Positive and productive

A CONVERSATION ON RACE THAT IS BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY

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The lines to the microphone at Union Missionary Baptist Church on Dec. 9 filled quickly.

“What you feel, what you think, what your experiences have been are extremely important,” said Pastor Melvin Jones to those attending the town hall forum in the wake of the unrest after grand juries failed to indict police in the killings of unarmed black men in Missouri and New York.



A father shared the shame of having his young children see him pulled over by a white police officer repeatedly for no reason. A woman told how she and her husband share the same car but only he gets stopped regularly. He’s black and she’s white.


The gathering personalized the national conversation on racial inequality and disparity.


But the conversation, while positive, wasn’t “productive,” said one vocal attendant.


It was one-sided, absent some equally frustrated voices with other points of view, seen easily on social media:


“There really isn't that much racism. Not on the level some people believe.”


“My ass does not get any special treatment for being white. And I personally… didn’t do anything to create racism.”


“Apparently being Caucasian makes you inherently racist, whether you think so or not.”


If there’s anything 2014 taught us, it is that race matters. It matters if you are a person of color. It matters if you’re white. It matters if you don’t understand why it matters.


City Pulse chose race relations as the topic of the year for 2014, not as a period at the end of the sentence but as a jumping off point for a year-long conversation in 2015.


What did we learn about race in 2014? What did we not know about ourselves or even how our friends and family feel? What did we learn about history and unhealed wounds?


And more important what do we need to do, change, understand, talk about in 2015?


The close of 2014 is marked by the unrest across the country responding to the Ferguson, Mo., and New York cases. Our distrust, fear and sensitivity was only amplified by the assassination-style killings Dec. 20 of two New York police officers. But that’s the fiery end of a year that was brewing to a boil month after month.


Racial tensions are more than racial. They can be ethnic.


We continue to debate, with little resolution, the status of immigrants in our nation, arguments framed by fairness, economics and even language — code words in some circles for Hispanic.


The severity of how unsettled we are is evident in the president's choice to speak out more personally about his own experiences being stopped by police for the only apparent reason of being black.


“Not only do I hear the pain and frustration of being subjected to that kind of constant suspicion, but part of the reason I got into politics was to figure out how can I bridge some of those gaps in understanding so that the larger country understands this is not just a black problem or a brown problem,” President Barack Obama said in a recent interview with BET. “This is an American problem.”


Obama emphasizes that while tension is still just skin deep, we have made progress as a nation and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. But he asks us also to have patience as we tackle possibly the most sensitive part of resolving racial bias and discrimination.


You have to have vigilance, but you have to realize that it's going to take some time, he said. We're not going to make it perfect, but we can make it better. Better is good because, over time, if you have enough 'better,' 10 years, 20 years from now, our kids are safer, the community's more confident about its place, the police officers are going to be in a position to do a better job.


City Pulse is committed to opening the doors to productive, intentional and engaged conversation about how we relate to one another across color lines. We will explore why race does matter and what race matters are important in our community. Through investigative journalism, community conversations, social media engagement and other forms, we hope to shed light on ways to improve our understanding of one another and explore any changes we may need to make in our systems of justice, education and others.


It may not be pretty. We will get angry or sad along the way.


Hopefully we can learn and grow as we step into this uncomfortable conversation together.


To that end, we asked Lansing-area residents to share their views on race relations. Here are some of those voices.

Racism hides and stews in its own juices in America

Having followed issues closely, it's clear to me that racism rarely lives on the surface of American society. It just hides and stews in its own juices. People with latent fears of black people sided with police officers who had killed unarmed individuals, but swore race had nothing to do with it. Ordinarily pleasant people were brought into police


 controversies, spewing venom. Police officers whosometimes have good cause to respond to an individual's actions seem to respond more forcefully where blacks are involved. Some of them know what they are doing. Many don't.


~ Richard Monroe, Lansing resident and treasurer of the Socialist Party of Michigan

We need to train ourselves to think in a new way

I think the most important lesson to take from this year is understanding, and accepting that white privilege is real. It seems that many people feel that this means they are automatically guilty of racism just for being white but that is not the case. Racism is a multigenerational problem and i t will require a multi-generational solution. While people of today had nothing to do with the origins of racism and are largely not as racist as they were in the past, white people today are still conferred many privileges; often from automatic, subconscious reactions. If we want to be more than just “not racist” and become allies in the movement for true institutional equality we need to acknowledge our institutional privilege and automatic reactions and actively, consciously train ourselves to think in a new way and call out those around us when they fall into these cultural habits. We, as a country, must admit that this exists and take conscious action to change. Inequality weakens our society as a whole. Meaning in the grand scheme it hurts all of us. Our generation may not have started this problem, but the torch has been handed to us to solve it.


~ Ian Seager, 24, is a DeWitt native who lives in Lansing. He is studying environmental studies in sustainability at MSU and is co-production manager for Learning Leaves Community Farmscape.

Racism exists, it just looks different than 50 years ago

What I have learned this past year is that there is an obvious issue here in this country with the relationship between police and minorities, specifically young black males. There seems to be an unfortunate amount of racial bias in some of our police departments, and it can lead to events in which we lose too many young men. But this issue is even larger than just these cases. Racism still exists in our nation, but it just looks different than it did 50 years ago. Until we all decide there is a problem, we will not be able to move forward productively. I hope 2015 brings some serious discussion dealing with gun control, police training, racial bias and our prison system.


~ Paul Troutman, 26, environmental landscaper. East Lansing native, graduate of Lansing Community College. 

We must remove the stigma associated with people in need

Race relations is a nuanced issue that must take into account historical injustices, inequities of opportunity, access to basic needs, and ingrained societal perceptions.


2014 was my first year as the executive director of Cristo Rey Community Center, a community services organization that provides access to food, medical services and mental health care to all people in need. My experiences here have challenged my preconceptions and understanding of race and poverty at the community level:


Everything is connected. Access to basic needs allows important conversations about empowerment and representation to take place. Without these staples, underrepresented people cannot meaningfully evoke or impact change.


Moving forward we must remove the stigma associated with people in need. Poverty for example is a symptom of inequity, not its cause. To give when requested and to receive when needed is a shared quality of our human condition. In this spirit it is possible to continue moving forward even in the face of difficult conversations such as race relations.


~ Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cristo Rey Community Center. Holds an MBA and dual bachelor of science degrees in communications and Spanish.

Transcending bias will dictate our survival as a species

One of my early memories was eating at The Famous restaurant on Michigan Avenue as a kid. A black man entered the establishment, wearing a suit, holding his fedora in his hands. He approached the head waiter. A few moments later he left, then returned with his family in tow. They were all dressed for church. My dad leaned over and said, “He just asked the waiter if they serve colored.” It was my first awareness of race. Later I delivered the newspapers that had the headline of Martin Luther King’s assassination to homes on Kingsley Court. Forty years later we were knocking on doors to get out the vote for Obama. Things are better, but we have a long way to go.


Race is an important issue to the extent that it reveals how much work we have yet to do. I can’t speak with any type of authority on the experience of being a minority of any kind. I’ve lived with blessings of white privilege, and because of that I’m blind to what so many others have to experience on a daily basis. I believe that how (or if) we transcend bias and deal with the other (including race, class, sex, sexual orientation or any number of other differences) will dictate whether we make it as a species. It’s central that we have the discussion.


~ Mike Stratton, a psychotherapist who has lived and worked in Lansing / East Lansing for most of his 60 years. He hosts Vinyl Side of Midnight on LCC Radio.

Ugliness and racism fester just beneath our veneer of civility

As the riots in Ferguson and the shootings in New York demonstrate, we still have a long way to go in the area of race relations in this country. Frustrations are simmering just below the surface. Certainly, it has become politically incorrect to express racist views publicly these days, as the Donald Sterling case illustrated, but for every Donald Sterling, there are still millions of Americans who hold racist views privately, or even worse, convince themselves that their voting patterns and their public opinions stem purely from political or economic motives. We have made progress, as the election of our first African-American president has clearly indicated. But the treatment of President Obama (who is the only president I can remember who has been routinely denied his honorific) and the venomous protests over immigration show the ugliness and racism festering in American life just beneath our thin veneer of civility.


For me, the greatest sign of hope in this country is the current generation of educated young people, who appear to have no qualms whatsoever about interracial friendships or relationships. The more mixture there is between the races, the less likely it will be in the future that battle-lines can be drawn on the basis of color.


~Mark Galik, adjunct professor of writing and literature at Lansing Community College. Galik is Czechoslovakian and Japanese, but prefers to be identified as an artist and intellectual.

We must create higher levels of accountability and trust

Trying to define racism in the 21st Century is very difficult. It is not that we don’t have policies, systems and people who harbor racist ideologies and stereotypes explicit or implicit; it is rather that identifying the motive as racism when people clash at the color line is more a default position than an absolute fact.


The recent shootings of unarmed black males by white police officers have brought a nationwide resurgence of the race question and the question of equal justice for people of color. Systems of justice must be challenged to reflect greater accountability and transparency. The current system of internal police investigations, close association with local prosecutors and private grand jury hearings leaves too much room for malfeasance and the miscarriage of justice.


Better training, racial balance among officers, body cameras and community policing programs should help reduce poor judgment and the need to use deadly force. The use of an independent prosecutor and the establishment of a community review board with subpoena power will enhance accountability and create a higher level of trust.


Racism is a social construction intended to marginalize and subjugate people as “the other” under systems of power and attitudes of oppression. It dehumanizes in order to support a sense of privilege, a supremacist view of life and the desensitization of a person’s worth and value. However, when you peel back the skin, that’s all it is — skin. It covers the body but it doesn’t define character. What a wondrous point of human diversity that skin comes in a variety of beautiful colors.


~ The Rev. Dr. Melvin T. Jones, pastor of Union Missionary Baptist Church, President of the Greater Lansing Clergy Forum and co-president of Action of Greater Lansing.

A race war is pending in our country

What I have learned? Is that when a black individual kills a white person it's just a murder! But when a white person kills a black individual it's a racial murder! I think this racial shit was just an excuse to rob and loot. Every time there is a so-called racial killing the black crowd loots and burns down their town. And it all stems from slavery! But just to show one’s ignorance of one's race whites only accounted for six percent of slavery. Blacks were the largest owners/traders of blacks and Muslims were second. This race issue is just a bunch of uneducated unemployed bunch of blacks looking for a reason to steal! And I personally think a race war will happen I hope it doesn't but if you can only poke a dog so much before you get bitten.


~ Joey Goodman, via Facebook

Denying our racial hangups perpetuates the problem

2014, a year saturated with struggles for equality and acknowledgement of being human for people of color. Media brought us descriptions of countless people being hurt, defamed and even murdered because of the belief that people of color are thugs, criminals, uneducated and violent demonic monsters. Meanwhile, the urge to deny negative racial bias hung on the lips of those who would breathe in I’m not racist but and breathe out some of the most hateful words. We are all flawed and have racial hang ups. Denying it perpetuates the problem. It's what we do that determines what happens next.


2015 has the ability to be an amazing year.


How? Humble ourselves. Realize we are all human, we all make mistakes, apologize and correct your actions. Show love and compassion to repair relations. Say hello and share a smile. Open a dialog with one another, genuinely talk from your heart and most importantly, truly listen. Disagreements and issues will arise, but fundamentally we want the same things. Happiness, good health and security for us, as well as our loved ones, and to be treated with respect.


~ Darryl Quinton Evans, Lansing, owner and CEO of Pure Enchantment Photography. Married father of three.

Tragic outcomes can be avoided if suspects don’t resist

Unfortunately my department doesn't allow us to comment publicly where we use the department affiliation. Not being able to use my department name and background and 25 years of experience kind of takes a lot of wind out of the sail that I would fly. I have honestly been trying to avoid Facebook and all the crap that's been flying around the Internet. It blows me away how facts are just spun or disregarded. I wish i could point you in the right direction here. But a lot of people I know around here aren't going touch this right now. It’s too volatile. I would love for you to interview Sheriff David Clarke (from Milwaukee County Sheriffs Department in Wisconsin) because that guy is calling it like I would. The difference is his words are weighted so much heavier than mine ever would be because he is the Sheriff … and he's black. I can say the same things he does ‘till I'm blue in the face and people go “Oh, well he's a white cop. What do you expect him to say? He’s never walked in my shoes. Or some may say, Well you’re the exception!


Honestly, I don’t know any cops that go out and say, Hey, tonight I wanna shoot somebody, or Whoa, there is a carload of black guys. Let’s go F with them.” It’s ridiculous to me that people actually think we think like that. It’s actually sad. Really sad. People of all races, creeds and colors need to realize that we react to situations that are thrown in our faces. People, 99 percent of the time dictate how something is going to turn out for them. We react. Sometimes, unfortunately it’s with deadly force. Everyone loses. Everyone. If suspects in crimes didn’t fight, resist, assault officers and/or escalate situations a lot of these tragic outcomes would've been avoided.


~ Anonymous mid-Michigan police officer

Biases are socialized into us

Recently, I took a test through Project Implicit. (https://implicit.harvard.edu) I was anxious while taking this test. I consider myself a person who is loving and well intentioned, but none-the-less, I have implicit biases. I knew at the end of this test, a small fraction of my bias would be spelled out. The results showed I have a moderate automatic identification with Asian people compared to Black people. This was surprising to me at first, given how many more Black folks than Asian folks I interact with and am close, personal friends with. However, after consideration and assessing the emotional response in my body, I had to admit that I understood this result. Asian people are much closer to me in skin color. As much as I am saddened by it, I acknowledge I hold negative biases about black folks. These biases have been socialized into me. I have to be aware of these biases EVERY SINGLE DAY! I’m not at fault that our society is created based on such notions, but it is the TRUTH and if I want it rooted out in others I must first work to root it out in myself while realizing it will be a neverending task.


~ Jen Smith, via Facebook

We all share responsibility for the effects of racism

I challenge college students to think systemically about ethically laden issues such as hunger. As part of this learning process, I attempt to stoke meaningful exchanges about uncomfortable topics that often relate to race and poverty. I need to create safe places for exchange and foster uncommon communication skills, in addition to providing objective facts and a more complete historical account.


I believe that we all share responsibility for developing a more accurate understanding of the historical narrative and current effects of racism in the U.S. It is time to evolve our understanding of racism to include the institutional and involuntary reverberations of our past. I think that we need to cultivate the language and resources that allow for meaningful exchanges about racial disparities, and be patient with each other when our words are imperfect but intentions are sincere. It is my hope that Lansing can be a leader in creating venues that allow for meaningful community exchange.


~ Julie Cotton, of Lansing. Cotton advises and instructs at MSU in sustainable agriculture and food systems. She grew up and attended undergraduate school in Texas.

Race relations are better than the news media would have you believe

I have learned nothing I did not already know — media tries to shape our opinions through its own distorted and victim-based lens as if we were children and if we are lazy.


I chose a different method of measurement than parroting what was in the news.


I believe we need only look closer at our own daily lives and experiences. The state of race relations in America is what we choose it make i t each day with every handshake — respectful look in the eye and common courtesy.


One interaction at a time.


I have given and received plenty of each in 2014 with humans of all races.


I expect the same in the New Year.


So my declaration is that race relations are better than news folk will have us believe but that we will not know this unless we keep it local — one interaction at a time.


~ Radio personality Tim Barron is chairman of the Lansing Entertainment and Public Facilities Authority.

Majority of white people deny racism is a problem

Racism is alive and breeding just the same as it was 40 years ago. Minorities live it every day while the majority of white people deny the problem. Those who acknowledge it are full of white guilt and the media is blamed for stirring the pot. The first step to change is STOP denying the problem. Minorities having equal treatment in every way does not impede upon the power group in any form. Some people seem to think if black people are treated equal, they lose something.


Oh and if you ask the Facebook Scholars, Obama caused racism, yet he is the only President who has ever been treated the way he has been and blatantly called a monkey.


I stand on race as an ally who acknowledges the white privilege I have; who attempts to break down racial biases.


In 2015, we as a country need to step out of denial that there is a problem. You cannot attempt to change something until the issue is acknowledged and every human experience is respected where people are not using the “N” word and “thug” interchangeably while stereotyping a whole group of people as one reality thugs and jobless bums.


~Ashley R. Orel, 28, of Holt. Orel received a bachelors of social work from Eastern Michigan University and a graduate degree from Central Michigan University. Orel is a member of the Lansing Jaycees, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., NASW and MCEDSV.

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