Culturally broad and inaccurate approaches to community services and institutions have been clearly shown to be ineffectual and misplaced. When addressing societal issues such as sexual assault and domestic violence, a more highly attuned and relatable framework is needed by organizations in order to truly connect and help the people that need it. Here on the show today to talk about the institutional racism that is still so prevalent, and share some thoughts on the steps that are necessary at this moment to continue trying to dismantle this, is Pamela Chambers! Pamela is an award-winning and leading specialist on race and cultural diversity issues and currently works at Beyond Diversity Resource Center, where she is committed to helping women of color confront oppression and institutional racism through powerful change and personal growth. In our conversation, we cover some of Pamela's history working in the space, reflections on what has changed and what has not, and her thoughts on the most pressing areas to address in 2021. We get into the cycle of bias and policy creation and look at some examples of how these patterns have been present in the last century. Pamela weighs in on privilege, talking about how we all walk in and out of different forms of privilege constantly, and the resultant impetus that puts on us to listen and learn. The episode finishes off underlining the main thesis of tailoring services to the culture, language, and needs of the people, and our guest makes a great argument for why this is so pressing right now. For this and more, listen in.
Beyond Diversity Resource Center
Culturally broad and inaccurate approaches to community services and institutions have been clearly shown to be ineffectual and misplaced. When addressing societal issues such as sexual assault and domestic violence, a more highly attuned and relatable framework is needed by organizations in order to truly connect and help the people that need it. Here on the show today to talk about the institutional racism that is still so prevalent, and share some thoughts on the steps that are necessary at this moment to continue trying to dismantle this, is Pamela Chambers! Pamela is an award-winning and leading specialist on race and cultural diversity issues and currently works at Beyond Diversity Resource Center, where she is committed to helping women of color confront oppression and institutional racism through powerful change and personal growth. In our conversation, we cover some of Pamela's history working in the space, reflections on what has changed and what has not, and her thoughts on the most pressing areas to address in 2021. We get into the cycle of bias and policy creation and look at some examples of how these patterns have been present in the last century. Pamela weighs in on privilege, talking about how we all walk in and out of different forms of privilege constantly, and the resultant impetus that puts on us to listen and learn. The episode finishes off underlining the main thesis of tailoring services to the culture, language, and needs of the people, and our guest makes a great argument for why this is so pressing right now. For this and more, listen in.
Beyond Diversity Resource Center
EPISODE 11
[INTRO]
[00:00:04] RW: Welcome to this episode of We Hear You, from Harambe Social Services in South Jersey. We Hear You is designed to give a voice to victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. This forum is for survivors and their allies to discuss issues that impact them and their families, as well as to educate communities.
In the coming segments, we will hear from survivors. They will tell us their stories and what they would like for us to know. As allies, we want to hear how we can support them.
[EPISODE]
[00:00:46] RW: Good evening. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to We Hear You Podcast. Tonight’s special guests is Pamela Smith Chambers. Pamela is a leading specialist on race and cultural diversity issues. She has a commitment to help people confront institutional racism and oppression, through their personal growth and change. Pamela is with the Beyond Diversity Resource Center. Before joining that, she was with the Office of Bias Crimes and Community Relations.
She also has been a director of counseling and education services at the YWCA of Trenton, New Jersey. She holds a master's in counseling and a BA in English with a minor in African-American studies from Trenton State College, which is now College of New Jersey. She is the recipient of awards from several organizations, including the New Jersey Coalition to End Domestic Violence, and the advisory board of the New Jersey Human Relations Council, and the Florence Credit Union Residential Center of the Juvenile Justice Commission. She is also the co-author of The Anti-Racist Cookbook, and The Great White Elephant. She has also authored an article called 'Rape, Care and Racism'.
With that, welcome, Pamela. How are you?
[00:02:24] PSC: Thank you, Rose. As so many people seem to be saying these days, I'm doing as well as can be expected. There is so, so much going on in our country right now that sometimes I wonder how any of us are still standing, but I'm doing okay.
[00:02:38] RW: Well, it's certainly good to hear you and have you on as a special guest tonight. We have done so much work together over the years. It seems very unnatural not to see you on a weekly basis.
[00:02:55] PSC: Yeah. I certainly miss our work. I think that the work we were able to do together was pretty phenomenal. It's a little sad to see where that has ended up.
[00:03:04] RW: Yeah. I think if time permits, I want to share a little bit about what's going on currently with that. I thought that tonight, given your background and just the nature of We Hear You, we thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about your experiences working with women of color, particularly black and African-American women in both domestic violence and sexual assault. Can you share a little bit of that background for us?
[00:03:37] PSC: Yeah. That's a hard question, because when I was director of the rape crisis sexual assault program, as the director of Counseling and Information Services at the YWCA of Trenton, and when the sexual assault program was housed at the Y. It was the Mercer County program, there weren't any black women that I worked with. I'm searching my not-so-great memory these days. For the most part, all of the sexual assault care programs in the state of New Jersey were headed by white women. The coalition under which these programs worked was headed by two white women. I remember very vaguely that there was a program director at one of the programs. Other than that, as we moved around the table, I was pretty much the only black person there.
[00:04:34] RW: What was the timeframe for that?
[00:04:36] PSC: Oh, gosh. I was afraid you were going to ask me that. Let me rephrase that. It was the end of the '80s, early '90s. It's been quite some time. My fingers are crossed. Hopefully, some things have changed. At that point, the sexual assault care program was under the auspices of the YWCA and under my particular department at the time.
[00:05:02] RW: Okay. The thing is, though, when you speak of leadership particularly, and I can speak as much about sexual assault, but definitely for domestic violence programs and the membership of that coalition, very little has changed. To my knowledge, we currently have Annette McDonald. I think you mean her. She actually has a domestic violence program and shelter program now.
[00:05:29] PSC: Oh, wow.
[00:05:30] RW: Access. Yes. Somewhere in Essex County. She's an ED. Then, there is a MonaVie, which has always been around. It’s been around for quite some time for South Asian women and headed by a South Asian woman. Those are the two that I am aware of. Maybe missing someone.
[00:05:53] PSC: Is Rain still in existence, Rose?
[00:05:55] RW: Purple Rain?
[00:05:56] PSC: Yes.
[00:05:57] RW: Yes, it is. It is still in existence. Asia is still doing some work with that, but more on limited skill. She talked to me, well not a while ago, but I think she is veering away from the direct services and doing some other work, working with training of law enforcement.
[00:06:21] PSC: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:06:23] RW: She's directly involved with the fatality and near fatality review board, which is very important work. She's been very active in that.
[00:06:32] PSC: Oh, great. Okay.
[00:06:33] RW: Yeah. I do not believe she is as active as she used to be with the direct services.
[00:06:39] PSC: I see.
[00:06:40] RW: The limitations are still there in terms of leadership, for sure. That clearly impacts how agencies are run and how policies are developed. Because we do know of the agencies that exists and I just looked at something, I believe there are 35 programs now in the 21 counties. When you're talking about that many and then in terms of blacking beads, of course, Harambe is not a member of the New Jersey coalition. It is certainly for black people, and then a NETS program. I think that this is a perfect segue into just the conversation about the need for culturally specific programming.
[00:07:34] PSC: Yeah. Yeah. I think that trying to communicate that need to speak to specifically about New Jersey and then just get to the bigger picture, trying to work with domestic and sexual violence programs in the state of New Jersey, trying to help leadership staff understand the importance of not just culturally specific services, but diversity on a number of criteria within the leadership of the organization has been almost impossible. The resistance has, from the very beginning been off the chart.
I think it comes from what comes from a few things. One, I think that the culture of the United States is very much built on white cultural norms. That pervades everything; our educational systems, our workplace, mores and customs, all aspects of our culture. It's an invisible situation for most white people. As a result, it's very hard to help people understand how significantly culture drives service outcome.
We have in New Jersey, a culture of primarily white women who believe that they are good people, who have good intentions. As a result, don't see the need to do the deep self-examination that would allow for changes in programs that would make them more inclusive and do a much better job of doing culturally specific services. That attitude is not just EDs in the domestic and sexual care programs in Mercer. I mean, that's pretty universal. Getting people to change those attitudes is not easy. I can say that once you do, you have organizations that do amazing things around being anti-oppressive. Okay, because I don't believe it's enough to be just inclusive, or equitable. I think you have to attack the systems that buoy up oppression and racism and begin to eliminate those systems before you can make real change.
[00:09:50] RW: It's so true. The programs are a microcosm of the society. They certainly do reflect that. Possibly because the system is smaller. I'm not sure that that contributes to, but I believe it does contribute to the difficulty with moving it. It stays so rigid and it’s a little entrenched a body of people who are very fixed in mind, body and spirit. There has been so little movement over time. It's very, very difficult. It's one of those jobs that becomes, I guess, an avocation and people tend to get there and stay there, because they can. The mindset stays the same.
[00:10:46] PSC: Yes, it certainly does. It certainly does. I think, one other thing is that in this culture, in many ways, white people have been taught to fear and distrust people of color. Again, that's not a personal indictment against any white person, but instead, how white culture has institutionalized racism and other forms of oppression. You know, Rose, because you've been – we've been a part of so much of each other's work that little things, like a black man can just show up and folks were terrified, and he hadn't done anything.
[00:11:24] RW: Hasn’t done any. He doesn’t and he’s just there.
[00:11:26] PSC: We've seen that demonstrated in the worst possible ways around the innocent murderers of so many black men and women on the part of police, who say, “Well, I was afraid for my life." They have all the training and all the weapons and the people laying on the ground dead had nothing. It's heartbreaking. I think that's part of the problem. As a result, if you've been taught to be fearful and distrustful of certain groups of people, based on stereotypes and erroneous information about those people, then when you think about it in a deep way, when it comes to hire somebody, your criteria changes.
You feel comfortable with people who look like you. You feel comfortable with people who share the same religion and the same family values and the same practices, people who are part of your culture. I think in New Jersey, that's definitely part of what is reinforced the isolation of women of color from leadership, and even women from services. I know, I've heard stories over all these years since I've been doing this work, from women of color, who say, “I can't trust that these programs will have my best interests at heart.” They find alternate methods of support and healing. I mean, I learned from you primarily and then going out and hearing women tell me those stories.
It's difficult, because where do people learn so many negative stereotypes and misinformation about groups of people, they often learn it in their educational institutions within their own families. Families are a primary teacher. If that's the case, then trying to get people to confront and undo some of those learnings means going against the training and teaching from the very people you were taught to trust and love. I think, that's yet one more barrier to getting people to move.
[00:13:23] RW: Some change. That whole curve is about, only that you have learned how to be racist is so difficult. So difficult. It means that I'm good. I'm a good person. I love everybody. I don't see color. Something's wrong with you, if you are seeing me as a racist.
[00:13:51] PSC: Exactly.
[00:13:52] RW: I am seeing you as a racist, because you have been acculturated in a system that is racist. How can you not be racist?
[00:14:01] PSC: Right. When you have been acculturated in a system that benefits you simply because you have white skin, you are part of a culture of whiteness. It has disadvantaged me as a black person. The ownership of that is critical before you can move forward. I think part of it, I mean, I spent almost 10 years working in the New Jersey Office of Bias Crime and Community Relations. I did training all over the state around issues of bias and prejudice and racism and the like. One of the difficult pieces is that in this society, we view people, like the Klan, skinheads, neo-Nazis, the new group that President Trump is loving so much right now, the Proud Boys. We see those people as racist. What white people tend to do is like, “Well, I'm not one of them.”
[00:14:56] RW: I’m not them. I’m not them.
[00:14:58] PSC: I'm not lynching people and burning crosses on lawns and attacking folks and the like. They can't see how by birth, you become complicit in a system, and that it's not about blame or shame. It's not about making people feel bad. Although, those are all things that people can feel as a result of this. It's about being willing to take the responsibility that your people did this. Therefore, if you can take responsibility that they did it, you can take responsibility to work to undo it. For most people, that's not quite the path that they choose to take.
[00:15:36] RW: That’s right. It's too painful for them. The guilt is too powerful, they can’t take it. I would say, the people that are, I guess, who feel they're the best people, they have the hardest time with it. Is not even the most biased people? It’s really the people that are really, the good people that go, "Then that can’t be made. I'm not. You call me – Oh, my goodness. Don’t. Call me —" Just yes. Yes, yes. Right about we're saying, and I think that the difficulty is that, especially when we're talking about our programming. When we're talking about our programming, we're talking about people developing policy. Say, develop policy. They cannot see the implicit bias in their policy. This is how we harm victims who come in, who are people of color.
[00:16:37] PSC: That’s right. That’s right.
[00:16:39] RW: That's right. that's the piece that we're trying to – if they can get that piece, how they influence – they’re influenced by their culture. They’re influenced by white culture and therefore, if they have no balance in that opinion as they develop policy and practice, then therefore, their policy will continue to be slanted. White culture and that's all I was saying.
[00:17:07] PSC: That's right. That's right. Rose, in many ways that goes all the way back to the women's liberation movement and the early beginnings of some of the DB & SA work. The precursor to that was some of the stuff that happened during the women's labor movement, where white women were fairly angry with black women who were going through a black liberation movement on race and looking at eliminating racism. There was a lot of disconnect. Disconnect that I experienced personally, disconnect that you saw with the national leaders around the resentment of white women, that we would be looking at the liberation of men who they saw as the universal perpetrator, so to speak.
Again, I'm not blaming all men for being perpetrators, but it was like, this is the enemy and we are trying to overcome this. That's fine, except that they left very little room for black women, and very little support from white women for the black women's cause. I think that it is that history, in part, that has traveled through time, either unconsciously, but in the DNA of the change process around services, around violence. It's been a long journey and it's been one fraught with a lot of issues cross-racially. I think that has a little bit of an impact as well.
Rose, can I say something about your comment about the policies?
[00:18:39] RW: Yeah.
[00:18:40] PSC: I think that there's a huge issue in this society around the perception of fair as equal. I think that that has shut down the ability for many programs to offer equitable services to all of the diverse clients they serve. They have rules. Here are the shelter rules and here's what has to happen. I mean, I've seen little tiny things that seem, I guess, important to do, like we want to have some diversity in food, so that different cultural people can have stuff. We're going to translate materials into a variety of language.
It is so touching the surface, that in some ways, it makes me angry because the policies go unchanged. What the leaders of the organizations can't seem to understand is that if you don't understand, for example, how different cultures perceive and manage time, then you don't understand how setting a certain policy that this happens at X time on Tuesdays only, could very well be disadvantaging a lot of women who come through the door.
Then, what happens is those women get blamed. Well, they're irresponsible. They don't respect time. They must not care. They get perceived as unworthy and undeserving of what I'm trying to do for you, because I'm the good person and you're not doing it the right way. We see that in social services. We see that in education programs. I mean, what's happening to children across the country in educational settings is heartbreaking.
It's because those norms play out in all of the policies. Then, if women of color are brought to the table to speak on it, they received the ‘yes, but’ response quite often. The policies go unchanged. People say, “Well we brought in people,” but because those people don't agree. The majority rules, which is another white culture dynamic, then things often will stay the same. It ends up being this vicious cycle, and quite frustrating for I think, women of color who have been working to make change.
[00:21:10] RW: I'm interested to see what the figures and stats are going to be around court, in having court via Zoom, versus in-person opportunities, because of the pandemic. We are ready, ourselves in Harambe, we're told, “Well, I have no place to go to have a private conversation on Zoom. I need to come in.” Shutting everything down and saying, “This is of course, I experienced it from schools and the different things that happened there.” For women who need to come in to have their final restraining order hearing, that's an in-person, typically an in-person hearing.
Then, when that is now held on Zoom, a couple of things have happened. One, they may not, or they have difficulty getting to where they can have a private conversation on Zoom to have this hearing. The second thing that happens is typically, that is where the folks come in, like Harambe, or some other agency to say, “Hey, here are some things that may help you in the courtroom.” We cannot represent them. We're not allowed to do that. We are allowed to give them some guidance on how to present themselves, that would be most advantageous to them. What remedies to request? This is when you do that.
If we're not having any of that prep time for them, because now they're on Zoom. Well, we're not there with them on the Zoom call. I’m wondering what the challenges are for women who are faced with that? Then again, I really do believe that it's disproportionately going to affect women of color, than it does white women. Because there’s a digital divide that we know about. That became very evident once the schools closed, and okay. Well, have your children tune in to Zoom. Well, that would be great if I had Internet. I don't have Internet.
[00:23:15] PSC: That's right. That's right.
[00:23:16] RW: They’re like, “Really?” Again, these things that white culture takes for granted. We don't all have that. Some of us have it. The unfairness of just being a part of the other side, that people don't even take time to find out how that's different, much less why it's different. Let’s attack the why and then really fix it. We'll do the surface. This has to come up and does come up when developing policy and how some things just don't fit for us. There have to be some different options to address issues. There typically is one. It's going to be this or that and that's it. You don’t always fall into this and that. Somewhere in between.
[00:24:11] PSC: Yeah, exactly. I'm thinking about it. I apologize, because you know how I am a going to do a sort of problem-solving thing. Computers, that women who are victims of violence have, need to be considered the same as their house, their cellphone, because there's a long history. Thank goodness for your good teaching of me, of things like people going through cellphones and people not allowing people into the house, or not allowing her out of the house. I mean, all of that stuff.
Now, what is there in that to make you think that a woman is going to have her own private computer that her abuser may not have access to? I mean, that's not possible. I mean, it's not that some women will have it, but that's part of the new normal. Court systems have got to begin to think – I mean, a couple of things. It's like, how do you do this? If police were right acting people, then you could have a police officer there perhaps to make sure that she has a chance to be on the computer uninterrupted and un-spied on. Then, if you’re sharing the computer, what's going to happen? You can't do that every time. You do that what? 20 times a day? That's a stupid suggestion. I get that. I'm just saying, there has to be some intervention of some kind.
[00:25:32] RW: I'm not really sure how that is done, but I'm really wanting to do more research to get. How are those hearings being held? I would say that that will be something that Harambe would be open to, if we could get that information to victims that here's a safe space you could come, where you can come safely.
[00:25:56] PSC: That's right. That's right.
[00:25:57] RW: There, you could have access to a computer to do your Zoom hearing.
[00:26:03] PSC: That would be wonderful, Rose. That would be wonderful.
[00:26:06] RW: Yeah. Because we found – When I got that message, I was like, “Really? Really?” Like, “Wow. What else can we do?” We definitely were not set up for people to come in, because there was not an effort. It was only a tiny, little office we had. We had two little offices and a counseling room. The counseling room was small. Then it was a open space, but that space was not private. There was no way anybody can use that space for it. That was one of the reasons that we moved to the larger space, so that people could have a large multi-purpose room, where they can space themselves as much as they need to. They are starting to come in.
The thing is, is that having one agency in the whole state of New Jersey, but two, I'm not sure how access is set up that program in terms of if it's exclusive enough. Harambe is exclusively geared towards people of the African diaspora. The point is that definitely, there are 21 counties, even the small state of New Jersey that is way too small and way too few that are looking at, specifically, what are the nuances necessary to help women and victims in general, be comfortable in the setting when they're speaking out.
[00:27:33] PSC: Well, you know what, Rose, maybe, and again, I know you don't need me to make up more work for you to do. But perhaps, one of the roles that Harambe can serve, and I think you might have some partners to help. I'm thinking about Avanzar in Atlantic County and all the work that they've done around anti-racism, anti-oppression, and certainly a NETS program. Maybe there are one or two others that I'm not aware of, but it might be a strong role for Harambe to lead a small group of people who are acting as advocates to implement the very policy that you've already implemented within your program, of reaching out to all the programs, all the executive directors, all the counselors, because I've learned reaching out to the ED doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get movement.
you would want, perhaps, counseling staff and people who would accompany – I mean, however you might want to do that, and talk about the value of creating space for the women to come in to do those court interviews, in that safe space of the agency itself. All those agencies are used to providing safe spaces and confidentiality. It wouldn't take a big leap to have a computer and an advocate available to sit next to this woman and support her as she's going through our process. There's certainly probably, well, I'm not going to buy that there's no space with an agency to have that happen. I mean, it's not like you're going to have 500 people show up on any given day. It's a flow of people. Maybe that's part of Harambe’s new work to actually step out as the leader to advocate for that.
[00:29:15] RW: Yeah. I think that that's something that could be done. I think it's a matter of addressing the court officials in the prosecutor's office really — there. How is that hearing held? Then, how can we enhance that? Because we're feeling that again, people of color are at a disadvantage. I think that's what it takes. It takes that second look. Mainstream programs are not willing to take. They say, “Well, this is the role, and this is why it has to be the role.” They often cannot see outside of that, what they will and they have become more accustomed to doing a little bit around language at this. They do seem to understand that better than they did maybe a few years ago.
There's still been the whole issue around races. They just don't get it, that there is a need for anything different. Don't get it. we continue to strive for that. I know, you have done a lot of work, as you mentioned. We did work together on trying to make some of those changes towards better inclusion and access for women and people of color. What would you say, I guess, anything that you see, in terms of you mentioned one agency that had made some strides after your working with them? What would you say is the key thing for agencies to do in order to make that leap towards better racial equity within their program?
[00:31:00] PSC: I think that one of the main things that opens the path for change is the redefinition of what it means to center the voices of people of color. I think that it is the strongest barrier that has prevented white women leaders of these programs in New Jersey. It goes back to what I was saying a little earlier about when you are acculturated to fear, or distrust, or dislike, a race of people, and even if that stuff is not on the surface, even if you believe that you weren't acculturated that way, you were.
Hearing my voice on issues of what's good for women of color in a way, that's stronger than the way you would listen to a white woman, who's talking about that, is a situation that we have confronted for years. It is not something that white people are accustomed to. I mean, we're not doing politics tonight, thank goodness. So much of what happened during Barack Obama's presidency, rested on the fact that white people are not acculturated to take leadership from people of color and resent it deeply.
Anti-racism principles call for centering the voices of women of color. It's more than just hearing what they have to say. As I suggested earlier, you have to trust the voices, you have to listen to the voices. Then you have to make change on the information that those voices share. Just to address people of color, I mean, we're not talking about grabbing 25 people of color off the street and saying, “So, what do you think about domestic violence?” I mean, we're talking about other black, Latinx, Asian, native women in the work, in the movement, who have done this work, who understand the women in their populations and can bring their voices to the table around change.
We're talking about women with great expertise. I think that point has to be made. I think that's one thing, centering the voices of people of color. I think that's really important. Then the second is what I was implying, and that is that you have to re-examine as white women, what does it mean to take leadership from women of color? Not to use double standards around qualifications. Not to rest on what's comfortable for you and to admit that you're wrong. You truly have to be able to say, “Well, I'm wrong, and I've been wrong about this.” Boy, does that hurt, and boy, do I feel bad. Then get over it and move in positive ways for the population that you're so committed to serve.
Rose, I will say this, too. We're talking about race and we're talking about black women primarily, and other women of color as well. However, in the world of oppression, we all walk in and out of privileged groups. It's like, I'm a woman, I don't have privilege based on gender. I'm black, I don't have privilege based on race. Not once during this pandemic did I have to worry that I wouldn't be able to feed my family. I am pretty deeply rooted in the middle-class and economic threat. Knock on wood. Is not something that I was faced with. There are thousands upon thousands of people who can't feed their families right now.
I walk in a economic privilege. I'm not a multimillionaire. There are many people who have more economic privilege than I have, but I'm not facing the threat of homelessness and poverty. Therefore, I benefit from some financial independence. I'm walking in the privilege of that. I think, people don't understand. I'm a heterosexual woman. I have a husband. I have children. I have grandchildren, and my life is on public view all the time. I don't have to worry about being killed, because I'm a lesbian. I don't have to be worried about being rejected or physically harmed, because I'm a lesbian.
As a result of that, I wish that white women would grapple more deeply with the fact that yes, racism is hard to grapple with if you're white. At the same time, we all walk in and out of privilege and non-privileged places and the places where all of us walk in privilege, we stumble, we make mistakes, we do some really bad things sometimes out of stupidity and innocence, not out of nasty intent. If we could just figure out how that works for us, in other situations, I think we'd be more comfortable talking about race.
[00:35:55] RW: It is somehow needed to find that parallel, so that you can at least identify with that experience, because it does exist. It’s real. Because of the distant tremendous shame and guilt around racism, that people, they just can't see it and that's why you have to go out to another place and then come back. I know one that I often use is that of disability, because I do have privilege around mobility and never have to consider where I'm going so far in advance of when I get there, whether I'm going to even be able to use a restroom with some amount of dignity.
Don't have to consider that. I'm going to go eat, or how I'm going to travel because of that. Where am I going to spend the night? If you are not able to address that, as you say, and on some level, then it would be very difficult and difficult to get a piece around race.
[00:37:08] PSC: Yeah. You have to address it, but you can't dismiss it by falsely leveling the playing field. I've had a number of white women say to me, “Oh, well. As a woman, I have faced sexism and gender bias. I know just how you feel. Oh, it's the same.” It's like, it's not the same. Racism and gender bias is not the same. Just like, I had to learn issues around disability. It's not the same as racism. I will say that I'm being real presumptuous to speak for you for a second. I mean, one of the ways that we learn that lesson was we centered the voice of a person with disabilities.
It was like, what she said went. It was like, we can't argue with this, because it's not our experience. We were blessed with a patient, loving teacher, and that person helped us understand. That's another thing you can't count on. Sometimes people are willing to step up and teach you and sometimes the pain and anger and frustration of the oppression that they receive means, I'm not doing it today. I'm not doing it.
It's not that the way to learn it is well, let me go talk to the black person I know and ask all the questions. That's totally inappropriate. There are millions upon millions of books, movies, articles. Get in groups, read the articles, process the articles, invite women of color to the groups, but don't rest everything on them. Don't put that pressure on them. Share the ideas. Discuss things. Increase your learning curve.
There is a significantly growing group of white, particularly women who are active anti-racists, and who have been looking at white racial privilege and accountability to people of color for their anti-racism work. They're all over the – I mean, there's quite a few of them. Ask –
[00:39:08] PSC: New Jersey. Yes.
[00:39:09] RW: Find them. These women, I know quite a number of them are willing to talk to other white people. They're willing to offer trainings to white people, to help them begin to undo some of the kinds of thinking they have and put in place strong anti-racism thinking. They often will do trainings only for white people, because they want them to feel safe. They don't want them to feel they have to be too frightened to open their mouths and say something wrong, which I think is a wonderful idea. It speaks to some of the ways that we have separate work, in addition to joint work.
[00:39:44] RW: Well, there's certainly much work to be done. I think that this time, for this moment, anyway, feels different to me, in terms of readiness. I know very often, there's some situation and it's a catalyst, and then there seems to be a shift. Then it shifts back. I'm feeling different about this particular time and I am hoping that coalitions, domestic violence programs, sexual assault programs, will be taking advantage of this moment to do some real work.
Definitely take advantage of the talent and the expertise of women of color that are around them, particularly black women, who can be useful, but are not there to be – it’s that whole piece of you have to do your work. I can lend my voice and explain which directions you can go in, but you have to do the work yourself.
[00:41:00] PSC: That's right. That's right.
[00:41:01] RW: That's the part that gets lost in women of color. I think, why we get so exhausted and we'll say, “Well, I'm done. I'm not doing it anymore.” Because it's like, “Well teach us, teach us, teach us. Train us. Train us.” Then, no activity, no movement.
[00:41:19] PSC: Right. They don't do any change.
[00:41:21] RW: On the training. That's the difficult part, I think, for what – I am hoping that this particular time that we can take advantage, because this is the perfect storm of the racial injustices for 2020 pandemic and the general overall condition of our country should help us to know that this is the time to make some significant change.
I'm hoping that that's something that we're going to be able to see all now. I know that eventually, some of those folks will listen to this podcast and hopefully, they will hear one thing, just one thing that will help them to move forward. The importance is that this is a podcast that we’re hoping survivors are listening to, as well as advocates. We want survivors particularly, to feel that there is a place for them to go, that they will be heard and they will first of all, have to bite through and cut through the racial bias before they can get to discussing the victimization.
I think very often, this is how we lose victims, and that they go back into oppress their abusive situations, because the oppression within the helping situation is too powerful. Too painful. Where they go back to this other situation, rather than deal with what they deal with that programs. That's my understanding.
[00:43:08] PSC: Yeah, absolutely. Just one tiny comment to what you said about the training. In my experience, one of the things that happens in programs is that the leadership sends people to training like, “Oh, well. We have a very diverse population in the shelter, so we're going to send the shelter staff for the training.” Well, that's all well and good, except the power doesn't rest in shelters there for the agency decision-making.
One of the things that I think is critical to happen is that the leadership needs to put itself in the position to be trained. They need to stop sending the shelter coordinator. I mean, I think everybody needs some training, don't get me wrong. It is at the leadership levels, or within the organization that change is likely to occur. While centering the voices of women of color throughout your agency is critical to the change. Ultimately, whiteness says that there's a hierarchy. Part of anti-racism is that that hierarchy has to be dismantled in terms of the only people that hold power.
There has to be a power sharing around decision-making and implementation of new policies. I would hope that leaders of agencies would challenge themselves to rethink their positions as white women mean, as you suggested earlier, and do the training and re-education that they need to do to lead the organizations from a different vantage point.
[00:44:37] RW: Absolutely. Have that understanding that this one is not a check-off list, right. It cannot be, “Oh, I have a training three years ago, five years ago, or when I was in college, I had some training. It is not about that.
[00:44:56] PSC: All going commitment.
[00:44:57] RW: That’s not it. It is a checklist, because since you had that training, then what else have you done to increase your learning? That is more of what it's about.
[00:45:10] PSC: What growth has been in the field? How has the field of anti-oppression grown? It's grown tremendously over the last 30 years. We have so much more knowledge and so much more everything. Yeah, it's a lifelong commitment to social justice. It's not training on oppression. If that's all you're going to do, you're wasting your time.
[00:45:30] RW: It is certainly that. It is definitely, this is where the personal does have to come into it, because they don't really change your life as a result of this learning. I'll use that term, rather than a training. It isn't a training. It is a learning. Ongoing learning and growing that you must do in order to be an effective leader of an agency that is promoting racial equity.
[00:46:03] PSC: Right. That’s actually right.
[00:46:04] RW: That is actually an anti-oppression agency that is devoted to anti-oppression. You just know, it just that isn't what you're doing. Totally good for you.
[00:46:19] PSC: You're not doing network. Other things that you taught me, Rose, in some of our earliest work was to let go this concept that one size fits all. It's like, there are about in the homework that I've done, perhaps a 100 different dialects of Spanish in Central and South America.
[00:46:38] RW: Oh, my God.
[00:46:40] PSC: Translating your brochure into Spanish, it's like, well that may be nice, but how that works for a Guatemalan woman, versus a Venezuelan woman, versus a Puerto Rican woman, it's not the same. You have the general Spanish brochure people can get by, but it doesn't speak to the individual woman, as she's walking through the door. Or black people are –
[00:47:02] RW: The cultural aspects.
[00:47:04] PSC: No. No. Right. All Blacks aren’t the same. They don't have the same needs. They don't come from the same culture. Back in the early days, some of the early days of the work, it's well, we want to solicit Black women. Well, make sure they get this information. We're going to go to the churches. Used to drive me crazy. It's like —
[00:47:27] RW: We’re not in the church.
[00:47:29] PSC: Then we weren't even looking at mosques, or temples or anything like that. It's like, you’re assuming that all black women are in church, because that's not true in the culture. Again, you get all this crazy stuff working together, the one size fits all. This is what we know about black women, so this is how we're going to deal. I find that really offensive and a little wearing. It's like, the racial populations in this country are so diverse, we are only beginning to tap the surface to understand the extent of that diversity.
In my work in schools, 20 years ago, we were talking about, oh, there are about a 150 languages spoken in the public schools in the State of New Jersey. I haven't paid much attention to that for about five years. At last count, there were over 300 languages being spoken in public schools in the State of New Jersey. Our diversity is growing by leaps and bounds. The importance of addressing each woman as an individual, being able to say, “I don't know. I’ll find out.” Which challenges the white culture norm of being perfect and always getting it right. Who cares? It's like, “No, you're going to get it wrong.” Assume you're going to get it wrong. Ask. Stop working from that one size fits all in. I translated my brochure. I'm checking this box and I'm done.
[00:48:54] RW: The checklist. You're so right. I think the frustration I know yours and as well as mine, is feeling are we still there at the same place you were five years ago, 10 years ago, translating the one brochure, having the one staff person?
[00:49:16] PSC: Who speaks Spanish.
[00:49:17] RW: Maybe that person is the administrative assistant, but you have her translating for counseling clients. I mean, instead of looking for a counselor, who is speaking Spanish, how about to why is one get one out? Why is one is on-call whenever? You only have one. Any number of these is –
[00:49:40] PSC: Yeah. Rose. It’s even more than that, because it's about hiring women who are culturally of the groups you want to represent. I remember having a very, very bad sexual assault situation that involved children, who did not speak English and whose parents did not speak English. When we got through that, I went out searching for a Latinx woman, who was culturally Latinx and who spoke Spanish.
Now, there's all kinds of arguments that people can make, which I don't even care about anymore. Like, “Oh, we're just not legal. You're not supposed to do that.” Well, if we're going to do a good job on this, then we need to be able to confront the ridiculousness of some of the legal obligations that we're supposed to have around certain issues, like hiring and promotion, and all that stuff. I have a daughter who is bilingual. She speaks Spanish. I would never hire her, because there's no understanding of the deeper –
[00:50:46] RW: Or the cultural –
[00:50:47] PSC: - cultural thing. My daughter is African-American. I'm happy that she's bilingual. The bottom line is, if I want a counselor who's going to address the needs of victims, I need someone who is culturally connected to the groups I want to connect with. We don't get that in the programs. The fallback is, well, I can't do that. It's illegal to hire people based on race, or whatever. Well, you're not doing your job, if you don't see that as important.
The person who shows up who can just speak Spanish is not going to work, because we know that in crisis, people are deeply affected in their culture. We know that. Yeah. That's just another issue that compounds the problems that we're talking about.
[00:51:32] RW: Absolutely. You're right to say that Black people as well, are not a monolith. We come in all shapes, colors, sizes, socio-economic groups, religions, educational background.
[00:51:48] PSC: Lots of cultures.
[00:51:50] RW: Multiple cultures, multiple cultures. Not all black people are African-American, first of all. That's a whole another thing.
[00:51:57] PSC: That’s right. That's right.
[00:52:00] RW: Then to respect that, respect that people have a culture of not being American, that they may be Caribbean, they may be Guyanese, they may be Moroccan. They could be any number of things. They could be Dominican. Anything.
[00:52:15] PSC: Even South American, or Central American.
[00:52:18] RW: Yes, absolutely. We just lump you in the basket. I think that definitely is one of those things can be highly offensive, just in the language we choose to write our policies in. We don't say black. We say African-American. Okay, that's great for the African-Americans, but they may not be African-American. They don't consider themselves African-American. They’re not African-American.
[00:52:48] PSC: That's right. They're not. They're not. They’re not. Now, they may be ethnically, if they become citizens of the United States, and they're from Africa. They might be African-American. That might be –
[00:52:59] RW: In that that way. Yes.
[00:53:00] PSC: Another place that I worked quite a number of years ago, a person who defined herself as African-American showed up for a job interview and she was a white woman. She was from Africa. She was an African, born in South Africa and immigrated to the United States and became a US citizen. Technically, it can play out a million different ways.
[00:53:24] RW: Just having that openness and being willing to look at the differences, discuss the differences, and having people of that group to be part of the discussion is what you're saying in terms of centering the voices of people of color, but not making policy for people without the people. It's a part of the discussion. We have our work to do. Certainly, has been a robust conversation.
[00:53:54] PSC: Always with you, Rose. Always.
[00:53:56] RW: Always, always. Before we close, is there anything that we didn't touch on that you'd like to share with us?
[00:54:03] PSC: I don't think so. You know how we talk. I mean, this is both a formal discussion between colleagues, but it's also a long-running conversation between friends. I think that I can't really think of anything that we didn't touch on. Of course, when we hang up, I'll think of 25 different things.
[00:54:23] RW: Of course.
[00:54:24] PSC: I can come back another time and have another conversation with you.
[00:54:26] RW: Well, we welcome you any time. We would definitely love to have you back. The door is open anytime.
[00:54:34] PSC: Thank you.
[00:54:36] RW: Thanks so much for coming on. We'll get together very soon.
[00:54:40] PSC: Thank you so much for having me. This has been a wonderful, wonderful evening.
[00:54:44] RW: All right.
[00:54:45] PSC: Take care.
[00:54:46] RW: All right. Take care. Goodbye.
[00:54:47] PSC: Bye.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:54:49] RW: Thanks for joining We Hear You Podcast with our host, Rose Williams, from Harambe Social Services, a grassroots organization in South Jersey. Harambe is Swahili for pulling together in unity. We use the principles of the nguzo saba in all of our services, to educate communities about domestic violence and sexual assault.
Our primary focus is to provide counseling services to victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. If you or someone you know needs to talk to us, please call 609-225-6936. Again, that number is 609-225-6936. Our counseling services are free of charge.
Be sure to follow Harambe Social Services on Instagram and Facebook. We would love to hear your feedback about tonight's focus. Tell a family member and a friend about the show. You can help us get the word out and go to buzzsprout.com to make a review.
Thank you. Be safe. Be well.
[END]