Overcoming racism involves becoming aware of what we are currently unaware. Here are a few of my awakenings.
Colorism and racism
"Colorism" began in the 1400s when light-skinned Europeans colonized and enslaved dark-skinned Africans.
"Race" is a social construct that categorizes persons according to skin-color: black, brown, red, yellow, and white. Biologically and genetically, however, all people are part of the one human race.
Skin color is determined by melanin, a pigment that regulates the amount of ultraviolet radiation to penetrate the skin-more melanin means darker skin, typical of people who live in tropical climates.
Human populations have changed skin color -- from light to dark or from dark to light -- as they migrated toward or away from the equator; such major changes have occurred in as few as 100 generations.
Whiteness
White supremacy: the ideology that white people are superior and, therefore, have the right to economically and politically control people of other skin color.
White privilege: societal benefits enjoyed by white people but not by people of color, such as complete freedom to travel and maximal access to housing, employment, education, and healthcare; studies show that whites are typically not aware of the extent of their privilege.
Allostatic load: wear and tear on the human body under ongoing duress, resulting in immunological breakdown and disease; a common condition among suppressed, disenfranchised, economically depressed people.
Cultural competence: knowledge or awareness of practices and lifestyles of cultures other than one's own; a skill now deemed necessary in multi-cultural arenas such as education and healthcare.
Reference books
Weary Feet, Rested Souls by Townsend Davis
Arranged by location, this book describes the various locations of the Living Legacy Pilgrimage.
The largely untold history of Unitarian Universalists who were instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement in the South.
Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk about Race and How to Do It, 2nd edition by Shelly Tochluk
This book invites readers to consider what it means to be white, describes and critiques strategies used to avoid race issues, and identifies the detrimental effect of avoiding race on cross-race collaborations.
Excerpts from
Witnessing Whiteness:
- Racial prejudice is a preconceived judgment or opinion based on insufficient knowledge.
- Racism, on the other hand, involves a system that offers advantage based on race [or skin color]. White people might consciously reject prejudice, yet are often unaware of how the structure of our society continues to advantage whites over other groups.
Selma Awakening: How the Civil Rights Movement Tested and Changed Unitarian Universalism by Mark D. Morrison-Reed
An analysis of the civil rights activism by Unitarian Universalists in Selma, Alabama.
Resistance: A Memoir of Civil Disobedience in Maricopa County by Annette Marquis
The story of Marquis' involvement, in July 2010, in the National Day of Non-Compliance in Phoenix, Arizona, on behalf of immigrants, her arrest, and a long night in the jail run by notorious sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The Children by David Halberstam
The Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of young people who became early revolutionaries.
Documentaries
Eyes on the Prize, a comprehensive six-hour TV series about the Civil Rights Movement from 1952 to 1965.
Neshoba, the story of a Mississippi town still divided about the meaning of justice 40 years after the murders of civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, the brutal murder of Till, a black boy from Chicago, after he supposedly wolf-whistled at a white woman in rural Mississippi in 1955.
Freedom Riders, the story of the Civil Rights Movement's protest against segregation on interstate buses.
4 Little Girls, a documentary of the racial terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four African American children.
Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story, a documentary of how an African American waiter changed -- and was subsequently killed -- after he spoke out on network television about being demeaned by white customers.
Home of the Brave, a documentary on civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, a white northern woman, who was murdered in 1965 as she campaigned for black suffrage in Selma, Alabama, and the effect of her death on her family.
Next blog: My story from the South
