Opinion | Standing with students of color

Rev. Nancy Brink, Director of Church Relations at Chapman University

Four summers ago, when 49 people were killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando, the staff of the Fish Interfaith Center planned a vigil for the next afternoon. Because it was summer, I had very low expectations about the turnout. To my amazement, well over 100 people came. As a lesbian, I was completely heartsick and broken – and that gathered community helped me take my first steps back into the land of the living.

This year, the deaths of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude and Breonna Taylor has moved many of us off our couches and into the streets for peaceful and heartfelt protest. Cell phone video cameras are now documenting what people of color have long tried to tell white America – that too often they are dying at the hands of police.

And it is not just the police who make life miserable. The systemic racism of institutions means fewer people of color are hired and promoted. Generations of red-lining and banking discrimination has meant that Black and Brown families have far less accumulated wealth than white families. And the poor always seem to get blamed, as if poverty is really their own fault, because they must be lazy. People of color have to deal with daily racist abuse – thoughtless, and sometimes intentional, comments meant to put them in their place.

So when I reached out to the leaders of the Black Student Union (BSU) to ask if they needed support, their answer was, “Yes.” 

That is why we offered last Friday’s event: “Taking Care of Community: Standing with Students of Color.”

This gathering was offered to help us take a breath together and find strength to continue the work of dismantling racism in our hearts and in our communities and nation. 

But offering support and encouragement needs to be a daily practice for all of us, particularly white people. We all need to plan how we will respond in the face of microaggressions we witness. Doing nothing is not acceptable. We all need to be ready to listen and learn when someone calls us out on something we have said or done. An immediately defensive reaction is a sign that we have some work to do. If you feel like saying, “I am the least racist person I know,” it means you are lying to yourself.

If none of this makes much sense to you, may I recommend a book for you to read? It is “So You Want to Talk about Race” by Ijeoma Oluo. Chapter by chapter, she takes on important topics: what is racism, privilege and intersectionality; affirmative action and the school to prison pipeline; cultural appropriation and microaggressions; the model minority myth. She also has a chapter that I found very compelling: “I just got called racist, what do I do now?”

I am spending this COVID-19 time going deeper than I ever have in understanding my privilege and the history of racism. It is hard work and it is the right work. It is past time and the right time. If you are new to this learning, I urge you to join me.