Black and white women: what still divides us?
(includes a related article on coping as a Black woman in the office)(Panel Discussion)
Essence, March, 1998, by Audrey Edwards, Dana Canedy
"What's the first thing you think of when I say `White women'?"
"Intelligent."
"Manipulative."
"Privileged."
"And what's the first thing you think of when I say `Black women'?"
"Strong."
"Determined."
"Attitude."
We're not usually asked such printed questions, but we do certainly harbor ongoing perceptions, opinions and unconscious attitudes that get to the heart of how Blacks and Whites see each other. When Essence and Ladies Home Journal magazines convened a roundtable discussion on race last fall to assess some of the issues that still divide Black and White women, tough questions were asked -- and the perceptions were startling.
Why, after a defining Civil Rights Movement in the sixties, a move to liberate women in the seventies and the push for affirmative action and diversity programs in the eighties, does race remain such a major issue? What emerged during the roundtable, as participants responded to a number of scenarios about race developed by the moderator, is that much of what troubles relationships between the races in the nineties has to do with how each perceives not only its own experience but also the experiences of the other. The views sometimes overlap, but they are never in total sync. The White women gathered, for instance, said they sec Black women as strong, assertive and confident -- and that's a strength. Black women said they see themselves as strong, assertive and vulnerable -- and that's a burden. Black women saw White women as privileged, in control and protected -- and that's an asset. White women saw themselves as privileged, guilty and uncertain -- and that's unsettling.
Though we have all been shaped and sometimes even warped by race, how we see and interact with one another is a function of not just race but of age, gender, class and upbringing as well. "One of the things we know is that none of us is born racist" says roundtable moderator Greer Dawson Wilson, Ed.D., a Black woman who is head of Greer & Co., a diversity-consulting and training firm in Charlottesville, Virginia. "But based on where we come from, who our parents were, where we lived, what kind of jobs we have, what kind of friends we had, all of those things end up being a value system that influences our racial attitudes."
Joining Dr. Wilson were six participants, three White and three Black. The Black participants: Terri Heard, 29, a Philadelphia writer for a national weekly magazine; Sandra Naves, 34, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who is a grievance coordinator at the Muskegon Correctional Facility; and Pynke (pronounced pinky) Gohaner-Lyles, 48, deputy director of the Monticello Area Community Action Agency in Charlottesville, Virginia.
White participants were Laurel Touby, 35, a freelance writer raised in Miami and now living in New York City; Debra Abbott, 46, originally from Long Island, New York, who runs the youth programs at the Monticello Area Community Action Agency in Charlottesville and works for Pynke Gohaner-Lyles; and Mims Breckenridge Harris, 57, a native of Twin Falls, Idaho, who is director of campus activities at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
The group convened in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Nursing in Philadelphia for an all-day session that was at times raucous, at other times painful, but always provocative. Conversations ranged from frank assessments of how we get along at work (the one place Black and White women have the most interaction) to revealing admissions about power and privilege, fears and anger. Whether it is an informal meeting between Black and White women or a national initiative on race like the one called for by President Clinton, talking about race has never been easy. But only through open, honest dialogue will Blacks and Whites begin the tough process of getting to know each other. That's where the racial healing and understanding start.
POWER AND PRIVILEGE
For the Black women convened, Whites can't begin to understand people of other races until they accept that they automatically have privilege and power in American society, simply by virtue of being White. The resulting sense of entitlement informs all their perceptions, from the major to the mundane. Take the following scenario outlined by Dr. Wilson: At a workplace retreat, White women arrive in jeans and T-shirts and the African-American women arrive in skirts. One of the White women asks a Black woman why the African-American women are so "dressed up."
"What's going on here?" Dr. Wilson asks. Laurel Touby, the 35-year-old White journalist, takes a guess: "Black women always dress up for regular functions because they want to be taken seriously?" Not quite, Dr. Wilson says. What's more to the point is that Whites as the majority race set the standards -- consciously unconsciously -- and whenever they think Blacks are deviating, whether it's "dressing up" at a retreat or wearing their hair in corn rows, they say and do things that make Blacks feel wrong when there really is no question of right and wrong.
"There was this petite White woman who came into the office one day wearing tight pants, and nobody said anything to her about the way she was dressed," recounts Sandra Naves, the Black grievance coordinator at a state prison in Michigan. "And then another day a Black female came in wearing a skort set with a jacket and silk blouse and somebody made a comment about her being dressed up."
Obviously much confusion, misunderstanding and resentment surround Black and White perceptions of each other on even the most mundane things. African-Americans have their own standards for what's appropriate when it comes to dress, hairstyles and other aspects of their culture and resent it when they feel they have to continually explain these standards to Whites. Yet Whites, who often have genuine and innocent curiosity about Black culture, resent the implication that asking a simple question could make them racist. Who's right? Is anybody wrong?
The real question to Whites might be: Why do you feel the need to ask the question in the first place? And to Blacks: Why do you feel offended by the question? If you as a White woman are asking because a Black woman dressed differently rattles your notion of what's appropriate, where does that notion come from? Is that the only and view? If you as a Black woman are offended by the question, what's the nature of the offense? That Whites still know so little about you? That you feel you're being held to standards not your own? Or are you so sensitive to racial slights that even an innocuous question can be misunderstood as racist?
The truth is, says Debra Abbott, the youth director at a human-services agency in Charlottesville, Virginia, who is White and considers her self "a recovering racist," one of the hallmarks of White power and privilege is that "Whites don't really have to think about race at all." And a defining feature of the discrimination and oppression experienced by Blacks is that race can become almost all they think about when dealing with Whites. Such divergent points of view are bound to lead to conflict.
Pynke Gohaner-Lyles, deputy director of the community-action agency where Abbott works, equates White power with the White need to control -- to be superior. Even though she runs an agency of about 100 people, she says, "I can be in a meeting where, first of all, I'm probably the only woman of color in the room out of, say, 15 Caucasian women. And if I or any other woman of color has an opinion, they may pretend to listen to it, but then it goes right out the window. I think a lot of White women really believe that we don't know what we're talking about -- that we don't have the basis for talking."
As insulting as such White dismissiveness might be, Black women say, it is the unconscious, visceral reactions of Whites to Blacks that can be the most damaging. Terri Heard, an African-American who commutes by train from Philadelphia to the suburbs, told this disturbing story about her daily ride: "You get the corporate lawyers and business types on this line, and the train can get crowded -- even packed -- and no White person will sit next to me until they absolutely have to. I get the feeling no one is sitting next to me because I'm Black."
Whites often don't get it; they don't acknowledge -- or they don't care about -- the debilitating psychological effects such actions have on Blacks. "There's a lot of shame and guilt involved with White people when it comes to race," Abbott says. "They don't want to own up to privilege and power or racist behavior. They feel, `I did the civil-rights thing -- I marched in the sixties. We took care of all that. Why do you keep bringing this [racism] up?'"
FEAR AND ANGER
While the Civil Rights Era saw major changes, "we stopped working on it," Abbott believes. Clinton's call for national "conversations" on race, the bitter court fights over busing and affirmative action, chilling incidents of police brutality against Blacks and the ongoing cases of racial bias throughout the country all speak to America's persistent difficulty in solving its race problem. Even the briefest of encounters between the two races can be cause for alarm and tension, as this scenario reveals: Sharon, a White female, and Brenda, a Black female, are walking down the street talking. Four African-American teenage boys approach from the opposite direction and Sharon freezes.
"All right, I admit that's a racist response," says Laurel Touby, the White journalist. "But truthfully, if I see four Black kids together, I'm more scared immediately, with no reason, than I am if I see four White kids." These kinds of reflex, gut fears of Blacks by Whites are particularly galling to Blacks. And it's not just teenage Black boys who elicit such fears. More and more Black women complain about being followed in department stores as if they were going to shoplift, or about being refused entry at all -- as happened to Oprah Winfrey. Apparently unrecognized, Winfrey was denied entrance when she rang the buzzer of a posh New York boutique. The news media often fuels these fears with its negative portrayals of African-American people.
I know tons of crime is done by Whites," Touby says, "and I know plenty of White people are on welfare, but in my experience and from what I see in the media, the more aggressive men are Black." In fact, in Touby's experience the more aggressive people have been Black. Growing up in Miami, where she went to a predominantly Black junior high school, Touby has vivid memories of Charmaine, the Black girl who became her nemesis, often threatening her physically and verbally at school. "I can still see her long lacquered fingernail on my nose and hear her saving `Hit it off, bitch, c'mon, hit it off.'"
Yet Touby's fears, like those of many other Whites, are grounded in something much deeper than memories of a childhood bully: "There's always the assumption that you're going to be hated by Blacks," she says. "And I don't have the language to talk Blacks out of their rage if they threaten me."
There it is. White fear of Black anger. Vague, free-floating, but always palpable, rising to the surface in the most ordinary of encounters between Blacks and Whites. It doesn't help that after four centuries, Whites and Blacks still don't know each other very well. Indeed, in vast areas of the country Whites don't come into contact with any Blacks at all. Mims Harris, for instance, who grew up in a small town in Idaho that had a population of 20,000 and one Black family, didn't meet an African-American until she was a graduate student.
She admits that she is occasionally afraid to be honest in her dealings with Blacks. "Sometimes I'm so afraid I'm going to say or do the wrong thing that I might not challenge something a Black person says that I don't agree with." There's the fear of being labeled a racist, but for many Whites there is also an anger that comes with that fear. Blacks tend to filter everything through a racial lens, Whites complain, when the truth is that every comment, question or disagreement from a White person is not racially, motivated -- and certainly not racist.
A large part of the differences in perception has to do with style -- Black women are often more often local and more expressive in language and gesture. Whether it's making a statement with hands on hips or pointing a finger for emphasis, their manner can be intimidating to White women, whose culture encourages more understated behavior.
Harris doesn't think Blacks overstate the race issue. "In general, when I hear Black people say something was racist, it probably was," she says. "But that's hard for Whites to hear. I finally got it when I understood the privilege issue. What it means to be White is that I never have to think about being White. But every day a Black person has race in his or her face."
HOW RACE COLORS EVERYTHING
What has constantly having to confront race dome to the sensibility of Americans? One of the most debilitating legacies of slavery is that race dominates almost every area of Blacks' lives, even the most intimate. Take a look at this scenario: An African-American woman is downtown and sees an interracial couple -- a White woman with a Black man -- approaching, holding hands and laughing. The Black woman shakes her head and glares at them as they pass by.
Pynke Gohaner-Lyles, the Black agency deputy director, lets out a sigh of exasperation listening to the scene. "God knows, people gave up lives for us to have equality," says. "You want the races to mix -- you want real integration. But now you have our men crossing the line to be with White women, and I don't feel good about it."
Interracial unions between Black men and White women have always been an explosive issue in American race relations, and for Black women they've ignited some new hostilities. "I don't have a problem with it as much as I used to," says Sandra Naves, the Black prison official, on the idea of interracial dating. "But what I do have a problem with is knowing that as attractive as I might be as a Black woman, I can be made to feel not good enough when a Black man chooses a White woman."
For Black women, a large part of what they resent about White female priviledge is that society affirms White women regardless of how they look -- and rarely affirms Black women, no matter how beautiful. This is what makes Black women angry when they see a Black man with a White woman they consider unattractive, or see a Black man marry down in class to a White woman. Added to this is what many Blacks see as White culture's continued appropriation of Black culture. Whether it's White teenagers listening to Black rap music or White suburban housewives slapping each other a high five, Black art and expression typically get co-opted by the larger society. "It goes right back to this: What do we have that's ours?" says Gohaner-Lyles. "Now we don't even have our men." That is not the reality, of course, but it is too often the perception, and that becomes yet another wedge dividing us.
HEALING THE WOUNDS
What will it take to start the healing process? Certainly, honest talk between the two groups is a crucial first step. But before both sides can even talk, they have to become comfortable with the racial and cultural differences each brings to the table and recognize that different doesn't have to mean divided. Blacks have to learn how to communicate with Whites without anger, and Whites have to learn to listen without denial. "We Whites are the ones who have to work on the racism piece," says Debra Abbott. "People of color have been trying to reach us for a long time. We have to understand independently what it means to be White and both that affects people of color."
Sandra Naves, recognizing that Black anger gets in the way of racial dialogue, says, "One of the things I can do is work to get rid of my hostility. When a White person asks me something, instead of getting an attitude, I can see it as an opportunity to broaden her horizons, to help her understand why I think the way I do, or dress the way I do or wear my hair in braids."
"Change always starts with one person saving something to another person," Dr. Wilson says. "It doesn't happen when you get 500 people in a town meeting.
It's always going to be when Susie Jones and I have this dialogue. I may not agree with everything she say -- and I don't have to. But there will be an opening up of our minds, a look at how she sees her experience and how I see mine. And there should always be respect for whatever differences we bring."
BACK AT THE OFFICE...
IMPROVING RACE RELATIONS IN THE WORKPLACE
At Monticello Area Community Action Agency in Charlottesville, Virginia, a nonprofit agency that provides programs for the poor, a middle-aged White man was struggling with what to do about an uncle who made racist jokes at family dinners. He turned to an unlikely group of people for advice -- his White coworkers. Another man had experienced a similar problem and advised his colleague to confront the relative.
"People will bring situations they are struggling with and they'll get input from the group," said Debra Abbott, a Monticello employee who participates in the group called the White Caucus (and a panelist in the Essence/Ladies' Home Journal race roundtable). The caucus, and a similar one involving Black employees, meets informally about once a month and will eventually come together to discuss diversity issues.
"Diversity training" has been en vogue for at least a decade at companies whose motivations range from a do-the-right-thing sensibility to a desire to protect the bottom line from lawsuits. But some organizations are now trying approaches like race-based caucuses and employee self-assessments to give coworkers a better understanding of how their own attitudes and experiences shape their behavior toward others, said Mauricio Velasquez, president of The Diversity Training Group, a consulting firm in Baltimore.
"In the mid-1980's, race-relations training was very confrontational, very in-your-face, and it made people feel bad," said Velasquez, whose clients include Black & Decker, the League of Women Voters and Arbitron, the ratings company. Today, he said, some companies are eager to find new ways to get workers to relate to one another. Velasquez gives employees homework -- a 50-question "diversity IQ test" -- to evaluate their attitudes about race before they attend a single group discussion.
Kenneth Jones, a consultant with Peace Development Fund, a foundation in Amherst, Massachusetts, has been conducting caucuses since the early 1990's. "The only way to transform an organization and an individual is through caucuses in which people of color get together to deal with their problems, and White people get together and talk about their problems, and then we all get together as a group," said Jones, who helped the Monticello group create its caucuses. "We talk about music, about religion, about language, all aspects of culture."
Below are suggestions from the experts of things you can do to improve race relations in your workplace:
1. For Black women, who have often been among the first to sign up for traditional diversity training: Don't become frustrated if previous programs have produced few changes in your organization's culture. Suggest new approaches, like caucuses, that offer fresh solutions.
2. Encourage your company or organization to embrace its diverse workforce by, for instance, including art at its headquarters and music and food that reflect workers' various cultures at corporate functions.
3. Make your company's approach relevant on a personal level: Recommend that employees keep private journals in which they explore their own attitudes and behavior before they attend a diversity seminar.
4. Take a personal approach -- expand your network of lunch partners to include people of different races and cultures that you may not have considered befriending.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
Essence, March, 1998, by Audrey Edwards, Dana Canedy
"What's the first thing you think of when I say `White women'?"
"Intelligent."
"Manipulative."
"Privileged."
"And what's the first thing you think of when I say `Black women'?"
"Strong."
"Determined."
"Attitude."
We're not usually asked such printed questions, but we do certainly harbor ongoing perceptions, opinions and unconscious attitudes that get to the heart of how Blacks and Whites see each other. When Essence and Ladies Home Journal magazines convened a roundtable discussion on race last fall to assess some of the issues that still divide Black and White women, tough questions were asked -- and the perceptions were startling.
Why, after a defining Civil Rights Movement in the sixties, a move to liberate women in the seventies and the push for affirmative action and diversity programs in the eighties, does race remain such a major issue? What emerged during the roundtable, as participants responded to a number of scenarios about race developed by the moderator, is that much of what troubles relationships between the races in the nineties has to do with how each perceives not only its own experience but also the experiences of the other. The views sometimes overlap, but they are never in total sync. The White women gathered, for instance, said they sec Black women as strong, assertive and confident -- and that's a strength. Black women said they see themselves as strong, assertive and vulnerable -- and that's a burden. Black women saw White women as privileged, in control and protected -- and that's an asset. White women saw themselves as privileged, guilty and uncertain -- and that's unsettling.
Though we have all been shaped and sometimes even warped by race, how we see and interact with one another is a function of not just race but of age, gender, class and upbringing as well. "One of the things we know is that none of us is born racist" says roundtable moderator Greer Dawson Wilson, Ed.D., a Black woman who is head of Greer & Co., a diversity-consulting and training firm in Charlottesville, Virginia. "But based on where we come from, who our parents were, where we lived, what kind of jobs we have, what kind of friends we had, all of those things end up being a value system that influences our racial attitudes."
Joining Dr. Wilson were six participants, three White and three Black. The Black participants: Terri Heard, 29, a Philadelphia writer for a national weekly magazine; Sandra Naves, 34, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who is a grievance coordinator at the Muskegon Correctional Facility; and Pynke (pronounced pinky) Gohaner-Lyles, 48, deputy director of the Monticello Area Community Action Agency in Charlottesville, Virginia.
White participants were Laurel Touby, 35, a freelance writer raised in Miami and now living in New York City; Debra Abbott, 46, originally from Long Island, New York, who runs the youth programs at the Monticello Area Community Action Agency in Charlottesville and works for Pynke Gohaner-Lyles; and Mims Breckenridge Harris, 57, a native of Twin Falls, Idaho, who is director of campus activities at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
The group convened in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Nursing in Philadelphia for an all-day session that was at times raucous, at other times painful, but always provocative. Conversations ranged from frank assessments of how we get along at work (the one place Black and White women have the most interaction) to revealing admissions about power and privilege, fears and anger. Whether it is an informal meeting between Black and White women or a national initiative on race like the one called for by President Clinton, talking about race has never been easy. But only through open, honest dialogue will Blacks and Whites begin the tough process of getting to know each other. That's where the racial healing and understanding start.
POWER AND PRIVILEGE
For the Black women convened, Whites can't begin to understand people of other races until they accept that they automatically have privilege and power in American society, simply by virtue of being White. The resulting sense of entitlement informs all their perceptions, from the major to the mundane. Take the following scenario outlined by Dr. Wilson: At a workplace retreat, White women arrive in jeans and T-shirts and the African-American women arrive in skirts. One of the White women asks a Black woman why the African-American women are so "dressed up."
"What's going on here?" Dr. Wilson asks. Laurel Touby, the 35-year-old White journalist, takes a guess: "Black women always dress up for regular functions because they want to be taken seriously?" Not quite, Dr. Wilson says. What's more to the point is that Whites as the majority race set the standards -- consciously unconsciously -- and whenever they think Blacks are deviating, whether it's "dressing up" at a retreat or wearing their hair in corn rows, they say and do things that make Blacks feel wrong when there really is no question of right and wrong.
"There was this petite White woman who came into the office one day wearing tight pants, and nobody said anything to her about the way she was dressed," recounts Sandra Naves, the Black grievance coordinator at a state prison in Michigan. "And then another day a Black female came in wearing a skort set with a jacket and silk blouse and somebody made a comment about her being dressed up."
Obviously much confusion, misunderstanding and resentment surround Black and White perceptions of each other on even the most mundane things. African-Americans have their own standards for what's appropriate when it comes to dress, hairstyles and other aspects of their culture and resent it when they feel they have to continually explain these standards to Whites. Yet Whites, who often have genuine and innocent curiosity about Black culture, resent the implication that asking a simple question could make them racist. Who's right? Is anybody wrong?
The real question to Whites might be: Why do you feel the need to ask the question in the first place? And to Blacks: Why do you feel offended by the question? If you as a White woman are asking because a Black woman dressed differently rattles your notion of what's appropriate, where does that notion come from? Is that the only and view? If you as a Black woman are offended by the question, what's the nature of the offense? That Whites still know so little about you? That you feel you're being held to standards not your own? Or are you so sensitive to racial slights that even an innocuous question can be misunderstood as racist?
The truth is, says Debra Abbott, the youth director at a human-services agency in Charlottesville, Virginia, who is White and considers her self "a recovering racist," one of the hallmarks of White power and privilege is that "Whites don't really have to think about race at all." And a defining feature of the discrimination and oppression experienced by Blacks is that race can become almost all they think about when dealing with Whites. Such divergent points of view are bound to lead to conflict.
Pynke Gohaner-Lyles, deputy director of the community-action agency where Abbott works, equates White power with the White need to control -- to be superior. Even though she runs an agency of about 100 people, she says, "I can be in a meeting where, first of all, I'm probably the only woman of color in the room out of, say, 15 Caucasian women. And if I or any other woman of color has an opinion, they may pretend to listen to it, but then it goes right out the window. I think a lot of White women really believe that we don't know what we're talking about -- that we don't have the basis for talking."
As insulting as such White dismissiveness might be, Black women say, it is the unconscious, visceral reactions of Whites to Blacks that can be the most damaging. Terri Heard, an African-American who commutes by train from Philadelphia to the suburbs, told this disturbing story about her daily ride: "You get the corporate lawyers and business types on this line, and the train can get crowded -- even packed -- and no White person will sit next to me until they absolutely have to. I get the feeling no one is sitting next to me because I'm Black."
Whites often don't get it; they don't acknowledge -- or they don't care about -- the debilitating psychological effects such actions have on Blacks. "There's a lot of shame and guilt involved with White people when it comes to race," Abbott says. "They don't want to own up to privilege and power or racist behavior. They feel, `I did the civil-rights thing -- I marched in the sixties. We took care of all that. Why do you keep bringing this [racism] up?'"
FEAR AND ANGER
While the Civil Rights Era saw major changes, "we stopped working on it," Abbott believes. Clinton's call for national "conversations" on race, the bitter court fights over busing and affirmative action, chilling incidents of police brutality against Blacks and the ongoing cases of racial bias throughout the country all speak to America's persistent difficulty in solving its race problem. Even the briefest of encounters between the two races can be cause for alarm and tension, as this scenario reveals: Sharon, a White female, and Brenda, a Black female, are walking down the street talking. Four African-American teenage boys approach from the opposite direction and Sharon freezes.
"All right, I admit that's a racist response," says Laurel Touby, the White journalist. "But truthfully, if I see four Black kids together, I'm more scared immediately, with no reason, than I am if I see four White kids." These kinds of reflex, gut fears of Blacks by Whites are particularly galling to Blacks. And it's not just teenage Black boys who elicit such fears. More and more Black women complain about being followed in department stores as if they were going to shoplift, or about being refused entry at all -- as happened to Oprah Winfrey. Apparently unrecognized, Winfrey was denied entrance when she rang the buzzer of a posh New York boutique. The news media often fuels these fears with its negative portrayals of African-American people.
I know tons of crime is done by Whites," Touby says, "and I know plenty of White people are on welfare, but in my experience and from what I see in the media, the more aggressive men are Black." In fact, in Touby's experience the more aggressive people have been Black. Growing up in Miami, where she went to a predominantly Black junior high school, Touby has vivid memories of Charmaine, the Black girl who became her nemesis, often threatening her physically and verbally at school. "I can still see her long lacquered fingernail on my nose and hear her saving `Hit it off, bitch, c'mon, hit it off.'"
Yet Touby's fears, like those of many other Whites, are grounded in something much deeper than memories of a childhood bully: "There's always the assumption that you're going to be hated by Blacks," she says. "And I don't have the language to talk Blacks out of their rage if they threaten me."
There it is. White fear of Black anger. Vague, free-floating, but always palpable, rising to the surface in the most ordinary of encounters between Blacks and Whites. It doesn't help that after four centuries, Whites and Blacks still don't know each other very well. Indeed, in vast areas of the country Whites don't come into contact with any Blacks at all. Mims Harris, for instance, who grew up in a small town in Idaho that had a population of 20,000 and one Black family, didn't meet an African-American until she was a graduate student.
She admits that she is occasionally afraid to be honest in her dealings with Blacks. "Sometimes I'm so afraid I'm going to say or do the wrong thing that I might not challenge something a Black person says that I don't agree with." There's the fear of being labeled a racist, but for many Whites there is also an anger that comes with that fear. Blacks tend to filter everything through a racial lens, Whites complain, when the truth is that every comment, question or disagreement from a White person is not racially, motivated -- and certainly not racist.
A large part of the differences in perception has to do with style -- Black women are often more often local and more expressive in language and gesture. Whether it's making a statement with hands on hips or pointing a finger for emphasis, their manner can be intimidating to White women, whose culture encourages more understated behavior.
Harris doesn't think Blacks overstate the race issue. "In general, when I hear Black people say something was racist, it probably was," she says. "But that's hard for Whites to hear. I finally got it when I understood the privilege issue. What it means to be White is that I never have to think about being White. But every day a Black person has race in his or her face."
HOW RACE COLORS EVERYTHING
What has constantly having to confront race dome to the sensibility of Americans? One of the most debilitating legacies of slavery is that race dominates almost every area of Blacks' lives, even the most intimate. Take a look at this scenario: An African-American woman is downtown and sees an interracial couple -- a White woman with a Black man -- approaching, holding hands and laughing. The Black woman shakes her head and glares at them as they pass by.
Pynke Gohaner-Lyles, the Black agency deputy director, lets out a sigh of exasperation listening to the scene. "God knows, people gave up lives for us to have equality," says. "You want the races to mix -- you want real integration. But now you have our men crossing the line to be with White women, and I don't feel good about it."
Interracial unions between Black men and White women have always been an explosive issue in American race relations, and for Black women they've ignited some new hostilities. "I don't have a problem with it as much as I used to," says Sandra Naves, the Black prison official, on the idea of interracial dating. "But what I do have a problem with is knowing that as attractive as I might be as a Black woman, I can be made to feel not good enough when a Black man chooses a White woman."
For Black women, a large part of what they resent about White female priviledge is that society affirms White women regardless of how they look -- and rarely affirms Black women, no matter how beautiful. This is what makes Black women angry when they see a Black man with a White woman they consider unattractive, or see a Black man marry down in class to a White woman. Added to this is what many Blacks see as White culture's continued appropriation of Black culture. Whether it's White teenagers listening to Black rap music or White suburban housewives slapping each other a high five, Black art and expression typically get co-opted by the larger society. "It goes right back to this: What do we have that's ours?" says Gohaner-Lyles. "Now we don't even have our men." That is not the reality, of course, but it is too often the perception, and that becomes yet another wedge dividing us.
HEALING THE WOUNDS
What will it take to start the healing process? Certainly, honest talk between the two groups is a crucial first step. But before both sides can even talk, they have to become comfortable with the racial and cultural differences each brings to the table and recognize that different doesn't have to mean divided. Blacks have to learn how to communicate with Whites without anger, and Whites have to learn to listen without denial. "We Whites are the ones who have to work on the racism piece," says Debra Abbott. "People of color have been trying to reach us for a long time. We have to understand independently what it means to be White and both that affects people of color."
Sandra Naves, recognizing that Black anger gets in the way of racial dialogue, says, "One of the things I can do is work to get rid of my hostility. When a White person asks me something, instead of getting an attitude, I can see it as an opportunity to broaden her horizons, to help her understand why I think the way I do, or dress the way I do or wear my hair in braids."
"Change always starts with one person saving something to another person," Dr. Wilson says. "It doesn't happen when you get 500 people in a town meeting.
It's always going to be when Susie Jones and I have this dialogue. I may not agree with everything she say -- and I don't have to. But there will be an opening up of our minds, a look at how she sees her experience and how I see mine. And there should always be respect for whatever differences we bring."
BACK AT THE OFFICE...
IMPROVING RACE RELATIONS IN THE WORKPLACE
At Monticello Area Community Action Agency in Charlottesville, Virginia, a nonprofit agency that provides programs for the poor, a middle-aged White man was struggling with what to do about an uncle who made racist jokes at family dinners. He turned to an unlikely group of people for advice -- his White coworkers. Another man had experienced a similar problem and advised his colleague to confront the relative.
"People will bring situations they are struggling with and they'll get input from the group," said Debra Abbott, a Monticello employee who participates in the group called the White Caucus (and a panelist in the Essence/Ladies' Home Journal race roundtable). The caucus, and a similar one involving Black employees, meets informally about once a month and will eventually come together to discuss diversity issues.
"Diversity training" has been en vogue for at least a decade at companies whose motivations range from a do-the-right-thing sensibility to a desire to protect the bottom line from lawsuits. But some organizations are now trying approaches like race-based caucuses and employee self-assessments to give coworkers a better understanding of how their own attitudes and experiences shape their behavior toward others, said Mauricio Velasquez, president of The Diversity Training Group, a consulting firm in Baltimore.
"In the mid-1980's, race-relations training was very confrontational, very in-your-face, and it made people feel bad," said Velasquez, whose clients include Black & Decker, the League of Women Voters and Arbitron, the ratings company. Today, he said, some companies are eager to find new ways to get workers to relate to one another. Velasquez gives employees homework -- a 50-question "diversity IQ test" -- to evaluate their attitudes about race before they attend a single group discussion.
Kenneth Jones, a consultant with Peace Development Fund, a foundation in Amherst, Massachusetts, has been conducting caucuses since the early 1990's. "The only way to transform an organization and an individual is through caucuses in which people of color get together to deal with their problems, and White people get together and talk about their problems, and then we all get together as a group," said Jones, who helped the Monticello group create its caucuses. "We talk about music, about religion, about language, all aspects of culture."
Below are suggestions from the experts of things you can do to improve race relations in your workplace:
1. For Black women, who have often been among the first to sign up for traditional diversity training: Don't become frustrated if previous programs have produced few changes in your organization's culture. Suggest new approaches, like caucuses, that offer fresh solutions.
2. Encourage your company or organization to embrace its diverse workforce by, for instance, including art at its headquarters and music and food that reflect workers' various cultures at corporate functions.
3. Make your company's approach relevant on a personal level: Recommend that employees keep private journals in which they explore their own attitudes and behavior before they attend a diversity seminar.
4. Take a personal approach -- expand your network of lunch partners to include people of different races and cultures that you may not have considered befriending.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
