My Anti-Racism Plan for #ShutDownSTEM

Yes, another post about a hashtag. This one only came to my attention a few days ago. #ShutDownSTEM is a movement within academia, research and technical fields to take an inconvenient break from our regular work in order to spend time addressing institutional racism in our work places and our lives.

Yawn, you say--another diversity and inclusion session that makes white people feel like they're doing something without any actual positive effect on people of color. But in fact, that is the point of the day: making a plan for going forward, with the acknowledgment that becoming anti-racist is not a one-and-done deal but a constant, difficult, intensely personal process.

The reason I'm writing this here is for accountability. I'm finding it difficult to walk the line between speaking out as an ally and performative allyship, so what better place to publish my process and intentions other than a public-but-barely-read blog?!

My goal for the year, italics with updates of incremental progress.

• Education
• How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. Bought June 10, 2020
• Join reading group to discuss above Joined June 8, 2020, Group starts June 11
• Prioritize podcast listenings: Code Switch and The Breakdown by Shaun King
• Read at least one more book: Women, Race and Class or White Fragility, and/or...
• Sign up for at least one D&I class offered at work (even though they are never convenient for my schedule)
  
• Teaching my kids
• Read Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. This is a history of racism in the US, written by a well-known MG writer (Ghost), intended for educating kids. Purchased May 2020, next-in-queue of bedtime reading books with my kids (unless they pick it up themselves first)
• Next: share with them the names and stories of Black people killed by racist actions as they happen, instead of the lump of stories I gave them to explain/motivate them to participate in in the current Black Lives Matters protests
  
• Donations: 
• I will increase the proportion of our family's donations to organizations fighting institutional racism to 5% of our income (while maintaining other donations so it will be a financial sacrifice although not even close to the income disparities in the US between white people and people of color.
• Part of this will come from 14% of my 'personal' money (my husband and I give ourselves an allowance to spend on clothes, hobbies, personal outings, gifts, etc.,) as well. 
• These are the organizations led by Black people that we support financially:
• Color of Change: Organization led by people of color to increase Black political power
• The Action PAC: Shaun King's organization that has been working on changing legislation concerning police brutality well before the current wave
• The North Star Shaun King's media organization
• Nami Thompson, Boulder Parenting in Diversity cofounder
• Purchase (instead of borrowing) books by authors of color  
  May 2020: finished book II of N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Triology. 
  June 2020: started reading with a daughter Tomi Adeyemi Children of Blood and Bone
  June 2020: purchased How to Be an Antiracist (see above)
  
• Personal actions
• Wear my Black Lives Matter shirt in uncomfortable situations
• Finish a conversation with a friend of color who called me out on a statement in which I was lecturing her on 'American culture'. I said I would follow up, and never did. I need to bring it up and apologize for my statement, and thank her for having the courage to speak up and educate me.
• Publish the blog I wrote about the above incident if I get her permission to do so
• Write a letter to the elementary school principal about what seemed to be disproportionate punishments for Hispanic kids at the school. They happened before his time but I still need to make sure he's aware of the research about this
  
• Accountability
• Made a calendar event for June 10, 2021 to revist this plan, publish what I completed and failed to complete in this document, and make a new plan for next year. 

#OwnVoices

I’ve been hearing misconceptions during casual discussions, agent panels and even from a classroom instructor that #OwnVoices means fiction writers must constrain ourselves to write only what we know from personal experience.  I believe this is missing the point and has the potential to unwind the progress that has been made toward including more diversity in fiction.

That push for more diverse representation has caused some authors to write more inclusively. Two problems resulted:

1) If a writer’s lived experience is on the powerful side of a societal hierarchy, they are unlikely to have a strong understanding of what it is like to be on the less-powerful side. Therefore, the diverse stories written by them often do not ring true to the audience who was supposed to see itself represented. Also, their more privileged readers obtain an illusion of understanding something they actually don’t.

2) Since the publishing industry shares the biases of larger society, the people selected to tell these stories are more likely from the privileged identities. The result of this is that the already-represented people are making money off of the stories of marginalized people. This can be compared to colonization of those stories and is the cold, hard cash argument for #OwnVoices.

Remember, the point of the #OwnVoices movement is to make space for writers from backgrounds who've traditionally been underrepresented in the publishing industry.

As fiction writers, our work may be drawn from our own experiences, but it is also imagined or researched. There are many great examples of writers creating characters who are not like them at all. The most negative result of the advice to only write exactly what we know is that writers will back off of including diversity in their fiction. Please, no.

How to proceed?

1)    Educate ourselves on the generalities of power dynamics and privilege.

-       Learn about privilege

-       Believe that people with different lived experiences than us are telling the truth about their experiences. (Much discrimination that can be argued away on a case-by-case basis can be proven in research studies)

-       Research the damaging prejudice tropes that are present in fiction and movies so we can actively avoid them. For example, I'm striving to keep my current middle-grade novel from falling into the 'white savior' trope. 

-       Seek critique partners who are familiar with these issues, and listen to each other

-       Educate ourselves more! Writing The Other is available as a quick-read work book and a large number of master classes and retreats

2)    Examine specific story ideas to ask ourselves if we’re the best person to tell it. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard was from an agent at RMFW 2019 (who I can’t seem to find online): if you’re on the higher side of a power dynamic writing a character from the disadvantaged side, don’t make the story about that marginalization.  For example, a male writer can write a female character but prudence suggests he might want to avoid making the story about the MeToo movement.

3)    Writing ‘up’ the power dynamic is less fraught than writing ‘down’ because the point is to make space for the less privileged to tell their own stories. Also, the stories of the powerful are so often told that marginalized writers do understand them better than vice-versa.

4)     Once we've decided that our work passes the above questions, it is time to get to work on specifics. Do your homework. Research communities you want to write about. Hire sensitivity readers from those communities (but don’t blame them if they miss something that you are later called out on). Be willing to make mistakes, admit your mistakes, apologize for your mistakes. This is how we learn and get better. (Just because you write something racist doesn’t mean you are A Racist.) Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.

5)    Support diverse authors by reading and buying their books, which in turn supports our development as writers by giving new perspectives on these tropes.

  

As fiction writers, we have control over our products. It can be difficult to remember this. Is there something that could change that would avoid trampling on someone else’s story? 

I narrowly avoided writing a version of American Dirt. My first novel is set in the near-future, after the U.S. government has collapsed under pressure from climate change, and the pregnant protagonist must escape through the Colorado Rockies with her daughters. When I heard a radio report about a Syrian mother who had escaped to South America and made her way north toward the U.S. through horrendous experiences, I realized her story was the same as my protagonist's, but happening now. By switching to a present-day immigration story, I could have escaped the required categorization of ‘sci fi/fantasy’ under which I felt stuck because my novel was set in the future. But a few days thought of the research that would be involved in learning about these very real countries, people and communities suddenly made futuristic world-building look a lot easier, so I stayed with my original concept.

It didn’t cross my mind at the time that it wasn’t my story to tell. If I had written it, I could only hope that the agents and editors in my path to publication would have set me straight. Not by saying not to write something I didn’t know, but by asking if publishing and promoting my book would have taken away from a more authentic telling of the story. Traditionally published authors might look to these professionals to educate them, but obviously (see again: American Dirt) they can’t rely on that. Independently published authors bear the responsibility of educating themselves. If they don’t, there is no reason other authors shouldn’t educate them (see:  RWA).

We can all work together to make the publishing world truly better—inclusive in the stories it tells and the authors who make money telling them—to achieve the true goal: telling good stories that help us all understand each other better.

Seeing Both Sides: The Bike Path

I'm a frequent user of the multi-use paths around my house. I bicycle to work almost entirely on trails. I walk with my parents, my neighbors, and occasionally a group of friends. I run, and in the last decade I spent a lot of time jogging with a stroller and/or small children on their bikes.  I walk a dog when we're dog sitting. When it snows enough, I have even cross-country skied.

Participating in so many uses has made me realize how easy it is for the trail users to get in each other's way.  Dogs wander all over the trail, connected by a leash that blocks the passageway. Children on bikes need a lot of space and make sudden, erratic moves. Joggers wear headphones and so don't realize people are coming behind them. Groups of walkers focus on their conversations and are unaware of how much space they take.  Bike commuters are focused on getting to work instead of paying attention to how high their speed is relative to the other users.Walkers find the ski tracks an easy path to take through the snow.

I've felt my anger rise when I've come across examples of people acting these ways. Yet, since I've almost always been in the other user's place, I know how easy it is to make those mistakes myself. Having the perspective of both sides means I can understand why there is a conflict, and I can forgive others for making the mistakes because I hope to be forgiven myself. I've come to believe that those are the two keys to maintaining the peace of my day.

First, seeking understanding of the other person's experience. Putting myself in their shoes: what it feels like when a bike comes flying by a precious child, what it feels like to be late for work when you're already putting in the effort to save carbon emissions and getting exercise, what it feels like when your dog won't listen no matter how much effort you've put into training, how great it feels to be lost in conversation with your friends, or surrounded by music or an audiobook.

Second, forgiving their mistakes. The hiker doesn't know how precious those unspoiled cross country tracks are to the skier. The cyclist might have been under stress and forgot to proceed cautiously. The parent failing to steer a jogging stroller might be on the cell phone with a doctor who finally called back. The dog walker might be unprepared for how vigorously the dog will want to meet another of its species. The group walkers are getting exercise and socializing, both keys to their health, which benefits all of society. Should we be angry at that? Does it help annyone?

These two actions--understanding and forgiveness-- can go a long way toward resolving many conflicts that naturally arise from occupying the same space as other people, which is basically life as a social animal.  My spouse and I are trying to teach our children both to strive for an awareness of the other,  and at the same time forgive the other when they don't meet our expectations. I'm starting this series of posts to explore these sorts of topics; not to claim one side is better than the other, but to seek understanding within apparent opposition.

Are there issues you find yourself on both sides of, or have come to understand the other side? Please comment!

Parallel Universes

What would my life have been like if I had gone to a historically black university?

A radio segment on NPR a few days ago reminded me that I had been tempted as a high-school senior by a brochure from a college in Atlanta, simply it featured a beautiful picture of a window. During a college fair, I talked to their representative, an African American man who heard my GPA and said they would admit me for sure, they'd love to have me.  I don't know if me being white had anything to do with his reaction, but it gave me pause.  It was enough different from the reaction I'd had from other colleges I'd been talking to: that I shouldn't expect to get in unless I was a valedictorian, multi-sport athlete and had done a lot of community service. When I researched the Atlanta college and learned it was historically black, I may have entertained a romantic idea of adventure, and I still loved that window, but I knew it wasn't enough to base a college decision on.

There are three main reasons I wouldn't want to go back and change where I went to college. The first is that I met my husband there. The second is that I went on a study-abroad-turned-traveling adventure. The third is that, once I returned to finish my degree, my undergrad department gave me the chance to be a paid teaching assistant, which showed me what a great deal grad school was, and so I went to grad school, and subsequently found science to be one of my places in the world. But all of that aside, if there was one thing I would be tempted to change, given the chance to do it over again, it would be going to a historically black college.

One of the things I love about traveling is that its a lazy way to build character. All you have to do is put yourself in the country, on the journey, and things won't be easy. You don't have to choose every day or every moment to do the challenging, uncomfortable thing. You just end up doing them, often in order to eat, drink or sleep. The result is that deep, unique, satisfying experiences are delivered.

What a culture shock it would have been for me, a white girl who grew up in the mountains of Colorado. I'm sure I would have been uncomfortable. Probably miserably self-conscious and experiencing culture shock without even understanding what I was. Maybe it would have been too much for me and I would have used my privilege to run back to a majority-white world. If I had been rejected by other students because of the color of my skin, I would know what that feels like. If I had had to answer for the actions of every white person throughout history, I would know what it feels like to be held as an unwilling representative for my race.  If black students thought I was receiving preferential treatment (as indeed I felt from the representative at the job fair), I would have had to confront that possibility. If I had been singled out, or conversely ignored, what would that have done to my self-worth? Would I have laughed along with jokes that made fun of white people, just to prove I belonged? Would I even have gotten the jokes? Would I have a better idea what it means to be white, or would I have struggled to identify with my race and sub-culture?

Compared to my hippie travels, which I thought at the time had changed me a lot, it seems this cultural experience would have been much more substantial, and much more useful for living in the United States.

One of the advantages of being a writer is that I can explore those parallel universes in theory. The paths I didn't take.  I can talk to white girls who took that plunge and find out what it's like, and write a book. (Someday... after my current one is polished!) What better 'leaving the unknown' in the Hero's Journey, and what better way to explore race relations without trying to take over someone else's voice?

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Seeing the Light

My facebook feed is filled with reactions to lasts week's police shootings of Terence Crutcher and Keith Lamont Scott. Some say #BlackLivesMatter. Some say the police are just trying to do a dangerous job. Some say it is isn't the people versus police or black versus white but light versus dark.

As a white person, I believe it is light versus dark but not in a good versus evil sense. Seeing the light means waking up to the true nature of the problem. Don't let me skip over that the police should be held to a high standard. After all, we give them the power of life and death over all of us. However, the police shootings are not just a police problem. They are the tip of the race-relations-in-America iceberg.

The police officer who shoots an unarmed black man because she assumes he is a danger to her is functioning from the same emotional response as the homeowner who calls the police because a black man is parked in front of her house... or the mom who puts her white daughter in a private school because the kids at the neighborhood school don't look like her... or myself when I assume that the African-American bus driver is not from "my" part of town... or when I only think to lock the car doors in downtown Denver after I pass a bus stop with lots of black people...

I am ashamed of my reactions. I apologize for them. But even more I'm ashamed that I spent thirty-eight years thinking that I lived in a post-racial United States. It turns out that only 'white America' is post-racial. And since white America is not all America, it's time for us to learn from those who are experiencing a different reality.  It's time to crack open one eyelid and let in the light. It hurts, but do we want to spend our lives in darkness?  Do we want to raise our kids without acknowledging the contradiction between what the United States is supposed to stand for and what they see around them?

In June 2014, I almost didn't read Ta-Nehisi Coates' Atlantic article The Case for Reparations. I mean,  I supported diversity and all, but reparations? Really? I had never owned slaves. My ancestors hadn't, as far as I knew. Why should I be held responsible, especially fiscally responsible, for something that happened centuries ago?  Luckily for me, I read it. Luckily for all of us, Mr. Coates wrote it. There is so much interesting history in the article (read it!) but the fact that touched me personally was that black people in the seventies and eighties were still systematically being denied mortgages.

I grew up in the seventies and eighties. My parents certainly weren't rich. In fact, they physically built their house themselves in order to move into an upper-middle class neighborhood. No one can deny that they worked hard and made lots of sacrifices, but a similar black family in the same location would have struggled to get that construction loan. They would have had to work harder than my parents did, and still likely would have been denied. My parents are good people. We did nothing wrong. But we benefited from an unfair system.

There's more in that article--I won't try to summarize. What I learned became a ray of light that illuminated the racial unrest that unfolded in the U.S. that summer, starting with the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. I read Waking Up White by Debby Irving.  I listened to what Americans of color were saying, and tried to actually understand instead of getting defensive because it made me feel bad.  By clicking on links posted by friends, I gained invaluable access to black people's stories: a woman who fears the day her son will be big enough to be perceived as a threat,  parents who have no choice but to teach their children about the realities of how they will be perceived, executives who are mistaken as staff at professional events, college professors who fear that their lives could be extinguished in something as simple as a traffic stop.

These are things I've never experienced in my white-American bubble. I've been nervous about the cops pulling me over for speeding, but the worst I worried would happen was that I'd have to pay a fine. I've felt like I didn't belong at academic conferences, but no one has ever asked me to get them a clean towel. When my child gets in trouble at school, the teacher dismisses it as a learning experience, not grounds for suspension or a fundamental character flaw. I've never been forced to explain to my child why their friends' parent wouldn't invite them over. I've never had to choose between speaking up about an offensive comment and losing a friend or a job.

One of my white friends posted that he doesn't want his kids to grow up being blamed for things they didn't do. I don't want my kids to perpetrate the racial divide that continues in this country. I don't want them to grow up under the false assumption that race doesn't matter in America, simply because it doesn't seem to matter to them.  I want them to listen to other people, not discount their experiences because they are different than theirs. I want them to recognize their privileges and use them to stand up for racial justice. 

So I continue to pull up the blinds.  It is often uncomfortable, but I deal with that like an adult. I make mistakes, but I believe that fear of failure shouldn't stop me from trying.  I would rather live in a painfully bright world than be soothed by a false darkness.

Tailwinds of Privilege

It was a gorgeous fall day and, having escaped my responsibilities for a few hours, I rode my bike east through the Colorado plains. My muscles were ready to work hard and I felt like I was flying past the brilliant yellow cottonwood trees. As I enjoyed being completely self-propelled and using my body to its capacity, I noticed I was going faster than usual. Congratulating myself on getting in such good shape, I considered for the first time entering a bike race.

When I turned around at the half-way point, the wind started blowing. My ears and fingers were quickly chilled and, despite how hard I pushed, my pace had slowed. My legs ached with the effort of pushing the bike forward against the wind. My lungs were bursting and the gusts knocked me from side to side, one time almost blowing me to a stop. People in the cars passing by must have thought I was a beginner. Or drunk. Who was I kidding, thinking about doing a race?

As I cursed myself for weakness and the wind for its antagonism, it occurred to me that this headwind I was now struggling against probably hadn't started at the moment when I turned around. It had likely been there the whole time and was the real explanation for my earlier, record pace.  I was astounded to realize that I hadn't noticed the tailwind at all while it was helping me. It was only when I experienced it head-on, immediately afterward and on the same course, that I was forced to admit I'd had help. Before that, I'd given myself full credit for the increased pace.

On a there-and-back bike ride, one person can experience what it's like to be helped or hindered by the wind. But it is difficult (in some cases impossible) for one person to experience the other side of their societal privileges. 

In life, the person I'm passing with ease might have an intense headwind, but since I don't feel it, I assume I'm just stronger. And it's not to say that I'm *not* strong. On the bike, I was certainly working harder than the person cruising up the road in their car, exercising only than their ankle to push the gas pedal down. I could have stayed at home lying on the couch. I get some credit.  I just have to be careful about claiming all the credit.

(As a side note, I also cannot claim to be the first person to use this analogy. After having this experience, I also read it in the eye-opening Waking up White by Debby Irving. I haven't researched if there was an earlier published version).

Up next: Given how hard it is to recognize the existence of a tailwind and how easy it is to take sole credit for our achievements, how do we know when we are finding our path eased by privilege?