Sad that this is so necessary here, but glad to see that this happened. Wish the school administration were doing this! With federal civil rights investigations going on, they ought to have been spearheading this kind of cultural awareness instead of fostering the hostilities for which they are now causing our district to be investigated.
By Aaron Leibowitz
aleibowitz@wickedlocal.com
August 08. 2015 9:34AM
Five-week course at FUMC fosters racial understanding
A handful of Melrosians recently participated in a five-week crash course on racism.
The class, titled “White People Challenging Racism,” met for two hours on five occasions in May and June at the First United Methodist Church in Melrose. The goal was to better understand racism and white privilege in order to build a more just society.
Last month, several members of the class and its facilitator, Stewart Lanier, gathered at the church to tell the Free Press more about their experience.
Lanier first took the class himself in Cambridge and found it unlike any diversity training he had done before. After taking the class a second time, he became a facilitator. A small collective of volunteers has kept the course afloat since 1999.
“Two things kind of distinguish it,” Lanier said. “One is that it includes role play, so you actually have little scenarios people bring in from their own experiences. The other is we create an action plan that really has to do with right where you are.”
Before they could arrive at action steps, Lanier and his co-facilitator, Katy Thompson, had to lay the foundation. They taught the “Four I’s” of racism: individual, interpersonal, institutional and ideological.
Gradually, the class came to recognize how isolated incidents are connected to larger systems with historical roots. That, at first, was hard to swallow.
“I think we all went through that period of feeling like, ‘Oh, this is really not good,’” said Ed Schmitt, who was sponsored to take the class by the Melrose Human Rights Commission. “There were at least a couple classes where everyone was despairing.”
Each week, the participants completed readings, watched videos and engaged in discussions to paint a clearer picture of racism’s realities. That meant talking not only about individual interactions, but also about matters of national policy.
One example, Lanier explained, is the national response to drug problems in different communities. In the 1980s, the national response to drug use in predominantly black communities was to initiate a “war on drugs,” with harsher penalties enacted for drug users.
Today, the opiate crisis in suburban areas is viewed as a community health problem.
“We’re trying to help folks come to see that this is the way racism works in our society,” Lanier said.
One of the most jarring moments for some participants was learning about American housing policy after World War II. Loans were made more easily available to white families and often denied to black families, which pushed wealth into the suburbs.
“That was the thing that hit me the most out of everything we said,” said Melrose resident Jean Gorman. “It’s the kind of thing that I find myself discussing with other people. I want to tell them.”
Over the final three classes, the participants each brainstormed an action plan. What could they do in their daily lives to combat racism? How could they be better allies to people of color?
Siblings Wendy Warren and Bert Whittier, who both teach at Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School, made plans to involve their students in conversations about inclusion.
“The tagline at the middle school is, ‘A School Where Everyone Belongs,’” Warren said. “I thought it would be interesting to talk to our students and open those conversations. That’s something we say on our opening announcements, but is that something that everyone feels?”
Whittier has already tried implementing his new knowledge in his eighth grade English class.
“It was my opportunity to kind of put myself out there a little bit,” he said. “It’s all about practicing, it’s all about being ready to respond in a meaningful way. That’s not necessarily a way that makes me feel good, but it’s a way that connects with the other person.”
The participants admitted that calling out racism in their daily lives can be challenging, but the course gave them some of the tools to do so.
“Social norms just dictate that you’re going to nod and smile,” said Jane Allen, a member of the church who helped organize the class. “You can’t do that after you take this class.”
Perhaps the most difficult step was being willing to take the class at all.
“I think that people don’t like to think they got something for the color of their skin,” Allen said. “They don’t want to think it’s the spoils of racism. They feel like it takes something away from them. That’s also why people get down on others and say, ‘Well, they should just get to work, get a better job, educate yourself.’ That reinforces that whole concept that they earned what they have, we earned what we have, and we can kind of rest comfortably.”
Those who took the course this summer developed, as Whittier put it, a new set of eyes and ears when it comes to race. They found that they could do more than watch helplessly as the country reckons with police brutality, or as they seek to build a more inclusive community on a local scale.
“Some of us are children of the ’60s, and I think we have a consciousness of what was going on then,” Whittier said. “Having a course like this raises that sensitivity again, and it also says you can do something about it.”
Lanier hopes to teach the course in Melrose again this fall. While the workload is somewhat heavy, he emphasized that participants should not be discouraged from signing up if they cannot complete every reading.
The class costs $55 and is open to all, regardless of racial identity.
“We don’t need to be 1,000 people or 100 people or 10 people,” Whittier said. “We can make a difference individually.”
For more information on the class, contact Stewart Lanier at Stewart@LAOSConsulting.com.
http://melrose.wickedlocal.com/article/20150808/NEWS/150808147
Glad to hear 2 school employees took this course. I'd be interested in taking it if my schedule permits. MPS needs for all of it's personnel to take this kind of training. KUDOS Bert and Wendy.
I ditto the suggestion to have this course given to MPS staff.
Of course the school district spends $10's of thousands a dollar a year on so called, "Professional Development", which has been shown to be wasteful by at least two government studies and a recent 10,000 teacher study by one independent educational group. Perhaps this money could be better spent teaching them about "Racial and Social" Development!
I'll pay the $55 (very reasonable). We had to pay for our own fingerprinting so what's the diff. Both important to have for the sake of our children.
The fact that you said "understand white privelege" totally just turned me off.
When you find mine let me know.
This type of civil rights training is all well and good but it does no good if when parents and children complain to the superintendent and or the school principal about this type of behavior by staff, they get attacked by the superintendent of schools and city solicitor's office. It is the illegal retaliation and intimidation of complainants more so than the discrimination and civil rights violations against minorities and Special Ed students themselves that is the real crime being committed here in Melrose. Of course, the Federal Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights has apparently figured this all out.
" It is the illegal retaliation and intimidation of complainants more so than the discrimination and civil rights violations against minorities and Special Ed students themselves that is the real crime being committed here in Melrose."
No, actually they are all "real" crimes, and they are just different aspects of the same hostile and abusive culture in the school district and city governance. There are indeed actual laws being broken, routinely and with abandon, in Special Education, federal civil rights, and against basic laws of governance, hence the involvement and confirmation from the Secretary of State and Attorney General's office multiple times the last few years especially. Some of these things are longstanding and relate to larger Melrose culture (its business community, clubs, and a public that passively looks away instead of standing up for others and for what's right--what happened with the Y rapist showed this most discouragingly) and some explicitly tied to this mayor and his selection of appalling legal counsel who have supported and promulgated the actions in many arenas--labor relations (look hard at the settlements, many of which have been quietly arranged via insurance, and there are literally millions that have been squandered needlessly in Melrose), governance, SPED, etc.
Melrose wants to think of itself in the best possible light, as proud citizens anywhere would. This would be fine and honorable if only the pride extended to honorable conduct when it really counts. Facing unpleasant truths and dealing with problems in a mature way for the greater good leads to a kind of civic pride that is earned and truly honorable. Melrose has the opportunity right now to show that it can be a more mature and honorable community, so that it can be proud of things that extend beneath the superficial, the "quaint," the "charming."