Posts Tagged ‘Whose story is it?’

Posted: February 2, 2015 by Donna Bivens in Quotes
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Revelation

The Gender of Reflection

Posted: January 26, 2015 by stevemcdonagh in Uncategorized
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Do words and phrases have genders? What type of people come to mind when the word “war” comes up? How about “sewing circle”? And which one of these do we take seriously? One is organized violence, the other is organized labor. One has countless books and movies, as well as trillions of dollars, dedicated to its analysis and propagation each year. The other is often used in this part of the world as a way to trivialize a group of women socializing with one another. War, despite its unimaginable cost to women and children throughout history, is seen as an exclusively male endeavor. Sewing circles are, as mentioned, a female space. War is destruction by unquestioning soldiers carrying out unquestioned orders. Sewing circles are constructive– not just for the clothing and other articles they produce or mend, but also for the so-called “gossip.” Not to idealize the concept, but socializing in a circle provides a space for an exchange of news and ideas, as well as the time and space for reflection and thoughtfulness. War is seen as a measure of strength. Sewing circles have become a metaphor for pointlessness.

More than a few times since I’ve been involved in the “social justice” non-profit world have I heard meetings described as sewing circles, which not only deride the stated purpose of whatever meeting but also the people participating in it, who are often women. Planned actions, on the other hand, are often framed in war language. “Battles”. “Going on the offensive”. What this adds up to, to me, is the feminization of reflection as a way to discredit it. It plays into traditionally patriarchal notions of leadership and organizing which value speed, hierarchy, and force. It also frames thoughtfulness, slowness, and deliberation as inefficient and wasteful. It reflects the values of the mass culture we live in, where characteristics associated with women– such as gentleness and openness– are seen as unfit for grappling with or wielding power.

It is important to see what this means for those of us doing social justice work. When reflection is feminine, and the feminine is despised, we cut ourselves off from a deep source of individual and collective power. Any discussion of freedom is meaningless if we do not have the freedom to process what is happening to ourselves and the people around us. If we can’t, or won’t, do that, then all we have at our disposal are unexamined ideas given to us through education– an education provided largely by school systems which have been seen as broken as long as they’ve existed, by a media system controlled by a few large corporate monoliths, and by our communities that are often both products and survivors of trauma. Without real, rigorous reflection, it is difficult to do anything through our work except reproduce or escalate the existing conditions.

For two years, this Project held story circles across Boston, inviting neighborhood residents to come into our circle and share their experiences with desegregation. Often, when people told their stories, they would begin by trying to fit their personal details into an already established narrative. For example, that “busing ruined the city” or that “both sides experienced hatred”. Not to say that these are false or wrong narratives, but no matter how “true” they are, they are also the entrenched ones that have allowed patterns of inequity to persist. As their stories went on, though, and they tried to follow both threads (their personal story and the larger narrative) to their ends, you would often see people struggle, or they would start sentences and then trail off. Words would fail them. It was like they had come up against a brick wall. They had reached the limits of both their personal story and the larger narrative. And here was where, in a quiet circle with no interruption, we saw a variety of reactions. Some people would just stop and cede the floor, or get frustrated, or persist and find some new piece of knowledge. Any route can potentially offer opportunities for reflection for both the person telling the story and the people listening. It allows us to see how firmly in place the established narratives are and how challenging it is to uproot them, even if our personal experience tells us they are insufficient. It allows us each to build and play off of one another’s stories, to see things in our own histories we never saw before, and to further our understanding of our place in a larger history.

Learning is an uncomfortable process. It is a struggle. It brings up feelings of uncertainty, vulnerability, and weakness. These are characteristics associated with the feminine. But it does us no good to ignore these feelings. In fact, those are the spaces where the most work can be done, because they are also the places where the entrenched narratives steer us from and don’t want us to go. We need to sit there and examine them individually and collectively so that we can work towards the kind of “two-sided transformations” that longtime activists and leaders James and Grace Lee Boggs believed were necessary, where, through our persistence, we transform both our institutions and ourselves.

Why a Circle Can’t Be at the Table

Posted: January 15, 2015 by Donna Bivens in Unfinished Business
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Education Happens when you learn something you didn’t know you didn’t know.          

 —– Daniel Bornstein (oft quoted by my friend Paul Marcus)

 

While it is beautiful  to see Boston city government acknowledge and put resources towards addressing the city’s race and class legacy, the way it is going about it points to  their challenges ahead.  Most pressing for Union of Minority Neighborhood’s Boston Busing/Desegregation Project (BBDP) is that for the second time recently city officials have taken language from BBDP without mentioning its existence. This is done to a Boston-based, African American-led organization that has made a film about, listened to stories about, studied and learned about Boston’s desegregation crisis for over four years with a small staff and a legion of amazing volunteers.

As director of BBDP, I have to say that this is not being written because we are proprietary. It is being written because we don’t want to be proprietary but know that being in a system –one many young people name as a white supremacy system* —it is critical that you claim your work in order to avoid being disappeared by those “at the table”.

When we first started on BBDP with our tag line of truth, learning and change, more than one person questioned the use of the word “learning”. Their concern was that people would be insulted by the word–that they might think we assumed we knew something that others didn’t.  This fascinated me since our assumption was just the opposite: that there was so much others knew that we didn’t.

That certainly turned out to be the case. What I am most proud of about BBDP is that we have listened well and we have been eager to learn from everyone. We’ve tried to honor all the voices we heard and to learn from our fiercest critics. From the beginning UMN decided to explore Boston’s difficult desegregation history because so many stories and unprocessed feelings from that era were shared during our organizing for CORI reform in Massachusetts and for increased Black parent involvement in the schools.  UMN put those voices at the center –not  experts, not  activists, not  politicians. We got many complaints for doing this but we knew those were the voices to start with to ask the questions that would forge some new learning. (And I can’t imagine working on education without being hungry to learn).

 Our first task was to ask those stakeholders and others throughout the Boston area, “Is it important to revisit this history?”The answer we got back was “Yes, but only if it is relevant to our experience of the present and not just a rehashing of the past.”  So our second audience was not people and communities who were content with who was being served today. It was people from communities that were under siege or who with few resources were trying to address the problems of a society that looked at people of color and impoverished white people as the problem and lifted up systems of greed and excess as the answer.

We understand the need to be “at the table”. UMN does that very effectively and honors political process and policy making. However, we chose circles as our form in this particular project.  One must earn and fight to keep their place at the table. There is a head and a foot. Not everyone can fit. It is assumed that people can speak for others. The circle, however, is ever expanding to stay alive. Each person or community has something unique to contribute to figuring out the problem, determining the solution, implementing action for transformation and evaluating where to go next. 

Though educated some in the white privilege system, I have had the good fortune to be educated not just in dominant white society but to learn how to learn from different systems.  I have studied a small amount with indigenous West African (Dagara) teachers. I have also learned so much from Asian thought and practice by way of Buddhism. I have learned from and about indigenous U.S. (Native American) traditions.  I have had the honor to learn for years from womanist/feminist/ Asian / and mujerista theologies.  I don’t claim any expert knowledge but I do claim a deep appreciation for the wealth of real diversity that exists in all traditions. I don’t think I can speak with authority from any of them but I am an “author” in the tradition in which I was raised: African descended —“Black” —U.S. culture and history.

In being part of this project in particular and UMN in general I have learned or remembered so much more about that culture and what it has to offer if it does not have to fit into the tiny box offered by white privilege society.  As Ta-nehesi Coates so brilliantly points out it is not a “better” culture but it is definitely as good as any other.  It can only come to the circle as its authentic self. There is something I’ve had the honor of learning, relearning, remembering though this work.

We desperately want Mayor Walsh and the city to succeed in the work they’ve undertaken on confronting Boston’s race and class legacy. We know there is support for race and class equity, democratic access and making demands of public institutions at all levels in the city and in all social locations. We just ask for respect and to be allowed to bring our authentic, diverse, loving Black-led selves “to the table”.  And of course no one has to earn a place for anyone in the circle—it is a birthright. We hope you will join us in our upcoming circles to explore Unfinished Business.

 

Footnote:

*I actually think I’m talking more about white privilege culture that continues to be problematic due to its failure to understand that it is grounded in white supremacist culture. Many thanks to our Tufts intern last summer Fabrice Montissol for helping me remember how crucial it is to acknowledge, learn about and confront the white supremacy system for the sake of us all. We’ll be writing more about this but are so glad it’s so prominent in discussion about current racial conflicts.

P.S. Being slow at many things, I am writing this post much quicker than I usually write so it may be edited if I can get back to it. Also this is me writing as me not as the project. Steve did the same, in his authentic voice (which I promise I’ll no longer try to tone down as I practice Horace’s way of “letting Loddy, Doddy, Everybody ‘play’”!)

State of the State of the City

Posted: January 15, 2015 by stevemcdonagh in Uncategorized
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“I know from my own life that you can’t move forward unless you reach out and deal honestly with the past. The truth is that when it comes to race and class, Boston has a lot of unfinished business. We must not be afraid to talk about it.” -Marty Walsh, State of the City, 1/14/14

The Mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, mentioned BBDP’s work on Tuesday in his State of the City address. Well, I’m not sure if that’s what he intended, but he did nonetheless. In the quote above, Walsh namechecks the title of our report, Unfinished Business: 7 Questions, 7 Lessons, while speaking of lingering issues of race and class in the city. Now, would we have liked him to mention us specifically when he uses our language? Sure. It also would’ve been great if, a few moments later, when discussing the City’s brand new grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to hold community conversations around race and class issues, he mentioned organizations like the YWCA, which have been holding similar dialogues for years. But this isn’t really about us or our work. It goes deeper. Mayor Walsh’s speech the other night serves as another way to highlight the recurring patterns that keep us stuck– particularly, the pattern of those in power to talk about race and class sympathetically, while, at the same time, strengthening the barriers that uphold those categories.

Just as an example, early in the address, Walsh gives his administration credit for having the most “diverse” police department and cabinet in Boston’s history. He later spends some time honoring a number of people specifically. The firefighters who died on the job in March. Tom Menino. The police and others who helped guide his response to the protests led by Black Lives Matter and We Are the Ones. All but two of his honorees are men. Mostly white men, individually, though through singling out the Boston Police and Fire Departments, he also signals an allegiance to two traditional strongholds of white male political and economic power. So here we have a place where the Mayor simultaneously celebrates a surface “diversity” while, on a deeper level, re-affirms existing power dynamics.

To circle back, Walsh touts his relationship with Rockefeller over acknowledging the work of BBDP and the YWCA, among others, while still using the language of those groups. This is erasure. His comments (and the initiatives he’s speaking about) overwrite the contributions made, and labor performed, by organizations led by women and people of color in favor of the new programs of his administration (which have no track record). This is not nothing. This is, and long has been, critical work in maintaining the system. Crossing out smaller groups is an effort, conscious or not, “intentional” or not, to retain and increase control of the narrative around racism and class in Boston. By co-opting not only the language and the concepts but also the process, the City and its partners can limit the questions and shape the conclusions drawn, while also appearing responsive publicly. His comments and actions around the Olympics play similarly.

I say all this not to attack Marty Walsh or his administration, but to look at how his address works as an example of how the system we live in can repurpose the work and words of marginalized groups to reinforce its white supremacist pillars. It’s great that, apparently, people at City Hall have read BBDP’s report and liked some of the ideas in it. But Unfinished Business was not to be used as a cloak. If we are to make real headway in resolving issues of racism and class in Boston, as the Mayor so desires, then we need to speak honestly and interrogate thoroughly the words and actions of those in power. What do they mean? Who do they signal? Why can Walsh tout the billions in new construction in town and get applause, while at the same time say next to nothing about the displacement of whole communities happening because of those same billions? How does the idea that Boston is “strong and getting stronger,” as he put it, read to those being pushed out of town? The Mayor told us one story about our city on Tuesday, but, as he must have realized from his familiarity with our work, it is far from the only one.

The Same Old Story on the Radio?

Posted: November 25, 2014 by stevemcdonagh in Uncategorized
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On Thursday, November 20, WBUR ran a piece on-air they called “’A Fear of Going to School’: 5 Former Boston Students Reflect on Busing.” In it, they played clips of a conversation between 5 former Boston Public Schools students who were bused as part of the desegregation plan put into place after the 1974 court decision. The personal stories shared on the program spoke to a lot of the personal and community trauma that occurred at the height of the crisis, and how that trauma has lingered since then. Each person’s story encompassed a lot of emotion and evoked the intensity, fear, and uncertainty of the period. The five participants should be thanked for being willing to share their stories with a larger audience, and, in fact, some of them had already participated in BBDP story circles prior to this piece. What drew my attention, though, in listening, was the way the program framed these stories. In our work, which has focused in part on collecting personal stories from before, during, and after desegregation, local and otherwise, we have always found the focus on the violence of the period to be a way of limiting how we talk about what happened. When we speak about desegregation and only talk about the extreme instances, we run the risk of losing track of historical context and the relationships to power of the groups involved. Listening to the WBUR program, it was discouraging to hear not only the lack of context provided to the listener, but also repeated uses of misleading language that serve to fit the same old story we’ve been telling for forty years, as well as the interests of power today.

What does it do to our perception of public school desegregation in Boston (and by extension, nationally), when the producers of the program, positioning themselves in an “objective” role, repeatedly refer to the desegregation plan as an “experiment” or “an uncontrolled experiment in social engineering”? And, further, as the producers of the segment are tasked with editing the conversation and selecting which clips to play, what do we make of them giving significant airtime to one participant, Tom Murphy, a white man who spoke at length about how the court order “artificially disrupted the environment of an otherwise vibrant city”? What picture does this paint historically? If desegregating the schools was social engineering, then how do we characterize the social order that existed beforehand? The producers do not address this themselves, but Murphy is given time to talk about how population movement occurs “naturally” and that government shouldn’t get involved.

I think that the timing of this radio piece should also be noted. In Boston, currently, if we are still “in the process” of gentrifying, we are pretty far along in that process. Simultaneously, the public school system locally (as well as nationally) is under assault from “school reformers”– one being bankrolled by noted grassroots activists like Bill Gates, the Walton family, and Goldman Sachs. So how does looking back in the manner WBUR has chosen resonate today? For example, whose interests does it serve to paint being a student in the Boston Public Schools as akin to being “embedded in a war zone,” as one of the participants in the story recalled? Does that encourage listeners to draw connections to images of today’s public schools, which are commonly painted as “broken” by the media? Similarly, how do we view people fighting their displacement from the city when we’re encouraged to look at population movements as “natural”, with no consideration of race or class?

A program that uncritically uses the familiar narrative of “busing pitted everybody against each other” and that “violence was endemic” on all sides serves to erase the larger patterns of history and power that the desegregation period came out of. It does the work of creating and evoking a pre-desegregation past that was free of problems before an activist judge and government forced unwanted changes down the city and country’s throat, “pitting everybody against each other.” This image erases hundreds of years of Black activism around education. It erases practices like redlining and blockbusting, as well as federal government policies that subsidized the suburbs for new white homeowners while tightly controlling where Black people could rent or buy. The WBUR program provides an interesting look into some personal stories, but frames them in a way that does a disservice to the social location of their participants and recycles the same conversation we’ve had about education, turf, and money since long before Judge Garrity made a decision. What we need is to see these patterns, so when we see the cranes hovering above Roxbury and East Boston, or hear the supposed benefits of the Olympics, or hear the “low-performing” rationale behind another public school closing, we can ask critical questions and take critical action.

Tell YOUR Story

Posted: June 11, 2014 by Donna Bivens in Uncategorized
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In a wonderful recently posted TEDx Roxbury Women talk, City Councilor Ayanna Pressley speaks to the power of story. As she says, “behind every statistic there is a person, a story, a testimony begging to be told”. This could be a motto of BBDP!

She lays out beautifully the power of our K-12 education stories and how our lessons there can deeply influence our life trajectory–our values and passions, our commitments and life purpose.

This so aligns with what BBDP has encountered in story circles and interviews. The more we listen the more we begin to make out the tapestry of experiences and understandings that have led us from Morgan v Hennigan to today.

We hope you enjoy the talk as much as we did.

Beyond Common Ground

Posted: February 3, 2014 by meghandoran in Uncategorized
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At a recent Christmas party I described our project to someone I’d just met as “trying to tell a more full story of school desegregation and busing in Boston.”

“Common Ground already did a pretty damn good job at that, didn’t it?” he asked.

So I didn’t know this guy very well and I was at a very loud and crowded party. I did not really feel like debating the finer points of J. Anthony Lukas’ opus. But here’s the truth – one of the first things I learned when coming onto this project is that not everyone does think Common Ground should be the definitive history. After nearly two years of talking to people about this history I am inclined to agree, if for not other reason then it’s too easy to say ‘this history’s been told – Tony Lukas did the hard work for us, now we can move on.’

“Well, I think lot’s of people feel their experiences aren’t represented in that book” I responded, and, much to my relief, he let it drop. Did I mention it was really loud there? Anyways, we moved on to talk about his feelings about desegregation in South Boston, rather than getting into it about Common Ground.

I didn’t think much more of it, but now here we are in 2014 and, as the BBDP has been expecting, the 40th anniversary remembrances have begun. Commonwealth Magazine recently featured an article from the Columbia Journalism Review looking back at Lukas’ work with reverence, concluding that:

“Anthony Lukas was a perfectionist in a world that is far from perfect. Common Ground is probably as close to that ideal as journalism can get.”

Ok, now I’m ready to get into it. Common Ground is a sprawling epic – there is no doubt that it covers ambitious history, but it is one man’s perspective. There are multiple perspectives and stories not included in it. One of the most powerful critiques I’ve heard came from Ruth Batson, who was a leader in Boston’s Black Educational Movement:

“One of the most devastated and distorted views of the Boston public school history was t2014-02-03 15.19.47he publication in the 1985 of the book Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas…JOHN ANTHONY LUKAS STOLE OUR MOVEMENT… In spite of all his accolades and skills as a writer, Lukas does a shoddy job of portraying the true desegregation era in Boston. It seems to matter little that the contributions of black activists were minimized, omitted, or reported negatively in Mr. Lukas’ book. The book completely leaves out the struggle that was carried out for so many years by black activists in Boston. When the book was first published, many of us who had labored long and hard in the battle for educational equity felt as if we had been cut off at our knees.” (Ruth Batson, The Black Educational Movement in Boston, 2001)

Ms. Batson is not the only one who feels Common Ground got some things wrong, though she perhaps said it the most strongly. In our report from our first year we listed several examples of stories we believe can enrich both our understanding of our history and where we are today:

  • The story of what was happening in Boston’s Latino/a and Asian communities
  • The story of those who went through school desegregation (especially young men during that era – we have heard more from women)
  • The story of communities as viewed by the people who lived in those communities, including the story of South Boston from a South Boston perspective (many originally from this neighborhood feel it has been misrepresented)
  • The story of those who were committed to making school desegregation work, before, during AND after the crisis
  • The story of schools that didn’t experience violence

This list is by no means exclusive and we’d love to hear your thoughts on other stories that don’t fit into the Common Grpund narrative. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from this work is that there can, of course, be no single story. As we enter the 40th anniversary year of school desegregation I think the city will do a disservice to this history if we say, ‘this story’s been told – Tony Lukas did the hard work for us, now we can move on.’ There’s so much more to learn and to understand from each other that can not be gleaned from one book.