Day 6: De-Segregating for Justice and Relationship
Hello my beloveds,
We’re halfway through our 12 Days of Action—and as we dig in again today it’s a good time to go back to the list of three specific ways you want to grow your commitment to antiracism. Is the list the same? Has it shifted? Has this experience made clear other areas of antiracism growth that are important in your life?
Something that continues to be important to me is to regularly check in with myself about my antiracist practice. Antiracism is not just about knowledge or values. Those things are important, but it’s primarily about behavior. So, having an intention practice of how I’m growing my capacity for antiracist behavior needs as much intention as does any kind of growth I want to see in my life.
This connects directly to today’s invitation to action.
The “space between” white people, and Black people and other people of color, that Chanté Griffin calls our attention to, is not only a consequence of legacies of racism, which have marred our relationships with each other. They are also perpetuated by longstanding structures of segregation, which directly affects all our lives.
In housing, schooling, city planning and more, segregating forces have acted on our over and over again—historically, and on up through the now. In the lives of most white Americans, because of forces set into motion long before most of got here and choices our ancestors made about whether to resist those forces or not (usually not) segregation is the default.
If we want something different, then—if we want robustly multi-racial interactions, connections and community—we have to make choices that make such realities possible. We have to actively choose against segregation every day in ways small and large; or segregation will simply continue to have its way with us.
This is your action for today. Do an audit of where you spend your time and where you spend your money. Literally list it all out. Then identify specific choices you could make to shift where spend your time and your resources. Move your time and resources from mostly white spaces into as many Black- and Brown-owned, run or majority spaces as you possibly can. (Where do you get your haircut? Shop for groceries or buy books? Which library or what neighborhood parks do you take your kids to? Where do you volunteer? Who is your dentist? I could go on and on.)
Intentionally choosing against segregated patterns is a practice that allows us to invest more directly in the well-being of communities of color. Beyond that it also makes interracial relationships more possible and likely, because leaving white spaces (and doing so again, and again, and again) allows new possibilities that the default-setting of a life lived within the confines of segregation never even lets us imagine.
Jen
Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.
Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.
Day 3: Explore through the work of these projects (read about them, watch the videos) Acts of Reparation and the Community Remembrance Project as a way to contemplate generational legacies, learn about current efforts for remembrance and repair, nourish your own moral imagination for where you may be called to plug in.
Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”
Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.
P.S. Save the date: Join me and others who took part in this experience for a live conversation on Tuesday, July 9th at 5:00 PST/6:00 MST/7:00 CST/8:00 EST as a way to wrap up and reflect on our 12 Days of Action. We’ll follow up with the link shortly.
P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf
