Urgency part 3
To wrestle with the notion of urgency and racism (as well as other oppressions) you should understand that ending policies, practices, and programs that reinforces racism has never been an urgent matter in America. We are constituently met with addressing the issue at surface levels and rarely at all the depth required to end it. Take the timeline above as an example. For 246 years we had American slavery, which was embedded in the culture of the country through law and norms. Were there people that were abolitionist? Yes and there was still racism and differences in the abolitionist movement. According to David Blight, Professor of History and Black Studies
Amherst College,
“And it was also especially frustrating to black abolitionists to deal sometimes with the kinds of abstract debates that abolitionists would have, that white abolitionists would have, over doctrine. And, increasingly, in the 1850s, black abolitionists didn’t have time to struggle over doctrinaire questions of tactics and strategy. They were by the 1850s about the business of building their own communities, and trying to organize real strategies against slavery in the South.”
Moving past the period of slavery, you could notice that laws changed to add rights to blacks, but also laws were introduced to restrict those rights granted. The culture that upheld slavery shifted, but not enough to eradicate the use of policies, practices, and programs to disadvantage Blacks. Moving past segregation to mass incarceration, we see the same shift in racist tactics and with the culture of passive acceptance or softening of explanations of racist policies has not changed. Reading that quote from David Blight gives me a sense of déjà vu for the movement and reinforces what I understand as an antidote to the white supremacy characteristic of sense of urgency.
- an understanding that rushing decisions takes more time in the long run because inevitably people who didn’t get a chance to voice their thoughts and feelings will at best resent and at worst undermine a decision where they were left unheard;
- developing a personal and collective practice of noticing when urgency arises and taking a pause to deliberate with thoughtfulness and intention about the nature of the urgency and the range of options available to you.
In the era of Frederick Douglass, black abolitionist were making the “demand for recognition, the demand for mutual respect.” In essence, Black Lives Matter was being called for then and still today. So my thought is during all of these movements have we actually witness a rush by white abolitionist and their descendants in the movement to place surface level solutions that eases their conscience but doesn’t change the culture or way of being that creates the oppressive environments in the first place? How many people seem satisfied that a new law is in place, that may hold people accountable for racist behaviors, but does not change the racist behaviors itself?
By understanding when we rush decisions and ensuring that more voices are involved, we have a chance to tackle this long standing issue at it’s core and address it at the multiple levels that it exits in.
