Weekly Shares (6/5/23) - Envisioning The Culture We Want, Need, And Deserve
A friend forwarded me a copy of Tema Okun’s interview with Ryan Grim on the Deconstructed Podcast from this past February. You can find the transcript and the podcast here. Okun is the author of a document titled White Supremacy Culture, which was initially written in 1999 to support her racial equity work with different organizations. “I never once posted it,” she noted. “I never ever expected it to be used, certainly, out of context of the whole piece. So then it just started circulating. And it kind of started to have a life of its own.”
Even the headline of the interview on the Intercept website, TEMA OKUN ON HER MYTHICAL PAPER ON WHITE SUPREMACY, is a bit misleading. In some cases, the word mythical is equated with fictitious or fake. This paper by Okun is 100 percent legitimate. However, it is fair to say that it is not an academic paper based on research. Okun describes the origin of the paper as follows: “I went to a meeting and it was a very frustrating and horrible meeting. And I came home and I sat in front of the computer. And the article literally came through me onto the computer. It was not researched. I didn’t sit down and deliberate. It just came through me. And I’ve never had that experience with my writing, before or since.”
Of course over the years, the paper has resonated with many people and it has continued to be used by groups to lean into deeper discussions around racism and creating more inclusive organizations. In recent years, Okun has heard from some people that the paper has been used as a checklist in some organizations, and people have actually been targeted and lost their jobs because of this. She states unequivocally that this is not an appropriate use of her work: “It’s not meant to be used to target people. That’s not what it’s meant for. It’s meant to bring people together to talk about how we’re getting in our own way and what we can do differently.”
As for the current work in DEI and the pushback, she states: “My position is that there are multiple ways for us as a nation, and for those of us who care about racial justice, there are multiple ways to work towards it. And the way I do it is one way and the way you do it is another way…I don’t think shame and blame are a good way to lead this work. What I’m saying…is that shame and blame are inevitable feelings, particularly for white people, because once we confront our history, we are going to feel shame and we’re going to feel blamed and that’s just part of it. And the cleverness of white supremacy and white supremacy culture is that defensiveness against understanding it is built into it. So defensiveness is going to come up. Any DEI practitioner with any kind of experience is going to have to address defensiveness; that’s just part of the work. So any implication that we can do this without making white people defensive is just uninformed.”
Okun’s website, whitesupremacyculture.info has been updated with resources, including a critique of her work. She notes: "While I do not agree with much of the critique, I do want people to understand the multiple perspectives and experience people have with this material. Please do use this material as a reflective tool to help us all see how we are getting in our own way. Please do use it to help us vision the culture we want, need, and deserve.”
Other things I am reading/watching/listening to:
This article from the Boston Globe highlights the importance of not dwelling on a single story to generalize about a group of people. Udonis Haslam, a member of the Miami Heat, is a lifelong Floridian who reminds us that not everyone in Florida is in alignment with the work of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and he asks people to “…please stop Florida-shaming us people. We’re not happy about what this man [DeSantis] is doing. Diversity and inclusion and taking the [books away].”
Americans' Views of Childhood Vaccines Remain Largely Positive | Pew Research Center
This summary of recent Pew Research around vaccines found 88% of Americans say the benefits of childhood vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) outweigh the risks, compared with just 10% who say the risks outweigh the benefits. Sadly, the decline in support for vaccine requirements for children has been driven by changing views among Republicans: 57% now support requiring children to be vaccinated to attend public schools, down from 79% in 2019. I can’t help but think about Jonathan Metzl’s book Dying of Whiteness where he notes “When politics demands that people resist available health care…that might feel emotionally correct but are biologically perilous, these people are literally asking people to die for their whiteness.”
Police Scotland chief constable says force is institutionally racist
Chief Constable Sir Iain Livingstone stated the following: “It is right for me, as chief constable, to clearly state that institutional racism, sexism, misogyny and discrimination exist,” Livingstone told a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority on Thursday morning.
“Publicly acknowledging these issues exist institutionally is essential to our absolute commitment to championing equality and becoming an anti-racist service.”
When We Listen To Students, We Improve Our Schools
A great article from Learning Forward notes the following: ''Each piece of information we glean from students widens our aperture for improving schools...It is essential that we are consistent and intentional about listening to them.'' Great concrete actions to create a more intentional process for getting regular feedback from students.
Mark Anthony Gooden on Culturally Responsive School Leadership
This interview from ASCD’S Educational Leadership magazine with Columbia University Professor and author Mark Anthony Gooden highlights the focus needed by school leaders on culturally responsive practices in order to support sustained school-wide change. Gooden notes the importance of not just seeing inequities, but acting to change these conditions.
“You can't let such acceptance of historical inequities go uncontested. You have to question why this is OK for some schools or districts but not others. So critical consciousness means having that lens to see the context of the current reality and say, "This has to change. We have to do things differently."
The Ghost in Your Phone : Throughline : NPR - This episode looks at Cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Cobalt is a resource used in smartphone batteries, laptops and electric cars. More than three-quarters of the world's cobalt supply lies in the Democratic Republic of Congo and it is mined by the Congolese people for pennies. This episode discusses the continued centuries-long fight for the resources of this country with little regard to the health and well-being of its people.
The Freedom of Speech : Throughline : NPR - From the episode website: Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the U.S.?
Into America Podcast - Don’t Send the Police: Send Freedom House (2 part series) - Discussed the history of paramedics in United States and the first paramedics who originated in Pittsburgh in the late 1960s at a place called Freedom House. This group of black men changed the way that we respond to life-threatening emergencies and set the foundation for how we respond today. In part 2 of the series, Freedom House Rides Again, a new Freedom House in Miami, Florida is modeling a way to better respond to mental health emergencies.