11 Things You Can Do RIGHT NOW to Improve The Obstacle of Race in America: STEP ONE: De-Weaponize The Language of Race

Thank you to everyone engaged in our current national push towards social justice for black citizens. Each of you who has thanked me for trying to express my thoughts, challenged me on my perspectives for being too conservative or too progressive (I’m truly honored I’ve been accused of both!), asked me what specific actions they can take right now to effect change, or just sent a DM to see how I’m handling and processing our current reality, thank you.

As promised, I’ve spent some time cobbling together my thoughts on our individual ways forward. I don’t pretend to be a fantastic or established voice of civil rights, I don’t pretend to have all the answers. As both disclaimer and perspective, my views are fused by having a complex connection to and relationship with black pain and suburban privilege, to have grown up on the outskirts of affluence, to have frequently challenged and confronted both liberal and conservative breeds of bias and discrimination to swim in Ivy League waters, and to have experienced the kindness and exceptionalism of high-quality police work, while having also experienced the powerlessness and fear that comes from baseless and racially-motivated police interactions.

Each day, I will share ONE bullet from the list, so we can digest and communicate. The list below is offered humbly. I hope that you, regardless of your color, station in life, or political affiliations, can find some value in the ideas presented. Don’t forget there are wonderful organizations doing fantastic work on these issues right now, and watching everything unfold these last few weeks has inspired me to possibly start my own -- more on that later... But no matter what you do, stay involved, stay engaged, and push for the equal America that is more possible today than ever in our history together.

*11 Things You Can Do RIGHT NOW to Improve The Obstacle of Race in America.*

STEP ONE: De-Weaponize The Language of Race

“You’re a racist.” “That was racist.” “He’s a racist!” There are few words in the English language that end a conversation faster than the word racist. People run to their respective corners, dismiss the accusations, defend the accused, grab their chips off the table and go home. Culturally, we’ve successfully created no safe-haven for the “racist”, while in practice, we let classically racist behavior flourish and reward it with raises, accolades, and election victories.

Fun exercise: Take a moment and ask yourself -- “Do I know any racists?” Really think. Maybe a few, maybe none come to mind. Maybe that one “crazy” uncle. Maybe that one lovable grandparent “who grew up in a different era.” But -- now, take a second moment and think of the dictionary definition of a racist : ‘A person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.’ My inclination is if we’re just checking boxes from that list the number of racists you know, by that definition, just went up. It comes uncomfortably close to home. Maybe it’s a sibling. Maybe it’s a friend from work. Maybe it’s elected officials -- maybe yet, it’s even an official you voted for.

So, what do we do with the dissonance between what we’ve thought of as the meaning of a word and the practical realities of that word? The same thing we do when a garden hose, a pair of shoes, or a paradigm no longer serve us. I suggest, simply, we throw it out.

(Note: this suggestion, and the bulk of this list, focuses on the individual level: the identification and observation of behaviors and actions of individual people, not on larger societal organizations, systems, or institutions.)

I suggest, instead, we take the word “Racist” and break it up. Into small, targeted, and specific words and phrases. How do we do that? Well, first we must take a quick but necessary detour:

A position that recent global protests suggests it’s long past time we adopt, regardless of how we personally feel about solutions to police brutality and governmental response to civil unrest, is that we can no longer pretend to live in an Obama-ordained, Pollyanna post-racial society. America was born a promising country rooted in white supremacy (inarguable, y’all) and today has hundreds of years of empirical data to support both its ongoing promise and the seemingly inescapable trappings of white supremacy. (Note: I recognize at least one of you winced at the phrase white supremacy, but let’s look at the definition: ‘the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society.’ If that’s not a pretty good definition of the mindset that welcomed, condoned, and aggressively enforced slavery -- I don’t know what is).

So that’s our problem - we have these words to describe things that we think we’re personally above - that our friends and neighbors are above. And if we keep thinking that, black lives are doomed.

In a nation that is not post-racial, and is “unconsciously discriminatory”, I argue that we all need to chose our “conscious” sides. If racism is the status quo, we get to actively pick who we will be and who we will show up as: The question is will we be Agents of Racial Bias or Agents of Racial Change?

Will our actions fuel, even in small ways, discrimination? Will we refuse to challenge the status quo and turn a blind eye to the cries of black voices familiar and unfamiliar? Will we do nothing? If so, we have made the active choice to be an Agent of Racial Bias.

On the other hand, will we challenge our biases, will we challenge our neighbors and friends in their big and small moments of active bias? Will we do the work to be uncomfortable in a society that has made us complacent with dog whistles, apologists for our leaders, and in so many ways blind to the journey of our fellow citizens with different color skin? If so, we have made the active choice to be an Agent of Racial Change.