yet often I hear of organizations and corporations using diversity or cultural competency as the new panacea for an old problem. One piece of pathogenic whiteness is that we feel we can fix just about everything. Such is often the case with the use of diversity in group trainings.

In this essay I would suggest that there’s a huge difference—in fact, eons of difference—between diversity training and what I choose to call racial awaredness/transformation. I have been on my own inner journey seeking to know my own unaware (unconscious, indirect, covert) racism for the last ten years. I am a seeker in process, a person afflicted with the disease of racism in recovery; I don’t claim to be an expert, or that my answers are “the” answers. Just knowing that racism is a conditioned disease has given me hope for change. I have found that unaware racism is the kind of unconscious racism perpetrated by white people with the best of intentions yet freighted with many daily “micro aggressions” towards folks of color. Racism is running in our veins—we just don’t know it, or see it.

I would like to clarify something else as we move on. In this essay I use the term white supremacist system or structure. Here, I’m not referring to hate groups or extremist racist groups. I’m simply talking about a fact of life in our culture. Who is it in this country that controls the power, the overall leadership, the economics, politics, etc? It is still largely a white, European American, male-dominated structure. The term white, supremacist system refers to the initial dynamics in the beginning of the United States of America, and the system that has continued throughout our history until the present. For instance, white maleness, in its present configuration, is the reservoir of all our white dominance; as whites we have been shaped by this system, and as whites we continue to perpetuate it.

Some recent research studies in the corporate and academic venues have taught us more about this notion called diversity. They suggest that perhaps the notion of diversity may need to be expanded. Often, diversity can mean having individuals within groups who vary in their similarity with each other, but not necessarily by skin tone or culture. The essence of this sort of training is understanding another’s culture with its behaviors, values, rituals, and practices, and communicating cross-culturally. This may cross age differences, sexual variations (also notions of femininity and masculinity), economic backgrounds, educational training and exposure, cultural distinctions, diverse languages, etc.

These same studies show that there appeared to be more tension and conflict among group members who were from different ethnicities and cultures. (Hello?) This should not surprise too many of us, but it points out two givens in our society today: first, that racism or skewed racial identity still prohibits humans from working as a healthy system and from benefiting from each other’s resources. Or, I should say, the skills, empathy and understanding about divergent cultures and ethnicities often are unknown through ignorance and lack of practice; this keeps racism in place without anything that challenges our intelligence, creativity and denial system.

Well-known published author and professor, Joe Feagin, notes that the field of psychiatry uses the term alexithymia to describe the disability of certain people to understand or empathize with the emotions (perhaps perceptions too) of other people. He suggests that we ought to go beyond an individualistic interpretation of the term and use social alexithymia writing, “Essential to being an oppressor in a racist society is a significantly reduced ability, or inability, to understand or relate to the emotions, such as recurring pain, of those targeted by oppression. Social alexithymia thus seems essential to the creation and maintenance of a racist society.”

Secondly, this example bolsters what I’m suggesting here, i.e., thinking that diversity, in-and-by-itself, in a kind of “sampling-a-seminar process,” has as its end unity, goodness, altruism, and humanitarianism. A dialogue process around racism begins and is yeasted throughout by an attitude of unlearning, openness to self-examination, and flexibility. Goodness is certainly a positive value, isn’t it? Altruism? Humanitarianism? These are all powerfully assertive values especially when seen in an atomistic way.

The truth is, though, is one’s academic knowledge, excellence in communication, development of emotional and social intelligence, and cross-cultural communication may be working synergistically without full awaredness on the part of the encoder (the dude doing the communicating). It’s my hunch that racial awaredness must underlie all of the above, and that they need to be seen in a holistic way. When this is happening, one can begin to walk the path to personal awaredness and transformation around healing any kind of “ism.”

Kathleen Greider suggests that we have theologized and acculturated aggression as something evil, sinful or bad. She illustrates with various studies, (with particular emphasis on the work of Anne Campbell) that this axiological reality shows up especially in shaping how both boys and girls are swarmed by the culture’s sensing of aggression. It plays out in our definitions of gender, and with the natural outcropping of ethnic relationships. Greider writes that “girls tend to learn that aggression is ‘expressive’—it signals emotional upset or lets off steam—while boys tend to learn that aggression is ‘instrumental’—it is a means to an end, a way to get something the boy wants, especially from another person” (p. 81).

Both of these acculturated values—expression and instrumentalism—are relational. Greider argues that both the oppressed and the oppressor need to learn that aggression is our inner tool to resist hostility and oppression, respectively, in all its forms. Since both the oppressed and the oppressor suffer because of oppression, non-violent resistance to oppression means translating the vitality inherent embedded in aggression to overcome injustice. This is a good example of thinking and acting non-dualistically as we’ll discuss later in this essay.

From my point of view, this more expansive view of diversity among group members is a healthy thing. It moves diversity into what most of us already know: each one of us is very distinct from one another. We all have “one-of-a-kind” fingerprints. Disagreement in communication is not only natural, but needed. If we were all the same we wouldn’t have anything to discuss or learn from one another. If we were all similar, we would all think very much alike. But when we look deeper, we usually find more commonalities than dissimilarities. Each of us views the totality of life through the formative inklings of our own culture. This is the porch on which we sit looking out into our horizons.

A recent example from a small town in Texas concretizes this idea. It’s a key one to note, because it offers us a systemic vantage point. Whites in America need to consider racism from a systemic focus. If you asked most whites if they were racists, they would probably reply, ‘No, I’ve never done anything to hurt a black person (substitute Asian, Latino, Arabic here).’ Since most whites live in real denial about our racial problem, this answer is sort of a stock one. Racism isn’t only about putting a non-white person at a disadvantage, or perpetrating a racial act, or a blatant innuendo about a person from a different group than ourselves, it’s about receiving the birthright of being born white. As Peggy MacIntosh first described it, it’s about white privilege..

A high school principal in Everman, Texas departed her job after making racial remarks on the school’s loud speaker. She began her descent into termination by telling the student body that it was black students, who failed the TAKS math tests, who gave the school an unacceptable rating. Later, over the school’s intercom, she said that eight more African American students needed to pass the math test for the school to meet state standards. Her justification? She said she was using it as a motivational tool. Unbelievable! She excused her comments by saying ‘”It was not derogatory in any way. It was not racial. It was just common knowledge of the TAKS breakdown.’”

So at this point, I have to ask, what causes an educational leader and someone who may influence many young lives, to give this kind of answer, and seem to be completely unaware of any hint of racialized thinking? She had been working in the field of education for twenty-nine years, and probably had a doctorate. My contention is that racial awaredness doesn’t come to us by education alone; what’s imperative, as I see it, is that our model of our own identities and that of others is accurate, clear-thinking, challenging and critiquing of stereotypes and assumptions about race. Apparently Ms. Kathy Culbertson had some educated ignorance. This is not said to put down her education or who she is as a person (not blamin’ just explainin’), but to show that prejudice of any kind is ‘an emotional commitment to ignorance.’ Additionally, Superintendent of the Everman Independent School District, Jeri Pfeifer said, “Culbertson’s remarks were true (emphasis mine), but shouldn’t have been made over the PA system.”

This last statement indicts a sub-system, the educational one that is a part of a larger, more powerful one; it gives adoration to the concept of research and evaluation, as if it is the measure of all that is certain. Actually, from my experience, it’s a part of the denial of the white system that still puts the blame on the “other,” the “foreigner,” and the “stranger.” Xenophobia arrives at our cultural door because we fear what is different from us. It comes from attending to only one part of the problem and diagnoses a group, in this case African Americans, as the causal factor. In other words, it’s another way to play “the blame game.”

Another observer, Netia Tunson, an African American member and parent of one of the students commented, ‘”You can’t put this school’s performance on one race,’” she said. ‘”It starts with the staff.” Most whites would quickly respond by saying Ms. Tunson wants an entitlement, i.e., let the staff handle this problem. But there’s more here than meets the eye. From the model of liberation studies, Ms. Tunson is speaking as one of the marginalized, and one of the oppressed. This has been her experience as a person of color in this nation. If we think from the white power model and its systemic structure, Europeans came to this country as the gift-givers of their superior culture. This was the bequeathing of Manifest Destiny. The baggage they brought with them contained slavery, genocide of Native Americans, discrimination towards non-whites and women, subjugation of the poor and economic/class stratification. Although there have been laws legislated to stop discrimination, and to equalize education for all, there is a root of racism that still strangles us in America. It’s embedded in our thought processes.

Ms. Tunson’s plea is that the responsible portion of the educational system, in her own neighborhood, is the staff who teaches and administers that system. These people become active players, and everyone interacts in some way. They are leaders in the white power structure. One of the rudimentary principles in communication theory is that the encoder of information (the sender) has responsibility for how that information is communicated to others. It’s their role to insure that the decoders of information (the receivers) are given the maximum conditions to clearly understand the message.

The closer the comprehension of the message by receivers, as originally intended by senders, the more effective the communication. Both receiver and sender roles switch back and forth since communication is a process. It’s my view that the seminal meaning of the word “communication” is to facilitate understanding, cooperation, and resource sharing. This clearly didn’t happen in Everman. We also see here a semantic principle in operation: words don’t mean, people mean. Words, being a symbolic representation of thought, are tricky. The encoder must think ahead of time how her words will be decoded by the receivers. Words are the expression of the aggregates of our cultural and social mindset. Clearly, words limit our understanding because we all attribute different meanings to even the same words at least on a meta-narrative level. Knowing this doesn’t lessen the ambiguity of communication at each level. How I hear is also culturally conditioned.

If one’s identity is formed around power and control, then one’s identity base comes from a deficit mentality. The easy way to perceive reality is to be against something rather than stand for something. If self-differentiation comes at the expense of seeing others as “one down” rather than the truth that all human beings are “one up” then one’s identity will be suffused by dysfunctionality. This is the sickness of white privilege. Inner walls of ignorance and denial must then be built to protect one. I will find that I project my own deficits onto others different from me. All of this takes an incredible amount of energy.

In the rubric of General Semantics categorization is one of the higher abstract paradigms that enables our humanity to store information about differences. Categorization sees things or people within a group as being related, and those outside the group as being unrelated. “Race is an arbitrary system of categorization. The concept of race evolved out of beliefs concerning underlying biological differences among people. However, science has not supported race as a biological entity. Nevertheless, we continue to categorize people on the basis of observed physical differences, and this has powerful social psychological implications.”

Ridley suggests that self-esteem is the interaction of the Three Levels of Identity. To give us a visual, he diagrams three interlocking and overlapping circles. One of them symbolizes Human Identity; one of them Racial Group Identity, and the other Individual Identity. The segment where all of the circles overlap can represent the less-general-more-specific self-esteem of a person. Here again we see a system consisting of three types of identities, and we could theorize that when disequilibrium jostles the three circles an imbalance occurs. Every known system, in this case that of an individual, resists imbalance, and searches for ways to regain balances again. There are, of course, many other ramifications that we could think about together. But that isn’t the theme of this article so we’ll move on.

An understanding of power also is very relevant when we understand our true identity, and our transactional interaction with other cultures. For white people, this power is usually one of the secret and hidden pieces of the iceberg. Sociologist Stanley Lieberson suggests:

….That power alone determines the outcome (of whether cultures will collide-mine), causing one group to become dominant and the other subservient. If the subordinate group proves to be the nonmigratory group (earlier Lieberson cites places where culture shock has been lessened such as with the Bedouins, who resisted outside cultural innovations, and maintained their own, native attitudes due to gradual cultural diffusion), the changes to its social organizations can be devastating. No longer possessing the flexibility and autonomy it once enjoyed, it may suffer material deprivation and find its institutions undermined.

People within relationships arrive at playing certain roles, and these roles become patterned. Patterned and pivotal. Within these roles, members of any system develop the need for the other person to play his or her role. The roles emerge out of relationships within the system. Relationship is a function of structure. They may be symmetrical or complementary. A symmetrical relationship is based on similarity; the behavior of A and B are joined together so that the energy in the relationship produces more of the same for each one. In complementary relationships, there is sufficient dissimilarity that the transaction brings a mutual “fitting together” so that the relationship is healthy and each person is differentiated. For many European Americans our relationships with non-whites are symbolized by neglect, indifference, fear, hostility. We can call them adversarial, or dominant/subordinate.

The white supremacist system is governed by white privilege: the unearned benefits for being born as “white” in whatever way “white” is defined at the time. “Whiteness” has changed its definition at numerous points in our history. White privilege is founded on power and control. There is a constant imbalance of power tipped towards the white, supremacist system. If the scale tips towards more power to non-whites, the white system emanates some kind of resistance. To give up the power and control requires surrender, wisdom and humility, not a trait of huge numbers of white people today. We want to be superior, we want to continue to be the model for what is beautiful, virtuous, industrious, productive, intelligent, and artistic, and so to turn white privilege upside down means a radical change of identity and of system. In the end, we want to hold onto the benefits of our white privilege.

We say (even if we don’t use words) that our way is the right way, but in actuality we have created a co-dependent system, and are dependent on non-whites. All through our history whites have depended on the subordination of workers of color. The Chinese built our railroads, African Americans gave us mercantile wealth through slavery, Native Americans taught us farming skills, and today Latinos give us their manual labor skills. Wise suggests that our self-definition of whiteness is made up entirely of what and who we aren’t (emphasis mine).

Designing a new consciousness around diversity and healing racism means conceiving the historical, social, emotional, and economic baselines that structure white privilege. It means thinking holistically and systemically, rather than anchoring ourselves in singularity. This means stretching beyond diversity, clearly thinking with our passion and reason beyond mere academics, skills, and models. It means that we open the retinas of our minds to catch the systemic and seminal. genesis of white privilege. In other words, we need new maps of the territory.

I would argue that when a person begins this journey, and continues along this road, it becomes a heart journey, a spirit journey, a transformational trek. It’s a journey of the soul that must include the willingness to own all of our dark sides as white people. It means looking at archetypes and myths we have received from our family of origin, and our “Great Mother”—this social system we live in. It’s also a head and heart journey. It’s a deconstructing and constructing endeavor. We have much to unlearn, and we have much new understanding to develop. Our self-learning must consist of being in global community with a diverse group of other human beings. The Center for the Healing of Racism has this as one of its goals—acting as a catalyst for healing within a community of dialogue.

Our white, supremacist social structure is a gargantuan system with many sub-systems. Thus, racism is a systemic disease, not an individual one. We could say that racism is prejudice + power + privilege. Knowing this may help a white person in recovery not beat himself or herself up with shame or vain regrets only to remain stuck. The individualistic or psychotherapeutic model used in much of psychology and sociology leads family members or group members to blame the sick one in the group or family. Seeing systemic racism as a philosophical, social and emotional illness allows us to see that it emerges from an unhealthy system. It produces unhealthy outcomes for everyone. If we can look at how we see difference through our own lens, it’s then that we can decide what we might choose to change.

If we truly desire to see the ethical principles embodied in the legal documents that forged this country into a nation, and in concert with all the spiritual principles of most of the faith traditions, to become authentic, played out, and our social fabric, we have to undergo a raising of consciousness in ourselves. Maybe when this social consciousness reaches a critical mass, our system will change to become inclusive, tolerant, honest with itself, and egalitarian. Until then these ethical precepts are just words on paper. And let us never forget that those in power who constructed the Declaration of Independence were wealthy, white landowners. Women and Native Americans were outside the orb without dignity, power, wealth or respect. African slaves were considered 3/5 of a person as described in the Federalist Papers.

As white Americans, we can educate ourselves to uncover how racism hurts both non-whites and whites. It means going beyond self-interest to what’s best for all of us. The challenge for white players in this game is to be willing to give up power as mentioned above. Are we prepared to give up some of the benefits of white privilege? It’s only by going to the ledge, a learning edge, of new growth and consciousness. I wonder how many of us, me included, are willing to pay the cost of this ticket into a “new-born, new brain” society?

It’s not my purpose, in this essay, to talk about the subtle mechanisms within the dominion of white privilege. I hope I can write more about this in the future. Here I’m looking at the more generalized concepts that differentiate diversity training and the real, honest inner work that must first be done by each of us, in order to dismantle racism. A large goal, but we start with ourselves, and use an incremental building process.

A good place to start is to summarize our case story of the principal in Everman, Texas—Cathy Culbertson. If we’re good, progressive, liberal white folks, we may be thinking to ourselves, ‘How could she have been so myopic in her pedagogy? How could she have missed the forest for the tree right in front of her? How could she be so stupid?’

It will assist us if we can bust some stereotypes that are put out there by media sources, casual conversation, family rants and raves, and those to whom we give power to in our lives. An island may seem flat when we see it from ground level, but perhaps if we traverse the beach into the water, we may feel a downward slope as our toes try to keep us balanced. Did you know that Galveston, Texas, where I now reside, is an island? Duh. Hurricanes have left their slivered nails on the personality of this place. A category 5 hurricane would see a twenty-two foot storm surge here, carrying much of the island away, and burying it in a watery grave. But Galveston, as one man told me, is actually a mountain, it’s just that we can’t see its base. Somehow what he told me gave me some measly comfort, as I was thinking of this as a metaphor for white racism.

This is also how we have to discern our national disease—racism. Like an iceberg, most of the mass is below the surface, in our history, our forgotten tragedies, our repressed memories, our psychic depths. Any attempt at decreasing racism must begin by one’s willingness to go to the base of the mountain. Only then can we have a well-developed picture of what racism is. Don’t obsess about climbing to the top. But do begin the ascent at its base, as you put down one foot in front of the other one.

So let’s briefly discuss how we came to the worldview that ‘white is right.’ The prior formulations of our educational system and ethics began with Aristotle. Aristotle’s philosophy and pedagogy is what much of our Western educational system has been founded upon. We’ve inherited it, and although it’s gone through many morphes, it gives us some of our natural, working values as a society. It has many contrasts with Eastern philosophy.

Aristotle “extremized” the notions of such things as good and evil, logic and reason. My term “extremized” is meant to show that these concepts were on two ends of a continuum standing towards each other, face-to-face. For instance, one Aristotelian principle would contend that “A” would be at one end of this linear diagram, and every “Not-A” would be at the other. From this comes our “either-or” thinking. Eastern philosophy generally things of life as “both and.”

Later in time Cartesian thought posited a similar dualism. If we think of the linear continuum, material objects are put in categories of opposition. This is a set-up for adversarial relationships in the psychological/social realm. As Tim Wise has written in a recent article, Aristotelian philosophical constructs were gradually used as a template with which to compare the planet’s diverse people groups. Colonizers who explored and exploited the New World transposed this philosophical worldview onto conquered peoples—usually indigenous—or non-white. How did this happen?

Oppression becomes cemented as a social reality within our social structure. As mentioned before relationship is a function of structure. Earlier in our nation’s history, during enslavement of Africans, it was suggested that the way to keep the system of oppression going was to “divide and conquer.” The cultural system needed to find a way to do this with African slaves, and so many indentured servants was to label the indentured servants as “white.” They then were sandwiched between the wealthy landowners and the slaves. Those in power used the tool of displacement—they took the heat off themselves as oppressors, and let the noveau whites take it. By this means they divided the lower classes, dissipating the power of resistance, and also creating more oppression by imagining and categorizing the “new whites” with a newly-born superiority over Africans. The enticement of economic benefits were thrown in the mix so that “whites” could own land, vote, and were no seen as property. This of course didn’t happen for African slaves.

The white, supremacist society thus began a structure of oppression by the making of an ism. For this to have occurred, you needed to have dualism as a foundation. Remember dualism states that something is either up or down, out or in, good or bad. So dualistic thinking sets up a circle with an inside and an outside. Inside you might find civilized, moral, smart, rich, heterosexual, white, male, abled, etc.

The system assigns positive or negative traits to words that are used dualistically. If everything inside the circle is a + then what’s outside is a -. And you find that opposite of heterosexual, outside the circle would be gay, or homosexual. If you have said cowboy is on the inside, then what would be on the outside? Yeah, you guessed it, Indian.

The system assigns everything on the inside of the circle as what is the “norm,” or “normal.” They all are bestowed with pluses. Everyone outside the circle is seen in comparison to what is “normal.” This is one of the ways that stereotypes begin, and how they are perpetuated. Each time one of the negative folks outside the circle does something that isn’t viewed as “normal” the stereotype is reinforced and given more potency. Individuals within the dominant group run with the set up. My experience has shown me that white folks are bolder to tell racist jokes, share negative innuendos about non-whites, and use abusive slang about persons of color with other whites. They are bold to do this, because they don’t think they’ll be challenged by one of their own group. This is where a white person with ‘a consciousness of dignified equality’ can interrupt daily interactions of racism. “Hey, just because I’m a European American, doesn’t mean I think just like you do!”

Lastly, one other factor constitutes the fashioning of an “ism.” People on the inside and outside are socialized into roles. One becomes a member of the dominant group, and we know where we belong. As Ridley wrote we are socialized into our Racial Group Identity. White privilege is carefully camouflaged, and persons of color are socialized as the targeted group into “internalized racism,” or “internalized oppression. And so one group is pitted against the other and a racial awaredness is distinctly not part of our repetoir of social literacy or intelligence. We remain isolated and separate from each other, not really knowing people as individuals, but as caricatures.

Along with this dualistic worldview, a religio-ethnocentrism arose during the colonization of the Americas with the sublimated message that European Christians were superior to other religions, and that this was the only way of redemption. Thus, the conquered indigenous peoples were savagely unsalvageable unless they confessed to Christianity. History writes the ugly record of the ‘slaughter of the innocents’ who didn’t except this dogma. This theology carried the stigma of genocide, and the colonizer’s rationale for them to subjugate non-whites and indigenous peoples; they were, after all, primitive, deficient, and carnivorous. In later history in the beginnings of the white identity movement, having its roots in the British Isles several centuries past, non-whites came to be classed as soulless. This one part of the belief system can justify all kinds of abusive actions, including death, torture, and genocide. In much of the West, we now have what my good friend Cherry Steinwender calls white, Christian privilege.

My dad was a deeply religious man. He grew up in Illinois, was college educated, a captain in the navy, and volunteered with many community groups in one of the suburbs of Chicago. One summer, about eight years ago, I was visiting my mom and dad. I sat with my dad on our back porch. They lived in a very affluent suburb along what is called “the North Shore,” along Lake Michigan. At the time, Chicago had an African American mayor, Harold Washington. He was accused of giving many government jobs to his friends and other African Americans. In fact, this was the same kind of system that the powerful mayor of Chicago, Richard Daly, had used during his long tenure as mayor. It was said that he was the second most powerful democrat in the country.

At one point in our conversation, my dad said that ‘those people simply don’t have what it takes to lead Chicago.’ Obviously he was referring to African Americans; at this point I just kept listening. Eventually, I gave some alternative views to his own. The more I did this, the more irritated he became. I was incredulous because I had never seen this side of my dad. It dawned on me that one can be a very intelligent, sincerely religious person, and still have dark place in their heart towards one group or another. I realized that I wasn’t going to change dad, and I was really disappointed in his contentions. I realized that the one little phrase “those people” is one of the biggest tip offs that a person sees the “other” as someone outside of the circle of normalcy.

Our principal, Ms. Culbertson, was simply acting out all of our European history’s ideas, theories, myths, conjectures, and fallacies. We are entrapped when we don’t critically challenge these ideas and the system from which they grew. Ms. Culbertson was parroting a cultural superiority that has been transmitted across generations of our white supremacist culture. The subtlety of white privilege is that the dominancy of whiteness allows us not to even think about what it means to be white.

Ten years ago if I had been asked what it means to be white, I probably would have had no answer, or a very ambiguous one. I don’t know even if today I have a very good grasp of this, because it’s a complex question. It was James Baldwin who said that being white in America means not having to think about it.

American values highlight such premises as linear progress, the measurement and evaluation of production, the domination of material objects and nature, including success and failure (based on performance). What we can measure and calculate we can use as a norm of productivity and usefulness to society.

Indigenous, land-connected cultures view life via the sacredness of life in land, living things, and human beings. They note seasons and time in a natural, cyclic way. They know by the seasonal, barometric signs that planting time is near, an elder nears her time of crossing over, and a young boy inches towards initiation into manhood. They can see when the harvest is almost ready. So they see no great value in measuring or counting the crops except to say that it was a good or bad year. The hunt was plentiful or scarce. Even life after death is understood in a circular motion. When death knocks on the door, new life starts somewhere else, maybe in other beings, or in another mode, and goes on. All life eventually goes back to where it all started, in the Great Spirit, or the soul.

In this essay, I have spent some time in exploring how our white superiority made its way from Europe to the Americas. It’s still with us today. It now comes in different forms, but is still just as toxic for all of us who live here. I realize that this is how I perceive the problem of racism. I don’t have all the answers (and neither do you, or the President, or the Congress, or the Senate, or the woman on the street). I am in process, a work in process. My understanding racism as a systemic model buttressed by the trickster of white privilege is sort of my baseline; my perceptions and world view may change. I am attempting to describe in words what I see happening around me, especially in the lives of other white people with whom I share the benefits of white privilege. Words are limited but experience can be a joined ritual. I don’t like privilege because it robs others of their souls as well as my own.

Since we live in a white male-driven, power structure that I call the ‘white supremacist structure,’ we need to come to a more powerful consciousness that racism has hurt all of us, both whites and non-whites alike. But power isn’t an easy addiction to put down, and leave behind. Keying in on diversity/racial awaredness would allow all of us to cross over boundaries that have been created in blood, social conditioning, colonialism, laws, and a host of other factors. We would be more productive if we could attain this goal. Our tension levels would decrease, and our empathic perceptions would lead to more teamwork and sharing of resources. We would be better equipped to deal with conflict, finding resolutions based on dialogue, understanding, tolerance and love.

There’s a children’s book that speaks to this wonderfully. After going through birthdates, favorite foods, where a person lives, etc., the author says something that any one of us might imagine. He asks the reader to imagine people walking down their street, or in their school without any skin. All you can see is their bones. You might be hard pressed to know whether they were female or male. And that’s his point. Underneath our skin and hair, with their kaleidoscope of color, texture, smell, we are all basically the same. The same in terms of our common humanity. But we are different in our ideologies, our beliefs, our values, our thought processes and in our cultures. Our bones look pretty similar on the continuum of human development. I like this metaphor as it describes one human race, with diverse ethnicities and cultures, and I might speculate one soul. The oneness of humanity is an axial around which all other aspects of diversity turn. Some of us just haven’t learned this yet, but it’s my hope we will.

The People of Hurt Hurt People

It’s a pre-historic cycle
That has been our plague.
Cain, it’s said, hurt by Abel,
And Cain, he said, hurt by Creator Spirit.

Downcast, feeling hurt, rejected,
To murder of his own blood.
How can this be?
The People of love, the Beloved,
Love the created peoples of all
The world.

But the People of hurt, finding hurt inside,
Hurt others, hurt themselves, hurt breathed out
Like air, brown on black, black on black, white
On white, yellow on yellow, they all hurt,
Like an unmanageable black lung disease,
Without conscience and without thought.
Never asking, where does this start,
And how will this end?
And will it end with me?

Children hurt children, children hurt adults,
Adults hurt children, their parents, the widow.
Having lived in the incubus of hurt,
Ignorantly, without hope, hurt builds up
Into the damned heart, until floodgates
Open and the hurt floods out, impulsively,
Triggered, without reason, self-inflicted
They author the hurt.

When we sit with the hurt,
Like the Amistad Middle-travelers saw in pictures,
a symbol of hurt, not knowing the words, only
feeling the energy of life and death
on the pages of worn, dog-eared books,
hanging in front of their eyes,
and in history’s gaze.

We identify with the hurt of all prophets and mystics,
Who suffered for the sake of others, for fire-fed truth.
And we know we are the beloved.
Who could have hurt this one, and that?
But can now choose to enter the love
That trickles slowly at first.

Our minds filled with voices and useless
Slogans; we must allow this belovedness
Move the couple of feet from head to heart
For its reality to pervade all of us,
So we can live this truth.

This love is a mystery,
Unfathomable, without explanation,
Without any self-subsistence
On our parts, free of all we might
Try to do, perform, will or desire.

Sitting in our own hurtness,
Just for awhile we may see how
All of the ones who came prior
Were “wounded heroes and heroines”
Who Knew the inner directed pain
Of hurt, releasing us by living again.

Where and when does the change happen?
When self-abuse turns to self-love,
When self-justification turns to surrender,
When blame turns to solidarity of humanity;
When our hurt dissolves into the water
Of her greater hurt from her greater love
For all beings created like us,
And different from us.

No longer any “different,” no longer any
“other,” no longer any target of scorning
mockery or baseless violence.
One, all hanging out to dry.
Carried off like ivory sheets into a mountain
Cloud whose arrowhead points to the
Four corners of the earth.
There is no diagram that can be followed,
No set of instructions that confound our heads,
No CD Rom with easy to install directions,
Nothing we can do but to say,
I receive this from you, free me from the bondage
Of self that feeds my hurt
That magnifies my blaming,
And keeps me knotted in interiorized hurtful pain.

The silence does its psychotherapeutic, unseen
Work so that our understanding is moved
Like clandestine wind on a moonless night
Into the hungry maws of our hurt hearts.

Say yes, that’s all we can do,
Let go of everything except
The knowing of no greater love
And then the cycle can end,
The hurting can stop.

There’s no telling when anyone who
Has been a hurter will be stopped in her tracks.
There’s no knowing when an experience
Will begin a new video, instant replay,
Of a new cycle, beginning with open hands,
And open hearts, saying “yes” to the
Banner of “loved people love people,”
And “no” to “hurt people hurt people.”

Is it simple? Yes.
Is it easy? No
Is it full of effort? No
Is it our payment for being good? Absolutely not
Is it the hesitant certificate at the end of the training?
No, it begins with a tiny rivulet somewhere in
Heaven, running downhill into our galaxy,
Picking up steam until it runs like the rapids.
Righteousness, justice, grace, combined,
Into the catch basin of heart.
Because it is not hope in our brains,
But love born for the “being” in our veins.

Say yes to the waves,
Say yes to being a friend to ourselves,
Say yes to seeing others not as hard outsiders,
But as long, missing in action siblings.
Say yes. The Beloved People love the Beloved People.
(the choir sings and chants its way to the
heavens that are no longer far off pipe dreams,
but as real as the ground on which we stand).

The multitudes echo namaste standing on
The new deck of wood that stands above
The puddle of blood once bled!
Today, too, the blood of the sufferers
Will also touch us. Never forget.

CB: hrtpeple.hrt (9/10/05)

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

Recent tracking of hate groups in this nation range anywhere from 230-300 known hate groups. Although these groups pose a significant danger, and are scourged in our land, a far more subtle, and powerful foe is institutional racism. Prejudice + power=institutional racism. At the core of I.R. is economics.

There are two types of I.R.: WHAT?

1.Direct--conscious and intensional racism which is practiced without apology or shame. Up until fairly recently it's been legal--Texaco, Jim Crow laws, etc.
2.Indirect--may be intensional or unintensional. When it's intentional, it's deliberately disguised so the public won't know about it. When unintentional, it's very complex, has a life of its own, and is very hard to eradicate.

DIRECT:

Understanding that every act of I.R. has deliberated and traceable origins is key to know about for three reasons:

1.Our memories have been shortened by amnesia and pain-killers; thus, histor has been distorted.
2.I.R. as practiced today with much subtlety often seems innocent and harmless, unless it's seen as the successor of the direct, blatant I.R. of the past.
3.Many leaders are sincere in their desire for racial harmony, but are in denial about racist practices in their institutions.

In the years following WWII, there were banking and housing policies which were established that directly created segregation and red-lining of certain neighborhoods in the city. This created a ghetto area within the city. Banking practices kept African Americans from obtaining loans, and real estate practices kept AA's out of certain areas and confined to others. There was a time, when it was legal, for realtors to not show homes to people of color.

A classic example of this was the creation of a ghetto in Miami, FL. There was a literal wall built in an area called Coconut Grove which was built to separate black and white neighborhoods. Here's what an excerpt of the Miami City Planning Board meeting said, " A resolution recommending that the establishment of a permanent dividing line between white and colored occupancy in the area north of Grand Avenue and east of Douglas Road."

INDIRECT

Although today it's illegal to discriminate according to race in the workplace, educational standards are manipulated, residential requirements are added, coupled with height, and weight limitations. Just this year, it's been discovered by one of New York's newspapers that although there is a smaller % of people of color on the NY City Police force, a much greater % of disciplinary actions (about 55%) is found among police officers of color. This is a disparate amount for the numbers on the force, and is being investigated.

Government elections are controlled and manipulated by "gerrymandering" of political boundaries and districts, and there are still cases of vote fraud.

Today, it's clear that the end of de jure (legalized) racism has failed to bring about the end of de facto (actual) racism.

LEVELS OF I.R.

In every organization, there can be 3 levels of I.R. at work: 1). attitudes and actions of personnel; 2). policies and practices; 3). structures and foundations.

PERSONNEL--i.e., Mark Furman in LAPD--"when a 'person' is 'personnel' he or she personifies the institution.

POLICY & PRACTICE--Dick Gregory theorizes about a institution that replaces all of its white personnel with people of color, but doesn't change its racist policies and practices; it would still be a white, racist institution. Racism in institutions can be changed by eliminating wrong practices

STRUCTURES & FOUNDATIONS--an institution's foundations are its stated purposes, its historical traditions, the spiritual, moral and ethical teachings on which it's built, and its financial undergirding. The foundational base of every organization and institu. built in this country has been infected with racism (see Federalist Papers). THE CHURCH, WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE HAVEN AND ANCHOR FOR RACIAL JUSTICE IS ONE OF THE MOST SEGREGATED UNITS IN THIS LAND.

Our church, the WCG, had a flawed religious foundation around racism. We believed that ancient Israel, was a superior race with superior heredity, and God chose them for that reason. One statement "God started off his chosen nation off--even though brought out of slavery--with all the natural advantages of a superior heredity" (Armstrong, 1985, p. 170). We believed Israel's descendants were basically the white, anglo-saxon, europeans, so if they had superior heredity, where did that put other people groups? This view was flawed and it affected how others of non-white backgrounds were treated within our fellowship.

About 9 years ago we began to see this was wrong, and about 2 years ago we came to see that this was a structure of our I.R. We went through a corporate repentance and changed this flawed structure. When a building is falling down, you have to go down to the foundation and start from scratch, rebuilding from the bottom up.

TO CHANGE I.R. WE NEED TO CHANGE OURSELVES--IT'S NOT RACISM THAT'S OUT OF CONTROL IT'S WE WHO ARE OUT OF CONTROL. THIS IS ESPECIALLY HARD FOR WHITE MALES TO ACCEPT, BECAUSE OF OUR INCREDIBLE VORACIOUS DESIRE TO BE IN CONTROL OF EVERY SITUATION.

1.LISTEN TO PEOPLE OF COLOR--THEY HOLD THE KEY TO CHANGE.

2.WHITE RACISM IN WHITE INSTITUTIONS MUST BE ERADICATED BY WHITE PEOPLE AND NOT JUST BLACK PEOPLE. IN FACT, WHITE RACISM IS PRIMARILY A WHITE RESPONSIBILITY" DISMANTLING RACISM.

PRE/POST ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Grades 4-5

DATE:_______________
NO:_________________
E:__________________
AGE:________________
SEX:________________

Grades 4-5

Answer the following questions briefly in about one sentence or so.

1. What does the word “race” (having to do with types of people) mean to you?

2. What is a stereotype?

3. Give an example of a stereotype that you know about:

4. When it comes to who you are, how do you identify yourself (for example, “white,” “black,” “Hispanic,” “Asian American,” etc. Please write it on the line to the right of the “E”.

©Christopher Bear Beam, 2006

PRE/POST ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Grades 6-8

DATE:_______________
NO:_________________
E:__________________
AGE:________________
SEX:________________

Answer the following questions briefly in about one or two sentences. Feel free to use the back of the paper if you need to.

1. Give an example of discrimination against a non-white person:

2. What is a hate crime?

3. What is Martin Luther King, Jr. known for?

4. What is a stereotype?

5. Give an example of a stereotype:

6. What does the word “prejudice” mean to you?

7. What do you call yourself as far as your ethnicity goes? Please write it on the line to the right of “E” above.

PRE/POST ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Grades 9-12

DATE:_______________
NO:_________________
E:__________________
AGE:________________
SEX:________________

Answer the following questions briefly in about one or two sentences. Feel free to use the back of the page if needed.

1. What is prejudice?

2. Give an example of prejudice that you personally experienced:

3. What is racism?

4. Is it possible to have prejudice and not be racist?

5. What is a stereotype?

6. Explain what you think is the difference between a fact and an opinion:

7. Briefly describe the system of slavery during the first 250 years of our nation:

8. How do you self-identify yourself when it comes to your ethnicity? Please write this on the line above to the right of “E.”

PRE/POST ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Adults in the Community

DATE:_______________
NO:_________________
E:__________________
AGE:________________
SEX:________________

Answer the following questions briefly in about one or two sentences.
If you are unsure just write “unsure” under the question. Please use the back of the paper if you need to.

1. What does the term “racism” mean to you?

2. Is there a difference between “prejudice” and “racism”?

3. How would you define a stereotype?

4. Give a brief description of how you understand the legal segregation system prevalent in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s:

5. How would you try to become an ally to someone who is of a different ethnicity, culture or religion than yourself?

6. What does the word “homophobia” mean to you?

7. If you identify as “white American” what can you do to interrupt racism in your daily interactions? What about if you’re “non-white”?

8. If you identify as being “non-white” what can you do to heal from racism’s effects?

9. “All people are members of the human race.” Please respond:

10. How do you self-identify yourself when it comes to your ethnicity? Please write this on the line to the right of “E” above.

Thanks for your participation!

DATE:_______________
NO:_________________
E:__________________
AGE:________________
SEX:________________

Answer the following questions briefly in about one or two sentences.

1. There are several types of racism; define one kind of racism and give an example of it:

2. Define the meaning of “stereotype”:

3. How are racial stereotypes communicated and perpetuated in our culture?

4. What factors in our society contribute to a “fear of the outsider, or a fear of the foreigner” in U.S. society?

5. What is the difference between a fact, an opinion, and a generalization?

6. What does the term “white privilege” mean to you?

7. How do you self-identify yourself when it comes to your ethnicity? (Please write this on the line to the right of “E” above).

DATE:_________________
NO:___________________
E:____________________(write what you call yourself, like black, white, mixed, brown, etc.)
SEX:__________________
AGE:__________________

Look at the pictures shown by teacher. Then circle T or F for true or false.

1. “All white people are rich” T or F

2. “All blacks want to be gangsters” T or F

3. “Physically people are mad about their problems” T or F

4. “Asian people are all smart” T or F

5. “All Mexicans are lazy” T or F

6. “All white mothers are good mothers” T or F

7. “I’d say that people who evacuated from Katrina are criminals” T or F

The UIT was first developed by William V. Haney, Ph.D. in 1955. Dr. Haney first developed the UIT as a doctoral dissertation in 1953; it has undergone numerous refinements, and other graduate studies have followed up using the UIT as well. It has been used in with graduate studies groups, college level groups, high school groups, and with business, law, speech, psychology, English groups. Another important use of the UIT has been within the discipline of General Semantics. GS provides education, knowledge and skills to learn how to observe ‘what’s going on out there,’ how to evaluate and interpret it, and then how to communicate what we see happening outside of our selves and inside our selves.The Uncritical Inference Test is available from the Institute of General Semantics 2260 College Ave. Fort Worth, TX 76110 @ 817-922-9950, or by emailing igs@time-binding.org.

This test is designed to determine a person’s ability to think accurately, scientifically and carefully. Since a stereotype is a sweeping, partial generalization, the UIT is a way to assist individuals to see how they come to their conclusions about groups of people; this is very easy for any of us to do, especially when it comes to those who are very different from us. It’s hoped that learning more accurate ways of thinking will lead to more positive and healthy behaviors. Cognitive Therapy suggests that new thinking leads to new behavior.

Facts are bits of scientific information that we observe about the world around us. Facts can be tested and proven by scientific method. We may make inferences about facts, but these are not the facts themselves—inferences are assumptions or generalizations that we form inside our own heads; these are then reinforced by our social conditions, family and peer influences, larger societal systems, and media messages. Generalizations, assumptions, inferences and personal opinions may be used in either healthy or unhealthy ways.

The UIT (I prefer the term assessment because people have so many negative connotations about the concept of test) can be used as a pre and post assessment for high school-aged and college-aged participants in Dialogue: Racism trainings. Some de-briefing can be done after the pre and post assessments to explain stereotypes, assumptions, and racialized thinking.
© Christopher Bear Beam, 2006

Objectives: 1). To examine feelings and thoughts around advantages and disadvantages through shooting marbles; 2). To observe the uniqueness of each person and her marble; 3). To demonstrate that bias and prejudice are based on what can be observed externally in stereotypical thinking; 4). To look deeper at the differences as individual perceptions rather than group categorization.

SET UP: PART I

1. Set up a circle and have participants find a place around the outside of the circle.
2. Place the individual marbles inside the circle.
3. Ask participants: how many of you have ever played marbles? How many have not? How many of you wear glasses? How many of you have trouble aiming and hitting a target, like archery for example? Do you think you have good “hand eye” coordination?
4. Then the facilitator can say something like “Well, some of you may have some difficulty with this because of your disadvantages; some of you may do better than others because of your disabilities.”
5. Explain: use the big shooter to try and knock a marble out of the circle; if you knock one out, you get one point, 2 you get 2 points, etc. Each person gets only one shot.
6. When the game is over, tally the points and see who got the most, the least or none.
7. How do you feel? How do you feel if you felt you had advantages? Disadvantages? (Use the feeling faces to share feelings). Do you feel some people in American society have advantages? Disadvantages?

SET UP: PART II

1. Each person picks out a different marble.
2. Ask participants to notice how it feels, describe the colors, what kind of patterns or colors are on the inside, and anything else they’d like to say about it. How would you describe your marble to someone who has never seen one before?
3. Ask participants about the similarities between all the marbles as a group.
4. Use the microscope to put each marble under a magnified view: what do they see that’s different now from seeing it with just their own eyes? What new aspects can they detect? Do they think each marble is unique?

DISCUSSION: prejudice/bias are often based on physical characteristics: hair, skin color, language/dialect, clothing, music, shape, smell, art, the way things appear to be. These are all observable by the five senses. What we see we describe and then we make inferences or create stereotypes based on the conditions around us. An inference is an opinion not a fact. “I saw that guy stumble out of the taxi cab (fact); he must be drunk (inference).” Stereotypes have cognitive, visual, emotional, social starting points. We get stereotypes about other groups by what we see in media, what our family and friends tell us, by the stories we hear, and the metaphors that are used about other groups.

One way to examine our stereotypes is to look at individuals in a group; even there we have to be thoughtful. If we see someone in a group do something that reinforces our stereotypes, we usually think or say, ‘I told you the _________s were like that!’

A. Use indexing, for example, African American1 is different from African American2.

B. Use dating, for example Joe Smith1953 is a different person from
Joe Smith1981.

These two simple tools can help us see differences and can aid us in busting up our stereotypes. Always remember that we can define prejudice as “an emotional commitment to ignorance.”

First Look Media & Infinity Media (A William Vince/Robert Merilees Production; a Charles Martin Smith film), 2005, starring Barry Pepper, Annabella Piugattuk).

The Snow Walker is many things—a lesson in dealing with our shadow side, the meeting of Western and Indigeonous cultures, intercultural understanding and communication, cultural racism, the counter turning of sexism, one human being respecting another, the turning loose of old ways and resources when they don’t work in new contexts, and many more.

Charlie is a white pilot who is self-centered and angry. He agrees to fly a young, twenty-year old, Inuit woman to a hospital in Yellowfork, but only in exchange for some walrus husks which is why he had made the extra stop in the first place. The first step in Charlie’s long spiritual journey, with his selfish motives aside, is to sit in the same cockpit with this sick young Inuit.

The plane has mechanical problems and they go down, down into this vast place called the Arctic, a land of tundra, water, mud and rock. So they go down in a desert wasteland as seen through Charlie’s eyes. They manage to salvage a little food, but that’s about all. It’s here where we first see that Charlie, a former fighter pilot in WWII, is a very angry man. As obstacles and adversities arise we see over and over again that this anger erupts, with his venting it at whatever is close at hand, including Canala, the Native woman.

One of the main contrasts is seeing how Charlie deals with crisis and how Canala does. He is obsessed with desperation. He wants to live, of course, as we all do, but the basic question at hand, is how do we survive a crisis, in cooperation with ourselves, others of difference, and from the land and water? His attempts to survive are peppered with a seeming unending drive to dominate the land, compete against the elements, and secure the resources to stay alive. Canala goes about the same goal of survival in her indigenous way: patiently waiting for game, prayer to the spirits, and the use of her ways of listening to the earth and creation. Not with a gun, but her traditions and prayer.

One of the key natural actors in this film is the snowy owl. It meets Charlie in the beginning and says good bye to him in the end after he buries Canala. Probably, the white owl is Canala’s totem. Her wise totem is a talisman of patience, because the owl waits patiently for its prey, and can even play dead if need be. While it waits it rests to conserve its energy. To Charlie this would be ludicrous in the face of his own death. Yet, spiritually, resting in spirit is observing and listening in order to live. In resting the greatest vitality is available as an inner resource. This kind of resting then leads to focused action and resilience. In other words, it leads to life.

As the story unfolds we see that his methods lack potency; as many of us know, insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Charlie’s old, Western ways are dying off in his relationship with Canal. His old expectations are really self-fulfilling prophecies that become premeditated bites of resentments. His hope turns to despair until he sees the effects of her ways. Canala’s methods seem to bring results. This draws him closer to her. They find ways to communicate and work together to stay alive. Like his tattered old boots that are now useless, he begins to let go of his old ways that in this faraway place are completely useless. In this process, his respect for Canala opens up, and he begins to become a follower. He sees himself in her, and then in the creation.

The compassion of Mother Earth is incarnated through Canala, and earth is the incarnation of her. She is one with all. She is filled with nurturance, laughter, and child-like playfulness. There is no sense of fear at the predicament they find themselves in. Her pain is her illness that might be Tuberculosis. She begins to have nosebleeds and to cough up blood.

They sit in a tent together, sewing hides for clothes and boots. She says, ‘I want to tell you a story of a little girl.’ She tells the story of a young girl whose father dies. Her older sister is also dying. Charlie listens intently wanting to know what this means. The little girl knows that blood is life, and she lets her older sister suck the blood from her cut wrists. In this irony of what we know to be suicide, she chooses to give life. Now Charlie knows why Canala has the scars on her wrists.

Many beliefs in gods and goddesses have blood sacrifices, even as the Hebrews did in the Bible. For Christians Christ is the ultimate blood sacrifice, and the genuine sacrifice. The communal sharing of wine or grape juice is the ritual of finding life in the blood of Jesus. As one shares this at the communal table, an individual becomes one with God and all humanity.

Charlie and Canala eat raw meat together. In this sinewy and chewy metaphor, they draw on the commonality of all life. For Indigenous folks, like the Inuit, there is no need to cook the meat, only eat it. Cooking, here, is another symbolism for modernity. It’s a sort of burning up of real life, and a substitution of the fake for the real. It represents a mask covering up the essence of life, i.e., the energy found in the circle of life. The form replaces the substance. “Seeming” replaces “being.” In “being” many possibilities exist for life. The exterior chases away the interior, the home of heart where God lives.

At this point in his journey there’s one quick scene that paints this beautiful picture: as they are walking to reach some community (with absolutely no clue as to where this community is located except Charlie’s hunch). Charlie uses his map and intuition here, but now has learned that Canala knows more than he does about how to make the journey and live. So despite his own skepticism he follows, reluctantly sensing in his insides that she knows the way.

The inner chaos of Charlie’s anger is his past experience of war. He has reoccuring dreams about killing; he tells Canala the story of his own killing, and doing what he needs to do without asking himself some hard questions. In one dream scene, we see Canala riding shotgun as the gunner’s mate with her hand tenderly on his. Just as the owl was with him, so was Canala’s spirit to keep him alive for this journey. As he recounts the story to her, we see his pain, that he has hidden with his own ego, pride, and alcohol. He thinks he has made peace with what he did in the war, but has he?

For us, being in the driver’s seat of our lives rather than being an observer seems the best role of all. The metaphor of the plane and pilot is really about life. It’s about life’s traumas and glories that are really all the same. They simply are. It’s what we do with them inside ourselves that has meaning. Charlie’s challenge is to listen and learn. To rest and to go. To see and respect. To feel and to be in the feeling. All of his anger and pain have been pushed away into numbness until he meets Canala. Now finally, he is feeling what he feels; when he is hopeless and depressed he stays with it; when he feels alivened and motivated he goes with it. And in the end this is what brings him home.

Seeing himself for the first time in the mirror of Canala’s heart and her ability to listen without judgment, he is doing his own healing. The walls of “them and us” are falling away. The isolation of his own pain is disintegrating. The coalescing of his soul with Canala’s and his oneness with all life and humanity, with the acceptance of each one’s uniqueness and difference, melds together in true agreement.

An oversimplified generalization about a group of people

An oversimplified or exaggerated description or assumption about people or things

Webster’s: “A standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an over-simplified opinion, affective attitude or uncritical judgment”

Our English word stereotype comes from a printing term and connotes a stamping of a letter mould over and over again producing the same letter in the same way

Stereotypes are distortions, caricatures, and institutionalized misinformation (Walter Lippman)

Stereotypes are overgeneralizations, they are learned, factually inaccurate, rigid and persistent

Stereotypes are transported across generations as an element of the accumulated knowledge of society; media images reinforce stereotypes within our biology; because of this they are deeply ingrained and often buried deep in our unconscious so that we’re unaware of them

Stereotypes are “stupid” (ignorant). This is because we substitute facts for inferences when we view others different from us in stereotypical ways. We aren’t thinking rationally or scientifically. Another way of saying this is that stereotypes are “false to facts” because all life is unique and diverse. Refusing to give up our stereotypes is “an emotional commitment to ignorance (The Center for the Healing of Racism, Houston, TX). For example, no one represents their whole group

Slide 2 stereoty.def “The Irrationality of Stereotypes”

1. Undue attention or harrassment for being in a more affluent, white neighborhood. There is an assumption of being “suspicious.”
2. Overlooking or ignoring a person of color in the interest of serving a white person’s needs or agenda.
3. Viewing persons of color as trouble makers, criminals, drug users, violent, etc. As being less civilized and more of a savage nature.
4. Use of derogatory, slang terms towards persons of color while in the presence of other law enforcement people, and persons of color.
5. Police profiling in stopping motorists along the roadway, and searching them for drugs, weapons, and other illegalities. Example: my son used to deliver pizzas and drove a late model car normally associated with Latinos; he was stopped repeatedly because he looked suspicious in the neighborhood.
6. Having a non-verbal and objective way of protecting whites when around persons of color, as well as their property.
7. Mistreatment of persons of color incarcerated in prison.
8. Police brutality towards persons of color while being questioned or locked up; a stereotype that the supposed criminal will attack them if they don’t use more force.
9. Asking persons of color “what are you doing in this neighborhood?” as if they didn’t have the freedom to be wherever they choose to be.
10. Protection of each other when it comes to being investigated for racial injustice or mistreatment, i.e., the “silent blue wall.’
11. Biased blaming of persons of color when a fight breaks out with whites.
12. General mistrust of neighborhoods populated by persons of color due to a history of fear and antagonism towards the neighborhood; having the attitude of not expending as much time or energy to intervene in these neighborhoods; a stance of “staying away” to let them fight it out among themselves.
13. Making a person of color jump through more hoops by not being helpful, by making procedures a hindrance to getting the assistance they need; ignoring their rights, and putting up resistance.
14. Hypervigilance and exaggeration of commands and controls to persons of color; threatening by pulling out guns, or to use force.
15. Being passive or neglecting to protect establishments owned by persons of color; i.e., when a club owned by African Americas in Austin was ablaze, police seemed to celebrate, and say they thought this was normal because the place was in the wrong part of town. They didn’t go out of their way to intervene.
16. When the Texas State Troopers were celebrating one of the African American officer’s birthday, they joked, and wore KKK pointed hats as a joke. This gives a glimpse into some of the mindsets among the East Texas Law Enforcement officials.

CB: stereoty.law (9/16/05)

DATE:_____________
NO:_______________
E:_________________
AGE:_______________
SEX:________________

INSTRUCTIONS

This assessment may help the reader to think accurately and carefully; it will help you to assess whether you think factually or stereotypically. In other words, are you able to know the difference between what a fact is, and what an inference is. Webster’s defines the verb infer this way: “to conclude by reasoning from something known or assumed.”

Please read the story carefully taking into account the following points:

1. Please read this short story about the two groups. Assume that all the information in the story is accurate and true. You may refer back to the story as often as you need to.
2. You will then read statements about the story. Please answer the statements only in numerical order. DON’T GO BACK TO FILL IN OR CHANGE YOUR ANSWERS. This will distort the assessment.
3. After you read carefully and thoughtfully each statement, determine whether the statement is;

a. “T”—this means that based on the information given in the story, the statement is DEFINITELY TRUE.

b. “F”—this means that based on the information given in the story, the statement is DEFINITELY FALSE.

c. “?”—this means that based on the information given in the story, you can’t be definitely certain. (If any part of the statement is doubtful, mark the statement “?”.)
4. Indicate your answer by circling either “T” or “F” or “?” opposite the statement.
5. REMEMBER: Answer ONLY on the basis of the information presented in the story. Try not to answer as you think it MIGHT have happened. Answer each question in numerical order; don’t go back and change your answers.

THE STORY

Two groups of students congregate outside of a local high school. Each group is talking in whispered tones. Everyone in each group is wearing a common colored sweatshirt—one group is wearing black and the other is wearing blue. One group of Latino American students begins talking louder and louder, and the volume of their conversation increases. The other group, a group of African American students, glares intently at the Latino American group.

There is the sound of loud hip hop music coming from somewhere nearby, most likely from a CD or DVD player. Two European American students are sitting on the bleachers by the football field within hearing distance of the two groups. One of the European American students doesn’t look up from reading her book as energized tension rises in the two groups. This student has very short hair and is wearing a “rainbow” colored ribbon pinned to her jacket. On her backpack is a bumper sticker that reads, “Stop AIDS now!”

A low rider stops nearby the group of Latino American students. Its radio is blaring Tejano music. Shortly after this, the Latino American group starts walking slowly towards the group of African Americans. As they get within earshot, one of the Latinos yells, “Hey, n-----s, let’s get down!”

STATEMENTS ABOUT THE STORY

1. The two groups are standing T F ?
across the street from the
school.

2. The two groups are fairly T F ?
close to the football field.

3. The two groups are whispering T F ?
about each other.

4. One of the groups is composed T F ?
of Asian Americans.

5. The two groups are rival gangs. T F ?

6. All members of the African T F ?
American group are from the
U.S.

7. The African American group T F ?
members look intently at
the other group.

8. The African American group T F ?
is loud and boisterous.

9. The hip hop music is causing T F ?
the African American group
to get more agitated.

10. The two European American T F ?
students are doing their home
work.

11. The European American student T F ?
who is reading avoids eye
contact because she is scared.

12. The student who is reading enjoys T F ?
reading.

13. The driver of the low rider T F ?
incites the Latino American
group to attack the group of
of African American students.

14. The Latino American group T F ?
member uses the “N” word as a
“put down” of the other group.

15. The “N” word is only used about T F ?
African Americans and by
African Americans.

16. The African American group and T F ?
the Latino American group gets
into a fight with each other.

17. Both the African American group T F ?
and the Latino American groups are
more emotional by nature.

18 The two groups are going to attack T F ?
the European American female
because she’s gay.

This assessment format is synthesized from an original creation of William V. Haney, Ph.D. that he designed in the 1950’s; Haney entitled it The Uncritical Inference Test with the intended purpose to test whether one’s thinking was accurate and scientific. I use it as a pre/post assessment to measure one’s skill in distinguishing between facts, inferences, assumptions, and opinions; it also provides a means to perhaps measure and discuss the difference between facts and stereotypes.

DATE:__________
NO:___________
E:_____________(how you define yourself ethnically)
AGE:__________
SEX:___________

Take a look at these values and circle the numbers of each one with a number that corresponds to the following scale:

1=extremely important
2=quite important
3=moderately important
4=unimportant

Social Justice Issues 1 2 3 4

Power 1 2 3 4

Money 1 2 3 4

Fairness to others 1 2 3 4

Treating others
With dignity 1 2 3 4

Possessions 1 2 3 4

Recognition 1 2 3 4

Understanding
Racism 1 2 3 4

Self-Esteem 1 2 3 4

Pleasure 1 2 3 4

Morality/Ethics 1 2 3 4

Health 1 2 3 4