This morning my husband and I got an email from the principal of Berkeley High School, which two of my stepkids attend, saying that a "racist and hateful" message was found on one of the computers in the school library. The message, which used the N word several times and referenced the KKK and threatened a "public lynching," was discovered at 12:30pm but the email was sent out about ten hours later.
This morning, a significant portion of the Berkeley High student body (probably over 1000 students), led by its Black Student Union, walked out of school. They gathered on the steps of Berkeley's historic City Hall building and then marched to the UC Berkeley campus, assembling at Sproul Plaza, a historic site of student protest.
I work in downtown Berkeley and arrived after the students had gathered at City Hall. I texted my stepson to see if he was there (he was), listened to speakers for a while, then headed to the office, but continued to follow the protest for the rest of the day on social media.
I made the mistake of looking at some of the comments on the coverage of the walkout--it shouldn't surprise me to see people asking why the students are making "such a big deal out of nothing" or that it was a prank or a hoax so therefore, again, just an opportunity for people to play victim, or have a chance to cut class.
These comments go right to the heart of the issue--that unless you have been on the receiving end of having your safety and life threatened simply because you exist, as people in oppressed and targeted communities have, you 1) have no idea what it's like and 2) have absolutely NO RIGHT to say "it's nothing" or play it off as a joke or a prank.
I finally had the chance to see a short routine by local comedian W. Kamau Bell recently, in which he addressed the incident at the Elmwood Cafe, a popular spot in one of Berkeley's most upper-class neighborhoods. He was meeting his wife (who is white) at the cafe and as he approached her table an employee at the cafe rapped on the window from inside and told him to "scram." I had heard about the incident, and how it poked a hole, however small, in Berkeley's collective insistence that racism doesn't happen here. He laid out an analogy for what happened next that I really appreciated. When he confronted the employee and pointed out that what she had done was racist, she replied "I don't really think it was racist." So here's the analogy: you're eating a piece of pizza, and someone comes up to you and says "that's not actually a piece of pizza you're eating."
Just to be 1000% clear: racism=pizza. When you find out that someone has hacked into a computer at school and threatened to lynch you it does not matter if it's a prank or a hoax or anything. The act has served its purpose: to terrorize. My personal experience with this is feeling the pervasive sense of physical threat that women hold in a society that fails to disrupt rape culture and cycles of domestic violence. Fear is not "rational," so there are certainly times that my perception of threat may or may not have coincided with the actual threat level. But that is absolutely beside the point. When you feel under threat, you are, because the psychic damage has been done. And a threat made as a "prank" in a society whose systems are built upon using fear to subjugate and oppress African Americans needs to be taken seriously, regardless of whether it's carried out.
I'm currently reading Between the World and Me--it took me months to get it from the Berkeley Public Library because there was such a long waiting list. I take this as a good sign that there's so much interest, because this book needs to be read by...well, everyone. Ta-Nehisi Coates' explanation of the continuous threat of the destruction of black bodies and the deep personal and collective fear that results was illuminating to me: I already had a sense of it but he described it in a way that really brought it home.
So this is the country that my stepkids now live in. As I followed the protests today, I felt overwhelmed with two very strong conflicting emotions. One, pride for the students for refusing to accept this act at their school and for refusing to accept the administration's slow response. Two, sadness and shame that this incident even happened, in Berkeley, in 2015. And those two competing feelings sum up how I feel as a white parent with three black stepchildren who immigrated from a country where they were not pegged as "black" to place where they most definitely are. Here, they have opportunities and freedoms that they wouldn't have necessarily have had, but they are also now black children in America. Even in Berkeley.
Even though I know this, I still have skirted around the edges of this conversation, mostly because of the shame I feel. But it's time to get over it--because it's not about me--and talk openly about the racism in our country, and community, directly with my stepkids.
This morning, a significant portion of the Berkeley High student body (probably over 1000 students), led by its Black Student Union, walked out of school. They gathered on the steps of Berkeley's historic City Hall building and then marched to the UC Berkeley campus, assembling at Sproul Plaza, a historic site of student protest.
I work in downtown Berkeley and arrived after the students had gathered at City Hall. I texted my stepson to see if he was there (he was), listened to speakers for a while, then headed to the office, but continued to follow the protest for the rest of the day on social media.
I made the mistake of looking at some of the comments on the coverage of the walkout--it shouldn't surprise me to see people asking why the students are making "such a big deal out of nothing" or that it was a prank or a hoax so therefore, again, just an opportunity for people to play victim, or have a chance to cut class.
These comments go right to the heart of the issue--that unless you have been on the receiving end of having your safety and life threatened simply because you exist, as people in oppressed and targeted communities have, you 1) have no idea what it's like and 2) have absolutely NO RIGHT to say "it's nothing" or play it off as a joke or a prank.
I finally had the chance to see a short routine by local comedian W. Kamau Bell recently, in which he addressed the incident at the Elmwood Cafe, a popular spot in one of Berkeley's most upper-class neighborhoods. He was meeting his wife (who is white) at the cafe and as he approached her table an employee at the cafe rapped on the window from inside and told him to "scram." I had heard about the incident, and how it poked a hole, however small, in Berkeley's collective insistence that racism doesn't happen here. He laid out an analogy for what happened next that I really appreciated. When he confronted the employee and pointed out that what she had done was racist, she replied "I don't really think it was racist." So here's the analogy: you're eating a piece of pizza, and someone comes up to you and says "that's not actually a piece of pizza you're eating."
Just to be 1000% clear: racism=pizza. When you find out that someone has hacked into a computer at school and threatened to lynch you it does not matter if it's a prank or a hoax or anything. The act has served its purpose: to terrorize. My personal experience with this is feeling the pervasive sense of physical threat that women hold in a society that fails to disrupt rape culture and cycles of domestic violence. Fear is not "rational," so there are certainly times that my perception of threat may or may not have coincided with the actual threat level. But that is absolutely beside the point. When you feel under threat, you are, because the psychic damage has been done. And a threat made as a "prank" in a society whose systems are built upon using fear to subjugate and oppress African Americans needs to be taken seriously, regardless of whether it's carried out.
I'm currently reading Between the World and Me--it took me months to get it from the Berkeley Public Library because there was such a long waiting list. I take this as a good sign that there's so much interest, because this book needs to be read by...well, everyone. Ta-Nehisi Coates' explanation of the continuous threat of the destruction of black bodies and the deep personal and collective fear that results was illuminating to me: I already had a sense of it but he described it in a way that really brought it home.
So this is the country that my stepkids now live in. As I followed the protests today, I felt overwhelmed with two very strong conflicting emotions. One, pride for the students for refusing to accept this act at their school and for refusing to accept the administration's slow response. Two, sadness and shame that this incident even happened, in Berkeley, in 2015. And those two competing feelings sum up how I feel as a white parent with three black stepchildren who immigrated from a country where they were not pegged as "black" to place where they most definitely are. Here, they have opportunities and freedoms that they wouldn't have necessarily have had, but they are also now black children in America. Even in Berkeley.
Even though I know this, I still have skirted around the edges of this conversation, mostly because of the shame I feel. But it's time to get over it--because it's not about me--and talk openly about the racism in our country, and community, directly with my stepkids.
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