A little over a week into Black History month and we’ve witnessed some booms and some busts as companies roll out their Black History Month initiatives. Barnes & Noble has already backed out of its Diverse Editions campaign after critics—justifiably—dubbed it literary blackface. The program, rather than promoting books actually written by Black authors, featured a dozen classic books (eleven written by white authors) updated to include people of color on the cover. The books’ contents remained unchanged.
The problem? Whiteness remained centered under a veneer of inclusion.
So how do we move beyond the veneer and into real inclusion? I’m going to lay out a three-pronged approach to get us started. The first will help us adjust the whitewashed worldview we may be absorbing and the second will set up on the road to acknowledging our own role in maintaining racism and the third will open up an honest dialog rather than continuing to pretend we are colorblind.
YOUR MEDIA DIET: WHAT MESSAGES ARE YOU INGESTING?
Begin by examining the media you consume each day. Take a look at everything that mediates and helps construct your worldview—podcasts, books, magazines, websites, blogs, social media, TV shows, music and games. Grab a sheet of paper and make a list. How much of what you consume has a significant Black influence (I.e., producer, author, editor, webmaster, actor/actresses)? How much of it is almost exclusively centered in whiteness? Take a look at your Instagram, Facebook and Twitter friends. How many people of color do you follow? Is it time to diversify the lives and perspective you glimpse each time you scroll?
This first step is basically an inventory. This is the data gathering that will help you make changes. No more denial. Once you know that what you’re choosing to feed your brain lacks diversity of perspective, the ball is in your court. You can change it or not, but you can no longer pretend you are exposing yourself to diversifying influences when your are not. If diversity and inclusion are your goals, consuming Black-influenced media is one of your strategies. What goes in to your brain, will show up in your life.
I track my reading on Goodreads, providing an easy way to go back and analyze who and what I’m reading. I have made a concerted effort over the past few years to read more authors of color. Even with that intention, I am hovering around the 20% mark on diversity within my reading list. If I included LGQBT authors, I could bump my diversity rating a bit, but for the sake of this examination, let’s just look at racial diversity (mine includes Black, Hispanic and Asian authors). I want to do better than 20%. Now I know. I have a baseline and can improve my stats. There’s a lot I can’t control about racial diversity and inclusion in the world. The voices I allow in my head are completely under my control.
So, here’s where I want to highlight a company doing Black History Month right. Insight Timer, a popular app that provide both free and premium guided meditations and other personal enrichment courses and lectures, is actually amplifying the voices of Black teachers on its app. When I logged in to search for a meditation, a pop up alerted me that they were featuring meditations by Black teachers this month. It appears that they actually altered their search algorithm to improve the visibility of the offerings of Black contributors. They did not just slap up some diverse-looking images on their site, they promoted the Black voices within their community. They actually help put Black voices into our minds via powerful meditation.
EDUCATE YOURSELF: WHEN YOU KNOW BETTER, YOU CAN DO BETTER
First, I am not writing this because I have done all the work. I am writing this to acknowledge all the work I still have to do and to point you to some women who are writing books, teaching courses and giving lectures that can start you on your own journey. This is where I need to pause and caution you to please not pop over to their Instagram or Facebook pages and start gushing about their work and asking lots of questions. What I have learned is that just adds a bunch of unnecessary white centering to the online spaces that they have so carefully curated. There is so much content they have already produced for you to dig into and work through. And compensate them for their work. How? Buy their books, buy tickets to their lectures, sign up for their online classes, or become a Patreon supporter of their work. So, with no further ado, I’d like to introduce you to three of my favorite antiracism change agents:
Dr. Christena Cleveland…Christena Cleveland Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the recently-launched Center for Justice + Renewal, a non-profit dedicated to helping justice advocates sharpen their understanding of the social realities that maintain injustice while also stimulating the soul’s enormous capacity to resist and transform those realities. Committed to leading both in scholarly settings and in the public square, Christena writes regularly, speaks widely, and consults with organizations.
I connected with Christena while working on Original Resistance, the Lilith anthology I co-edited. She was doing a Black Madonna tour through France right before I visited last summer. She inspired me to track down the Black Madonna (circa 1300) at the Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-la-Bonne-Délivrance, the motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Thomas of Villanova. I was drawn to Christena’s work because she connects the process of releasing ourselves from the bonds of the White Male God with racial justice. Christena wrote a powerful introduction to Original Resistance, proclaiming, “We must traverse the annals of history to unearth the sacred sites that have been violently gentrified by white patriarchy.”
Rachel Cargle…Rachel Cargle is a public academic, writer, and lecturer. Her activism and academic work are rooted in providing intellectual discourse, tools, and resources that explore the intersection of race and womanhood. Her social media platforms boast a community of over 315k where Rachel guides conversations, encourages critical thinking and nurtures meaningful engagement with people all over the world.
Rachel’s message is deeply challenging and often uncomfortable for her white followers. She is a disruptor who points out blind spots and sets healthy boundaries around her work. Come to her Instagram page as your own jumping off point, not to have your hand held. I have been participating in her Black History Month Challenge which includes daily prompts on specific areas to research ourselves. I have spent about ten minutes a day following her leads. I found a particularly insightful panel discussion on C-SPAN during the Emancipation Compensation Act prompt which I ended up listening to for an hour. The specific dynamics happening in D.C. just before Lincoln signed the Emancipation Act were so much more complicated than I’d imagined.
Layla Saad…Layla Saad is a globally respected writer, speaker and podcast host on the topics of race, identity, leadership, personal transformation and social change. She is the author of Me and White Supremacy and the creator/host of The Good Ancestor podcast. I subscribe to Layla’s podcast and was one of the nearly hundred thousand people who downloaded her Me & White Supremacy Workbook before it was traditionally published this year. She just finished her U.S. book tour and I was sad to be out of town for her Houston stop at Brazos Books. Subscribe to her podcast, The Good Ancestor, her conversations with change-makers and culture-shapers never disappoint!
All three of these dynamic women offer exclusive content to their supporters on Patreon. For $10 a month (or more if you’re so moved), you can contribute to their work and further your own work around racial injustice.
DON’T FEIGN COLORBLINDNESS: TALK ABOUT IT
As tempting as it is the pull the “I don’t see race” card to avoid difficult and honest conversations about race, don’t do it. Seek out spaces that take you out of your comfort zone and allow you to engage in real talk about race rather than pretending it doesn’t exist. I was recently at a party at the home of a friend where I was one of only two white people in a group of thirty or so. We had the best conversation about Friends (yes, the TV show) when two of the women I was talking to admitted they were big fans. Another woman chimed in, “No offense, but you two are the only Black women I’ve ever met who like that show.”
That led us to a discussion about the whiteness of the cast and general lack of diverse perspectives. One woman said she didn’t blame the show because they were merely reflecting the lack of interracial friendships among young professional in Manhattan at that time. With a shrug, she said a multiethnic cast wouldn’t have been believable. Another pointed out that the whole premise of the show was directly taken from Queen Latifah’s Living Single which premiered in 1993, a year before Friends made its debut. And that led me to research and come across J-Z’s short film Moonlight (aka, outtakes from a Black version of Friends). So, yes, even conversations about topics of insignificant as your favorite television shows can be insightful if you have them with people of different backgrounds and dive below the surface.
Which leads me to my final recommendation. Seek out organized events that cultivate these types of dialogs. For years, I have attended one called the Pink Iftar, an interfaith dinner where an incredibly diverse group of women share a meal and conversation as part of the Muslim observation of Ramadan.
If you live in Houston, let me share with you one such event happening this month. My dear friend Tracie Jae (aka The Quiet Rebel) has curated an evening called 100 Voices: Women’s Dinner Dialogue on Race & Culture on Saturday, February 29 at Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston. She is gathering 100 women (10 tables of 10 women) for a grace-filled guided dinner dialogue on race and culture. On her motivation for creating the event, Tracie says, “So often our discussions these subjects happen in a vacuum and we recycle our same understanding without hearing from others who may see the world through a different lens. 100 Voices is designed to offer a safe space for a difficult conversation.” Secure your spot at the table here.
So instead of posting a touchingly captioned photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks or President Obama, invest a little more time this month bringing diversity into your life through the people you follow, the shows you watch and the books you read; by supporting one or more of the change-makers churning out the content that will propel us into the realm of antiracism; and finding or creating safe spaces to talk honestly about race and culture with people outside your own ethnic identity. The effects will last well beyond this month!