When a fish is found floating belly up in a lake, it makes sense to examine it to see what it died of. When half of the fish in the lake are belly up, it’s time to look at the lake.
That was the premise of the Undoing Racism workshop held October 3-5, 2011 at Grand Portage Lodge and Casino. The group of about 30 attendees, coming from the Twin Cities, Canada, and points in between, included school administrators, Head Start employees, health service representatives, a chemical dependency counselor, a social worker, a police officer, a teacher, a tribal court judge, a pastor, a newspaper reporter, and a maintenance worker.
The workshop was presented by The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a New Orleans-based organization founded in 1980 by two community organizers who realized that while a lot of community organizing efforts were good, they were run by white people, and the effects of racism were not being addressed adequately. One of the three leaders of the workshop was John Morrin of Grand Portage, a longtime trainer with The People’s Institute.
The goal: to increase awareness of the existence and effect of racism in America and to mobilize people to help bring an end to it.
“I’ve had people in my family die because of racism,” Morrin told the group. “I’ve had friends die because of racism.”
A little history
Coming up with a basic definition of racism, and even of race itself, was an important part of the workshop. What is race? Is it the color of one’s skin? One’s ethnic background? One’s culture?
Race is not a biological reality. Morrin explained that in the 1700s, during the period of European colonization around the world, a couple of scientists—Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon—were tasked with “scientifically” classifying people by races. They came up with several different categories that are commonly known in America today as white (Caucasian), black (African- American), yellow (Asian), and red or brown (Native American or Aboriginal). The dominant culture of the industrial Western world perpetrated a belief that one “race”—white—was superior.
Court cases in the U.S. regarding rights to citizenship have been contradictory, using different standards to determine “whiteness” and working against people of color in cases where race was in question. “Whiteness was what the white person said it was,” said workshop presenter Deena Hayes of Greensboro, North Carolina.
The People’s Institute defines race as a specious (meaning it appears to be real but isn’t) classification of human beings created by white Europeans to assign human worth and social status using white as the model of humanity and the height of human achievement for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power.
When the U.S. Constitution was written, Morrin said, a black person counted as three-fifths of a person. This kind of dehumanizing certain groups of people helped justify kidnapping and enslaving them.
People may argue that some “races” have used their own initiative to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in America while others have not. One example would be a perception that Asians have done well compared to other racial or ethnic groups. Why is this? Workshop co-leader Debra Hayes pointed out that 1) many Asians came to America voluntarily and wanted to assimilate into the dominant culture, 2) they came with education and skills useful to the white world, and 3) not every Asian immigrant group is doing well; some are really struggling.
This is the first in a three-part series on issues discussed at the Undoing Racism workshop held October 3-5, 2011 at Grand Portage Lodge and Casino. Part 2 will offer a definition of racism and discuss the relationship between racism and poverty.
Leave a Reply