Protest vs Process

 

Yesterday County Executive Calvin Ball, Superintendent of Schools Michael Martirano, and Chair of the Board of Education Mavis Ellis release a joint statement addressing the issue of SRO’s in the Howard County Schools. You can find it in a number of places. I read it on the County Exective’s Facebook page. This morning Ilana Bittner of HoCoMoJo posted a narrative account of events beginning with SMOB’s proposal in last week’s BOE meeting to remove SRO’s from the schools. 

I’m still going over the joint statement, so I won’t speak to it today.

What I do want to address is how difficult it appears to be for many in Howard County to place themselves in someone else’s shoes, specifically, when it comes to issues of race. And, to be clear, I mean white people. 

A parable: once there was a young mother who was struggling with her four year old daughter and she saw in herself the evolution of toxic behaviors of her mother in her own childhood. And so she sought out a therapist whose field of expertise was this particular kind of work. The mother learned a lot about herself over time. She learned better parenting skills, too. But much of the work centered on addressing ways that she was damaged by her own relationship with her mother.

One day, some years in, she sat in a session and lamented a feeling of on going brokenness. 

“When am I ever going to fixed? I thought I was coming to therapy to get fixed.”

In that moment she realized she could never go back and erase the harm that had been done to her. Being in therapy was to learn to fully see the truth, and learn to live in a healthy way with that truth. This was not a happy realization. It initially made her angry. She grieved for a long time.

I tell this story because I see many white people who do not want to do the work of addressing the violence and injustice that was present in our nation from the start. They don’t want to dig deep enough to see how it was perpetuated far beyond slavery into system after system deeply interwoven into what they think of as “the American Way.” For them the American Way centers whiteness as the norm and they feel uncomfortable when faced with ugly truths that reveal what that norm is built of.

In Howard County there are people who can read page after page of student testimony about racism in our schools and, instead of wanting to address it, would be far more comfortable questioning the lived experiences of our children. There are those who want to remove language about racism from an official statement about equity. Indeed, some have gone on the record that our Student Member should have no official voice, now that he has used his voice in support of Black and Brown students and families.

“Why do they want to make everything about race? We shouldn’t be talking about race.”

Why? Because we cannot go back and erase the harm that has been done by white supremacy. Our responsibility is learn to fully see the truth, and learn to live in a healthy way with that truth. And that means being willing to be uncomfortable. In this particular case it means being willing to take action to deconstruct systems that benefit whiteness and harm Black and Brown students. 

I have had several online conversations with people who insist this isn’t about race, it’s about process. Parents who have seen their children’s educational experiences diminished by school policing would disagree. Acts of protest, acts which are meant specifically to adress injustice, are not often subtle and they are not designed to make people feel comfortable. 

That is a good thing. That’s what brings about change. If we care more about what makes us uncomfortable instead of accepting the lived truth of our Black and Brown students and families, we reveal that centering whiteness is our number one priority. 

It is very, very hard to accept that we cannot easily “fix” the generational injustice in our country. It’s very uncomfortable to sit with that and to begin to realize our complicity in it merely by existing peaceably with the status quo. It is scary to realize how much work there is to do and that we don’t truly know the outcome of that work.

We need to do it anyway.