While I don't directly work for our local high school that our non-profit is located in I do work predominantly in the school itself. I try to integrate myself as a staff member as much as possible to gain respect from teachers and administrators but I find that for the sake of my relationship with youth I also need to distance myself from the school as much as possible.
I first read the text by Tema Okun earlier this year when it was given as pre-reading for a professional development I was attending. We're usually taught (or at least I was) that White Supremacy is things like segregation and slavery, things that are "in the past" because we talk about them in history class and not about how they are still present today. I honestly don't even think I ever had a teacher call it White Supremacy until college. "It was just this one group, the KKK, that were 'really mean' to other people." *please note this is not a direct quote from anyone who taught me about racism but what I re-imagine it was like*
I didn't learn about systemic racism, redlining, stop and frisk, police brutality, the list goes on, until college where I was immersed in learning from diverse educators and diverse peers. It was then that I realized "oh shit I have a lot of unlearning to do". I think about how in my middle and high school years I blended into the sea of my other white peers and how we never had to think about White Supremacy because it benefitted us and if I hadn't taken the time during undergrad to present day to re-educate myself how hurtful I could have been to the youth that I work with.
I don't think a lot of people that work with youth (youth workers, teachers, whoever), especially in the community I work in, have done this unlearning and re-educating. Maybe they've just started this journey, maybe they don't know where to start, or maybe they're ignorant to White Supremacy or just don't care. Whatever the case may be I'm almost positive even if they have looked into some factors of White Supremacy they certainly have not looked at it through the lense that Tema Okun describes.
I wonder what it would be like to use this text as a tool for observation not only in our organizations as it pertains to staff members but also in our spaces with youth.
Thanks for your post Kelly. I appreciate the distinction that you make between the idea of white supremacy as being marginal, in the past, bad people "being mean" vs. a massive and nearly-ever-present presence/ system/ the air we breathe. I am also WOWing this idea of using the text as an observation tool--thinking about this on so many levels. For example, the power dynamics that are typically present in educational/ foundation observations that are all tangled up in white supremacy (perfectionism, one right way, objectivity etc.) and how this might flip the script. I keep stopping writing as I drift off thinking about this idea and all the possibilities. Let me know if you would like to follow up on it, I think this could be a fabulous project!
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