There is no excuse for why it has taken us as long as it has to have these sorts of conversations, but I'm incredibly grateful to now be having hard conversations about race. My employer has, like many others, decided to address systematic racism head on through conversations, training, donations, and changes to how we work. One of those trainings included "Being a Better Ally" today.
As luck would have it, the training ended up scheduled for the exact time when I needed to drive Alexis to dance. She has returned to her happy place, albeit with lots of safety requirements in place. It's a giant pain in my butt since I can't even with being expected to drive a kid across town during work hours. But, this time it worked out. I can join meetings from my phone, which means I can play the meetings in my car.
Alexis and Mila both got to attend "Being a Better Ally" training today.
Mila ignored it because of course she did. She had her Nintendo Switch to keep her amused. Alexis, though. Alexis was a silent but clearly engaged observer.
There were two things that came up that I was very glad came up. They opened up opportunities for conversation with a kid who is exactly the right age for those types of conversations. The first was the issue of whether it's appropriate to say, "African American" or "Black."
The topic made for a very good conversation, both during the training and later when Alexis and I talked about it. The most impactful part of that particular conversation for me was the discussion around why that question is odd in the first place. "Do you walk up to someone who you perceive to be European and ask them to classify their skin color? Or do you ask them where they're from or their ethnic background? And why?" One of the responses to why we don't ask for ethnic background with Blacks was that, "the answer might be 'my grandma was a Nigerian who was forced to the US aboard a slave ship and my grandfather was some rich white guy who raped her.'"
We don't ask the question because the answer might force us to recognize our history.
The other good conversation was around the meaning behind "Defund the police." I've been doing a lot of research on my own on the topic, but one example that was given during a follow-up conversations will stick with me.
You pull into the parking lot at McDonald's and there's a naked guy pacing backing and forth. He looks agitated and is yelling random words - not sentences. Who do you call for help?
The answer, right now, is the police. The system we have in place is that we ask for help from people who are carrying guns, accompanied by attack dogs, and possibly carrying a taser, tear gas, a baton, and pepper spray. That person is trained to watch closely for threats and to respond to those threats with force. They are not trained mental health or substance abuse professionals, but they are who we have. So we throw someone armed to the max at someone who clearly needs help, and our only real course of action is to take that naked guy to jail.
Imagine a world where we call a person who is trained to talk to people in need of mental health care and people who have substance abuse problems. If there were such a person we could call, then naked guy doesn't go to jail at all - he ends up at a facility that can provide him with the services he needs to stop being that naked guy standing in front of a McDonalds. Why do we expect a police officer to do the job of mental health professional when we know that's a legitimate career field that requires extensive training and education?
I don't have the answers to what precisely we need to do to fix this giant mess we've created, but conversations. Conversations are good.