[Lekooks] BLM Learn & Take Action March #2

[Ginger G]

Black Lives Matter - Learn & Take Action for March 2021 #2
LEARN –Read the letter (below) to the New Berlin, WI school board. (It is used with permission, but links are from my research, not from the letter-writer.) Pay attention to your local school board and VOTE in this election. Who are your local school board candidates?* Do they care about racial justice issues or do they double down on white supremacy?

TAKE ACTION – Eliminate these words and phrases <https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/common-words-phrases-racist-origins-connotations_l_5efcfb63c5b6ca9709188c83?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9sYW5ndWFnZS1hbmQtaW5ub3ZhdGlvbi5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJRCV14tk7b2DAncUZUnMo1K8lFHZ2CwnT-liywxBftI2lyQ1mr2VBhbH7JEJ_gAWTwebtI3GsPXS9Cq46WU4dSu3s0mxl8ppFjOuzMimYnuTj2Ob40MMP_nrH9K-AnCspwT6CqxMlv2PBOh1-4bc_oxM4dW9jfnj_92458giK3q> from your vocabulary. They’re racist.

Ginger Goral, Social Justice committee, Lake Country Unitarian Universalist Church, lcuuc.org <http://lcuuc.org/> 

*REPLY to this email if you want some research into finding out how your school board candidates lean.

——————

Dear (New Berlin School Board) NBSB Members -

My name is Justin Eugene Evans. My son, David, is a freshman at New Berlin West. We’ve lived in New Berlin for nearly 10 years. And, I’m a recovering racist. 

My greatest journey, as a human being, has been overcoming the racist propaganda I was taught…but most importantly, it was the absence of real history that made it so easy to be programmed into a racist.

We read The Count of Monte Cristo when I was a Sophomore. Not once did my Advanced English teacher mention Alexander Dumas was black. In Advanced History we learned about The Trail of Tears. It was one paragraph long and Native Americans were never mentioned again. I learned nothing about Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth as we studied The Civil War. We read about World War II but learned nothing about The Tuskegee Airmen. We read Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau but nothing about how Martin Luther King, Jr. Sam Cooke, James Baldwin or Malcolm X lived that civil disobedience.

The history I was taught washed over me for decades. And while I’d have told you I wasn’t racist, the Swiss-cheese history I’d been taught made it easy to believe that being white was somehow to be different than “other races.” History was white history. After all, if there were black inventors, black classical composers, black mathematicians, surely my teachers would have taught me about them.

I should have known the names Granville T. Woods, George Bridgetower and Katherine Johnson. And yet, they were excluded from my school’s curriculum.

If Black History were taught at all, it was taught as if everyone in the room, including our teacher, we're being forced to eat our broccoli. Black History Month was mentioned with eye rolls…eye rolls from teachers who managed to signal to us white folks that this stuff wasn’t really important. And because I was an undiscerning child, I took that in as fact.

Like an alcoholic, I found that who I thought I was and who I wanted to be didn’t match. I could no longer tolerate my hypocrisy. And, I have worked hard, incredibly hard, to strip my soul of the racism put there by an unjust system. Because I’ve been accidentally racist and am now deliberately anti-racist, I’m in the unique position to explain racism to my fellow racists. I can read between the lines when School Board members violate their Oath of Office and advocate for the elimination of Black History Month education. Such claims are justified with arguments so weak that members of our high school speech and debate team would easily dismantle them.

Last week, the claim was made that Black History Month is wrong because “other minorities” don’t have a month of their own. A simple Wikipedia search lists the months in which Jewish, Hispanic, South Asian, Filipino, Italian-American and Native American history are celebrated. Therefore, the claim of a board member that Black History month should be abolished because “other minorities” do not receive equal representation throughout the calendar year is false.

But, I’m troubled by this fact. Because, I believe members of our school board have a duty to educate themselves regarding the facts. You have a duty to be informed. You have an obligation to create policies from a place of knowledge. In addition, I’m troubled by the implications of the phrases “other minorities” and “if we’re going to be inclusive.” Let’s be clear; inclusion is part of Board of Education’s Code of Ethics. Section F clearly states that all board members should encourage the development of educational programs which meant the individual needs of every student regardless of ability, race, sex, creed or social standing. Every student.

Clearly, advocating for the elimination of Black History Month violates the New Berlin Board of Education’s code of ethics.

There was so many deeply racist, bigoted, biased and blind remarks that it is impossible to unpack them all. It was a deluge of delusion. There were nearly a dozen different racist remarks made. For brevity, I’m choosing to stick with the most obvious errors.

This board claimed that New Berlin is diverse. This town is 91% white. The black citizens of New Berlin constitute less than 1% of our town while black Americans constitute 12.4% of our nation’s population. The math is clear. We are more monolithically white. We are more white than the entire history of the US. Think about that for a moment. In 1790 only 80% of the population was “white.” In 1940, which was the highest percentage of whiteness in US history, it was 89.8%. And yet, we’re 91% white. No way no how do we qualify as a diverse community.

But, that doesn’t mean our education can't be. We need to understand the human race as it really is, not as some of us wish it to be. We study Black History because it is History that white folks refuse to incorporate into our general curriculum. And my own education is proof of that. Black History is American History. Black History is World History. Black History is simply…History.

Black History Month was never intended to be permanent. I learned this from one of my best friends, Jeffrey Speller. He’s an engineer, supply chain and logistics master who happens to be Black. And his father, Professor William Speller, helped create Black History Month in the hopes that all Americans would learn about the historical contributions of Black Americans. It was never Professor Speller’s intent that the shortest month of the year be the permanent place for Black History. It was to make Black History part of our national conversation. As it should be.

Do you know who Granville T. Woods, George Bridgetower and Katherine Johnson are? They are only three names of hundreds that I could throw at you. They aren’t randomly select; they’re fairly well known. One of them is largely responsible for why we defeated the Soviet Union in the race to the moon. One was a contemporary of Beethoven. The third was a rival to Tesla and Edison in the race to master electricity. So, be honest…did you know their names? If not, it seems to me that you’d benefit from some Black History. And some Indigenous History. And some West Asian History. And some history from every corner of the globe.

I have a deeply racist and sexist neighbor, born and raised here in New Berlin, who has asked me “Why are so many of your friends exotic?” I don’t call him out on it; partly because I don’t want the fight but mostly because he just doesn’t matter. His racism and stupidity have made him unwelcome at my home. If you were my family and you made some unthinking racist remark, I’d send you news articles to help you wake up to reality while remembering that I am merely a recovering racist myself.

Unfortunately, though, you aren’t my neighbor or my family. You’re my son’s school board. And I’m trying to do everything I can to raise my son to see himself as all humans did before Gomes de Zurara invented the concept of race in the 15th century. This won’t eliminate his privilege but it might curb his entitlement. You’re an obstacle to my son’s growth. And you’re an enemy, deliberate or not, to every Person of Color in our school district. You’ll be the reason that we have another generation of racist white folk who think, just as I did, that “if there were important People of Color, surely they’d be included in my history textbooks…and since they weren’t, then I guess white history is history.” You’re the reason Wisconsin is a really great place to live…if your skin looks like mine. It absolutely sucks for anyone with melanocytes in their epidermis. And if you don’t know that, then you just don’t know enough People of Color.

Lastly, I was stunned to hear a school board member weaponize Mr. Garza’s surname. We do not know how Mr. Garza sees himself and it is his right and his right only to tell us. Clearly, it would surprise some members of our school board that someone with a Spanish last name might navigate multiple identities, including being white. And no one should be tokenized as Mr. Garza was last week. He isn’t your shield to be used to protect yourself from accusations of racism. Don’t speak for him; ask him how he sees himself.

Additionally, the phrase “black on black crime” is blatantly racist and always has been. The proof is simple; when a white person attacks someone who is white, we do not call this white-on-white crime. We call it crime. And the reason is because white people are allowed to be individuals who make individual mistakes. But, if you’re a racist, you hold black people to a different standard. You believe a black person’s actions are seen as representative of an entire community. And that hypocrisy, that double-standard, that grotesquely illogical argument, ladies and gentleman, is racist.

“Race is everywhere right now because Black people are dying from police brutality.” Had anyone of you studied Black History you’d realize how laughable that sentence is…black people have been dying from police brutality since the invention of the police! America’s first police forces were slave patrols <https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing>. And according to Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D, their first duty was to control the behavior of “minorities.” How many of you know of Wisconsin's Sundowner Towns <https://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntownsshow.php?state=WI>? Have any of you asked a Person of Color if they consider New Berlin a Sundowner Town <https://www.uuworld.org/articles/was-your-town-sundown-town> today? To have an informed opinion, one must first be informed…and if you look like me, that means listening to People of Color. There is nothing more obviously and obtusely racist than a middle class white dude from the suburbs lecturing people of color that their experience is fabricated, their history should not be incorporated into the school curriculum and what we all need to do is just stop talking about race. We don’t “get over” racism by telling them to shut up.

I’m Justin Eugene Evans. I’m a recovering racist. I’m now an anti-racist <https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-anti-racism-5071426>  And I’m telling you, flat out, that the ignorance displayed by our school board, in particular by Mr. Kurth, demonstrates why our community so desperately needs Black History Month. In tonight’s session he was more interested in his lap top than listening.

Mr. Kurth, you lack the intellectual rigor to be on our school board. The amount of uninformed racist drivel that dripped forth from your semi-literate maw last week embarrasses us all. Your words are the ones that inspire a racial divide. Your words are the problem. You. Because you’re a racist. And you violated the Board of Education’s Code of Ethics, specifically Clause D, F I and J. You are an embarrassment to our community. You need to resign.


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