Day 27: Hate vs. Heritage

Dear Friends, Family and Neighbors!


Four days left! That’s nothing, we got this! We’re excited to start marinating on how we can keep the momentum going in our own lives and hope you are too.  We hope these 30 days are a habit building first or next step in our journeys to become anti-racist.  But we recognize that this will be a lifelong journey.  


Today we are looking into the monuments of the confederacy in our own neighborhoods and cities.  This could include physical statues, road names, park names and building names.  We will identify two or three named after confederate soldiers, slave owners or white supremeists.  Then we will do some independent research on the individual after whom the monument is named.  We are also interested in when the monument was erected or the building was named.  We then plan to look into what was going on in terms of race relations in the country at the time the monument was created or the building was named.  Once we have gathered all this information we will determine a course of action.  Perhaps we will write a letter in support of it’s removal or name change.  We are remaining open to our exploration and basing our actions on our discoveries.  It might also be interesting to explore the ratio of statues of white males to Black people or women in our communities.  


Here is a video from the ACLU outlining the correlation of the building of monuments with racist sentiment post civil war. https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/290033115366971/ 


Here’s an article about Nascar’s banning of the confederate flag: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/10/us/nascar-bans-confederate-flag-spt-trnd/index.html


There is also an effort to remove the confederate battle flag from the Mississippi flag: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/26/us/mississippi-confederate-flag-change-trnd/index.html 


We also highlighted an interesting video on the subject in Day 22, in case you missed it: https://day1ripples.blogspot.com/2020/06/day-22-learning-and-unlearning.html 


In the resources we have included some petitions you can participate in and info about the buildings at UNC named after confederate soldiers.    


Looking forward to hearing your view points and actions.  


Also attached is a great cartoon, exploring the word equity which we discussed a couple days ago.  


Happy Saturday! 


Peace,

Camerin and Beth 



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Yesterday's Actions and Reflections from the group: 


  •  My anti-racism work has been mostly oriented around book clubs, conversation and caring for the "reparations garden" that I'm tending through a local organization. My next step is to read My Grandmother's Hands. Resmaa Menakem is really rocking my world right now.

  •  Perhaps the greatest transcendence we can experience in our short lives is transformation of our awareness through the good, necessary and sometimes hard work required to over come implicit biases. What a marvelous goal to have! How exquisite to reach towards the divine in each of us, in ourselves and each other.
     "I SEE YOU" the credo of the Na’vi from AVATAR whereby by ’seeing’ is a total experience of the Heart/mind/body and ultimately can only be fully realized if we become open to being seen. We transform ourselves through each other.
     How refreshing, how joyful, how Truthful.

  • I have been watching the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.  He has an anti-racism guest on every night, and they talk about current conditions, history and anything else that comes up in regards to anti-racism.  The guests are Black and a few White People. Stephen and his guests have honest discussions about various topics ranging from statues being torn down to family history to riots to shootings to changes that are needed.  His music person is Black and is featured as well.  These are very intimate and good conversations, and I have learned a lot.  What is a comedy show when live is now a serious show that addresses the daily struggles we are going through as a nation.


  • Trevor Noah on Comedy Central at 11p is that for me.  He is thoughtful, well read and informed and on point.  He chooses interesting guests as well.   Too bad they are on at the same time.  I watch a lot of Cobert’s shows on Youtube.   He is great too.

  • I attended the second session of “Reimagining Policing in America” sponsored by the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing.  There was lots of good conversation and ideas about ways we can start policing reform, reshaping, renewal, refresh, etc.  This was recorded, and I highly recommend watching.  Also, the Center has launched a campaign to support its continuing work on mass incarceration, the death penalty, health inequities, and environmental issues that impact our black and brown communities: donate $1 and share with 10 friends. http://www.centerforracialhealing.org/

  • I watched an easy-to-understand but sickening-to-digest video on the history of race in America. Bottom line is that various and sundry governmental policies (several were new to me) over the years have caused the average black household to have 1/10 of the average white household’s wealth. Also, a white baby boy has a 1 in 23 chance to go to prison while a black baby boy has a 1 in 4 chance. Video is 17 minutes long.
     https://youtu.be/AGUwcs9qJXY

  • I watched “My Black Life,” a 12-minute spoken word piece written and performed by Dominique J. Hardy. Notable: “At school, Black History is an elective and optional...just like me.” PTSD=Post Traumatic Slave Disorder. http://www.centerforracialhealing.org/

  • Tomorrow morning, we’re joining our church's witness for black lives demonstration. It is going to be pretty simple - kids and families will make signs and stand by the church as people drive by. My son is making a sign.

  •  One of my coworkers who is white came over last night to hang out in the yard. We talked a lot about equity at our organization. She has been in several different management roles during times of "restructuring" and is doing a lot of reflecting on how refugee and first generation immigrant staff, in particular, were affected during those times. We talked about how things might have looked different in different situations with a focus on equity. 

  • Thanks for the suggestion of finding a “portal of appreciation”.  There are many, but I really wanted to look into the foods that Daisy (my daughter's nanny when she was a baby) cooked for her rather than feeding her the jars of baby food from the store or even the pureed veggies from our garden.  Collards.  Corn mush.  Radish greens from our neighbor’s garden next door.  
    Here’s the first article I found, and I liked hearing from two chefs with vastly different life experiences.  I’ve ordered Todd Richards’ book from the  Library and will be able to pick it up tomorrow.  According to the article  "His book is both a manual and meditation, in chapters moving alphabetically from collards to potatoes, on the forces of history that made him the cook that he is.”  Can’t wait to start reading it.

  • I’m also glad you mentioned the GUILT word.  It has plagued me for years.  It can be overwhelming and may be one reason why white folks have so much trouble seeing their white privilege.  Admitting it leads to guilt, and they know it.  I have dealt with my guilt by trying to actively engage in social justice issues.  I know it’s not enough, but it’s what I can do.

  • Today I’m going to research the historical background to minstrels.  My church (a liberal American Baptist Church in Livingston, NJ) had an annual minstrel.  We also had a partnership with a Black Baptist Church in East Orange, NJ.  I’m not sure how that partnership and the minstrel event are related, but I do remember the evolution of the minstrel at our church.  It ended sometime in the late 50’s, I think, but before it ended they changed some of the words to the songs that were sung each year.  I recall specifically “Mississippi Mud” when they changed the phrase “…when the Darkies beat their feet in the Mississippi mud” to “…when the people beat their feet in the Mississippi mud.”  White church members participated in these minstrels, often in blackface.  I really don’t know when the partnership with the church began or if the members of the Black Baptist Church participated in the minstrel shows, but the partnership was certainly in place before the minstrel shows stopped.  Maybe it was the development of the partnership that ended the performances after awhile.  I do know that I loved the songs from the shows and still can sing some of them.  Basin Street Blues, Mississippi Mud, Old Black Joe, Dapper Dan, Mammy.  I do remember that when the church decided to abandon the minstrel, it was because the racial stereotypes had become unacceptable to the congregation.  That would have been some time in the late 1950’s, I think.  It was definitely several years before I graduated from high school in 1963.

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