You know, right now where we are in the world we really need to work together.
And so we have all kinds of folks trying to work together, trying to work against this
battle or win that battle, or build this community and break down and dismantle communities that
aren't serving us.
What gets in the way every time is race.
There's unconscious bias that's built into our brains because we have really, as human
beings, for hundreds and thousands of years absorbed messages about who belongs at the
top of the racial hierarchy and who belongs at the bottom.
I was born in Medford, Oregon and in Medford there were absolutely no people of color within
the city limits.
So we're eleven years old and I meet another person, who then becomes my best friend and
she still is my best friend.
And her name is Serena Maria Cruz, right?
So Serena, for me, wasn't of color, she was white.
So we're graduating, we're signing up for the PSAT to take the test to--and this where
we've gone to school together for five or six years and we've been to each other's houses,
we've had birthday parties, we're all involved in the same gifted program activities and
she's filling out her form and filling our her race.
And I'm filling out my form, and I look over at Serena and I see her filling out the bubble
for Hispanic, and so I actually reach out and I grab her hand and I pull it up and tell
her, "Serena, you're supposed to fill out the white bubble."
And she looks at me and she says, she says, she says, "Look at me Suzy."
She says, "Look at me," like this.
And I looked at her, and I didn't have any clue what she was talking about, I didn't
know what she was talking about.
And when I look back now, right, and I think about entitlement.
I mean, it's hard for me to even locate where racial entitlement is because everything about
my life has been entitlement.
When I use the term 'codes of power' I'm foremost talking about the reality, that culture informs
everything we do and that most white people, because we live in a country where we see
ourselves all the--everywhere and every way and our culture is validated everywhere and
in every way.
We don't understand how our cultural values are brought into the classroom.
So, when a white boy walks in the room, we understand him, we have similar cultural values.
We understand how to behave, how to talk, how to respond to one another.
If I'm a white woman and he's a white boy, he can see me as his mother, I can see him
as my child.
That positions him to know not only that he's right in the world, but that he deserves to
feel comfortable and that he is really claiming his rightful place in the world to be a leader.
White boy, who walks in the room and is animated, and moving around and maybe even a little
cheeky, is smart, and isn't he smart?
Isn't he cheeky?
He's almost looked at as, 'well boys will be boys.'
A child--a boy of color, especially an African American boy, who walks in the room exhibiting
the same behavior.
Walks in and is, 'hmm I might need to keep an eye on him.'
And that, I really believe is our internalized racism.
That we are afraid of these young boys, and I'm talking young boys, four years old and
above.
And that instead of the teacher looking at him or herself and saying, 'what is going
on with me that this same behavior creates fear in me instead of admiration?'
We pathologize the boy of color.
I travel all the time, if I'm in an airport I've seen folks, particularly who could be
perceived as being from the so-called Middle East, who could be perceived as potentially
Arab or whatnot or Persian or anything else.
How many times I've seen them pulled aside and searched and it's not that that fascinates
me so much, it's the reaction of the other traveler, right?
It's the reaction of folks looking at them sort of very nervously, as opposed to, when
I'm stopped, because I travel enough, occasionally I'm gonna get searched.
Statistically that's obviously going to happen and when I am, what's that experience?
What's that like?
And I pay very close attention, and no one's looking at me.
No one is looking at me with that look of, 'oh crap, I really hope that white dude is
not on my plane.'
Right?
Nobody's really nervous about that.
When I think of internalized racism I think of the appropriation by persons of color of
the prejudice, bigotry, and stereotypes, which are aimed at them.
There's--it's always kind of like climbing up this mountain, well maybe if I do this,
maybe if I do that?
And sometimes it's not even consciously saying, well maybe if I did this.
It's not like I would consciously say, well maybe if I just make my hair a little straighter,
I would be more accepted.
You start learning, oh well you know if I could be more white, you know, then. ..then
I could be more comfortable.
I can fit in better.
There would be people that would come into the flower shop where my mom worked, I would
work in there sometimes during high school.
And if there was someone that walked in and that was say, Latino, you know, I might help
them last.
Just like, the white people do.
I think it's really, as Americans, we still are really not good at seeing our racist impact
when there is no apparent racist.
We need to really broaden our view so that we can see that if you have had decades, centuries
of explicit racism and then on top of that you lay seemingly race neutral rules and policies
you're going to get, still, a churning out of racial disparities.
Again, even if no one intended to do that because that's the way structural racism works.
History matters.