MicroAggressions

Last week we celebrated 10 years of the boys living with us.  Next year we celebrate 10 years since the adoption but, one step at a time.  We had this picture done while we were in Faneuil Hall celebrating our 10 years.  First we went to Dick’s Last Resort (A very big hit for the boys) and then we had this caricature created.  Top left is Dareek (23), bottom left Deron (17), top right is Alan (16) and bottom right is DQ (21) and, of course, me and Bob in the middle.

Bob got to Faneuil Hall with Alan and Deron and had to wait for me to gather up Dareek and DQ.  Later when he got home he posted the following on FaceBook [minor editing took place]:

“If you want to know something about racism in America, hang out with a couple black teenagers in a mall area. Sunday Sharon Kelley Antia and I took our kids out for a 10 year anniversary lunch. We had to take two cars and I got to Boston's Faneuil Hall first and had some time to kill. After walking around a bit Deron, Alan and I ended up hanging in the shade in front of L’Attitude Boston Boutique.

Within a minute two gentlemen with bright blue shirts marked SECURITY stood in front of the three of us, eyeballing Deron. Annoyed, I spent the next ten minutes eyeballing the security guys who decided to move to my right, out of my direct line of sight, while still watching Deron. All of us were doing our own thing waiting for Sharon, Dareek and DQ.

During the time the security guys are conducting surveillance on Deron, a gentleman with a black tee shirt emblazoned with "Now is the time for revolution" in white bold type above a white circular logo in Arabic, leads a woman by the fingertips, who is dressed in black niqab with rectangular eye slit (aspect ratio 5.5-6:1), embroidered on the edge with white thread and wearing sandals with an iPhone (white with a curved back, which would be a 3G or 3GS 2009 vintage) videotaping everything in site, often turning to get 360 views with earphones in his ear and occasionally talking as if on the cell phone slowly walks past my family and the security guys.

Security guys stay focused on Deron and Alan.

A few minutes later I get the word that Sharon is around the corner and tell this to Deron and Alan ([in other words] I talk to the two black kids) The two security guys look at each other and move on.

We are all profiling our surroundings, biased in our ignorance, knowledge and experience.

Having been briefed in OpSec and the stages of a terrorist attack my observations are as biased as when a mall security guard sees in a couple black teenagers.

I would like to think that the difference between the security guard and myself is that I am aware of my bias.

But my acknowledging my bias might be an intellectual bias on my part.

This whole bias thing is complicated.

We all have biases, how our biases cloud our interactions and how we react based on our biases defines us as humans.”

I asked Deron if he had noticed the security guard eyeballing him and he shrugged it off.  Since I have known them our kids have experienced this type of bias.  When they first moved in the two older kids talked amongst themselves about how they would ‘have each other’s backs’ when the white kids picked fights with them.  (Fortunately that did not come to pass.)  Early on I remember going shopping with them on Moody St and Dareek and DQ came our of a store and told me they had been followed around, in my ignorance I assumed they must have been exaggerating. 

A couple years later I was at Fresh Pond in Cambridge with Deron and Alan, they were probably somewhere around 9 and 10.  I had to go into the bank so they went to the Game Stop next door.  When they came out of their own volition I knew something was up.  They said they didn’t know why but the manager had been following them around and then told them to leave.  Well any parent of a pre-teen knows there is more to the story.  And any parent of a black kid knows that it might not be childish mischief.  So in I went with the two boys in tow.  The manager looked at me, looked at the kids and asked if they were with me.  I said that yes, I was their mother and I wanted to know if there was a problem.  He assured me everything was fine and the boys were welcome to shop there.  I told him no, they would not be staying.  I should have confronted the man but it is one of many times I did not.

These events repeat themselves over an over again.  My kids are great at math but some of them struggle with classwork and hence one of them was in the lowest level math class.  One day when he was in seventh grade he told me ‘people say we are stupid’.  I sent the following email to the principal and the superintendent, among others. 

D said to me this morning, "is my math class a way of segregating us?" [I didn't know he knew the word segregate]

"People say we are stupid."

I [D] told X that I am in Section E math and he said "O I feel bad for you.  That is the stupid class".  "I [D] said, 'How do you know what problems the kids in this class?  How would you feel if you found out some of the kids have certain things going on and you called them stupid?'"  I [Sharon] asked, what his response was and D said, "he didn't say anything else".

 I asked who says this class is for stupid kids and he said "everyone, everyone says this class is for kids that are stupid".  "I am not any more stupid than some of the kids.  I am smarter in social studies than some kids, why don't those kids have to be in a special class"?

"I don't understand what the point is.  They put is in a separate class.  Why do they do that?  It is like they are trying to say we are stupid.  Everyone says it".

I told him I was proud of his response to X.  I also told him that going forward whenever he hears anything along those lines he would be well advised to excuse himself from wherever he is and go tell someone, either the principal, Claudia, LaToya, someone that he is comfortable telling this too.  Identify one person and go to them each and every time he hears this.

Meanwhile, this is a burden he should not have to bear.

This is the principal’s response to D’s comments, and I quote,”

[D’s] comments point to two issues -- first that we have leveled math and second that our students have a culture right now where it's acceptable to be mean to each other.

Period, that was the extent of her response.  In other words, deal with it.

Just recently Deron at 17 sometimes finds himself with his friends driving around late (10 pm) at night.  He says they frequently get pulled over by the police.  It always goes smoothly and he does not seem bothered by it.  I am just grateful it goes smooth and pray it continues that way.  I suspect Michael Brown's parents use to say the same prayer.

Mcroaggression is a term I learned in grad school.  According to Wikipedia, “Sue et al. (2007) describe microaggressions as, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people.”  Each individual incident in and of itself is bearable, put them together time after time and it can be too much.

It exists.  Here in our community.  Don’t kid yourself.  But like Bob wrote, if we acknowledge it, if we attempt to deal with it and understand it, maybe we can chip away at it.  Just a little at a time.

Notes from our Conversation on the Environment

What, if anything can we as individuals do about the environment?

We had our first community conversation this week in Lincoln.  We were a small group, all from Lincoln but we were fortunate to have a representative from http://greeninglincoln.org join us.  They are a fabulous local resource. We had a lively and interesting conversation and it was a lot of fun!  For the most part we tried to keep focused on our main topic and really just sort of list out ideas of ways we can have an impact.  Here is what we came up with: 

·      Drive the speed limit.  One of our members said that driving the speed limit or less has a major impact on gas consumption.   According to http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.jsp by observing the speed limit we will use 33% less gas at highway speeds and 5% less around  town.  That's like saving about $0.10 to $0.35 per gallon.  At 15 gallons of gas a week that would be a savings of $78 to $273 a year.

·      MassSave – having them in to conduct a free energy audit can save loads of money.  One person just had them in last month and got two new water saving shower-heads and 20 or so energy efficient light bulbs for free.  In addition, through MassSave she was able to get her entire house insulated at a fraction of the cost due to a government supplement.

o   From the MASSSave website “ Each incandescent bulb you replace with an ENERGY STAR certified light bulb will save you about $10 in energy costs each year.

§  10$*20bulbs=$200/year in savings just on light bulbs.

§  Rebates available at MassSave sight: http://www.masssave.com/residential/mass-energy-rebate

§  You could qualify (and we did) for an instant insulation incentive worth 75% up to $2,000 on the cost of approved insulation improvements.

·      One person has barely needed to use oil to heat her house for the last two years since she installed a pellet stove.  Easy to use, clean, green and inexpensive, great combination!

·      One person has so many trees he does not require air conditioning in his house!

·      While it is great that Lincoln’s sidewalks are bike friendly, it would be wonderful if we had them all along 117.  There are a couple places where they are missing.  It would also be nice to have bike lanes in and between Lincoln and Waltham.

·      The town of Lincoln has an Infra-Red camera that Lincolnites can use for free.  Using this camera we can identify air leaks around windows etc.

·      Lincoln also has a Kill-A-Watt meter we can use.  Using this tool we can measure how much energy our various electrical devices, appliances etc use and, well, I guess we could consult our friend the internet to determine if the results are within a normal range.

·      One person is considering finishing her driveway and is considering using some kind of permeable material instead of the usual blacktop material.  This would allow water to permeate the surface in addition to draining off the sides.

·      One of us (me) has been using an electric lawnmower with great success for years.  Gas mowers are unregulated and have been determined to be a major carbon contributor.

o   I use a Neuton http://www.neutonpower.com.  Any problems, call them up, they send the part right away, easy to replace.  Super easy to use.

·      All of us are walkers and grateful to live in such a walk-able town.  Would be nice to have some more ‘destinations’ such as little mini parks or benches strategically located that we could walk to and meet and chat with a friend.

·      Lincoln has received a grant to fund changing the street lights to LEDs.

·      Solar energy, lots to talk about there.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could spread that program out.  Lincoln has received grants to fund solar power at the landfill and at the police and firestation.  There are some ongoing conversations among the Green Lincoln people about how to expand Lincoln’s Solar power.

Our next Community Conversation will be 7 pm August 26 at the Waltham Public Library.  The topic will be “How can we both remove the stigma and address the unmet mental health needs of so many among us?”  Hope more than three of us show up this time!!!

Oppression happens everywhere

“The fact of the matter is that oppression happens everywhere.”

I heard that statement on NPR this morning.  Oppression happens everywhere.  A couple days ago a friend of mine posted an old interview with  Sister Souljah on FaceBook in which she said, in part, ""When white people have an issue they go out in the 100s of thousands to protest. Where is the outcry of white people against racist whites? It is nonexistent. Where are the "good" white people? I WOULD LIKE TOO MEET THEM!""  She also said,  “You can say no, but you haven't lived this life”.

What am I supposed to do with that?  What are we supposed to do with that?

It is true that I have not ‘lived that life’.  It is true that I do not cry out about racism. I don’t voice my outrage about anything really, about mental health disparity, women's rights, the way we treat our veterans, homelessness, the state of our prison system or the state of our environment.  I could go on.   Maybe I should be voicing my outrage.  Many think I should, think ‘we’ should collectively voice our outrage.

I do try to quietly do what I can to affect change.  I have tried to raise my children to be respectful of all and to have compassion for everyone rich or poor, black or white.  What else should I do?  Should I take to the streets?  Write a letter to the editor?  What can and what should I/we do to make change?

What happened in Ferguson but for the grace of God could easily happen here.  I think, I hope, we would not have a military style response from the police but the shooting that happened could happen anywhere.  In fact it does happen here, in the streets of Boston almost every night.  Not, thank God, police shooting people every night but it is not uncommon to hear about yet another young black man or boy being shot in the streets.  2014 and this is our reality.    

What can we do?  One thing that would help is to change the makeup of the teaching staff we have in our schools.  For sure Lincoln, Waltham and Lincoln Sudbury have made efforts to add more diversity to their staffs but there is a long way to go.  Lincoln students are about 60% white and the teaching staff is 95% white.  Slightly less than 50% of Waltham students are white and the teaching staff is almost 90% white.  If we want to teach our kids how to live in a diverse community, wouldn’t making sure they are educated in a diverse environment be a good first step? Is that one place I should be voicing my outrage?

Is this something ‘we’ collectively should be talking about if we want to identify steps we can take in our community to combat oppression in its many forms?

Community Conversations

In the upcoming weeks I will host several Community Conversations.  These are intended to be opportunities for community members to come together to voice their thoughts on a variety of subjects.  The goal of the meetings will be simple, to listen and learn.  That is it; listen to what our neighbors have to say and try to understand their perspective.  We may agree, we may not, but if we do this right, we will leave with a better understanding of a variety of views on a variety of topics.  And maybe we will find some common ground.  At some point, in the hopefully not to distant future, maybe we will come to a point where enough of us agree on a strategy to help move us forward, but for now, let's work on understanding the issues.

At this time I have four sessions scheduled.  Two will be at the Lincoln Public Library and two at the Waltham Public Library.  If there is interest I will schedule more conversations in the future.

Wednesday August 20, 2014, 7 – 8:30 PM at the Lincoln Public Library

            What can we as individuals do about the environment that will really make a difference?

Tuesday August 26, 2014, 7 – 8:30 PM at the Waltham Public Library

            How can we both remove the stigma and address the unmet mental health needs of so many among us?

Wednesday September 10, 2014, 7 – 8:30 PM at the Waltham Public Library

            How can we improve services for our aging population?

Saturday September 13, 2014, 100 – 11;30 AM at the Lincoln Public Library

            How can we revitalize the economy and put more people with a variety of abilities to work?

In order to figure out what topics to begin with, I conducted a small survey of my acquaintances to see what would be of the most interest to people.  Overall, the top vote getters were:

1) Addressing mental health issues (23/34)

2) The environment (22/34) 

3) The economy (20/34). 

When I broke the numbers down by Lincoln and Waltham the results change a little.  
 Lincoln’s preferences are:

1) The environment (11/15)

2) Mental health (10/15)

3) The economy (9/15)

Waltham folks preferred:

1) Tie between mental health and issues related to aging (9/11)

2) Tie between MCAS and immigration (8/11).

Armed with the results of my survey, I  scheduled the Community Conversations listed above.

  

Personally, I would like to talk about all of the topics and, happily, there are at least some people that find each one interesting as well.  Immigration and MCAS would both be great topics to discuss next, as would Veterans benefits and Massport and Hanscom.  And, one person would like to discuss “Basic survival....for me....How can we make Lincoln affordable so we don't have to move out at some point.”  My guess is this applies to people in Waltham and many other communities as well.  I would love to fold that into a conversation, what can we as citizens/individuals do to make aging in our own homes tenable?  It is abhorrent that we should live our lives, raise our families in a community and be forced to move out due to financial constraints. 

I hope people will be willing to come to one or more of these conversations.  No need to be an expert or have a ‘solution’; either an interest in the subject or an interest in getting to know others in our community will be plenty.

Doing Well and Doing Good

Cannot believe how excited I am about what is happening at Market Basket.  The idea that the people are rising up in support of the business values they deem important and fighting against corporate America is just thrilling.  I have nothing against corporate America, I think it is a fabulous entity.  But really, corporations are just that, entities, regardless of what the Supreme Court ruled, corporations are not people and they cannot replace the heart of our country.  That belongs to the People.

And then I saw this article by Leon Neyfakh in the Boston Globe on Sunday and my heart soured even further.  http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/08/02/shareholder-value-bad-for-business/3O4MYxjWgmJ2DOPwkeYxyN/story.html  He quotes liberally from "Redefining the Corporation" by Boston University Professor Emeritus James Post on the history of corporations in America.  According to Post, up until the 1970's corporations were primarily concerned about "stakeholder value" as opposed to current emphasis on "shareholder value".  There is a very distinct difference between the two.  

By focusing as they currently do on shareholder value, corporations have a single minded focus on increasing the profits of their stockholders.  Every decision they make is based on whether or not the decision will increase their bottom line.  That is what has been preached and practiced since the mid 70's.  Prior to that things were vastly different.

'Back in the day', corporations were focused on providing a service to the community.  The stakeholders they served were everyone that had a vested interest.  That included their employees, their customers, their suppliers, their neighbors and their community at large.  That is a vastly different focus.  If a corporation is consumed with serving the community as opposed to the owners it may well operate in a more civic minded manner.  It would be concerned that its employees make a living wage, that it operates in a manner that is respectful of the environment, it might help support community resources that benefit the community at large and collaborate with its suppliers, employees and customers to ensure everyone's needs are being met.

Think how different our lives would be if more corporations invested in their stakeholders.  Sure it is nice to amass more and more zeros in the bank account but at some point, how many zeros are really necessary to prove one's worth?  Wouldn't it be nice to know that everyone was getting an adequate piece of the pie?  That the business you are running is not only generating a profit for the owners but is also contributing to society in a manner that is to the benefit of all?  Our unemployed, underemployed and employed but underpaid could all rise up in the ranks.  Our streets, education system, environment all could benefit from the support of the many corporation that depend on them for the very wealth they generate.

We have many modern day examples of this with Market Basket under the leadership of Arthur T. Demoulas being a prime example.  Clover, the restaurant profiled in Sunday's Boston Globe magazine is another.  It is clearly very 'doable' to both do well and do good when running a business.  Kudos to Market Basket employees and customers for standing up for what they believe in.  More of us might consider the same.

Engaging our Youth

Last week as I met three young men from Waltham.  We got to talking and I was impressed with how knowledgeable they are about what is going on around us.  They had energy and enthusiasm and a willingness to engage in discussion about the community they are growing up to inherit.

Unfortunately they felt disenfranchised and discouraged at what they see as bleak prospects for the future.  It was sad to hear how checked out these young men are, kids really, in their early twenties.  One of them is supporting his mother and his little sister, another feels targeted by the local police for behavior he use to engage in and for the appearance he has carefully cultivated while the third was hesitant to be pulled to far into the conversation.  It was interesting and encouraging to listen to them expound on their world but it was frustrating to hear them denigrate what they see before them.  They did not feel as though they have a voice or as though there is anything they can do to impact their future.

I talked with them at length about the fact that they are the future.  That if they are not interested in taking part, who will?  Who do they think should be responsible for determining their future?  I suggested to the young man with the police issue that it is on him to change his reputation.  If he wants to present as a long-haired, bearded guy that is perfectly fine but given he has a reputation as a punk (his word) it is on him to prove that he no longer is.  I asked all of them what effort they are making to be heard.  Were they taking part in anything in their community to try to affect change? No, they are not even registered to vote because ‘it won’t make a difference’.  I suggested that taking that attitude was indeed making a difference but it might not be the difference they profess to hope for.  They shifted their feet and acknowledged the point.

They are concerned about the costs of college and coming out on the other side with a degree and a lifetime of debt.  It was hard not to sympathize with that concern but I suggested they would make more progress finding a solution if they took part in seeking one.  I told them it is not ‘somebody else’s job’ to pave the way for them, it is completely on them and they can do something about it or not, that is what a free country allows for.  They are not and should not be fighting this battle by themselves but these are really bright kids!  Sitting around griping about it hasn’t gotten them anywhere and maybe they need to take another look at their approach to the future.  By the end of our talk one, and maybe two, of them was interested in attending one of my community conversations.  I hope they come!  Our society is dependent on all of working together for the benefit of all. 

More on #communityconverstations in Lincoln and Waltham coming soon

Immigrants on our Doorstep

 This morning I participated in a rally in Orleans MA in support of bringing immigrant children to Cape Cod.    This is but one of many divisive issues we face here in Massachusetts and in the United States.  We have so many children and adults here that are in dire need of help.  We have streets in need of attention, the environment in need of attention, we have vets that need and deserve care and health care costs out of control.  Why bring in more people in need.  I can understand the perspective of those that are on ‘the other side of this issue.

On the other hand, how can we turn kids away when they show up on our doorstep?  That is not to say we have not done that before, we just need to look back to the holocaust but I think we are better than that now.  I, for one, do not want to look back one day and wonder why nobody took care of these kids.  These kids are just kids, they could be my kids or your kids.  I cannot even imagine what they have been through to get here our how much pain and anguish their parent’s felt sending them.  That is love.  That is trust in the United States to do the right thing.

Not that the US has earned the trust.  We in the US are at least partly responsible for the troubles these families are facing.  We supported the economy that ultimately collapsed after we unceremoniously pulled out without taking the time to ensure they were able to carry on without us.  We supplied many of the weapons that are being used by neighbors to kill neighbors and to subordinate kids to do their bidding and join their gangs.  But still they are desperate enough to entrust us with the care of their children.

I get that this is not an easy choice.  I lament the fact that our children and people in need are not getting the services they require.  But I could no sooner close the door on these kids than I could if they were knocking on my front door.  These are kids! These are kids that will be subjected to rape, murder, gang violence and a life of abject poverty if we do not step up and help them.  We have to be better than that.