I strive to be anti-racist, but

July 10, 2020  |  By Life LeGeros  

I am a racist. In certain moments and about some things. I don't intend to be but that is irrelevant. Though I strive to be antiracist every single second, I know that as a white cisgender straight male, the brainwashing I've received in the past and the messaging I get every day from society means that I am forever limited in my aspiration to be antiracist all the time. 

For example, at the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board meeting recently I made a public comment including the phrase "all-white board." In that moment I was assuming that I knew how every member of the board identified themselves. By potentially erasing somebody's identity, I committed a racist act. For that, I apologize unconditionally to anybody I harmed. 

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in his book “How To Be An Antiracist” notes that "The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what – not who – we are." Kendi's central insight is that there is no such thing as "nonracist," so he forces us to confront each and every idea, action, policy, and moment. 

The School Board meeting provided many such moments. There were disheartening moments such as when the board extended the superintendent's contract unnecessarily even though there are many problematic issues with her (in)actions and recent communications from an antiracism standpoint. I had urged the board to pause on the renewal and focus on healing the harm in our community caused by racism along with investing in professional learning about antiracism. My letter with recommendation is here if you are curious. 

There were some very mixed moments, such as the motion to raise the Black Lives Matter flag at all schools. The proposal itself was problematic since community members of color and students had not been consulted -- the BLM flag-raisings at schools across the state have been grassroots and led by students of color. Those flags have been earned by tough community conversations and contingency plans. In our case, flying the flags would have been performative and potentially harmful to community members and students of color who would likely suffer from any backlash. The good news is that the board defeated the motion by a slim 0.15% margin. For those who abstained, I also recalled Dr. Kendi's assertion that there is no such thing as neutral.

The themes of my public comments were HUMILITY and LEARNING. (Or more accurately, UNLEARNING.) Those of us in our community who are limited by our whiteness, including me, have so much work to do. We must urgently learn/unlearn about the complexities of dismantling this system, and the paradoxical role in those efforts of white people. We must be humble enough to know that while dancing the dance of being led by community members of color without overburdening them, we will still do harm. And that the only way to minimize that harm is to continuously learn/unlearn how to be antiracists and to make this our first priority as a community, so we can keep each other accountable. 

In that vein, I urge the School Board to start or continue digging deeply into antiracism. While this is ideally done in groups under the guidance of expert educators of color, there is much to be gained from freely available information and vulnerable introspection. 

The most comprehensive resource I've seen is the Talking About Race portal from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. There are eight major topics with links, videos, and prompts. 

I strongly urge School Board members and everybody in our community to commit to self-study to strengthen the important antiracist work we will be doing together in the future. As I've mentioned before, for anybody who is interested, I offer my time to help process our learning together.

Duxbury resident Life LeGeros works at the University of Vermont where he supports Vermont middle schools to become more student-centered and, recently, more anti-racist. He holds a doctorate degree from the Leadership in Urban Schools program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.