White people talking to white people (WPTTWP)

Last night I was on Mount Olympus's Western face watching the sun gild the clouds above the Oquirrh Mountains in the most glorious pink. This morning I watched that same sun touch the highest peak of those same mountains. I saw it from the Park and Ride at 6570 South Wasatch boulevard, where a hiking meetup was taking off. 

I do not love these group hikes. But each time I am glad, after the fact, for the opportunity to talk with people who I would not otherwise have rubbed elbows with. Especially when we get to talk about White privilege and structural racism.

 In his book Democracy in Black Eddie Glaude Jr says if we are going to change the way we see Black people, "White people -- and only White people can do this -- will have to kill the idea of White people." 

It is never hard to connect a substantive conversation topic with race and power structures, since race pervades so much of our societal psyche. 

I have been encouraged by our anti-racism meetings at school to engage the topic of race when it comes up. Today the woman I was hiking near, a professor at Westminster College, said she didn't like working at her last college, Williams, because "I didn't get it about having wine and cheese parties, for students." The atmosphere of elitism was so intense that even she as an educated white person didn't feel comfortable. 

We then had a conversation about how institutions of higher ed make/fail to make attempts to create space for students of color and marginalized students who might easily feel that this school (and its bougie cocktail parties) is not for them. We mentioned some of the things Westminster does, and also how the curriculum and theoretical framework that is taught in classes makes a big difference. 

I told her what Ivy said about TikTok being a great place to find educators talking about how to be culturally responsive and anti-racist in the classroom. I also recommended and texted her the link to Zaretta Hammond's Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, which she seemed very keen on. 

Of course, this was a fairly easy conversation to have because she, like me, is a White educator who wants to do more for equity in her classroom. But any conversation we can have with those around us that normalizes talking about racism and how to be less racist, seems worth while. 

Isabel Wilkerson has a fascinating chapter of Caste: The Origins of our Discontents which illuminates how flimsy a term "white" is, and how recently its meaning has been debated. Just 120 years ago, in this country, when Italians immigrated they were not considered White. 

A Black man initially accused of miscegenation was released when the court found out the woman was Sicilian - it was no longer a marriage between White and Black. 

In 1894, 11 Italians were lynched in the South for Jim Crow-type offenses, facing the same punishment Black people would have faced. Different states at the time determined "Whiteness" by vastly different formulas.

Maybe "killing the idea of White people" is not as far off as I thought when I initially read Glaude's directive. He advocated, and I advocate, WPTTWP.