How to Tackle Antiblackness

How to Tackle Antiblackness

"Together we are powerful." "Black and Brown solidarity." "Yellow peril supports Black power." Interracial solidarity is foundational in the fight for racial justice for all, but often interracial conflict steals headlines instead. Just how can people of color transcend deep differences and internalized anti-Blackness? Listen to how Chicago-based organization People Matter forged a path to true interracial solidarity through education and compassion.

Transcript

Judith McCray, Executive Producer: [00:00:00] Welcome to Change Agents, the podcast series looking at grassroots actions and solutions from the inside out. Real people making real changes in communities of color and others right where they live and work. Stories about folks transforming their neighborhoods and the narratives about them.

Wendy Wei, Producer: I'm Change Agent's producer, Wendy Wei, with How to Tackle Anti Blackness. Back when anti racism curriculums circulated bookstores and popped up in corporate emails, white liberal America was on fire to learn how to be an anti-racist. But what do you do with the reality that people of color can be and are racist against each other?

It starts with identifying the root of racism for what it is, anti-blackness. [00:01:00] Our story follows one Chinatown based organization, People Matter, whose unlearning anti blackness class aims to build a true multiracial coalition. Chicago's Chinatown has never been a pure ethnic enclave. Surrounded by Bronzeville to the south and Pilsen to the west, the area known as Chinatown was and is a crossroads of migration for formerly enslaved people fleeing the American south and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Life has never been easy for nonwhite Americans settling into the United States. But many are quick to learn the destructive American tradition of blaming Black folks.

In this podcast, meet two new Americans living in Chicago who uncovered the global roots of their anti-Blackness through People Matter's Unlearning Anti Blackness course. Find out how they changed their minds. 

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: I move here with my family during the 2019 anti-extradition law protests in Hong Kong. [00:02:00] My family simply don't see any future there.

So that's why we decided to pack our things and then move here to start a new life. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Tracy's been a resident of the McKinley Park community for three years now. She works at the 25th Ward Office of Alderman Byron Sigchow Lopez. 

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: My grandparents moved to the U. S. years ago. They suffered a lot in the U. S. I wanted to work here at the Alderman's office to try to, you know, give back to the community more.

I didn't have a chance to do the same, uh, to them before they passed away. My role is Director of Constituent Services and Outreach. So, I serve English speaking constituents in our ward I also serve Chinese speaking constituents. And other coworkers, they serve Spanish and English-speaking constituents.

Wendy Wei, Producer: The 25th Ward is [00:03:00] one of the most diverse in Chicago, a relic of the classic machine politics of the daily days. The 25th Ward's borders are gerrymandered to resemble a donut, looping around the near west side to encompass Pilsen, Chinatown, West Loop, McKinley Park and Tritaylor, while largely avoiding Little Italy.

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: I signed up to a learning anti blackness class because I haven't lived in the U. S. for a long time and because the racial situation in where I come from, in Hong Kong, is very different. I didn't know much about black people's history. I don't know as much about Chinese immigrants or other Asian Americans or even brown communities’ history in the U.S. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Tracy's unfamiliarity with this history is not unusual, even to those who grew up attending Chicago public schools. Chinese immigrants arrived in Chicago following the [00:04:00] California Gold Rush in the decades after 1849. Racist laws in California that treated Chinese immigrants like non-citizens motivated many to travel over 2,000 miles to resettle in Chicago.

Originally living in the Loop area, Chinese migrants were pushed further south to the present Chinatown location due to racist stereotypes. City officials decided that the proximity of so many Chinese migrants to Union Station made a bad impression on visitors to the city. Meanwhile, in neighboring Bronzeville, white owned housing charged crazy prices to black tenants for terrible conditions.

Media of the time referred to the neighborhood and adjacent areas using derisive names such as the black belt or black ghetto. It was the site of the 1919 red summer race riots where over a thousand homes were burned to the ground and 15 black men were killed.[00:05:00] 

There is a persistent myth that has survived until today that Chicago's diverse communities are numerous, but they don't interact with each other and that is simply not true. Tracy is well aware of it, despite only living in Chicago for three years through her work at Archer Courts. Archer Courts is a mixed income housing building in the heart of Chinatown.

The building was a majority black apartment dating back to the 1960s, but presently, its residents are 70 percent Chinese senior citizens. 

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: There are a lot of, like, misunderstanding in between black and Chinese. Chinese communities, they encounter with each other every day, but the black people cannot speak Chinese.

And then at the same time, Chinese people also cannot speak English. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Tensions heightened at the outset of the 2020 pandemic, which coincided with a string of high profile homicides in Chinatown.[00:06:00] 

The Asian American community awoke to political participation and activism with an energy not seen since the civil rights movement.

In Chicago, organizations and support groups popped up overnight to address public safety in Chinatown. 

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: I was part of those groups because our office has a public safety committee. We have meetings with Chinatown residents too about public safety. And every time in those meetings, they will only have one narrative that they want, they want more police presence.

They want to increase more police patrol in Chinatown. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Tracy saw a noticeable difference in the ways that WeChat reported the crimes

WeChat is a popular Chinese messaging platform where up to 500 people can be added into a shared group chat. Chinatown's Chinese residents use it as a community crime alert [00:07:00] channel. 

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: In mainstream media, the race didn't really get mentioned much. And then in WeChat groups, they will amplify, they will specifically specify what is the race of the offenders committing the crimes, which are, you know, black people.

But actually, in reality, the crimes performed or committed in Chinatown are not always by African American. We also have, like, people from different colors who also commit crimes, even Chinese themselves. But they don't get reported as much in the WeChat conversation group. So, I really think it's unfair because it will only increase the tensions between the Chinese and the African American communities.

Wendy Wei, Producer: Racism in the U. S. is usually viewed through the lens of black and white. So, it is easy to overlook the fact that people of color also perpetuate anti blackness. [00:08:00] After 2020, Asian Americans are riding a new wave of political activism and inclusion under the Stop Asian Hate movement, but as cultural historian Robert G. Lee has argued, Asian American inclusion can and has been used to undermine the activism of African Americans, indigenous peoples, and other marginalized groups. No doubt that all people of racialized discrimination in the United States. But how do we get people of color to grapple with the ways that they may have benefited from various systems that are anti-black?

Consuela Hendricks, Co-President, PeopleMatter: My name is Consuela Hendricks. I'm co president of People Matter. I got my start in doing activism in high school. I started a club called International Club. What prompted me to start the club was that we had a lot of gang wars at my school, and these gang wars were racially charged. So, a lot of the times, Black students and Latino students, or non-Black Latino students, would start fighting with one another.

And [00:09:00] I've been thinking, like, we have so much in common. We're struggling the same things, or similar things. Why are we fighting? We're part of a multiracial school, so we have Black, Asian kids, as well as Brown kids. And so, we have kids from all around the world. So, we were able to talk about our identity, like talk about citizenship, talk about how people see us before we even walk in the door, or how people see us existing in spaces.

I learned so much from the, from everyone who spoke because I didn't understand like coming to a new country and how that felt and how scary that can be. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Consuela's friendships in high school brought her close to the Chinatown community, where she began volunteering at age 16. But as a teenager, she remembers distinct instances in Chinatown that made her feel unwelcome because of her blackness.

Consuela Hendricks, Co-President, PeopleMatter: I remember someone came in to give a talk about this disease that was impacting a lot of members in the Chinatown community. It required like a bone marrow transplant. I remember being like, hey, I wanted to donate my [00:10:00] bone marrow. And the lady told me, yeah, I don't think you're the same, not the same as us, so you can't donate bone marrow.

And I remember feeling so weird about that at the moment. Seeing me like, I can't donate bone marrow. This person's on their deathbed. You told me this is plaguing my community and I'm trying to give. And you're telling me, no, you can't give because. You're basically, you're Black, you know? It was just very disheartening in the moment too, which also sparked me to do a lot of conversations about this. Why are we so casual with racism in this space? Why are we not breaking this down? 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Those early experiences shaped Consuela's focus and her activism. Working with the multiracial communities in the 25th Ward was a natural progression of her high school experience as a facilitator. 

Consuela Hendricks, Co-President, PeopleMatter: When I'm building out these curriculums, I'm trying to open up dialogue, trying to connect other people's histories as well.

I think that when we do black, white context, we're doing a singular history when all our history touches each other because we're all people of color. 

News Clip: [00:11:00] The decline in the African trade, the nuke trade was open, bringing men from the footwork in Peru and also on the west coast of the United States. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Most of

the class is made up of first- or second-generation immigrants. Consuela opens up the first class with a global perspective on white supremacy. So that students can relate American racism with the white supremacy they may be more familiar with. She shows clips of anti-blackness from around the world. 

Film Clip: A laundry detergent ad in which someone of African descent was placed in the washing machine and comes out fair skinned.

This is a CCTV spring festival gala including, as this headline calls it, a truly shameless African skit featuring a black face. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: One student relates strongly to the clips on colorism that value white skin. 

Leslie Cortez, Youth Organizer, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization: We give very beautiful names to children who have lighter complexions, like we say [00:12:00] Chelita, like lighter skin, Guerita, that endearment is It's something that not a lot of folks want to confront.

There's even this phrase, but mejorando la raza, that means making the race better, and that really is a signal to making the population whiter, and that's very problematic. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: That's the voice of Leslie Cortez, a youth organizer at the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization in Lawndale, a predominantly brown and black community on the west side.

Leslie prefers the pronouns they them. They grew up in a Central American and Puerto Rican family. They sign up for Consuela course because they wanted to have better conversations about anti-blackness within their Latinx community, especially after the heightened tensions following George Floyd's murder.

In 2020. 

Leslie Cortez, Youth Organizer, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization: I was coming back from attending a protest with my younger sister. We're seeing people [00:13:00] on their roofs.

We're seeing people in groups with weapons that they make shifted like bats, wooden sticks. Some people were even armed on top of their businesses and police officers were high fiving and fist bumping with some of these folks. And it was the fear of community members thinking that the George Floyd protests were going to ensue Riots.

There was a lot of racism that was happening online, on the street, and this caused people of the community to target Black residents, Black neighbors. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Consuela's classes tackle the often unspoken of and uncomfortable racial experiences people of color have. Like for Tracy, who grew up in British occupied Hong Kong.

where white residents were deified. She was able to relate to Leslie's comments on their community valuing white skin [00:14:00] over brown skin. 

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: So, we get the part of the treat, to be treated like that. I grew up in Hong Kong and we're British colonized place. My dad worked in a major British company. So, he always said, Oh, hi, sir. You know, yes, sir. You can never say no when talking to white people. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: As it turns out, finding common ground over experiences with white supremacy isn't difficult. Every student comes to class with stories to share of a time when they felt less than because they were not white, or not white enough. It's hard to talk about things like what Leslie brought up.

Animosity between the non-Black Latinx community and the Black community, or what Tracy described in Chinatown. Throughout American history, all communities of color have suffered from white supremacy, from xenophobic immigration policies, to discrimination at work, to race based violence against bodies and homes.

But [00:15:00] Consuela's most difficult challenge is highlighting that the burden of the racist system weighs most heavily on one racial group in particular. 

Consuela Hendricks, Co-President, PeopleMatter: So today we're going to talk a little bit about the Mississippi Delta and Asian businesses and black communities. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Recent immigrants are often unfamiliar with the particular ways in which American society disenfranchises racial minorities.

So, a history lesson is included in every class. Here's a snippet from one of her classes and the discussion that follows. The topic is the history of Asian businesses in Black communities. 

Consuela Hendricks, Co-President, PeopleMatter: Chinese people were barred from white communities, as well as stayed in Black communities from the 1800s to the 1960s.

So basically, plantation commissaries made their prices more expensive to keep Black people in debt. So, the Chinese grocery stores were considered a cheaper alternative. However, a lot of Chinese grocery stores still was partnering with white people. They [00:16:00] were barred from owning businesses in white communities.

Cause it was like, this is for white people, but you can own land in black communities. This began this really gratuitous profit that Chinese grocery stores were able to do within black communities, which still last today, and it's simply off the fact that black people were not allowed to buy land at the time, even though black people were granted citizenship.

Video Clip: These stores played a uniquely important role in the segregated South, serving the Black community when the white community wouldn't. And this was significant because it meant more than 70 percent of the population got their groceries and everyday goods from a tiny Chinese community. Frida's family store in Minsang started out in the 1930s as two different buildings across the street from each other, one serving Black people, the other serving white people.

Neither Black nor white, the Chinese community found themselves in the middle. 

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: I haven't learned about the history of why Chinese immigrants actually end up being small grocery stores or laundromat [00:17:00] store owners until this video. I find it really shocking to know that the white people would sell land to Chinese immigrants.

Chinese immigrants, but not the black people who already have citizenships. That was Tracy. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Another participant, Angela, who is Chinese American, shared a family story recognizing the racial privilege Asian immigrants have over African American citizens. 

Angela: So, my uncle, he was telling me how, when he first came to the U S he was just at a gas station and there was a black man there who was basically very respectful and letting him go first to get the gas and stuff.

And he was like, why are you letting me go first? We don't know each other, but I feel like that really speaks to this racial hierarchy that is talked about in this video of how Chinese people were closer to white. I guess in my uncle's case, he didn't know anything about it, but he benefited from that from just being offered stuff automatically from just standing [00:18:00] there from a Black person, which is really disturbing to think about. And I feel like it can relate to this history of Chinese people in the South, their proximity to whiteness. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Students continued working together to examine the subtle messages in videos, like the one heard earlier. One participant picks apart the model minority narrative they've internalized. 

Participant: One of the ladies totally admitted that they had a store for white people and a store for black people even though it was like them manning both stores. They never, they never did really address how they basically benefited because of white supremacy and anti-blackness.

Wendy Wei, Producer: For most, it's the first time they've talked so openly with someone else about topics as difficult as race. These questions are given room to breathe, in part because of the safe space that is created. A space based on norms of respect and understanding. Though some students like Leslie have studied these topics in [00:19:00] college, the format of the People Matter class offered something those college courses did not.

Leslie Cortez, Youth Organizer, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization: Even if we had a racially diverse class, the history was still being told from a white lens. We felt outnumbered by white students. because there was a lot of defensiveness that came up in the courses. You feel the tension and you feel all of the microaggressions that already come every day from not talking about the subjects and to like try and unpack it and do that again.

Like, it just wasn't a safe place to do that. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Leslie is describing real psychological risks that they feel when they talk about racism or anti blackness. with white students that they may not feel when it's with another person of color. It turns out these risks are valid and have been well documented in psychology research by people like Kiara Sanchez.

She is a social psychologist and Mellon Faculty Fellow at Dartmouth College, where she studies [00:20:00] how people from different backgrounds talk about social identity. 

Kiara Sanchez, Social Psychologist and Mellon Faculty Fellow, Dartmouth College: So, we've run a few studies where we've just asked Uh, Black Americans, how they felt about sharing their race related experiences. They were able to tell us about the risks that they'd experience when talking with white people and the lack of risks of talking people from either their, their same race group or just a more diverse group that doesn't include white people.

I think within people of color, there are really different experiences and so you might have some of those concerns. But it's more nuanced. People might have different opinions if you're from the same group, but there's not an underlying fundamental fear that you're not understood. There's more of an underlying shared experience that you can sort of build off of.

Wendy Wei, Producer: So, there's some benefit to being in a room with people of similar racial backgrounds, but that's still [00:21:00] not enough. Even if you put people of all different colors in a room, these deep and honest conversations about race will not just magically appear. Despite shared experiences, Asian people can still perpetuate deep seated fears about black people.

Black people can repeat hurtful stereotypes about brown people, and so on. As Kiara said, and Leslie confirmed, it is really scary to talk about anti blackness, and even scarier to talk about one's own anti blackness. So, how did Consuela construct an environment where people were able to really dig deep?

Consuela Hendricks, Co-President, PeopleMatter: Uh, group discussion. So, let's take 10 minutes in your groups to answer the following questions. Like, how, how are you feeling about what you've just seen? Um, are you surprised that this has happened in many parts of Asia? I think I began to realize that socialization with one another without intention doesn't work well [00:22:00] when it comes to unlearning racism towards one another.

Now I'm thinking about even with the new near Southside High School being built and how CPS is talking about it's going to be the biggest multiracial high school that Chicago has ever seen. And me going to a multiracial high school and being also somewhat targeted for being Black in the school.

Integration without intention is always a recipe for disaster. I think that bringing people together for picnics, bringing people together for community events is great. But when we're talking about Integration when we're talking about coming together when we're talking about solidarity is rules that need to be stayed in place boundaries that need to be kept and things that need to be named while we're in a space and congregating together.

Wendy Wei, Producer: Consuela is talking about creating structures to help folks navigate the uncharted waters of having conversations about anti Blackness. Kiara's research comes to a similar conclusion. The norm is to ignore race. 

Kiara Sanchez, Social Psychologist and Mellon Faculty Fellow, Dartmouth College: People need support in having those conversations because [00:23:00] people don't know how to have the conversation.

There's lots of risks in engaging, and I think those risks are real. And so those risks need to be Addressed in order to be able to have good conversations about race. 

Consuela Hendricks, Co-President, PeopleMatter: Sure, I have folks that come in our workshops saying I'm not racist. I never thought any bad thoughts about black people. And then we have like three weeks later, they're like, you know what?

I think I'm kind of racist. You know? And it's because we're not honest. And I think that also goes into our punishment in society about people talking about racism or people being racist, everyone's afraid of the punishment that comes with it. One thing I teach in my class is that everyone's racist.

You know, you can't live in a white supremacist system and expect not to be racist. I think that honesty is the key into having these conversations. I think most people are not honest with themselves about the racism that they feel inside. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Consuela's approach normalizes uncomfortable feelings. They're not something to ignore or a signal that something is wrong, but a necessity in order to really [00:24:00] unpack anti blackness.

When that deeply uncomfortable feeling is reframed as constructive progress. We can really keep pushing the envelope. We can stop ignoring the topic, and as it always does, practice makes perfect. Both Leslie and Tracy have found new ways to think and act.

Leslie Cortez, Youth Organizer, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization: As the class progressed, I felt better about being able to tap into these areas. I feel better because it wasn't something that I just struggled with, but also something that my other classmates were learning with me. 

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: So, in the past, when my friends or my family, they say something very hateful or profane towards black people, I always say, you cannot say this, but I didn't have any supporting examples to give.

I learned a lot more about the history behind. I would use those incidents and cases as a [00:25:00] sample to support my statement. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Research has shown that often native-born children are the older generation of immigrants window into American society. There's a lot of potential there to spread information and have these difficult conversations that formal institutions cannot access.

Here's Leslie. 

Leslie Cortez, Youth Organizer, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization: I have the privilege of being able to take a class like this and so I try and be patient and respectful of the fact that I have family members who don't have the same privilege, and so when a family member says something that is anti-black, I invite them to take a pause and just be like, Hey, like, can you repeat that?

I just, you know, I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me. And then trying to have them kind of explore that idea more and just be like, I just really want to understand where that came from. Like, some people do have trauma, like, community [00:26:00] violence trauma of trying to defend themselves from each other.

I don't want to invalidate and dismiss some real concerns that people have in the community. It's also really rewarding to have these conversations again and again because then you can see it finally taking root eventually. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: Choosing to continue conversations about anti blackness is hard work. A productive conversation requires not only knowledge of the history of systemic racism, but also emotional strength to sit in profound discomfort with others. Choosing to expose yourself and your personal trauma again and again takes vulnerability. It takes commitment to a slow and painful process. So, there must be a good reason why Consuela and her students choose to continue these conversations.

Consuela Hendricks, Co-President, PeopleMatter: I try to do it from a place of love. Of course, you need to take your mental health days and some days are harder than others. But I do think most people are good people and they're trying their best. They just [00:27:00] don't understand. Like our education around race is just horrible. I don't really take it personally unless it's like really directed at me, you know, but the, even then it's like, it's like, it's nothing we can't quite work out. You know?

Tracy, Director of Constituent Services and Outreach, 25th Ward: I think everyone agrees that it's difficult to speak openly on topics on racial justice. It's okay to talk about it, cause it's okay to start this uncomfortable discussion, cause if we don't do it, when? Right? There are so many misunderstandings, so many injustices in the world about race, if we don't address this, when? We cannot wait for this to escalate and to get more intensive, rather we should just do it right now. 

Wendy Wei, Producer: I'm Wendy Wei.[00:28:00] 

Judith McCray, Executive Producer: Thank you for joining Change Agents, the podcast series looking at grassroots actions and solutions from the inside out. Produced by Juneteenth Productions. Theme music composed by Sara Abdelal. Funding support provided by the Chicago Community Trust, the Field Foundation, and DePaul University's Center for Communication Engagement.

Subscribe to this series on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and wherever you find podcasts. Follow Change Agents on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the website changeagentsthepodcast.com.