Agree to Be Offended re: Race & Racism

Slide 1: Without racism, I wonder if we would have known Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. - Tolstoy Soundtrack: “Luqman,” Me’shell Ndegeocello Presents The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of The Infidel

Slide 2: “ Agree to be Offended” ™ Curious Connections in Conversations of Race Assoc. Professor Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. Cultural Anthropologist/Ethnomusicologist http://kyraocity.com © 2008 This workshop was first presented at 2008 Conference for Global Transformation, San Francisco, May 18, 2008 with 53 participants from U.S., Canada and Europe. Second highest rating of any conference session (4.71 out of 5.00).

Slide 3: Introduction “Agree to be Offended”™ is a strategy for facing any kind of difference but particularly racism - a distraction that keeps people from a future that works for all. Race may be "a pigment of our imagination", but in conversations of race we often end up stuck being offended (Gaunt 2006).

Slide 4: This is what we think a “racist” looks like. But this is about you and the racism in your life.

Slide 5: Once Upon a Time, I Was Offended… The “Black Ring” in Pretty Pretty Princess It was around 1992 and I was in grad school at U of Michigan. …While visiting I was on a a fellow student minority student of color, I played fellowship… Pretty, Pretty Princess with a 5 and 7 year-old black girl and boy, respectively. Would you believe… If you get the black ring, you can play but you can never win.

Slide 6: “Don’t Take Things Personally”  Throughout school, we are told to not take things personally. Use “I” statements, they say.  In a hip-hop class at NYU in June of 2005, my students and I saw that no matter what we say, people always take things personally.  A rather disinterested Korean woman in class proposed an alternative: ”Why don’t we agree to be offended?" This was the start of a journey to transform how we resist being offended about race and racism.

Slide 7: We Say “Don’t Take Things Personally” but in reality we are…

Slide 8:  Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior (AAA Statement on Race, 1998).  "[Racism] is not about how you look, it's about how people assign meaning to how you look." – Robin Kelley

Slide 9: How to Define “Offend” from Merriam Webster Online Pronunciation: ə-ˈfend Function: verb intransitive verb 1 a: to transgress the moral or divine law : sin < if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive — Shakespeare > b: to violate a law or rule : do wrong <offend against the law>. 2 a: to cause difficulty, discomfort, or injury < took off his shoe and removed the offending pebble >. b: to cause dislike, anger, or vexation < thoughtless words that offend needlessly > transitive verb 1 a: violate, transgress b: to cause pain to : hurt … 3: to cause to feel vexation or resentment usually by violation of what is proper or fitting < was offended by their language > — of· fend· er noun We are vexed about: Hip-hop, terrorism, youth, parents, crime, the wrong neighbors/friends, education, racists, sexists, & homosexuals’ kissing.

Slide 10: You ARE NOT racist (like an object) In Javanese, the word “is” does not exist unlike in English. Without this verb, you can only speak of someone being racist. That allows us explore how we are being, doing or having racial or racist thoughts, feelings, and actions without being objectified.

Slide 11: Useful Working Definitions of Racism  The learned belief that one  Often a “rational” response “racial group” is inferior or to our fear of others; superior to another. xenophobia & self-hate (i.e., the black dolls are dirty).  The learned practices,  Making others different in attitudes, thoughts, expressions, suspicions, and order to justify an advantage/ representations that maintain invalidate a disadvantage. an inferior view of the dominated group.  Race is a social construct - a learned concept or practice  The stigmatizing of difference which may appear to be along lines of ‘racial’ or natural and obvious to those physical characteristics who accept it, but in reality is real or imagined. an invention of a particular culture or society. Notice it’s not simply about skin-color privilege. When did you first experience one of these definitions?

Slide 12: How did we learn to be racial/racist in the U.S.?  Race and freedom evolved about same time 1) “We hold these truths to be self-evident…all men are created equal” (1776). 2) Thomas Jefferson denied rights and freedom to African slaves and Native Americans in Notes on the State of Virginia (1781). US slavery was first system where slaves shared the same stigmatizing physical trait - black/dark skin, African origin. This was a “caste system” ascribed at birth to people of African descent living a nation defined by its achieved status (American dream) but only for whites and immigrants given white privilege.

Slide 13: How did we learn to be racial/racist in the U.S. in 20th Century?  White superiority became “ common sense,” a widely held view often under-examined but accepted as true.  Racial practices were institutionalized – i.e., Jim Crow laws, “ separate but equal” schooling and housing, redlining, etc.  Anti-miscegenation: In 1967, 17 Southern states -- all the former slave states plus Oklahoma -- still enforced laws prohibiting marriage between whites and non-whites.  It took South Carolina until 1998 and Alabama until 2000 to remove defunct anti-miscegenation laws in a referendum vote. NOTE: 48% of voters in South Carolina and 41% of voters in Alabama voted to keep these laws intact. Pictured above: Who were Richard and Mildred Loving (1967)?

Slide 14: “Race” ≠ Difference Hutu and Tutsi Palestinian and Israeli Us / Them … They / We The global conversation of racial difference is a superstition. The Roma, Forest People, and Dalits Skinheads and Racial Others It distracts us from being with the remarkable oneness of humanity. Immigrant, Illegal Alien, Aü Aüslander Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist, Bahai

Slide 15: When we remove “race”, we find out that humans are just plain afraid of each other. 1972 NYC Subway Experiment (M. Luo, NYTimes 9.14.04) Experiment: “Excuse me, may I have your seat?” Most researchers got sick before they asked. If they did ask, the answer was always…Yes!

Slide 16: We resist being offended about Race How do you get stuck with racism? The Banlieue riots in France suburbs, 2006  You hide what you really think and stop communicating  Avoid who and/or what got under your skin  You make them different: You get to be “better” and they are “wrong”  You gossip about it as you’re the victim (invalidating their disadvantage): “You won’t believe what he/she said!…”

Slide 17: Fear of others underlies racism  Not unlike fear, everyone is affected (not infected) by race, whether you aware of it, like it, or are from U.S. or not -- it’s there.  Race isn’t biological, but racism and white-skin privilege are real … as a conversation (on speed dial).  Race/Ethnicity are also a global conversation (in India, Japan, Brazil, Trinidad, and Russia, for example.).

Slide 18: Group Exercise: Revisit a Useful Failure 1. Take a minute or two - Recall your earliest memory around being Jane Elliot’s Class offended about race and racism? 2. Pair Share - Pick a partner (3 minutes each)  How old you were? Who was there?  What happened? What was actually said/done?  What did it mean about you, others, or life? 3. Sharing with the larger group: What would have been available if you had had Agreed to be Offended™ and stayed in the conversation? What could you say?

Slide 19: Agree to be Offended™ and stay in the conversation! What does it make available…  Facing useful failures with courage, compassion & even humor  The freedom to be offended and make a difference  The impossible becomes possible in one conversation  Transform the illusion of difference with velocity. Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. © 2008

Slide 20: Questions for YouTube comments Did you get value from Agree to be Offended™ and stay in the conversation anyhow? Is it useful? How might it impact your commitments at work, at home, in your community or in the world? If those commitments were fulfilled right now given your response, what would become available for you and your life? Share this with three people. Book a workshop for your organization and join my mailing list at… KnowledgeCrush.com

Slide 21: RACISM IS A RESOURCE FOR MIRACLES Curious Connections for Opposable Thumbs™  The adaptation of opposable thumbs made precision gripping possible followed by a series of complex adaptations -- the development of tools which probably led to our ability to walk upright.  Similarly, by revisiting how we learned to be racist, we refine our grasp on race fostering a series of complex adaptations -- the capacity to empower diversity/difference and fulfill on “ all [humans] are created equal” in our lifetime.

Slide 22: GAUNT’S PROMISE “I promise a world by 2036 where all people embrace and empower any communication, eye to eye with the remarkable oneness of humanity. How will I know this is so? The illusion of difference will be a superstition of the past” (Gaunt 2007). Help us fulfill on this promise! BOOK A WORKSHOP at kyraocity@gmail.com or visit http://KnowledgeCrush.com

Slide 23: RESOURCES  AAA Statement on Race. May 17, 1998. American Anthropological Association. http://dev.aaanet .org/issues/policy-advocacy/AAA-Statement-on-Race.cfm  Gaunt, Kyra D. 2006. The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-hop (New York: NYU Press). Co-Winner of 2007 Merriam Prize for most outstanding book from the Society for Ethnomusicology and Finalist in the 2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Book Award.  RACE Are We So Different? (A Project of the American Anthropological Association) http://www.understandingrace.org/. BOOK A WORKSHOP TODAY! Join my mailing list KnowledgeCrush.com for tele-classes & podcasts.

Slide 24: THANK YOU!  This workshop was made possible by… My participation in Landmark Education, the Wisdom Division, the Discourse Calls, the Conference for Global Transformation, and esp. my fellow graduates Laurie and Emil Rufolo and Debbie Baker. My students (over 700) esp. the 2005 summer hip- hop course at NYU and my colleagues at the Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Virginia, NYU, and Baruch College-CUNY. Thanks to Chrysalis Interactive, too. Students and teachers cannot create what’s Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. possible for the world without one another. PLEASE RATE THIS & COMMENT BELOW