Cheers at Year's End

Earlier this month, Kristi Bernard of Kristi's Book Nook gave me the Versatile Blogger Award. (I was in a musical at the time and then it was the holidays... but I've finally gotten back to posting.) Thanks, Kristi!

According to Kristi, my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to:

a.  Thank the person who gave it to me and link back to them. ✓

b. Share seven things about myself: 

1. I live on an island in Maine - a real island, the kind you have to take a ferry to get to.
2. Intense color makes me happy.
3. I once spent a weekend as a go-go dancer for an American rock band performing at the National Theatre in Seoul, Korea, dressed in a white mini-dress with fringe, in front of hundreds of screaming Korean high school students.
4. I've been studying jazz vocals for a number of years. Some of my favorite singers are Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald,  Carmen McRae and Canadian Susie Arioli.
5. As a young girl, I wanted my name to be Ruby.
6. I love bread. A recent favorite book is Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, which taught me to always have a wet dough in my refrigerator with the possibility of a fresh-baked boule or baguette only an hour and fifteen minutes away.
7. I'm a perennial optimist. I love the book The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.

c. Pass this award on to 5 (some posts say 15!) other recently discovered blogs and inform them of the honor. 

I'm not much of a blog reader, as in I don't have many favorites that I go to every few days. (My exceptions: Love Isn't Enough: "on raising a family in a colorstruck world" and my friend Catherine's Mama C and the Boys.) My favorite blogs are ones that are building a body of information and resource that is timeless and worth exploring again and again. Here are 4 nominations:

1.  Sojo's Trumpet: A Culture Blog for Teens. I discovered Sojourner Ahebee several years ago when she reviewed my book After Gandhi. She writes exuberant and important posts about music, books, global activism and cultural events, and has recently added a Zazzle account with beautifully designed Afrocentric greeting cards.
2. Korean American Story.  Essays by Korean Americans cover personal and political topics, creating a collective portrait of this diverse community.
3. Real Kids. Good Books. "Our children are gorgeously diverse and they love a good read." Kate has been blogging for only 9 months during which she's built an impressive archive (beautifully organized as a graphic) of book recommendations. (She had me at the heading illustration from Umbrella.)
4. Diversity in YA Fiction - a celebration!  "DIYA is a positive, friendly gathering of readers and writers who want to see diversity in their fiction." Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo, both YA writers of color, have responded to the problem of whitewashing in YA literature by giving attention to the positive side - good books featuring characters of color. I've just begun to mine this resource - lots to look forward to.

I'll notify the winners in the new year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Racists = Bad People?

Recently I've been collecting nonfiction children's books (mostly from the 1990's, mostly library discards) addressing racism, including these titles: What Do We Think About Racism?; Talking About Racism; Let's Talk About Racism; What Do You Know About Racism; and How Do I Feel About Dealing with Racism. 

As a group, the books have some useful information, but most define racism as a confusing umbrella term that includes prejudice based on ethnicity, culture, religion and nationality as well as race.

But the biggest drawback shared by all the books is limiting the discussion of racism to overt, personal acts. The take-away message: Racism is something that bad people do.

Focusing only on individual racial bias overlooks the reality that racism is a system of advantage based on race. It fails to grapple with the ways in which all of us are socialized to play roles based on the racial group(s) we belong to. It doesn't address institutional racism, white privilege, unconscious bias, or the influence of the dominant racial culture, all of which are far more pervasive than individual acts of personal racism.

And it implies that well-meaning, well-intentioned people aren't likely to say or do something racist. This constricts our conversations because any suggestion that an action, attitude, or statement might show racial bias causes people, especially white people, to get extremely defensive, completely resistant, or deeply ashamed, because it's heard as an accusation that the perpetrator must be a bad person.

Recently, social commentator Jay Smooth gave an engaging and illuminating TED talk at Hampshire College - "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love Talking About Race" - addressing the problem of people's resistance to the idea that they might be showing racial bias.

Smooth advocates, with delightful humor, that we move from the "good person/bad person binary" to "the dental hygiene paradigm of race discourse." He suggests that we equate a correction about race to the observation, "You have something stuck in your teeth."

Over the years, I've found the direction of remembering my own goodness to be quite useful in processing any feedback that my bias might be showing. If I know that my intention is good, then I can appreciate the mirror showing me any dissonance, offering me the chance to clean it up so that the impact matches my intention. I can choose to see the intervention as a kindness and respond, "Thanks! I needed that."