Tag Archives: DEI

Apr 19 2021
leadership

How Can My Organization Attract and Retain Diverse Staff?

Photo by pxhere.com, Creative Commons License.

This is a question I’ve been asked often both as a consultant and as a professional colleague. 

I know that some people want to hear concrete, easy-to-implement answers, like “Use this program designed by someone who’s never set foot in your organization,” “Advertise here,” or “Do these three harm-reduction protocols that assume to know what harm you’re causing and assume anything they haven’t foreseen is irrelevant,” but, until you know why you’re having trouble attracting diverse applicants and retaining the diverse staff you hire, it’s all guesswork. 

The real answer is: ASK THEM. Believe them when they tell you what’s wrong. Then ACT on it. You must then assess your progress over time, which includes, of course, restarting the cycle with ASK THEM. This is an oversimplified overview, of course. The complexity of these issues is why there’s an entire profession around JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) work. But understanding the basic steps will help you to lead your organization to JEDI mastery. 

Let’s start by breaking down what I mean by “ASK THEM.”

“Ask them” doesn’t mean management walking up to employees in the break room and saying, “Kim, you’re Black! Why don’t more Black people want to work here?” When you’re seeking to learn more about why your organization struggles to retain BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQ+, and (in many places) female staff, your data gathering must both FEEL safe and BE safe for your employees. 

While we’re at a cultural moment in which equity in the workplace is being more closely examined, there is still a very real lack of safety around speaking openly about racism, sexism, and other types of bigotry and discrimination in the workplace. Although technically illegal, retaliation is common. For example, 72% of people who report sexual harassment in the workplace face retaliation. 

Retaliation. The fear of retaliation is intense and very justified. Most employees in your organization who are BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQ+, or female witnessed retaliation or experienced it firsthand before they came to your organization. Retaliation works as intended– it creates a cultural climate of fear around speaking honestly about workplace experiences. Retaliation is easy to excuse and difficult to prove, leaving employees very little recourse. Three of the most common types of retaliation are poor performance evaluations, hostile work environment, and blackballing. 

Performance reviews are so unproductive, ROI-negative, and easy to manipulate that many companies, such as GE, Adobe, and Deloitte, have just eliminated them completely. The ease with which they can be manipulated or even falsified make them perhaps the most common form of retaliation. It takes very little effort to make a poor performance eval appear well-earned by exaggerating flaws and minimizing achievements, giving employees very little recourse. A retaliatory performance eval has the added bonus of justifying future retaliatory actions such as demotion or even termination. 

Creating a (more) hostile work environment is depressingly common and just as difficult to prove. Each individual instance is minor, and complaining about them seems petty, but the hostility is very, very real and it adds up quickly. Gaslighting is a common tactic that hides behind “a difference of opinion.” There’s nothing quite like watching the white men in an organization close ranks and insist that women of color on staff are “exaggerating” about workplace racism and sexism, yet I saw it with my own eyes at an organization that advertises itself as focused on social justice. 

Blackballing is the ultimate threat. While technically illegal, it’s very common for former employers to tell prospective future employers that someone who spoke out about issues in the workplace is a “troublemaker,” “toxic,” “not a team player.” This often takes the form of words that appear to be race-neutral but are so commonly used to refer to Black people that they have become racially coded, such as “angry,” “didn’t fit corporate culture,” and “unprofessional.” Again, illegal but very common. 

I know what you’re thinking– “But I would never do any of those! My staff can trust me! I’m ready to do the work.” Even if that’s true, your staff will never give you the whole truth until you’ve proven to them that you’re trustworthy and ready. I’ve personally witnessed white men in upper management claim they were “ready,” then retaliate viciously against every single person who spoke out. And while you may know to the core of your being that you would never do such a thing, the fear that comes from having seen it elsewhere– over and over and over– is very real, and too great to ask your staff to overcome before the work begins and they see you being reliably awesome. 

Another way marginalized workers will be more likely to trust you is when they see you refusing to settle for compliance-based assessments of your organization’s JEDI progress. 

Compliance-Based Assessments. Don’t mistake compliance with the law and lack of EEOC complaints for success. This is a common roadblock for organizations that see JEDI as an aspect of HR. Most workplaces that experience difficulties attracting and retaining diverse staff are (at least on paper) compliant with the law. Your organization can be completely compliant with the law and still be a miserable place to work for women, BIPOC, disabled people, trans people, fat people, non-Christians, and anyone who isn’t in your corporate culture “in group.” If you want to attract and retain diverse staff, you must do more than refrain from deliberately mistreating them. 

A lack of formal complaints is as far from JEDI success as passing the DMV driving test is from qualifying for the Isle of Man TT. Your organization may have many serious issues and yet have never received a formal complaint. Most instances of marginalization and bigotry in the workplace are extremely difficult to prove, and the formal complaint process is often expensive, onerous, intimidating, and timebound. Go look at the EEOC site— it’s a wonder any complaints are filed at all. Additionally, it’s well known that EEOC complaints are usually more trouble than they’re worth; 82% of workers who reported cases of discrimination in the past decade received no relief whatsoever. And of course fear of retaliation is huge here as well. JEDI success is not about avoiding lawsuits. It’s about making your organization a welcoming place for all types of workers, enabling you to attract and retain the best of the best in all your hires, not just the best out of one limited demographic. Which brings us back to:

“ASK THEM.” The first step in attracting and retaining a diverse workforce is identifying your organization’s strengths and growth areas by crafting effective, robust data gathering that captures both quantitative and qualitative data and analyzes that data effectively. You’ll also need longitudinal data gathering strategies to assess progress over time. 

To make data gathering both safe and effective, you need a multilayered approach, and I strongly recommend bringing in a JEDI specialist to guide you through the process of data gathering and data analysis. 

Quantitative data. A lot of organizations limit themselves to the most basic quantitative data gathering– how many people of certain identities are on staff. This is the first step, not an effective approach to data gathering in and of itself. 

One mistake I’ve seen people make with data analysis is to use incomplete employment data. I was recently asked for my opinion about attracting and retaining a diverse workforce for a large local business. The data I was given was just a table showing staff diversity data over time. A fictionalized example: 

2012: 

  • 15% Latinx workers
  • 4% Black workers
  • 6% Asian workers
  • 11% women

2017: 

  • 18% Latinx workers
  • 8% Black workers
  • 6% Asian workers
  • 12% women  

It looks like this fictional business is on the right track, right? Well, maybe not. How many of the original staff from 2012 are part of the 2017 staff? Are they hiring BIPOC and women workers only to see them leave within 2-3 years? If so, why are they leaving? The area in which the business is located is currently 25% Black, 27% Latinx, 15% Asian, and, of course, 52% female. Why are they so underrepresented at this company? Is the (slightly) increased representation due to JEDI initiatives they’ve put in place, a change in demographics in the area, or something else? Why haven’t they gathered any data on disabled workers? Trans/enby/genderqueer workers? Native workers? And those questions just scratch the surface of the data that needs to be gathered. There was simply no answer to the question they were asking without deepening the quantitative data gathering and beginning robust qualitative data gathering. 

Qualitative data. Quantitative data is the what; qualitative data is the why. Without identifying the specific issues at your organization– a process that will only be successful if your workforce is empowered to speak freely, without fear of retaliation no matter how misplaced you believe that fear is— your quantitative data will be essentially useless. Qualitative data gathering can take many different forms, and this is where a JEDI specialist will be critical. You only get answers to the questions you ask, and a JEDI specialist will be able to determine which questions your organization needs to ask. Additionally, there must be an impenetrable layer of anonymity in qualitative data gathering. Employees need to know that they will be protected from retaliation. Anonymity is just the first step; BIPOC workers often fear retaliation against all BIPOC on staff, and for very good reason. Fragility, resistance, defensiveness, gaslighting, and retaliation are all very common responses from management when issues in their workplace are identified, which is why “believe them” is the critical next step. 

The hard reality is that it’s very difficult for any of us to examine how we’ve contributed to a workplace that’s uncomfortable for diverse workers. Most people in management, especially upper-level management, have many robust areas of privilege and the power to act on that privilege in harmful ways, even unknowingly. Everyone with privilege– and we all have areas of marginalization and areas of privilege in our intersectional identities– has contributed to and benefitted from systems of marginalization and oppression. We all have work to do.

There are concrete benefits to addressing these issues. A diverse workforce that feels valued and heard is a more productive workforce, a workforce with loyalty to you and your organization, a workforce that will delight clients and be brand ambassadors for you wherever they go. But most importantly, working for greater equity in your organization is the right thing to do.

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Sep 18 2020
Culture, education

Is Trump Planting Undercover FBI Agents in Schools?

I’ve been job hunting for months. As someone with many years of teaching experience under my belt, I have alerts set for education-related positions on several job sites. The entire time I’ve been searching, I’ve been seeing job postings from the FBI looking for “experienced teachers.” Here’s a screenshot of an ad I found on LinkedIn in June. It says they’re “no longer accepting applications,” but this same ad has been reposted many times targeting cities all over the US. 

A LinkedIn job posting from the FBI that advertises for "Special Agent: Education/Teaching." The body of the ad says the FBI is looking for people "with expertise in education and teaching."

Here are a few screenshots from LinkedIn that show some of the breadth of the FBI recruitment of teachers:

The nest three pictures are all screenshots of LinkedIn listings. There are twelve job postings in all; all from the FBI. Nine are for "Special Agent: Education/Teaching" and three are for "Special Agent."

There are many more. The job posts labeled “Special Agent” list “EDUCATION/TEACHING” as a special skill for which they’re specifically recruiting. 

Back in June, I posted to my personal social media accounts about this, speculating that the FBI was planning to put undercover operatives in American classrooms to spy on educators who were teaching things the GOP calls “liberal indoctrination,” such as climate science, ethnic studies, critical race theory, race-based demographics, and history that centers the experience of BIPOC (such as the 1619 Project or discussions of the genocide of Native peoples). In June, this was just speculation.

Well, the other shoe has dropped. Now we have this:

Donald Trump tweets an article from Breitbart titled, "Trump Orders Purge os 'Critical Race Theory' from Federal Agencies" and comments, "This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue." Russ Vought retweets Trump's Tweet,. commenting, "Last week Donald Trump asked people to report any sightings of Critical Race Theory 'training.' We have been working with agencies to identify un-American trainings. We have set up an email to report these sightings. These must be stopped!" Vought supplies the email address underneath.

Trump and Russ Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, are, astonishingly, urging Americans to report other Americans for “un-American” activity. Once again, the US Government is demanding that Americans “name names” in order to ruin the careers and lives of fellow Americans. Joseph McCarthy lives. 

A lot of people confuse McCarthy with the House Un-American Activities Committee of a few years prior. While McCarthy didn’t run the HUAC, its focus on rooting out “Communist infiltration” and its abusive tactics are all part of what we now call “the McCarthy era.” McCarthy campaigned for his Senate seat on paranoid delusions of a Deep State, supposedly made up of Communists who had “infiltrated” the government and were attempting to destroy it from within. Sound familiar?

Once in the Senate, Joseph McCarthy became more insistent that “Communists” had “infiltrated” the US government. He forced hundreds of loyal Americans into hearings that were notoriously insulting and hostile. All the Democrats on his committee resigned, and, eventually, bit by bit, McCarthy lost Republican support as well, leaving the hearings in the hands of himself and his attack dog, Roy Cohn. 

In 1954, they decided to take on the US Army, accusing it of being controlled by their imaginary Communist Deep State. The Army-McCarthy hearings ended, along with McCarthy’s public support and career, with Army attorney Joseph Welch’s immortal words, “Have you no sense of decency?” McCarthy died just three years later, but Roy Cohn returned to New York, where he eventually took on a protegé– Donald Trump. 

Two black and white pictures of Donald Trump abd Roy Cohn. In the top image, Trump speaks into several press microphones as Cohn looks on. In the second, Trump and Cohn wear tuxedos and stand with former NYC mayor Ed Koch.
Donald Trump with Roy Cohn (and, in the second image, Ed Koch.) (Photo: “El diablo que enseñó a golpear a Trump El presidente resucita la figura de su mentor y compañero de juergas, Roy Cohn, inquisidor mcCarthista y abogado de mafiosos” by rupertomiller@hotmail, Creative Commons license.)

Trump, then in his 30s, was (for once in his life) a good student. Now, 40 years later, Trump has used what he learned from Cohn and taken the tactics of McCarthy’s Red Scare to create his own Red Hat Scare. The Office of Management and Budget has provided a handy email address to use to turn your neighbors and coworkers in for ”any sightings of critical race theory trainings” because Trump has decided that discussions of racism are “un-American” activities. 

How is Trump defining “un-American”? The average American has no idea what “critical race theory” is, so Trump’s relentless lies about it provide the definition. Trump has attacked anything that mentions white privilege or systemic racism, anything supportive of protests for racial justice, and anything that says the words “Black lives matter.” He has, after years of these attacks, variously referred to anything related to the struggle for racial justice  as “Antifa,” “the radical left,” and, now, “critical race theory.” He clearly thinks “critical” means “to criticize” rather than “to think critically,” and assumes the fight for racial justice is an attack on white people– specifically, on him. 

A young Black woman with long, wavy hair parted in the middle, stands at a protest, wearing a face mask and holding a sign that says: "AM I NEXT? Police killings violate my right to due process! The Death Penalty on the streets!"
A protester in Washington, DC. (Photo: “George Floyd Black Lives Matter Protest, 14th & U Streets, 5/29/20 [Explored]” by Geoff Livingston, Creative Commons license)

The Trump Administration has imagined a nefarious purpose for any type of education or training around race, and is instructing its cult followers to “report” any “sighting” of it in “Federal Agencies.” And while it’s comforting to assume Trump means in his own administration only by “Federal Agencies,” remember that he has already said that schools and universities that teach “critical race theory” will be cut off from federal funding, so he has already very much included them in this. They’re clearly seeing public education as a “Federal Agency,” and any kind of education as a potentially “un-American training.” Just yesterday, the Department of Education announced it is “investigating” Princeton University– a private university– just for saying publicly that systemic racism exists. Princeton’s admission that systemic racism exists on campus is being weaponized against them in a clear attempt by the Trump Administration to bully educators and intimidate us from discussing the realities of systemic racism. 

And the FBI has been trying to recruit experienced educators for months. 

Are there undercover FBI agents currently placed in schools and universities? Is this what Vought means by “working with other agencies”– like the FBI– to “identify un-American trainings”? 

In addition to the Princeton announcement yesterday, Trump once again directly targeted schools for “un-American” education, and he announced the formation of a “national commission to promote patriotic education.” How long will it be before he sends DeVos or even Barr to investigate an HBCU? Or the University of Chicago’s Race & Ethnic Studies Department? Or the New York Public School District? 

Since nearly anything can be termed “un-American trainings,” this is clearly a weapon used to silence discussions of race in America. Past experience teaches us that any weapon Trump has will be used in service to his personal grievances, and that both William Barr and the Senate GOP will enable every corrupt, horrific abuse he cares to commit. 

Whether there are undercover FBI agents placed to surveil schools and universities or not, make no mistake: This is about targeting and silencing BIPOC people, especially Black people, and their allies. Trump isn’t satisfied gassing, shooting, or disappearing protesters for racial justice; he’s not satisfied with the prospect of using a supervillain-style heat ray against them. Now he wants to prevent us from even discussing racism.  

A photo of a granite monument carbed with, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; of abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment to the US Constitution, 15 December 1791."
Photo: “First Amendment to the US Constitution” by elPadawan, Creative Commons license

Think about this email address and the Trump Administration’s urging that the public “report” any “un-American trainings” to the Office of Management and Budget. 

What will the Office of Management and Budget be doing with a report that Ms. Kennedy taught “critical race theory” in her 10th grade English class by having students read a chapter from Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race? What will the Office of Management and Budget be doing with a report that Dr. Abiola, Chair of the Department of Chemistry, required his department to do a day-long retreat on anti-racist pedagogy? What will the Office of Management and Budget be doing with the fact that nearly every university in the nation has an ethnic studies department? 

And what will the Office of Management and Budget be doing with the information that schools and universities won’t begin pretending that white privilege and systemic racism do not exist just because Trump demands it? Does Trump imagine he can intimidate HBCUs into lying about the lived experience of their faculty and students? Does Trump think we will all just set aside the mountain of data we have on these topics because he said so?

Trump will not win this fight. 

More Americans believe racial and ethnic discrimination is a major problem in America than support Donald Trump. 

More Americans support Black Lives Matter than support Donald Trump. 

Trump is dreaming if he thinks ethnic studies courses can be bullied out of existence. In 2017, Mike Pence’s own home state of Indiana passed a law requiring all Indiana high schools to offer an ethnic studies course at least once a year.

Trump. Will. Not. Win. This. Fight. 

Trump does not get to define “un-American.” We will not sit silently by while Trump defines “un-American” as “BIPOC.” We will not sit silently by while Trump demands punishment for BIPOC speaking out about the truth of their lives. 

Pull your [ALLEGED, ugh] undercover FBI agents out of our schools and universities, Don. 

We will not sit silently by while Trump tries to force this nation into a new era of McCarthyism. 

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Sep 09 2020
1 Comment
Culture, Film, Theatre

Protect Historically Accurate Casting

A black-and-white drawing of a Black man, barefoot and wearing a short white belted tunic, blowing on a musical instrument that looks like a shofar to me. He's carrying a tall staff and stands among flowers. He has a piece of cloth tied around his head that blows in the breeze around him.
Detail from the Kalender of the Shepherdes, 1490s, Paris

Well, they’re at it again! This time they want to take away our precious American and European heritage with their aggressively political casting. The snowflakes are whining about diversity (as usual). They’re insisting that historical films, TV shows, and plays be cast with no regard to historical accuracy.

They’re insisting that shows about Western history be cast with all white actors.

All jokes aside, whatever era in western history in which your production is set, I assure you that people of color were there. “Historical accuracy” is not an excuse for turning away BIPOC actors; in fact, historical accuracy should compel you to cast them.

The reason people believe there were no BIPOC in certain historical eras is because there are so few BIPOC in historical plays, films, and TV shows. Refusing to cast BIPOC, or relegating them to servant roles or stereotypes, just shows the world that the only dramaturgy you’ve done is on Netflix.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Cheddar Man. The earliest skeletal remains that have been found intact in England belong to “Cheddar Man,” a mesolithic skeleton found in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset. DNA testing revealed that he had dark skin and blue eyes. Cheddar Man lived 10,000 years ago. White skin only developed about 8000 years ago, almost certainly a mutation that was likely genetically successful due to its increased ability to absorb vitamin D in areas of the world with less sunshine. Yes, white people: If Northern Europe had more sunshine, we would all still have dark skin.

Roman-occupied Britain. Many people of African descent came to Britain as Romans with the occupation. Two notable examples of the archaeological evidence are the Beachy Head Lady and the wealthy Ivory Bangle Lady.

A painting of the face of a young Black woman facing outward.
A reconstructed image of the beautiful and wealthy “Ivory Bangle Lady.” Wikipedia has images of the grave goods with which she was buried, including a hand mirror (!!!) and a blue glass jar in addition to the eponymous ivory bangles and more jewelry.

The Knights of the Round Table. One of the Knights of the Round Table was Black– Sir Morien. In the tale of Sir Morien, written in Middle Dutch in the 13th century, Sir Morien is described repeatedly as “black” of skin and hair, and repeatedly called “the Moor.” Morien’s praises are sung throughout the tale as one would expect from the genre; he’s as skilled a fighter as Lancelot, handsome, brave, and, although young, taller than all the other Knights of the Round Table. In the tale, Sir Morien is searching for his father, Sir Aglavale, who had pledged himself to Morien’s mother, an unnamed Moorish princess, and then disappeared before Morien was born. Eventually Morien locates Aglavale, who returns with him, accompanied by Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain, to “the Moorish lands” to wed Sir Morien’s mother. No one seems to find anything unusual about white Sir Aglavale marrying a Black Moorish woman in a tale written in 13th century Europe.

The head of a Black man wearing a chain mail coif. The statue's nose is slightly damaged.
Detail of a statue thought to be Sir Morien, brought to Magdenburg Dom and called Saint Maurice– also Black— in the 1220s.

Feirefiz. Another Arthurian legend written in 13th century Europe is Parzival, written in Middle High German by Wolfram von Eschenbach, in which the main character, Parzival, has a Black half-brother, Feirefiz. Feirefiz and Parzival share a white father, Gahmuret, but Feirefiz’s mother is Belacane, queen of the fictional Moorish nation of Zazamanc. Feirefiz travels to Europe with a huge Saracen army to find his father, but meets his brother instead. Feirefiz cannot see the Grail because he’s not a Christian, but only agrees to convert after determining it will help him “in love.” He marries the Grail bearer, Repanse de Schoye.

It’s not at all surprising that these 13th century Europeans would be familiar with Moors. Why?

Al-Andalus. Most of the Iberian Peninsula, which now comprises both Spain and Portugal, as well as a bit of southern France, had already been under Moorish rule for 500 years by the time the tale of Sir Morien was written. The Moorish Kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula was called “Al-Andalus.” Portugal regained its independence in the mid-13th century, but most of Spain would continue to be under Moorish rule for another 200 years. For seven hundred years, most of the Iberian Peninsula and a slice of southern France were ruled by Muslim Moors. And before you jump in to claim that these were all light-skinned Amizigh, the art of the period begs to differ, showing a range of skin tones that include both light-skinned people and people who are unmistakeably Black.

Four Asian archers in armor, all facing to one side as they fire arrows at an unseen enemy.
Mongol archers painted in 1305 by Rashid al-Din.

The Mongol Invasion of Europe. This is a special valentine for the Witcher fanboys LIVID at the suggestion that Witcher 3 was too white, and LIVID that the Netflix series cast a few BIPOC actors: The Mongol Invasion of Europe. The Mongols were all over Eastern Europe in the 13th century including Poland, so your “Witcher is set in medieval Poland so diversity is solely political and unrealistic” argument dies in the dust, if it’s even still alive after everyone asked you where elves and giant spider monsters were in medieval Poland. Also for the Witcher crew: Black Madonnas.

Left: The Virgin Mary holds the baby Jesus, who raises his hand in blessing. Both Mary and Jesus have Black skin and hair. Mary holds a scepter in her right hand, and both are wearing golden crowns and golden robes. Right: The same image, but both Mary and Jesus have been repainted to look like white people.
The famous Black Madonna of Chartes Cathedral was repainted white in a controversial 2014 restoration. Most Black Madonnas have been left intact, apart from a few that were repainted in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Black Madonnas of Europe. Hundreds of medieval European paintings and statues depict the Madonna and child with dark skin. One of the most famous is the Madonna of Częstochowa in Poland. Starting in the early 19th century, white people began strenuously working to “prove” that the Black Madonnas were not “intentionally” Black, an activity that continues to this day. Wikipedia flatly states that there is a “wide consensus” among scholars that the dark skin was “unintentional.” Apart from the obvious– no, there is nothing like a “wide consensus”– assumptions such as “Mary must conform to a post-medieval definition of ‘white’ to have meaning to medieval European Catholics” is preposterous. Many of the Black Madonnas are reputed to have been painted by St. Luke himself as he sat with Mary. Whether or not this is true is far less important than the fact that medieval European Catholics believed it, and venerated their Black Madonnas as faithful depictions of the Virgin and child. The face they prayed to in Church, the face they held in their hearts as they heard the words “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women,” was Black.

Islam in America. Islam was in the Americas before Protestantism even existed. Many Africans who were enslaved in the Americas were literate Muslims, including Omar ibn Said, who wrote an autobiography about his life as a slave in Arabic.

Three trumpeters, all facing left. They're all on horseback, and their trumpets bear the standard of Henry the 8th. The middle trumpeter is Black.
Scholars agree that this image from the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll almost certainly depicts John Blanke.

John Blanke. Blanke was a Black trumpeter in the court of Henry VIII. He played at the funeral of Henry VII and at the coronation of Henry VIII. Records exist of his marriage and of his request for a raise. The king doubled his pay. Tudor London had a thriving Black population, many of whom married white Londoners. Click here for an article about the book Black Tudors: The Untold Story. 

Indians in London. There’s documented history that people from the Indian subcontinent lived in London beginning in the 16th century. A man called Suleman Noor was buried in Westminster in 1550. An Indian man named Samuel Munsur married a woman called Jane Johnson in 1613. There’s much more.

Abraham Pearse and John Pedro. Pearse was almost certainly a Black Pilgrim, and John Pedro was definitely Black. Click here to learn more about the Abraham Pearse controversy, which features white people claiming the “prestige” and “fun” of being descended from Pilgrims was “ruined” if their ancestor was Black, and subsequent DNA tests that focused only the Y chromosome, carefully avoiding tests of Pearse’s matrilineal line. Test results showed that Pearse’s father was European, and the white Pearse descendents claimed a victory for white supremacy. They seem nice. To this day no one has tested Abraham Pearse’s matrilineal line.

Lemuel Haynes. He was a Black Puritan who became the first ordained African-descended person in America. He was a Minuteman and an abolitionist as well. Read more about him in this book.

A Black man in spectacular full armor. His helmet is off, so you can see his bearded face. He holds his sword in his left hand and a standard in his right. His body is angled away, but he looks straight out at the viewer.
This isn’t related to the text; I just really like it. “The Black Knight” by Hans Krell, 16th century Germany.

Zipporah Potter Atkins. Zipporah Potter Atkins, a free Black woman, owned land in colonial Boston. Click here to learn more about her.

Colonel Tye. The most feared and respected guerilla commander of the Revolutionary War was Colonol Tye, a Black man (formerly Titus Cornelius) who took the British Army up on its offer to enslaved men— escape slavery and come fight for the Loyalists, who will pay you and see that you remain free. The unit he commanded focused on enslavers– including his own former master. They were known for hitting hard and fast, eliminating the Patriot target and liberating the people he had enslaved. The British paid him well for this, and as the war went on, his unit was given increasingly important missions. By 1780, he was a major force in the war, raiding militias and escaping with prisoners and plunder virtually undetected and with few casualties.

The Harlem Hellfighters.The 369th Regiment of the US Army was one of several Black units in WWI. These young men first went to France in 1918, and soon distionguished themselves as fighters and as ambassadors of Black American culture; introducing jazz to the French. They saw more time on the front lines than any other American unit, and suffered horrific casualties, losing half the regiment. When they returned home in 1919, they were given a parade down Fifth Avenue to celebrate their heroic deeds.

Speakeasies. To speak to a Bay Area controversy of old, there were many people of color in speakeasies. Even in segregated clubs, they were there as employees. White New Yorkers flocked to Harlem speakeasies to see their unparalleled performers. Many speakeasies that were known as “black and tan clubs”– clubs that welcomed patrons of all races– became important centers for the development of jazz and remained open for decades, such as the Sunset Cafe in Chicago and the Black and Tan Club in Seattle. Black-and-tan clubs were in cities all over the US.

There’s so much more that I didn’t include here. I have a lot about trans and genderqueer people. I have a lot about women. I have a lot more in general. Native people fought in WWI. The most decorated unit of WWII was the 442nd, made up of Japanese Americans, and remains the most decorated unit of its size in US military history. Viking shieldmaidens were real. One third of pirates in the Caribbean were Black. The oldest human culture that left written records had transgender priestesses and taught that the goddess Inanna could bestow any one of several genders on people to match their “hearts.” The world’s first known author was an Akkadian priestess, Enheduanna. I’ve now spent about a bazillion hours on this post, and I have to force myself to stop. But there’s so much more.

If you don’t see something here, that doesn’t mean BIPOC weren’t there. BIPOC have been erased from history, both through negligence and through deliberate malice. Time to set the historical record straight.

If you need something you don’t see here, I have reasonable rates for dramaturgy. Head over to Melissa Hillman Consulting to learn more. If you’re an artist who needs evidence to take to a gatekeeper who has told you that you won’t be considered for a project because “it wouldn’t be historically accurate,” I will work pro bono to get the information you need into your hands. 

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“Portrait of a Moor” by Jan Mostaert, c. 1525-1530. The name and rank of this elegantly dressed nobleman have been lose to time, but we do know that he was a courtier in the court of Margaret of Austria, the Duchess of Savoy and Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. The symbol on his hat means he made a Christian pilgrimage, popular with the court at that time, to venerate the Virgin Mary.
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Jul 27 2020
Culture

Disability & Covid-19

It’s Disability Awareness Month, and in the middle of this pandemic, at the 30th anniversary of the ADA, there’s never been a more important time to center people with disabilities. Unfortunately, the national discussion around Covid-19 has been marginalizing, rather than centering, PwDs.

mask.rebirthgarments

All the images in this post promote independent mask makers. This cute design has a window, making it easier for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to understand you! The maker is Rebirth Garments on Etsy.  (Pictured: A smiling person with very short black hair, wearing colorful garments and a face mask with a plastic window through which their mouth can be seen.)

We are not disposable. Although little is still known for certain about Covid-19, people with chronic illnesses and certain disabilities appear to be at greater risk. “It’s mostly just old people and people with other conditions,” is tossed out by people looking to shut down concerns. Some prominent conservatives have even gone as far as to say that the elderly and/or people with disabilities should be sacrificed to “save” the US economy.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this is around pediatric cases. In news stories about the children who have died, “[Name of child victim] had underlying conditions” is featured prominently whenever it’s applicable. I’ve even seen it on a line by itself. “Reduce your concern,” it seems to say, “This child was disabled, so it’s not as bad.”

PwDs and families of PwDs are facing the very real possibility that our access to life-saving medical care will be impacted by ableism. In areas of the country overwhelmed by serious cases of Covid-19, hospitals face the unpleasant task of triage, and while disability is not supposed to be a concern, ableism– like racism, like sexism, like transphobia, like fatphobia, like every other kind of bigotry– is often expressed in implicit bias. We believe we have “good reasons” for a decision that, when more closely examined, are actually the result of bias. When there’s one ventilator left in the hospital and three patients who need that ventilator, “quality of life” and “best chance for a full recovery” can knock a person with a disability out of consideration.

Both the widespread sentiment that the danger of reopening schools and businesses is overstated because most of the people who will die have pre-existing conditions and the implicit — and explicit— bias at work in triage reflect systemic ableism. Our lives are not just considered less important than the lives of the able-bodied, our lives are considered less important than the economy. Which means, at its heart, that our lives are less important than protecting the wealth of billionaires. It’s not about “getting people back to work,” as the US has ample resources to temporarily provide income to people who must stay home and childcare for people who cannot. We just choose not to because it would require raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires.

The lives of PwDs are considered a more acceptable sacrifice than 1% of the wealth of billionaires.

Our lives are as valuable and precious as the lives of able-bodied people. We will not be sacrificed so you can “reopen the economy” and hold in-person classes, football games, or two-for-one jello shot nights at McCovid’s. You cannot have our children to sacrifice on the altar of capitalism.

masks.mverse

The MVerse is making gorgeous silk masks. (Pictured: Five colorful, patterned face masks arranged in a fan pattern.)

The other group Americans seem more than willing to sacrifice for the economy are people of color.

Two of the most significant conditions correlated with serious Covid-19 complications are asthma and cardiovascular issues, both of which are over-represented in BIPOC communities, especially Black and Indigenous communities. The impact of systemic racism on health has been studied for years, yet there is still widespread white resistance to the fact that racism is a public health crisis. White health– like able-bodied health– is considered more valuable and important.

Anything that primarily impacts BIPOC or PwDs is not a “crisis”; it’s a “special interest.”

Too many able-bodied white Americans do not consider disabled lives or Black lives important enough to protect. We were all in favor of social distancing and shelter-in-place until it became clear that the higher risk was borne by people with disabilities and people of color. Immediately, conservatives peeled off and became stridently insistent that the pandemic was a hoax, masks were “mind control devices,” and every healthcare provider and scientist around the world were somehow lying for “profit.” Suddenly allowing people to die to strengthen the economy was an acceptable sacrifice.

People with disabilities:

If you are a BIPOC PwD, you face all of these same barriers at twice the intensity.

BIPOC, especially Black and Native people, are much more likely to live in poverty due to generations of aggressive economic disenfranchisement, making it more difficult to access medical care. When they do access medical care, they face enormous bias in the healthcare system. Both Black and Latinx people are less likely to have their pain properly treated in emergency departments and are less likely to be believed when self-reporting symptoms.

Black people in particular face shocking levels of bias and discrimination while seeking medical care.

  • Almost half of medical students surveyed in 2016 reported believing that Black people do not feel pain as acutely as white people, have thicker skin than white people, and have fewer nerve endings than white people.
  • In 2015, another study found that Black children with appendicitis were far less likely to be given pain relief in the Emergency Department than white children.
  • In 2017, the publisher Pearson was forced to pull a popular nursing textbook when a page teaching racist stereotypes was posted online. The text claimed, “Blacks believe in prayer and the laying on of hands to heal pain” and “report higher pain intensity than other cultures.”
  • While overall maternity mortality rates in the US are higher than any other developed nation, Black women are three times more likely to die from childbirth complications than white women.

BIPOC people with disabilities, especially women, face systemic barriers to healthcare that make their ability to survive any health crisis, Covid-19 or otherwise, extremely difficult.

mask.consciouschange

This little cutie is wearing a mask from Conscious Change, a Black-owned Etsy shop.  (Pictured: Adorable Black girl with pigtails wears a white t-shirt that says “Black Girl” in black cursive and a black face mask that says “I Matter” in white below a white heart with an black, upraised fist.)

Being a BIPOC PwD is an especially potent intersectional identity because white supremacy measures the worth of BIPOC lives by how useful they are to the white supremacist narrative: Are you making money for white people? Are you appropriately grateful to your white benefactors for the opportunities you’ve been “given”? Do you refuse to participate in protests against racism, including non-violent protests like taking a knee? Are you “happy” or “angry” and “rude”?

Nowhere is this more robust than in the white understanding of Black people. White people see the existence of Black people as being about white people. Every Black event, movement, slogan, or group is criticized bitterly if it does not center whiteness. If you doubt this, remember that they can’t even say “our lives matter” without white people angrily denouncing them as “racists” and responding with “white lives matter,” “white lives are better,” “only white lives matter” and support for white supremacy.

The angry and even violent white backlash to Black people publicly stating that their lives matter, combined with the widespread ableist belief that the lives of people with disabilities are less valuable, means Black PwDs face some of the most virulent and insidious bigotry in the country at the very moment when the nation is hotly debating whether we should sacrifice American lives to reopen schools and businesses.

mask.hipfruit

The Black-owned Etsy store HipFruit has a wide variety of masks, including both floral and BLM designs. (Pictured: A Black woman with long, straight hair and an off-the-shoulder top with navy and white stripes is wearing a face mask featuring white flowers on a black background.)

Government Apathy. This pandemic has highlighted the brutal impact of systemic ableism and systemic racism. Yet, as more and more people suffer, die, or survive with long-lasting medical complications, the government is less and less interested in providing relief. The Trump Administration, aided in large part by their ghoulish GOP allies in Congress, is insistent that unemployment and disability should be slashed, funding for Covid testing and tracing should be eliminated, and the CDC budget reduced in addition to pulling out of the World Health Organization. The press heaps praise upon Trump for wearing a mask in public and for making a speech without a single dangerous lie while his inaction and incompetence have caused the deaths of over 140,000 Americans (and counting).

The pandemic has put a spotlight on some pre-existing inequities. But what we choose to do about those inequities is the critical question. Thus far, we seem content with nothing better than comforting able-bodied white people with narratives like “People of color are at higher risk” and “People with underlying conditions are at higher risk” while half the nation insists that our deaths are irrelevant if the economy rebounds.

When you say, “Black Lives Matter,” please remember that some of those Black lives are disabled lives. When you say, “We should reopen schools and businesses because most of the people who die have underlying conditions,” remember that what you’re really saying is “the deaths of PwDs, especially the BIPOC PwDs at the highest risk, are an acceptable sacrifice to maintain billionaire wealth, since we can’t expect them to pay higher taxes for a few years.”

In a nation where months of conservative propaganda has resulted in 31% of people refusing to wear a mask regularly to protect others, , it’s impossible to predict just how deadly this pandemic will get in the US before we have a vaccine– which anywhere between 27% and 50% of Americans say they will refuse, thanks again to propaganda, this time on the standard sources for antivax hooey on the fringe left as well as the right.

There are many things in life that are “risky,” and “acceptable risks” are part of life. In this case, however, we’re not talking about “risk.” We know this virus is deadly; we know a certain percentage of people will die or suffer long-term debilitating consequences. In this case, “acceptable risk” means “it is acceptable to me that these people will die.”

We refuse to be your “acceptable risk.” Allies, accomplices, loved ones: stand with us. And we all need to remember that BIPOC PwDs are bearing the brunt of every aspect of this crisis.

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