Terrorizing Dissenters at the RNC - National Lawyers Guild

Convention 08
Why Go to Anti-Racism Training? I’m Not Racist!
A Message to My Fellow White Folks in the Guild
by Katy Schuman Clemens
At the Anti-Racism Training in Detroit, we were all supposed to write
something in response to the question, “why are you here?” My first
line was, “So that we don’t waste so much time stepping in our own
shit on our way to the New World we’re creating.”
My first Guild convention was Austin
in 2006. I looked at the schedule and
saw that all of Saturday morning was
taken up by an Anti-Racism Training and
a TUPOCC training. “Okay,” I thought
to myself. “I guess that’s the perfect time
to get out and see Austin. And I’ll get to
sleep in.”
What was I thinking? Probably what
many of you have thought. “I’ve done a
thousand anti-racism trainings. I’m in
touch with my own racism. I won’t learn
anything there.” I wondered why that
was all that was available on Saturday
morning.
As I learned this year, I was wrong.
Over my past three years in this organization,
I have felt issues of racism run
through its veins like sour blood. Some
(mostly younger) folks have told me that
they are fighting active racism within the
Guild, while other (mostly older) folks
have told me of their simmering resentment
that some people within the Guild
seem ready to call them racist anytime,
anywhere.
And this is the Guild, people. If we
can’t deal with issues of racism within
the Guild, how will we ever tackle it out
in the real world, where we can’t even
count on the baseline that nobody wants
to be racist?
It starts at the Anti-Racist Training.
First you have to start from a position
of recognizing racism. It’s not easy for
the “Current Gen” of the Guild because
racism in the 60s was so much easier to
spot than it is today, and it is easy to get
caught up in the joy of how far we’ve
come. It’s not easy for the “Next Gen”
of the Guild because racism as it looks
today is what we were cooked in, simmered
in, marinated in.
Let me just explain, briefly, a moment
in my own personal journey. It was a
conversation I had with my friend Omar,
whom I had met in a race relations class
in college. Omar was a tall, Black man
with long dreadlocks. “You know what
really gets me?” he said. “Everywhere I
go, I see white women grab their purses.
Ever so slightly. They move away and
just tighten their grip a little. They don’t
realize they’re doing it. But when you
walk through the world and people are
moving away from you just a little bit
everywhere, all the time, ‘cause they
think you’re about to attack them, that
can really get to you. It does something
to your mind.”
And then I saw it. I was sure that
I had done that. In fact, since that
conversation, it’s all I can do not to
make a specific point of not grabbing my
purse whenever a Black man walks past
me. But that’s not the answer either. It
would be nice if I didn’t notice when
a Black man walked past me, besides
giving him a smile and a nod because
he’s a fellow human being. This is what
I’m working on—part of my life’s work.
It should be part of all of our life’s work.
Many white people think that antiracism
training is nothing but self-hatred
and self-blame. They’re wrong. It’s a
constant struggle. It has to be hard.
Institutionalized racism is so big that you
can’t see it. Anti-racism training is the
act of lifting your head out of quicksand,
trying to twist your bound self around
in Plato’s cave so that you can see the
puppets and the blinding light of the sun
rather than the shadows on the wall.
But there’s joy too, particularly once
you get down to the actual work of
actively pushing back against the norm of
racism. You’re trying to push the chains
off of everyone who is bound, including
yourself. Think about where we’ll get
with this endeavor if the getting is good.
It’s easy to get discouraged when
facing such a large problem. I can only
imagine what it must look like and feel
like to be a person of color. But for me,
once I had gotten a handle on it, my
eyes had been opened. Now I could be
one of the forces of change—a conduit
through which the Revolution could
flow. The least I could do, to start with,
was to try to take some of the onus off
of Omar and my other friends of color
who have the big hearts to try to teach
all of us. I could take on at least some
of the teaching myself, from my own
white perspective.
I really believe that there is joy in
making of yourself an anti-racist sword as
well as a shield. But it starts with never
ceasing in your efforts, and never pausing
in your own personal journey. If you care
about the health of this human family
that is the Guild, and of the greater
human family on this Earth, then it starts
18 • GUILD NOTES • WINTER 2008