Checklist for White Allies Against Racism

Checklist for white allies against racism
How often do you behave as an ally to people of color?

Adapted from notes from John Raible: "I devised this checklist after thinking, as a person of color, about the white people I know with whom I have developed some degree of trust. I wanted to articulate the specific behaviors I see them engaging in which lead me to appreciate their actions on behalf of students of color and against racism in general."

Read through the checklist to get a feel for what constitutes "ally behavior" on the part of white anti-racists. How many apply to you! Use this scoring scale: 4 = all the time 3 = most of the time 2 = some of the time 1 = rarely 0 = never
Part 1
1. _____ I am present at meetings to make sure anti-racism is part of the discussion.
2. _____ I demonstrate knowledge and awareness of the issues of racism.
3. _____ I use the language and political worldview of anti-racism.
4. _____ I continually educate myself and others about racism.
5. _____ I recognize my own limitations as a white person doing anti-racist work.
6. _____ I raise issues about racism over and over, both in public and in private.
7. _____ I realize "it's not about me." I can be objective and avoid over-personalizing issues that people of color raise.
8. _____ I can identify racism as it is happening.
9. _____ I can strategize and work in coalition with others to advance anti-racist work.
10. _____ I attend to group dynamics to ensure the inclusion of people of color.
11. _____ I support and validate the comments and actions of people of color and other allies. (But not in a paternalistic manner!)
12. _____ I strive to share power with people of color.
13. _____ I take a personal interest in the lives and welfare of individual people of color.
14. _____ I use my privilege to communicate information from the dominant group to people of color.
15. _____ I hold high expectations for people of color.
16. _____ I reach out to initiate contact with people of color.
17. _____ I listen carefully so that I am more likely to understand the needs of people of color.
18. _____ I can adopt and articulate a person of color's point of view when it may be helpful.
19. _____ I can accept leadership from people of color.
Part II (Includes the characteristics in Part 1)
1. _____ I work side-by-side with people of color on tasks, projects, and actions.
2. _____ I can debrief with people of color to give and receive "reality checks" and affirmations after meetings, events, and actions.
3. _____ I readily understand–with no explanations necessary–a person of color's position or perception.
4. _____ I have joking relationships with individual people of color.
5. _____ I can vent with and be present for people of color when they need to vent feelings about racism.
6. _____ I debate issues with people of color and take their ideas seriously.
7. _____ I take risks in relating to people of color and take their ideas seriously.
8. _____ I demonstrate shared values with people of color, for example, impatience with the rate of change, anger and injustice, etc.
9. _____ I know the private lives and families of friends who are people of color.
10. _____ I can relax and socialize and be at ease with people of color.
Part III - The following are some problematic areas where white people seem to get stuck. Do they apply to you?
1. _____ I am not clear on the words people of color prefer to use to identify themselves.
2. _____ When people of color point out racism as it is happening, I feel personally attacked.
3. _____ I rely on people of color for education about my own (& institutional) racism.
4. _____ I use meetings and organizing time to establish my anti-racist credentials.
5. _____ It is important to me to point out examples of "reverse racism" when I see them.
6. _____ I have been told I act in a racist manner without knowing it, but I think I'm being an ally.
7. _____ I speak for people of color and attempt to explain their positions.
8. _____ I focus on mediating between people of color for other whites.
9. _____ I see my role as interpreting the behavior of people of color for other whites.
10. _____ I prefer to spend anti-racist time & energy dealing with my personal feelings and issues rather than moving the anti-racist agenda forward.
11. _____ I intellectualize about the struggle rather than live it daily.
12. _____ I wait for people of color to raise white people's awareness.
13. _____ I know well fewer than five individual peers who are people of color.
Copyright 1994 by John Raible

snycorva.cortland.edu/~russellkCreated by Kathryn RussellSUNY Cortland - PhilosophyLast modified on 1-04-01

From a prior student of mine...

Upon thinking about diversity and what it means to be and to work with and for the "Other", I asked an old student of mine, now attending Harvard University, to reflect upon her experiences growing up in MPS and going to the most diverse school in the state. I thought this may be useful to you, as future teachers. Here's her response...

***

It's sort of difficult for me to describe clearly how important it was to go to school in an incredibly diverse and open environment, because up through high school I'd never really known anything else. The student population at every school I went to in Milwaukee was tilted heavily towards the "other" with respect to race, income, and family background, so I didn't see the environment at King as any different from the schools I'd previously attended. Now that I'm at Harvard, though, I miss King's environment. Although the most obvious difference is that Harvard is much, much whiter than King, I think the more salient feature is that there's just so much privilege here. The first week of my freshman year, I was sitting around talking with a few people on our floor. Two kids got into an argument as to who was less spoiled, and they started giving examples of just how difficult their lives were. The first said, "I have to pump my own gas!" (Never mind that his dad bought the car and paid his credit card bills.) The second said, "I have to clean the pool!" That was probably my first "What the fuck am I doing here?" moment, and one of the first times I realized just how different my environment is here in Cambridge than it was back home in Milwaukee.The other reason I have difficulty talking about what King's environment went to me is because I don't fit perfectly on either side of the dividing line between the privileged and the marginalized. (Of course, I don't believe that it makes any sense to sort people out into the Man and the Other - but that seems to be the way a lot of people talk about privilege and marginalization.) On the one hand, I'm privileged to be white/Asian, to be upper-middle-class, to have educated parents, to be in good health, to have a two-parent family, and so on - so maybe I'm the Man. On the other hand, I'm female, I'm gay, I'm not-quite-white - so maybe I'm the Other. But from both perspectives, I think King was a good place to be. The diversity is good for people who don't fit the straight-white-Christian-male model, I think. I came out in high school, and although there were only a few out students (especially women), I found it a pretty accepting place to be out - especially compared to some of my friends from more homogeneous areas. I almost never felt that I was second-guessed because I was a woman, although I've felt that way in other settings (for instance, the national debate circuit). On the other hand, the diversity is also good for privileged people - I think that a lot of the passive racism and sexism and classism and heterosexism I see here at Harvard can be directly explained by the fact that a lot of people were simply never exposed to an environment that disrupted their assumptions about race, or gender, or class, or sexuality. It's hard to buy into stereotypes about black folks when your school is 65% African-American; it's hard to keep using "gay" as an epithet when you know that someone else in the room is gay. This is also where anti-oppressive education comes in. Not every classroom is going to have a gay student who's willing or able to call out other students for homophobic behavior, and in those classrooms, it's especially important that the teacher, as the authority figure and the adult, play an active role. I didn't entirely realize that I was gay when I started high school, but it was still incredibly reassuring when Amy, on the first day of her ninth-grade English class, laid out an explicit rule that it wasn't acceptable to use terms like "gay" in a derogatory manner. When you're in a position of privilege, it can be difficult to remember that not everyone is as comfortable in their own skin as you are; being in any kind of minority can often add to the already intense social pressure and stress that most kids experience during high school. So a good teacher, I think, goes out of his or her way to establish that it's not acceptable to pick on people because of their race or gender or class or sexuality. This is really, really tough, because it requires you to admit your own privilege - and a lot of us white upper-middle-class liberals feel awfully guilty about that. It's very difficult for me, as a white/Chinese woman, to admit that black students might someday see me as the oppressor, even though my intentions are good; I've been angry about white racism since the day my first-grade teacher told me about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, and admitting that I might be some small and well-meaning part of the problem is not only embarassing; it also calls into question a part of my self-understanding that's very important to me. But the best teachers I've had have recognized that and gotten over it. While it's legitimately uncomfortable to admit that you don't know everything about working with black students, it is infinitely more uncomfortable for your black students if you're not willing to get over yourself and figure out how to make your classroom safe for them.

Effective Teachers are Effective Allies

Kumashrio's article is a useful tool to identify the ways in which we do or do not employ methods of anti-oppressive education in our own classrooms and reminds us that there is not, and never will be, one "quick fix" to the multitudes of problems that have arisen out of a culture that is rooted in racism, sexism and colonialism.

I've been thinking about oppression in the classroom for quite some time and did my Masters study on the topic; through both my research and from personal experience, I've come to this very simple conclusion: to be an anti-oppressive educator, one must, first and foremost, identify her/himself as an "ally": an ally to "the Other". From here, we'll stop wasting our time over who is at fault, who feels guilty, and get some real work done. I have seen too many people become paralyzed by guilt, or by playing defense, thus refusing to listen to what Others (those who are different from the Self) have to say and validate their lived experiences as meaningful and telling. And if one wants to be defensive, ignore that oppression really exists, or wants to chalk it up to "anger", "laziness", or "complaining", then one will never be an effective teacher.

While there are, of course, weaknesses and pit-falls in every approach and every theory, using all of the cited methods of anti-oppressive education, while simultaneously questioning the methods and critically thinking about the implications of our actions, can reduce the amount of oppression students will inevitably experience in middle and high school.

I'm in a unique and special situation at Rufus King High School, unlike the rest of the city of Milwaukee, where people of different racial, gender, class, and religious backgrounds work, learn, and collaborate together to make what has often been said to be "one of the best high schools in the state" ; and to ignore our diversity or to suggest that our success is not partially due to our collective, continuing labor to unlearn our bigotry and to recognize and embrace our differences, would be a grave error.

Educators and administrators at King have implemented several programs, spaces, and opportunities for students and faculty to work in an anti-oppressive environment—or at least one that attempts to resist oppression. We implement the International Baccalaureate program, which has a strong focus on global education. Our after-school clubs (run by volunteer
faculty members) include: The Gay/Straight Alliance, The Black Student Union, Latinos Unidos, The Asian Club, Friends of Islam, The Jew Crew, Bible Study, The Gospel Choir, The Culinary Club (with a focus on making/learning about foods from around the world), Key Club (emphasis on local, community service), Amnesty International, and more. We have a diverse and (mostly) open staff that is willing to work together along with four specific Special Education programs (Blind, Deaf/Hearing Impaired, Autistic, and Emotionally/Behaviorally Disturbed).

A story: just a few months ago, my colleague and friend came to me with a note he received in his mailbox. It was from one of his prior students, an African-American autistic girl, coming out to him as lesbian. This was a unique position for him, as he's straight, white, masculine male who never thought of himself as someone a student would feel comfortable coming out to. My colleague came to me, asking what I recommend he do with the letter—this student, because of her autism, communicates mostly through letters, and is extremely isolated. Should he talk to her? Write her back? Say anything at all? I recommended that he acknowledge the letter simply by thanking her for trusting him. He did so and she now comes to his classroom every so often to talk about the latest episode of The L Word or Gossip Girl. This same girl also came out to one other teacher—another straight, white, masculine male who also said he wasn't exactly sure how to approach the situation. But he, too, simply acknowledged her courage and kept his door open.

These two men are not angry or defensive with her for revealing something to them that they cannot relate to, and, instead, offered her two spaces for her to feel safe and herself.

To be an effective teacher, your door needs to be open to all students; and not in a generic, "I-love-all-children" -kind-of-way, but in a genuine, honest way, in which you recognize your own privilege, your own power, and simply become an ally to those who experience the world differently from you.

***

Here's an e-mail I received from a colleague today:

In November, the Rufus King Jew Crew along with members of the Black Student Union, welcomed Mr. Israel Siriri to Rufus King. Mr. Siriri leads the Jewish Abuyadaya community in Uganda and reporters from Channel 10's Black Nouveau were on hand to film the event and interview Mr. Siriri. The broadcast times are listed below. We'll be busy with conferences for the first broadcast but it will be shown two other times to accommodate our exciting schedules.

Viewing times: Israel Siriri on Channel 10’s Black Nouveau Wednesday, February 18^th at 6:30 pm. The Siriri spot will be on at the top of the show. The program will re-air on Channel 36, Thursday, February 19th at 12:30 am and Sunday, February 22^nd at 4:00 pm.

In solidarity.