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By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color
It’s that time of the semester when students and faculty alike are exhausted. This time is always the point at which my students start to break down. Their absences are more frequent. Their requests to extend assignment deadlines increase. They start to panic about their final grades.
This is the time that exhaustion also creeps into professors’ bodies. We start to get sick. We hit snooze more often. We need extra shots of caffeine to get through the workday (and in my case sixth grade homework). Sound all too familiar? I am feeling more emotionally exhausted than usual, and when I considered the reasons, I realized that I could not point to one cause. What I realized instead is that I’m feeling the cumulative effects of a consistent stream of challenges, including macro and micro aggressions. Because there are so many, I chose a list format to catalogue them in this post. As a restorative to my own emotional well-being, I decided that a wish list was an appropriate way to remind us all how we might be/do better for each other.
I have one final wish, and this one is big. It’s my wish for everyone reading this post because it’s why I continue to stay in academe.
For those of you who have such friends, you know the deep gratitude I feel every day. For those who don’t (yet), keep looking because authentic, compassionate friendships are possible. And we need each other now more than ever.
Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.
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By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color
If you’re looking for a post to help you get your new school year off to a smooth, positive start, this isn't it.
I dread the beginning of a new school year, and this year is especially difficult (more on this later). I am known to go into depressive states until around October, when the realization hits that I have to let my beloved summer go and move forward—even if painfully—with the rest of the academic year. Summer is my F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E time of year. Unlike other seasons, I’m not bound by the schedule of my son’s school or limited by heavier traffic patterns on my usual routes or overwhelmed by an exhausting list of tasks for home and school. Though I teach a lot in summer out of necessity, I am privileged to be able to work mostly on my own terms. I actually have time to rest, exercise, write, and think. I consider myself a better mother in summer, but a more accurate way to characterize how I feel is that I struggle less with mothering. I make fewer mothering mistakes in summer. I am more patient, more forgiving, and more kind toward my child. I am less likely to say something I have to apologize for, and I am less likely to act in unkind ways. My number one reason for loving summer so much is that I have been able to more carefully take note of Nicholas’s growing up because of our long stretches of uninterrupted time together. He’s starting to imagine himself in college because he’s visited my campus so many times; with a little “encouragement”—really incentivizing—from me, he has broadened his summer reading choices to include actual literature and not just junk book series; he has had time to do some deep diving into learning about things he loves like roller coasters, cruise ships, and airplanes; and though still a work in progress, he is becoming more practiced working through his fears and trying new things. Not all changes over our summers together have been easy to negotiate, however. He is talking to me a lot less; he will no longer allow me to hold his hand in public; he says he has a constitutional right to his own opinion, which is not always an opinion I share; and his dad is now his go-to parent for advice. Times are changing, and I am writing this post to celebrate my son’s continued childhood and to lament what is most likely in front of him. The beginning of this school year marks a very important shift; Nicholas has begun middle school, which is simultaneously frightening and exciting. I am excited because he is excited about this next chapter. He is beginning to think about what being his own person means—our repeated message to him about being confident in his own skin and making his own decisions. Heading into next school year, Nicholas is deciding on a different path, and while this decision is literally about what being his own person looks like, it has come to mean something much more to me. Nicholas has asked to loosen the rules around his hair. Last year he asked to cut his hair into a Mohawk style and to dye it blue. I gave in on the former, but blue dye was and forever will be a hell no while he lives in our house. Our previous understanding was that he could do what he wanted in summer with his hair, but when school started we always went back to his regular hairstyle, which we call the “Even Steven” (also known as a “Caesar” or a “Regular”). For those unfamiliar with Black barbershop lingo, this is basically an almost bald shaved cut over the entire head. This summer he asked to grow out his hair into an afro. He also asked to renegotiate our agreement because he did not want to shave off his summer fro when school started this year. An afro on a Black child marks him/her—positively or negatively, depending on who’s doing the marking, and the bigger the fro, the more complicated meanings the fro engenders. To some (his dad and I are in this group), the fro is a visible marker of Black pride that connects the wearer to a political and cultural past and present. For others, it prompts fear, shame, disparagement, among other negative responses. We decided that Nicholas could keep his summer style. It is a visible reminder to me every day that my child is growing up, a sign of his growing independence, a marker of the (Black) pride he feels when he looks in the mirror. [By the way, the fro had a short life and has morphed into a high top fade. For those of you who know Nicholas, be sure to tell him how much you like his new hairstyle.] As this new school year begins, I must face that my child is heading into a new stage of his (educational) life and that the choices he makes as he grows older may have different meanings than before. Because racism too often causes the adultification of Black children, Nicholas will become more and more vulnerable to misperceptions related to how he presents himself and how he chooses to present his growing racial consciousness in what he wears, what he says (he's adept at code-switching), how he walks, what music he listens to, how loud he plays his music in public, and…a whole host of other choices. Imagine my fear that at such a critical time in his life—the beginning of adolescence—he has to figure out who he is within/against our current national context. I’m working hard to make sure that my fears don’t get in the way of us having fun as we navigate this exciting new journey together. He deserves to not feel pressured to protect me as I try mightily (and oftentimes in vain) to protect him.
Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.
By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color
We are in the middle of annual reviews, which means we have been busy documenting what we have “accomplished” in the areas of research, teaching, and service in the last year and describing the quality and significance of that work. We rate ourselves in each of the three areas, and our department chairs also rate our work as exceeding, meeting, or below expectations.
I know what you’re thinking: annual reviews are a function of neoliberal audit culture in higher education settings, where increasingly across the U.S., professors have to “prove effectiveness,” some might say prove our worth. For faculty women of color, annual review time can be especially stressful. Student evaluations do not always reflect the effectiveness of our teaching and instead reflect how racism and sexism intersect to influence students’ perceptions. Faculty women of color whose research is situated in marginalized disciplines (like critical race feminism) also may have a harder time demonstrating quality and significance of our publications using traditional measures (like impact factor of journals). Sometimes the service faculty women of color do that supports our institutions’ diversity missions, like mentoring of students of color and supporting other women of color colleagues, is invisible labor which does not get counted fully. For a long time (before and after earning tenure, by the way), I put pressure on myself (and way too much time) into annual reviews. With my research, teaching, and service situated in marginalized education fields, my focus was often on “convincing” my superiors that my work was as good as the work of my colleagues in traditional disciplinary fields. Because the academy has historically recognized as legitimate only a few indicators of quality and significance, a higher bar exists for demonstrating how my work “measures up.” This higher bar, and all the extra work it requires for a successful annual review, takes a lot of time and emotional energy. Explaining my teaching evaluations in a larger context of research on Black women faculty teaching diversity courses, providing additional documentation to demonstrate how big of an impact my scholarship is having in my field, justifying how mentoring of students and colleagues from historically marginalized groups is more time-consuming and energy-depleting than regular service yet still so essential to the health of the university, and proving that my public scholarship (the blogpost you’re reading now, for instance) is indeed scholarship and deserves to be “counted”—all of this extra labor for annual reviews is not uncommon for faculty members who do “diversity” work. We understand the costs when we make these commitments, but even with this knowledge, having to count and measure and justify and prove our “value” to the university can still be dehumanizing. To counter this effect, I made some changes over the last five years in how I approach annual reviews. I view my annual review for what it should be: an opportunity to stop and take stock of all that I have done over the past year; to think about how my work is aligned with my pedagogical commitments, especially related to social justice; and determine what adjustments I need to make in the upcoming year so that my work is more integrated and purposeful. The most difficult change was developing a different framework for and attitude toward annual reviews—and I’m still a work in progress. I resist seeing the review as my one shot at proving that my work and I matter in the space. I know that I matter, I know that the work I do matters, and I know that my mattering is never going to be measurable using the means that institutions privilege. I am no longer looking for ratings on an annual review to tell me how effective I am as a teacher, researcher, and colleague; what to do more of, what to do less of; or how close I am to what sometimes seems like a moving bar. The bar I set for myself is always going to be higher than one set for me, and sometimes this has meant that I don’t earn the highest scores. I’ve made some practical adjustments as well that I invite readers to consider. First, I set a timer to the work I do completing annual reviews. A very firm timer. I give the task no more time than this. No exceptions. Second, I use my own template which has sections with reusable content and sections that I fill in with new stats each year, and so far, this template works with the university template I am required to use. Third, I set goals for research, teaching, and service in 2-3 year increments, so I don’t write new ones until I have achieved these or until they change after this window of time has passed. Lastly, I know what my university’s handbook says is required of department chairs and me in this process, which can be helpful especially when department chairs change frequently. I also learned from Roxanne to schedule a session to work on annual reviews with a couple of colleagues who do similar work so that you can create statements of quality and significance together. Even though I’ve made changes over a number of years prior to my recent promotion to full professor, I understand that being able to work around some institutional norms is a function of my privileged position in the academy. I also understand that my individual approach to changing my mindset around annual reviews is not going to solve a more systemic problem nationally, where evaluation of professors has become increasingly more high stakes. But I have effected change for myself, which is sometimes all we can do for ourselves. I also invite administrators to use the approach of my current department chair—shout out to Dr. Anete Vasquez. She added a humanizing frame to the annual review process by sending an email to faculty members acknowledging that review meetings often trigger the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) and stating her intent to trigger our parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). To do this, she gave us a brief set of questions to answer in advance of our meeting which asked us to reflect on what was working—a strengths-based model—in our teaching, research, and service, and to offer solutions if we noted any problems. She also stated that we would work collaboratively in our meeting to draft the letter together—with ratings in each area—that accompanied my annual review to the next level. In my meeting with her, she asked me to help her make a case for positive ratings, which sparked a conversation about my accomplishments the previous year. I never felt like I was defending my work. Instead, my work was understood, and I felt acknowledged. I hope you’ve found a way—big or small—to use what agency you have to make annual reviews more formative and less high stakes, generative and not destructive, and collegial not adversarial. That’s what we deserve after all the work we’ve done throughout the year.
Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.
By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color
I lost a colleague from this side of the heavens on December 28, 2018. I said my last goodbye in person on December 19th, nine days before her passing, and I knew then that the end was probably near though I hoped for a different result. So I knew when our mutual friend texted in the very early hours of December 28th what the sad news was before I even returned the call.
Charlease Kelly-Jackson was 42 years young. A fierce mom of two. A loving daughter. A loyal sister in a family full of brothers. And a badass scholar in the STEM world. Before I wax nostalgic about our relationship, let me be clear that my post is not meant as a tribute piece. I could never properly capture Charlease’s impact. Furthermore, tributes are often written by those who are closest to the deceased. I do not want to exaggerate our closeness. I find it offensive after someone’s passing when folks mischaracterize relationships. We did not have a girlfriend’s type of friendship. We never took a trip, had drinks after hours, went to the nail salon, or did retail therapy together. I characterize our relationship of several years in a different way. I call myself her older academic sister—though her footprint in the field of STEM grants outsized us all. And this is the relationship I wish to highlight in this post. I remember our first lunch; a colleague who knew us both separately thought I might be able to ease her transition to our university—this place can be culture shock for even the most seasoned academics. I don’t know if I eased her transition with the advice I gave that day, but we became closer as a result of some mentoring through her tenure and promotion process. In the last few years, I have found that mentoring, especially as it relates to getting underrepresented faculty tenured and promoted, is one way to advance my commitment to social justice. We developed our professional relationship through our work with a small group of public schools our college partnered with; she worked at the elementary schools and I worked at the high school. We both felt at home in these schools, working to better prepare teachers for “our” kids. I pride myself on knowing how to work respectfully and thoughtfully with teachers, families, and communities. But Charlease had me beat. Every. Single. Time. She had five schools, I only had one. We often joked that we worked with our teacher colleagues much more easily than our university colleagues. Our closeness came through countless phone calls. I can hear her fast talking now. Guillory, you got a minute? I have a situation and I need your advice… Guillory, am I making too much out of… Guillory, let me read this email to you so you can tell me how to respond before I go off… Guillory, have you worked with such and such before? She’s asked me to do a grant with her… Let me pause here to say that many women of color in the academy will be familiar with the topics of these exchanges. They come from having to navigate a higher education system where our experiences, regardless of institution, go something like this: Woman of color enters the academic space. Woman of color works and works and works some more. Woman of color is dismissed/devalued/disrespected. Rinse and repeat. Women of color find myriad ways to survive this cycle, and one important strategy is to seek support from other women of color who have traveled our same path. We offer advice, an encouraging place to land, and knowing affirmation while we help each other make sense of our individual experiences within a system that too often diminishes our humanity. Charlease was not always receptive to my suggestions, but she always accepted them. We had this familiar process. She called for advice. I’d give advice. She’d argue with me about the advice. I reminded her that she called me for the advice, and I’d ask her again if she really wanted it. After she was less mad, she’d tell me that her mom told her to do the same thing that I had just suggested. And I always reminded her that her academic big sister might not always be right, but her mama always was. And then there were the heads-up phone calls. You know how we do. We call each other to share important information which helps us to navigate an unexpected or difficult situation because there’s never a shortage of struggle for women of color in toxic, oppressive academic spaces. And then there were the calls for the last two and a half years that were mostly about her cancer, its effect on her children, and the full-time battle she waged on top of an already over-full plate. She kept me informed—I feel privileged that she trusted me to know some of what she went through at each stage of a new treatment plan, a new clinical trial, another doctor’s opinion. I wish for any one of those calls now. I wish she was on this side of the heavens. As is often the case in the aftermath of death, you reach clarity, which has been the case with me too. What seemed big at work before I left for the holiday break seems really small now, so inconsequential in comparison, especially when I think about Charlease’s family. And perhaps this is why I felt compelled to write this post. To make a public promise to continue to mentor others in her name. To answer the late night call to dictate an email that settles a stressful situation before morning, to weigh options when a new work request comes through, to mirror someone’s worth back to her, to pay forward all the laughs we had together. And to remind us—and myself especially—that mentoring relationships have a lasting impact on the mentor too.
Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.
By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color
This past summer, I received an invitation from a leading scholar in my field to do a keynote address for a conference where other leading scholars showcase their work. He had asked before, and at that time, I said no. I said no, not because I didn’t want to do the keynote, but frankly, I didn’t even think I—or my body of work—was worthy of the ask.
Let me say that again. I did not even think I was worthy of the ask. Sad, right? Like too many other Black women in the academy subjected to consistent devaluation as scholars, I have struggled with/against Impostor Syndrome since I entered the academy as a professor more than twelve years ago. I am the poster child for what psychologists identify as a condition of self-perceived intellectual phoniness. Doubting my accomplishments, thinking I am not deserving of my achievements, fearing exposure as an intellectual fraud—this is the internal script that has been on constant replay in my head. To this day, when people I meet for the first time ask me what I do for a living, I don’t say “professor.” I say I teach. The next question is invariably about where I teach, and when I tell them my university’s name, they tell me that I’m a professor. Did you catch that? Perfect strangers have to tell me that I’m a professor. So when I received the invitation to do a keynote this time, my first reply was not just no, but hell no. Doing a keynote with this group in particular, my closest colleagues in curriculum theory, engendered my worst fears about myself. I do not belong in this space. I am not a real theorist. I work in teacher education, not in a curriculum theory program. What someone else has to say is far more important than I what I have to offer. I didn’t think that I could stand in front of large room full of scholars whose work I had read and studied. I felt like that they would see me just as I saw myself—an academic fraud, a phony, an impostor. I didn’t send the “regrets” email right away though. I told myself that I would sleep on the invitation and reply the following day. Some of you reading this who are not Black women scholars may also feel like impostors in your workplaces too, but I just want to make clear that for marginalized groups, feeling like you are fraud and are not deserving of your achievements is often intensified by systemic racism, sexism, cis-genderism, and ableism, to name just a few. Systemic practices in the academy which value us for our service more than our scholarship, for our obedience more than our critiques, for our silence more than our voices are dehumanizing and do real damage to our productivity, not to mention our physical, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being. So back to my decision about the keynote. I eventually said yes for one reason only. I am trying to teach my son to practice bravery when situations arise where he might be fearful. I don’t want him to allow fear to drive his decision-making like it did (does) mine for a lot of my life. I am not a perfect mother, but I am always an honest one, even when it’s hard. So I figured that I could not say no to the keynote and then turn around and tell him to say yes to doing things he fears. Mothering always pushes my boundaries. I’m not always grateful for the nudges, but this time proved differently. The writing of the keynote—not delivering it in front of an audience—was the hardest part for me, mostly to calm the noisy voices of doubt and fear long enough to produce thoughtful and provocative analysis. I learned that I write best with an academic babysitter, which Roxanne reframes as writing “in community,” and without my writing partners—Roxanne and Megan—the voices would have won. The second hardest part was to quiet my comparison mind because conference organizers sandwiched my talk in between keynotes by two popular big name scholars whose work I admired from afar for all of my career. I told myself that they were the badasses, not me; that people would come to hear what they had to say, not me. Having given the keynote last week, I now have the space to recognize that saying yes was one of the best decisions I made for myself (and ultimately for my son). Not because what I said was positively received, but because of the lessons I learned about myself and my work. I am not an impostor after all. The academy has done its best to convince me that I’m not a scholar, but no more. It’s time we step back from the expectation of institutions that don’t value us in the first place and step up on behalf of ourselves. My institution and all of its problems seem very small now in comparison to the work/writing I have left to do, and I realize that I must center my energy on intellectual work, which is my writing on Black mothering as a resistance practice, both as theory in my academic publications and as praxis in Mothering In Color. People being moved by the keynote was a humbling experience that highlighted how grateful I am to all who paved a way for me to deliver the keynote in the first place. I was moved even more toward bravery by their very generous support of the work. I invite others who are suffering through Impostor Syndrome to say yes to something you are fearful of doing. Taking that risk just might quiet those impostorism voices once and for all…or at least quiet them considerably.
Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.
By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color
I did not realize what an exhausting and stressful academic year I’ve had until I attended a wellness retreat last month with 23 other faculty women of color from my university. It was an entire day of culturally responsive mindfulness activities designed to help us take a pause on our lives, reflect on what is important beyond our work, and learn strategies for calming our minds and taking care of our bodies.
We gave up our phones and spent eight luxurious hours on ourselves and with each other, in conversation and in silence, in stillness and in movement. The day was simultaneously intense and playful, calming and rejuvenating. In all of my years in academe, I have never had an experience like the retreat. I was honored to be attending a retreat in memory of the brilliant Kathryn Epps, a Black woman leader at our university, and to be in the company of so many badass faculty women of color, to go through one activity together where we laughed so hard we cried and to go through another where we held painful experiences for each other. I could tell that our laboring—visible, invisible, and too often unpaid—in various departments across the university had taken its toll mentally, physically, and spiritually on many of us. The retreat was an opportunity to fill our depleted tanks. For me in particular, it was a clarion call to center my energy on what I have identified as most important, which includes time with family and friends and work that aligns with my commitment to justice pedagogy. At the end of the retreat, our lead facilitator and organizer Roxanne Donovan asked us to thank someone who was instrumental in our healing that day. At the time, I did not convey everything I wanted to, so I’m taking an opportunity now to publicly thank my retreat sisters for sharing in an experience that brought me back to center. Below are my top ten take-aways from the day. I share them as one way to pay forward what I have learned. 1. Many faculty women of color are so busy care-giving in the academy for our colleagues and students and in our personal lives for our families, whether we have biological children or not, that we do not take time to care for ourselves. We deserve to put ourselves first. 2. Self-care is a form of resistance against the regular dehumanization we often experience in the academy. My self-care regimen includes pedicure therapy, last minute lunches, or cheap bowling Tuesdays with my closest friends. 3. Bearing witness to each other’s pain is another form of resistance against oppression. Sometimes we hold this pain in sadness and sometimes in rage. Both can be productive because naming injustice is a necessary first step in the fight to end it. 4. Not being ourselves in the academy is exhausting. Performing superwoman strength all the time is also costly. That energy is better spent on ourselves and our families. 5. Silence every now and then may be necessary for self-preservation. But silence all the time is dangerous. Speaking up is sometimes our only form of resistance against oppressive structures, and speaking up today might pave the way for change later. 6. You are not alone. When oppressive forces take direct aim at us as individuals, it is best that we fight back in solidarity with allies we trust. While defending myself against an attack this year, I learned that I have a solid number of ride-or-die friends, and I could not be more grateful for their support. 7. It’s past time that universities actually commit resources for faculty wellness that go beyond the usual limited term physical fitness challenges and instead prioritize the retention of faculty women of color, a claim many universities include in their strategic plans but do not resource accordingly. 8. A gratitude mindset, where we practice reframing our day to consider what went right and what we’re grateful for, can set a foundation for improving our relationships and increasing our happiness. It did for me (and those who know me know that I was very skeptical of the possibilities of a “gratitude journal”). 9. We must never forget to pay it forward because our newest sister colleagues deserve our help and we owe our foremothers a great debt. 10. We deserve joy in our academic spaces. In all our spaces. Go find what brings you joy and do more of that by any means necessary. Period. The end. Shout out to Roxanne for her leadership and facilitation; to Kami Anderson and Michele DiPietro, our movement teachers; and to everyone who participated in the Kathryn Epps Faculty Wellness Retreat. We all deserve a sister circle who loves and cares for us unconditionally, who tells us hard truths even though we don’t want to hear them, and who holds us accountable to what we say we’re going to do. I am humbled by the many women who have paved the way for me to be here—biological and non-biological foremothers—and who continue to build with me a path toward joy. For me, that path will include more attention to my overall well-being and fostering connections with other faculty women of color. To that end, I’ve already planned my next women of color faculty retreat. This one is through WellAcademic and, not coincidentally, also organized and led by Roxanne. It is October 5-7, 2018, at the Elohee Retreat Center in the foothills of the Georgia mountains. Just like this past retreat, Roxanne will create an intimate sisterly environment where I and the other faculty women of color retreaters can practice strategies that decrease our stress and boost our joy and productivity. There’s yoga, sister circles, and even individualized coaching by accomplished scholar Joycelyn Moody. I can’t wait!
Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen a new series for WellAcademic, Mothering in Color.
By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color
*This post was inspired by Roxane Gay’s New York Times Op-Ed “No One is Coming to Save Us From Trump’s Racism” (1/12/18).
I was in a good place at the start of 2018. During my holiday break, I practiced regular self-care—a couple of dinner and movie dates with myself, a massage, a pedicure, some reading, and binge Netflix-ing. Then I took advice from Roxanne Donovan (WellAcademic’s co-founder) to develop a Top Ten list for what I was grateful for in 2017. That list helped me to realize that I took some risks on behalf of my work, I prioritized time with my family, I made gratitude an almost daily practice throughout the year, and I developed a regular writing routine again. Faculty received good news at my university about some leadership changes, and my mother’s doctor gave us good news about her surgery’s success. I was in a real space of calm. Anyone who knows me will laugh at my description here. Me? Calm. Cut me some slack. It was the closest I could get to calm. I was so dedicated to developing more space for calm in my life that I took Roxanne’s advice (again!) and tried a Mindfulness app, a real stretch for me. I didn’t even delete it from my phone when I received notifications to “Draw attention to your feet” and “Focus on your breath.” I was happy and hopeful about 2018. That lasted almost 11 full days. Anger slithered its way back on Thursday, January 11, 2018, when the president of the United States allegedly(!) objected to a bi-partisan immigration proposal that allowed protections for immigrants to continue entering the U.S. from “shithole countries” (or shithouse, depending on reports), his description for El Salvador, Haiti, and African nations. He suggested instead that we needed more immigrants from Norway. He allegedly(!) said this in a room full of elected lawmakers. I am not shocked by the president’s continued racism or the support he’s enjoyed in Congress to enact racist policies. What disturbed my calm and triggered my anger this time were the responses. (Non)Responses by people in the room, responses by prominent immigrants from these countries, responses by the media, and responses by people on social media, including some I know personally. The responses are familiar: excuses and lies by politicians to justify the racist comments, immigrants from these countries defending how much they contribute to the U.S., and apologies to people of color by so-called well-meaning progressives for another instance of Trump’s racism. The response, however, that triggered my anger the most was silence. Which brings me to the hard lesson I had to teach my son: complicity. How do you teach a ten-year-old when to be silent and when to speak up? As I have shared in previous posts, I usually wait on Nicholas to ask questions as a point of entry into these difficult lessons. Not this time. I don’t know if I made the right decision, but I figured that if I’m trying to help my child to understand complicity, the last thing I need to do is wait or be silent. Nicholas knew right away that what the president said was wrong and hurtful—the language was a clear signal. But he did not realize that there were many other people in that meeting who were also guilty and that there have been many guilty others since then who have made excuses, lied, or chosen silence as their response to racism. Connecting this event to bullying and bystanders and asking Nicholas what he would want others to do if they witnessed him being bullied resonated with him. Incidents where he has to be brave and speak up in defense of what is right even when he is scared and when the outcome will most likely not be positive will follow him the rest of his life. Teaching my Black child not to be complicit when he is witness to racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic acts, especially by people in power, is one of my most important and terrifying responsibilities as a Black mother. I live in that contradictory space of hope and fear. While I hope that my child will be brave enough to challenge White supremacy, I also fear for his safety when he does. ******** Before I end, I feel compelled to talk directly to those White progressives who share my sadness and anger at the times in which we are living. I hope that if you are reading this, you’ll be prompted to stand up against racism because frankly I’ve lost patience with so much inaction. Of course, I’m angry with the president and other White supremacists whose racism is easy to detect. But I’ve also had enough of the insidious acts that work to shore up racist structures, especially as they work against women of color. Unfortunately, I know far too many so-called progressives who say they are social justice educators and allies but sit back in silence while Black women and other women of color are alone on the front lines 1) calling out racism in overt and implicit forms; 2) trying to change oppressive structures for the benefit of progressives as well; 3) voting consistently against pedophiles, rapists, and racists running for public office; and 4) working more for less money. We see you waiting in the cut while we speak first. We see you standing up when it benefits you individually, but we don’t always see you standing up for our collective interests. So I say to you would-be allies: I am/we are tired of putting on the Olivia Pope gladiator cape every time a problem needs fixing or someone in power needs to be told a hard truth. Stop waiting on us to do the work of justice. When is the last time you did something other than apologize to people of color for yet another instance of Trump’s racism? When is the last time you asked us how we are really doing, what you might do to come in alongside and fight with us, or just sit with us in the pain of this mothering moment where every day there’s another terrifying thing? We all have a responsibility to each other. I hope you will choose to do something next time so that we are not carrying all of this extra weight by ourselves.
Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen a new series for WellAcademic, Mothering in Color. |
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