Demystifying Diversity E-Book

Daralyse Lyons

• Herausgeber: Loving Healing Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 334

Beschreibung

It can be difficult to find reliable information that amplifies the voices and the viewpoints of those who have direct experience dealing with diversity, equity and inclusion. In Demystifying Diversity: Embracing our Shared Humanity, Biracial journalist Daralyse Lyons has interviewed more than 100 individuals--academics, politicians, thought-leaders, advocates, activists and even an incarcerated inmate--and reveals her most important information and insights. By engaging with this text, you will find areas of human intersection and connection that challenge your biases and break down your barriers. Through empathy and understanding, we can create a more inclusive world.
"The work of any reconciliation along the lines of the basis of identity requires vulnerability, a vulnerability that we are told is not of value to the American way of being."
-- Paul Reese, Master of Divinity, Yale Divinity School
"Exposure and practice prepare people for unpredictable racial moments."
-- Dr. Howard Stevenson, director, Racial Empowerment Collaborative
"We are siblings in humanity. No one has superiority over another, except by their character."
-- Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
"In the present--and correcting the ills of the past--our public policy needs to always move towards equity. If we can do that, I think, as a society, we're going to get better."
-- Senator Sharif Street, third senatorial district of Philadelphia

Leseprobe

Demystifying Diversity: Embracing our Shared Humanity

Copyright © 2020 by Daralyse Lyons. All Rights Reserved

Foreword by Kyle V. Hiller

ISBN 978-1-61599-533-2 paperback

ISBN 978-1-61599-534-9 hardcover

ISBN 978-1-61599-535-6 eBook

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lyons, Daralyse, author.

Title: Demystifying diversity : embracing our shared humanity / Daralyse Lyons ; foreword by Kyle V. Hiller.

Description: Ann Arbor, MI : Loving Healing Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "Biracial journalist Daralyse Lyons interviews more than 100 individuals-academics, politicians, thought-leaders, advocates, activists and reveals her most important information and insights about diversity, racism, and anti-racism. Areas of exploration include the following cultural, ethnic, and gender perspectives: biracial, black, and white Americans, Latinx, neuro-diverse, LGBTQIA+, body image/types, Holocaust survivors, Muslims and Islamophobia, mixed-race couples, and others"-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020040251 (print) | LCCN 2020040252 (ebook) | ISBN 9781615995332 (paperback) | ISBN 9781615995349 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781615995356 (kindle edition) | ISBN 9781615995356 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Multiculturalism--United States. | Ethnicity--United States. | Minorities--United States. | Racism--United States. | Discrimination--United States. | Toleration--United States.

Classification: LCC E184.A1 .L955 2020 (print) | LCC E184.A1 (ebook) | DDC 305.800973--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040251

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040252

Published by

Loving Healing Press

5145 Pontiac Trail

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

www.LHPress.com

Tollfree 888-761-6268

[email protected]

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Excerpt from A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles by Marianne Williamson reproduced with permission.

To my mother, Sunny Taylor, who taught me the value of embracing myself and others exactly as we are.

Contents

Foreword by Kyle V. Hiller

Preface

Chapter 1 – Diversity and Me: Early Experiences

Chapter 2 – Encountering the Black/White Binary

Chapter 3 – What Biracial Identity Can Teach Us

Chapter 4 – No More Bystanders

Chapter 5 – Unconditional Love

Chapter 6 – Practice Being Anti-Racist

Chapter 7 – Agency

Chapter 8 – Belonging, Inclusivity, and Culture

Chapter 9 – Appreciate, Don't Appropriate

Chapter 10 – Embodiment

Chapter 11 – Coming Out of the Shadows through Community

Chapter 12 – Running Together

Chapter 13 – Putting the Glass Back Together

References

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Index

Foreword

I didn’t know what code switching was until, in 2016, I discovered NPR’s Code Switch podcast. I hadn’t the vocabulary to articulate something that was happening to me deep down inside: I was having an identity crisis and had been since I was a kid. I grew up in West Philadelphia in a homogenously Black neighborhood. At first, the only White people I ever encountered were my teachers, but there were plenty on TV. For whatever it’s worth, I saw as many Black people on TV as I saw White people in real life. That shifted in high school—the school was more diverse. But when I hit college, I was in a sea of White.

What did my elementary, secondary and post-secondary educations all have in common? I felt out of place in each environment, regardless of the shifts. For me, diversity was tumultuous, because I didn’t have a strong sense of my place in the world. Of course, I was young, but the microaggressions nestled into the corners of my mind, and I entered adulthood with a contorted sense of self. And I didn’t even recognize it until a few years ago, when a few tone-deaf comments from co-workers at a restaurant job made me realize I’d been compromising myself for the sake of others merely to survive. To be me wasn’t to thrive—it was a risk.

I was the egghead growing up. I wasn’t quite Carlton Banks egghead (maybe somewhere in the awkward middle of Carlton and Will—I was the cool, quiet nerd that everyone liked but didn’t really try to get to know), but I did get maligned for my “intelligence.” I didn’t get bullied in the way we imagine the smart kid in class gets bullied. In fact, my interactions with other students were pretty mild. That, actually, was the problem. No one tried to relate to me, to understand me. They hovered around for one characteristic, scooped it up and ran with it. I grew up with a fear of sharing parts of myself because it was often met with backlash. I got comments like “you’re so White” from my Black peers, and my White peers reinforced it with “you’re the whitest Black person I know.” All because they found out I liked that one Celine Dion CD that Babyface produced? Or that I had diction that they qualified as “talking White?” I was caught in the identity crossroads, fighting to show how I’m just as Black as anyone, and that blasting Carly Rae Jepsen when I need an upbeat bop doesn’t detract from that.

But really, can I be so mad at them? They were as young and dumb as me. Unfortunately, it continued well into my adulthood and is more pronounced now than it was then. Luckily, I have more tools to deal with it. This is where Demystifying Diversity: Embracing Our Shared Humanity comes in.

Diversity is an uncomfortable term for me. It’s something slung most often by White folks, many of whom are just now learning about the disparities afflicting marginalized people. I’m not upset at them for it, but it is exhausting seeing it unfold in real time. It’s troubling when I hear people clamoring for diversity when those same people are quick to subvert my identity with comments that are supposed to be in friendly jest. Reading, and editing, Daralyse’s book has been an abundant source of clarity, hope and help.

I’ve got diversity in my family. There are Native Americans in my extended family. I’ve got family that hails from Puerto Rico and have settled in eastern Pennsylvania, Virginia Beach and southern California. I’ve got cousins that are as Irish and blue-eyed as the next White person. There’s probably more White in our blood than we may know, considering my family was brought here as slaves. I celebrate the diversity in my family, and I honor it with my loved ones outside of those circles. But I don’t have to prove that to you, and the diversity in my family doesn’t make me any more or less Black. It makes me more diverse, inclusive, empathetic and understanding—virtues I don’t think many Americans uphold.

Demystifying Diversity: Embracing Our Shared Humanity is a step forward in mitigating that. Daralyse has comprised an indelible collection of stories and information that casts a wide, embracing light on the unique experiences of many different voices. This book and its companion podcast are the sort of guides I wished existed when I was coming up as a perennial misfit. I think we take for granted how much information has become available to us in the Internet age—which only came out of its infancy in the last ten years. I also think we take for granted how much opportunity for connection the Internet has afforded us. There have been countless relationships I’ve encountered, and been able to cultivate, that fit and elevate me (and ultimately, each other) because of the Internet: people who look like me, have similar experiences, share the same values and have similar interests. I yearned for books like this, but I didn’t know I was yearning. I didn’t know I was suffering. I didn’t know I was muted because of my “otherness.” I didn’t know that the complexity of my personality was, in a way, a thing largely because of my curiosity of other cultures—a direct response to my feelings of not belonging. I didn’t know so much about my own culture. I didn’t know other people were feeling this, and that there was a vast conversation happening around it.

Read this book. Listen to the associated podcast. Share it. Tell your friends. Do the work. Question your biases. Question your identity. We all need to, and Demystifying Diversity: Embracing Our Shared Humanity is an important step in our collective, arduous, complex journey towards inclusivity.

Preface

“Without a willingness to confront the human capacity for hatred, we ensure that persecution and dehumanization will continue”

Daralyse Lyons, author and co-creator of the Demystifying Diversity Podcast

I was at the Boys & Girls Club’s after school program, hanging out on the grass by the side of the building, when I overheard a White girl call a Black boy the N-word.

I stormed over to where they were standing. “Did you hear what she called you?”

The boy hung his baseball-capped head.

“Well… What are you gonna do about it?” I wasn’t trying to further intimidate a victim, but I couldn’t let the girl get away with hate speech. I was an eleven-year-old advocate for justice.

Nicole.

I turned to face her.

Nicole went to Western Middle School, like me. We were in the same grade. She was considerably shorter. The boy must’ve gone to Eastern or Central, one of the other two Greenwich Middle schools because he and I didn’t know each other. And Greenwich was the sort of town where kids of color who went to the same school knew each other. There were so few of us. Unfortunately, due to what ensued, the boy and I would never have the opportunity to be formally introduced.

Nicole elongated herself to her full four-feet, three-inches and planted her hands on her nonexistent hips. She had stringy, mousy-brown hair that dangled to her shoulders, a pinched face—like a Doberman’s—and beady blue eyes. “Yeah.” She sneered. “What’re you gonna do about it, nigger?”

The brim of the boy’s hat remained pointed at the ground. “Nothing. I can’t hit a girl.”

I knew that, if I wanted to remain on the right side of justice, I couldn’t stay a bystander.

“Maybe you can’t, but I can!” I delivered an unexpected fist to the gut.

(To this day, that punch remains the only one I’ve ever thrown—unless you count my brief stint with Billy Blanks Tae-Bo videos, or the six weeks I spent taking Wing Chun lessons).

Before she could react, I leapt on top of her, slapping, clawing, and pulling while she attempted to get away. “Stop! Ow! That hurts! HELP!”

She was crying out, yet she had been the one to inflict the more painful injury.

“You racist pig!” I screamed.

It took three teenage staff members to pull me off and drag me inside to the Program Director’s office.

The Program Director, Don, was tall and kind with soft, chestnut eyes and lips that smiled far more often than they frowned. After I told him my side of the story, he sat for several seconds, unmoving. It was as if he wanted to react one way, but knew he had to respond another. What seemed like minutes (but was probably only seconds) later, he instructed me to sit on the bench in the hall outside his office while he called my mom at work.

The hallway was brightly lit and cheery, adorned with children’s finger paintings. I stared at a red handprint on yellow construction paper. I didn’t quite know how to feel. I wasn’t sorry, but I that didn’t mean I welcomed whatever punishment awaited.

Mom arrived ten minutes later (two hours before the scheduled dismissal time) to find me still sitting in the hall. By then, Don had interrogated Nicole. He’d gone outside to question her. He and the other staff must’ve figured that, if they brought her inside, I’d have finished what I started—after she started what she started.

After speaking with my racist peer, Don had remained outside, so he was there to meet my mom, and give her a quick debriefing before the two of them walked in together.

“Dara…” Mom said.

Don held his office door open. Mom and I preceded him inside. He followed, gently closing the door, shutting out any possibility of interruption or intrusion.

“What’s this about you calling a girl a racist word?” Mom’s expression telegraphed her confusion.

“I didn’t call her a racist word.”

Don looked from me and my burnished skin to my ivory-complected mother, then back to me again. “Nicole said you did.”

“Nicole’s a liar!”

“What’d she say Dara called her?” Mom wanted to know.

The Program Director’s face flushed as he repeated what Nicole had said I’d said. “White trash.”

“Dara! Did you say that?”

“No! I would never say that. You’re White. I’m part White. I called her a racist pig.”

I explained about Nicole’s use of the N-word, and how the boy’s unwillingness to hit a girl hadn’t precluded me from hitting her on his behalf.

Mom let my version of events sink in. “Oh,” she said. And then, “that makes more sense.”

“Racism is wrong,” Don told us both, “and Nicole will be punished. But I can’t ignore the fact that Dara assaulted her.”

My mom was always a bottom-line-this-for-me person. “So… What’s Dara’s punishment?”

“She’ll be banned from the Boys & Girls Club for the next week.”

Mom didn’t ask for a partial refund—which was saying a lot considering her tight single-parent budget and her love of bargaining. She thanked the Program Director for his time and told him she appreciated and supported his need to take action. Then, she took my hand and led me outside, to her gold Honda. The car was the same color as my skin in the summer.

“Are you mad?” I asked after we’d climbed inside.

“Not at all,” she replied. “Dara, I am super proud of you.”

In the twenty-six years since being sent home from the Boys & Girls Club, I’ve continued to be an advocate for justice, but my approach has changed. I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to make more of an impact than a punch. Although I believe there’s a time and place for violence, I don’t think the systems that perpetuate prejudice can be dismantled without engaging with others in meaningful and empathetic ways.

As a Biracial1 person, I exist in the center of the binaries of Blackness and Whiteness and I hate that so many other people can’t seem to embrace both races simultaneously. I’m doing what I can to change that. In 2018, I published a children’s book about loving my Biracial identity and, in 2019, I was interviewed on “Community Voices,” a local cable TV show, about my understanding of race. The woman who interviewed me, AnnaMarie Jones, is Biracial, like me. She loved my message of acceptance and empowerment and we became immediate friends. We’d each been longing to meet someone with a similar spectrum understanding of race. Not long after our “Community Voices” interview, AnnaMarie called to ask if I wanted to work on a project together.

Her initial idea had been to center our project around anti-racism advocacy, but I wanted to create something more expansive and inclusive.

“I’m in!” I said. “But only if we can find a way to amplify as many marginalized voices as possible.”

And, just like that, the Demystifying Diversity Podcast was born. I interviewed over 100 individuals and collected more than 100 hours of audio.

There are a lot of -isms and -phobias that go beyond racism and I want to be part of a movement towards equity and inclusion for every human, not just people with whom I share the same racial lineage. Whoever you are, you’ve likely witnessed, participated in, or been the victim of some form of discriminatory behavior. It might’ve had to do with race, body shape, gender, religion, or any of the many identity markers that people use to justify their mistreatment of one another.

Through independent research, listening to others, and my own personal experiences, I’ve become all too aware of the devasting impact of othering (classifying an individual or group of individuals as fundamentally different from one’s self). I’ve come to believe that the only way to overcome dehumanization is to become aware that we all have complex and intersecting identities, to acknowledge the unique gifts that arise from our differences, and to embrace our shared humanity.

I’ve come to believe that we affect ourselves and each other in three ways:

1.We help.

2.We hurt.

3.We do nothing, remaining un-invested and indifferent.

To help can take a number of forms but any positive contribution requires engagement and empathy. To hurt is also active. It necessitates that we become agents of aggression and dehumanization. Doing nothing is also a form of hurt, but I wanted to create a distinction between active and passive perpetration. By no means does this excuse inaction. On the contrary! It is often those who do nothing who know better and could affect positive change, if only they would be willing to step into the ally zone.

One of my interviews was with Alisa Kraut, Assistant Curator at the National Museum of American Jewish History. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Alisa’s father was born in a displaced persons’ camp. Unsurprisingly, she had a lot to say about the importance of being invested in the lives, and therefore the deaths, of strangers. She told me that, as human beings, “We’re Venn diagrams in Venn diagrams. And so, if you can’t find those connections, it means you’re not looking.”

If you’re a human being in this world, you have areas of overlap with people you imagine to be different than yourself. The more we start looking for similarities, the more invested we become. Suddenly, strangers are no longer strange. They are just another iteration of ourselves.

I’m not saying we need to sit around singing Kumbaya, or that we’re all one. I’m simply pointing out that discrimination thrives on separation. At the same time, when it comes to the issue of othering, none of us are blameless.

Dr. Howard Stevenson, Constance Clayton Professor of Urban Education and Executive Director of the Racial Empowerment Collaborative, said something that I continue to find useful as I search for commonalities and connections between those of whom I might initially have been suspicious: “the reality is, we can sometimes be initiators ourselves, so you can be both initiator and ‘victim.’”

It is not possible to be a human in this world without sometimes displaying the ignorance that lurks on the other side of understanding. Yet, this feels like an especially divisive time to be alive. Especially in America. Since the 2016 election, othering has become so pervasive that it’s no longer surprising. The nation’s 45th president has been driving a lot of this discrimination and, when he hasn’t been instigating it, he’s been encouraging and supporting it.

Trump has admitted to grabbing women “by the pussy,” mocked a reporter with disabilities, heckled a 12-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, pledged to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, declared that Mexican immigrants are criminals and advocated “building a wall to keep them out,” refused to condemn White supremacists, condoned the beating of Black Lives Matter protestors and a homeless Latinx man, stereotyped Jews, made disparaging comments about women based on age and weight, and treated minorities as monoliths—making comments about “the Blacks,” “the Mexicans,” “the gays,” “the Muslims,” and “the Hispanics.”

To enumerate each of Trump‘s abuses would be a book in and of itself. (And many such books exist.) Trump didn’t create discrimination. He merely stoked the flames of a preexisting fire.

Sadly, America is not the land of freedom, liberty, and individual agency it purports to be. Salaah Muhammad, activist, podcaster, and disruptor, referred to slavery as “the original sin” of our country. I would label it the second sin, after the systematic annihilation of indigenous people. This nation began with the near eradication of Native Americans and indigenous peoples then quickly moved into a nearly 400-year long era of the enslavement of those who happened to have been born Black or Brown.

One of the reasons raced-based persecution has been so pervasive in America and elsewhere is that it capitalizes on visible difference, but early Americans did not confine themselves to persecuting people of color. Just look at the Salem Witch Trials and you’ll see how those who came to this country wanting to escape religious persecution morphed from victims to victimizers in an all-too-common manifestation, a manifestation which occurs culturally, societally, and individually.

In her February 2010 publication, “The ‘Monster’ in All of Us: When Victims Become Perpetrators,” feminist, defense attorney, and law professor, Abbe Smith writes:

Although victims do not always become perpetrators, a truism repeated by prosecutors at sentencing as if it were a profound revelation never before put into words, it is the rare serious perpetrator who was not also a victim. Of course, there are people who commit crime out of self-indulgence, self-interest, meanness, or madness. But among those who have committed serious crime, it is the rare perpetrator who has not also suffered. It is the rare death row inmate whose life does not read like a case study of extreme deprivation and abuse. It is the rare juvenile incarcerated in an adult prison for rape or murder who has had anything other than the cruelest of childhoods. As a career indigent criminal defense lawyer, I live in the world of victims turned-perpetrators. I am often more surprised by my damaged clients who do not commit serious, violent crimes than by those who do. Some might say that this is strange work for a feminist; I spend my time representing mostly men and boys accused of crime and violence, often against women. But, to me, it is all of a piece.

Smith understands that perpetration leads to pain and pain leads to more perpetration. Trauma is cyclical. Standing for human rights requires us to develop our capacity for empathy and to search out the causes that create conditions of violence and victimization. If we don’t intervene in restorative and reparative ways, hurt people are likely to hurt other people.

In order to embrace diversity, it’s essential to look at the intersectionality of identity and the interconnected nature of oppression.

Much of the information being released into the world today about diversity and inclusion tends to focus on a specific subgroup. There are books, podcasts, and TV shows about the Black Lives Matter movement, the history of slavery, Islamophobia, the mistreatment of individuals with disabilities, weight-based bullying, and all the other topics I present on the Demystifying Diversity Podcast and within these pages. While I am grateful for all of this important work, I want to take a broader perspective. By providing an expansive and inclusive look at the experiences of many (but certainly not all) marginalized members of society, I hope to challenge each of us to not only examine our prejudices but to practice empathy for those we assume to be different than ourselves.

Because knowledge without application almost never makes a tangible impact, this book is accompanied by a workbook that includes chapter-by-chapter exercises. Although the workbook is by no means compulsory reading, I invite you to engage with this work and I promise that, if you do, you will expand your capacity to love others and, invariably, that will enable you to more fully love yourself.

If you have the companion Demystifying Diversity Workbook, please turn to the exercises for the Preface and start them. Return to Chapter 1 in this book when you have completed them.

_______________________

1 Although most publications do not capitalize the word Biracial, I have elected to do so. It is now standard practice to capitalize races as proper nouns and because I see racial and ethnic identity as existing within a spectrum, it feels important to acknowledge Biraciality as a distinct and separate experience, worthy of the same recognition as any other racial affiliation or identity.

1

Diversity and Me: Early Experiences

“You may be hurting because someone has othered you, yet, whether you were aware of it or not, it’s likely that you’ve othered someone else. With empathy and understanding, we can move beyond fear, suspicion, and discrimination into healing, hope, and love.”

Daralyse Lyons, author and co-creator of the Demystifying Diversity Podcast

Smoke started wafting up from the back of my head.

My mom yelped and threw the steaming metal hot comb into the kitchen sink. It rattled around the empty silver basin. It was a good thing there weren’t any dishes inside, but we generally ate take-out (straight out of the container or off of paper plates) so unwashed dishes were a rarity.

I reached up and touched the nape of my neck. A chunk of singed golden lamb’s wool fell to the floor. Luckily, my hair was so thick entire segments of it could go missing without anyone noticing.

Mom skimmed the instructions. “Oh! I should’ve let the hot comb cool.”

I shook my still-smoking head.

“How about a French braid?” Mom suggested.

It couldn’t have been easy for a White suburbanite raising a Biracial child in Greenwich, Connecticut—especially as a single parent—but Sunny Lyons then, Taylor now, never subscribed to other people’s expectations. When, at seven months pregnant, she discovered that my dad was cheating, she left him. She taught me, by word and by example, that, if anyone mistreated you, you had the right to stand up for yourself.

Who cared if friends or family (or even the ever-present specter of society) second-guessed her ability as a White woman to raise a half-Black daughter? She never doubted herself. And, if people looked at us when we went out, she’d say, “They’re staring because you’re unique and beautiful.”

When I was six or seven, Mom took me to one of my classmate’s birthday parties. Two White girls who looked as if they might be around the same age as me approached us.

The one with the blonde pigtails greeted me not with a standard “hello” or “how are you?” but by asking “Are you Black?”

I smiled. “Half Black, and half White.”

“Oh,” she replied. “Want to play?”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

The three of us skipped away together.

I grew up believing that conversations about race could begin from a space of curiosity and connection and my existence as someone who has always claimed equal affiliation with both my Black and White heritage has offered me an entry into a spectrum of different spaces.

In 2018, I published a children’s book about my Biracial identity. I’d already published a wide array of adult titles and I was advised that I should differentiate that work from my kids’ books by writing I’m Mixed! under a pseudonym. I selected Maggy Williams, an amalgamation of my favorite aunt’s first name, and my grandfather’s middle name (both of them died before the book came out and I wanted to pay tribute to their importance in my life). After publishing the book, I went to various schools, libraries and organizations to read I’m Mixed! and speak about embracing all aspects of ourselves and each other. One of the places I went was the same Boys & Girls Club where I once beat up a White girl for calling a Black boy the N-word.

Don, the former Program Director, still worked there, although he’d been promoted several times. “I was so excited to hear about your book,” he said when he saw me. We gave each other a huge hug and, when we pulled apart, he told me “I’m proud of you.”

It had all come full-circle for me. Unfortunately, the world hasn’t fundamentally changed. I still see examples of prejudice everywhere. Although I’m unlikely to throw any physical punches, I still strive to stand up for others. So many people are in need of empathy, advocacy, and allyship because so many others are so hurtful.

During one of my interviews, Dennis Moritz, Jewish poet and playwright, said something that perfectly encompasses what this project has taught me: “I don’t think you can be an honest observer of the human condition without being overwhelmed at times by the cruelty that gets visited on people. It seems to me to be so counter to who we are. We’re beautiful. Every one of us is beautiful. There is nothing like a human being in this world that we experience. We are remarkable.”

Confronting the human capacity for evil doesn’t mean losing sight of the beauty and resilience within each of us. In fact, acknowledging both is the only foundation from which to begin the process of repairing the world.

Kinsukuroi, the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery, is a technique that offers a powerful metaphor for my work as an advocate for rights, justice, equality, diversity and inclusion. The Kinsukuroi artist takes broken objects and puts them back together using adhesive that has been infused with precious metals such as silver, platinum, and gold. By treating breakage as part of the item’s ever-evolving process, it’s always moving towards beauty while honoring brokenness. With the process that you’ll be invited to enter into as you read this book and do the exercises in the suggested workbook, you’ll be acknowledging breakage even as you look for areas of adhesion.

There is a passage in A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles by Marianne Williamson that recognizes the internal human struggle and calls us to be better, for ourselves and for others:

As I interpret the Course [In Miracles], ‘our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

It’s not always easy to walk in our light. It is, however, essential to learn to do if we want to stand for equality, justice, liberty, and love. It’s even more essential that we embrace the premise that every other human also has a light within them and none of us are more valuable than any other.

Not every person, or even every demographic, is represented in these pages. Nevertheless, you will find a multitude of different stories and will be able to relate to at least some of the wide-ranging human experiences shared within this book. As you read, and as you work through the accompanying workbook, I urge you to let yourself expand beyond the limits of what you think you know about yourself and others. It’s okay to feel broken at times. In fact, I hope you do. It’s part of the process and it’s within the cracks that you’ll find yourself most receptive to the growth that is adhesive—the human connection that is gold.

If you have the companion Demystifying Diversity Workbook, please turn to the exercises for Chapter 1 and start them. Return to Chapter 2 in this book when you have completed them.

2

Encountering theBlack/White Binary

“Just as deep as the issues of systemic racism are, so should be the lessons to overcome them.”

AnnaMarie Jones, co-creator of the Demystifying Diversity Podcast

Other than at the Boys & Girls Club at age eleven, the only other time I heard the N-word was in my late teens. Before transferring to NYU, I attended Molloy College on a volleyball scholarship. By the time I got there, I was a full-blown anorexic and bulimic and struggling with issues that had nothing to do with race but still made me feel isolated and ashamed. My volleyball peers were all rich, White and entitled. We had little to nothing in common.

One evening, while traveling for a pre-season tournament, the fourteen of us were sitting in the hotel lounge, waiting for our head and assistant coaches to get back from Subway with everybody’s food and talking about boys, parents, school, and our goals for the future.

“My goal is to get my dad to buy me a Mustang for my birthday,” Tara, the team’s back-up setter, declared. She explained that getting a car gift counted as a goal because she had a clear, linear plan of acquisition, including begging and manipulation. (Side note: Midway through the season, her dad did buy her the brand-new white Mustang, so I guess that was an achievement).

Somehow, the conversation drifted to pet peeves and, Alicia, a freshman, and that year’s right-side-hitter, posed a question to the group “You know who I hate?”

We all turned to face her.

“No,” Ashley replied. “Who?”

“Niggers.”

I took a deep breath. The rest of my teammates remained blank-faced. They weren’t going to say or do anything. It was up to me to take a stand, not only for one half of my race, but for what was right.

“You know…” Although I kept my eyes locked on Alicia, I could sense the others shifting in their seats. “I’m half Black.”

“Oh. Well, of course, I didn’t mean you.” She backpedaled. “I meant niggers.”

“I’m not familiar with what you mean by that,” I replied through gritted teeth. “What, exactly, constitutes a nigger?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “You know. An ignorant Black person.”

I stood. “I don’t know any ignorant Black people, but, evidently, you’re an ignorant White one.”

When I walked away, no one chased after me. I’m not sure what, if anything, was said in my absence, but, from then on, every time I saw Alicia, I saw ignorance and intolerance. When I looked at our other teammates, I couldn’t respect them. The notion of an “innocent” bystander is, in practice, more often mythology than reality.

Eventually, I transferred to NYU. Living in a diverse city, surrounded by people from all backgrounds, I felt a sense of belonging. Not that there wasn’t intolerance in New York. Prejudice is everywhere, and not all prejudice comes from White people. I learned this years ago.

When I was nine, Mom took me to Brooklyn to visit our African homeopath—the one who cured me of seizures with a single dose of a homeopathic remedy. While I was in his office talking about rubrics and repertoires, she sat in the waiting room leafing through a copy of Ebony Magazine.

A striking African American woman walked in.

Mom perked up. “Hi!”

Mom always enjoys talking to strangers. Take her anywhere where random people congregate—cafeteria-style restaurants, airports, the grocery store, banks, and hotel lobbies—and she’ll leave knowing at least three individual’s life stories.

The stranger sported dreadlocks that hung to the small of her back and a tiny gold ring in her left nostril. She looked the woman who’d birthed me up and down, then took a seat in the opposite corner of the room.

Mom didn’t take the hint. “Isn’t Dr. Kokayi wonderful? How long have you been seeing him?”

Nose Ring selected something of her own from the available-reading stack: Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters.

“He’s helped my daughter so much. We don’t even live in Brooklyn, but we drive two round-trip hours every month because he’s a genius. Is this your first time here?”

Nose Ring rolled her eyes at the chocolate-skinned receptionist behind the counter, as if to say Can you believe this White Lady has the audacity to try to talk to me?

“I prefer to keep to myself,” the stranger said.

“Okay.” Mom went back to perusing her black-is-beautiful magazine.

A few minutes later, when I emerged from the doctor’s inner sanctum, she wasn’t in the lobby. She’d gone down the hall to the bathroom.

A gorgeous woman in flowing white robes with a gleaming nose ring and rows of long, thin dreadlocks smiled at me from behind her glossy-covered Callaloo. “Why hello.”

I returned her grin. “Hi! You here for Dr. Kokayi?”

“Yes. Isn’t he wonderful?”

“Yeah. He’s helping me with my asthma.”

“Asthma? A beautiful girl like you shouldn’t suffer with asthma…”

Mom walked back in. I handed her a blue, Boiron tube. “Dr. Kokayi gave me a new remedy!” I declared.

“That’s great, Dara.” She squinted at the tiny vial. She needed glasses but was too self-sacrificing to buy herself a pair. “What is it?”

The stranger looked startled. “This is your mother?”

Mom stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Sunny. What’s your name?”

Nose Ring reluctantly allowed Mom’s pink-fleshed fingers to grasp her mahogany ones. “Imani Utawala is what I’ve christened myself following my emancipation from the systematic oppression of my people by the White man.”

The lady at the desk shuffled through her folders. I was pretty sure that, for insurance purposes, she knew Imani Utawala as Wanda, Lisa, or Elizabeth, with some standard surname, like Jones. (When we got home, Mom and I looked up the meaning of the stranger’s self-assigned names.)

Still, the knowledge that Mom had once engaged in jungle-fever love made Faith and Domination soften enough that her daggers were downgraded to those Nerf swords my cousin Kelvin played with. Still capable of inflicting pain. Not sharp enough to cut.

When the two of us were in her gold Honda, heading back to Greenwich, my remedy tucked into her purse, to be taken later—an hour away from food—Mom told me about what had transpired before I emerged from Dr. Kokayi’s office. “That woman wouldn’t give me the time of day until she knew I was with you. Even then, she wasn’t exactly effusive.”

“I know,” I agreed. “She was nice to me. Why would she treat us differently?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a race thing.”

“Race is just the color of your skin. It shouldn’t matter.”

“It shouldn’t. Unfortunately, for some people, it does.”

I think that we are doing each other and ourselves a massive disservice by treating Black and White as two opposing, binary forces. I also think we’re doing a disservice by acknowledging that there is a spectrum of Blackness while refusing to accept that, if that’s true, there’s also a spectrum of Whiteness.

When I refer to a “spectrum of Blackness,” I’m referring to the fact that, as disturbing as it is, there are a slew of YouTube videos, memes, GIFs and jokes depicting various stereotypical attitudinal differences between lighter and darker skinned people of color. While this is egregious and insensitive, it speaks to the fact that within conceptions of Blackness there is a sense that there is not uniformity. We see evidence of colorism operating all the time and Black people speaking about the skin-privilege of their lighter-skinned Black and Biracial counterparts.

Whiteness is different. The cultural conversation around White identity presents this particular race as an absolute and a binary. Whereas Blackness has shades and a spectrum, when it comes to Whiteness, one either is or one isn’t. That’s not to say that there are never instances of binary Blackness, and that those can’t be perpetrated by both Black and White people, but there does seem to be an overwhelming sense that Blackness and Whiteness are mutually exclusive.

Jose Gonzales, Director of Graduate Support at GESU School, a dedicated anti-racist and a Biracial Polish and Puerto Rican man, informed me “The more people we can get in that dialogue getting comfortable with their Whiteness and understanding the history of Whiteness in America and the world, the more we can start having authentic conversations about race and not only saying ‘I’m not racist,’ but offering anti-racist content, anti-racist advocacy, anti-racism language. It’s not okay to just say, ‘I’m not racist.’ Okay, that’s great, but are you anti-racist?”

I would argue that being anti-racist means refusing to perpetrate antiquated notions of race that can be traced back to slavery and refusing to be constrained by the systems of oppression that support White privilege.