Black Appetite. White Food.

Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom

Jamila Lyiscott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000006896
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Black Appetite. White Food. invites educators to explore the nuanced manifestations of white privilege as it exists within and beyond the classroom. Renowned speaker and author Jamila Lyiscott provides ideas and tools that teachers, school leaders, and professors can use for awareness, inspiration, and action around racial injustice and inequity.

Part I of the book helps you ask the hard questions, such as whether your pedagogy is more aligned with colonialism than you realize and whether you are really giving students of color a voice. Part II offers a variety of helpful strategies for analysis and reflection. Each chapter includes personal stories, frank discussions of the barriers you may face, and practical ideas that will guide you as you work to confront privilege in your classroom, campus, and beyond.

Part I
Naming the Problem

1
Vision-Driven Justice

Healing is not the absence of pain

It is the decision to act

In the service of your development

Rather than your defeat

I am a Harry Potter enthusiast. This might be one of the most important things to know about me. During Harry’s first year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, he stumbled upon a mysterious mirror. The mirror, hidden away, and only discovered by Harry because of his knack for always gettin’ into some mess, was called “the Mirror of Erised.” When Harry first stood in front of the mirror he was startled to see that alongside his reflection, his late parents, Lilly and James Potter, stood smiling and waving. Harry rushed to wake up his best friend, Ron, so that he, too, could see Harry’s parents in this magical mirror. But when Ron came to the mirror, he did not see Harry’s parents at all. Instead, he saw, along with his own reflection, an older version of himself decked out with accomplishments that he could only dream of. I am a Harry Potter enthusiast because author J.K. Rowling must herself be a magical being to so poignantly and piercingly forge such powerful moments of deep personal reflection in the world of her stories. You see, Harry found himself in front of that mirror every single night, staring into the eyes of his parents who passed away when he was just 1 year old. He sat there lost in the mystery of this mirror until the sagacious Dumbledore found him one night. At this point in the story, we learn from Dumbledore that what the Mirror of Erised does is show ones “deepest and most desperate desires.” By standing in front of this mirror, one is confronted with their heart’s deepest wants, which for Harry, was to have his mother and father in his life. But then Dumbledore offers a crucial warning when he says to Harry, “this mirror offers neither knowledge or truth … men have wasted away in front of it … that is why I am having it removed.” ¹

If my 15-year-old self were to stand before the Mirror of Erised, weighing 259 pounds at 5 feet tall, with dark brown skin and glasses, I would have seen a slim, shapely teenaged young woman, with long, flowing hair and hazel eyes. Transfixed, I would have been immobilized by this cruel apparition of my imagination. I would watch it. It would watch me. A prison of desire. I would have been powerless to walk away and mold the life I wanted, too stuck to step away from the mirror and into my journey. In my life, I have spent plenty of time trapped in the hauntings that Rowling speaks of through the story of this mirror. Being confronted with the realities of my deepest desires, interrogating those desires, and then powerfully stepping into the complexity of my journey knowing that I am forever unfinished has been the stuff of me. In reality, the deep impact of my childhood obesity would wrap itself up and through my Blackness and my womanhood like a sprawling ivy. My perception of the world would find its grooves most saliently along the contours of my body type, my racial identity, and my gender. Most Black parents of young girls in America are forced to have the “you’re Black-and-woman-and-you-have-two-strikes-against-you” talk. In my mother’s eyes, I could see another fear, one that fell in harmony with the historical figurations of mammies that mark Black American history. I was a dark chocolate Black girl suffering from obesity, and this reality is central to my story. Here, within the intersecting margins of my world, I had to dig deep to define myself outside of the social mirror. My lens as a scholar-activist today was forged in the trenches of some of my hardest childhood moments. My ability to critically question how institutions (de)value certain bodies and cultures was made in raw moments of needing to forge my own sense of worth and beauty outside of social standards. My fierce compassion for equity was brewed in real moments of defiance, of defining my fullest humanity in the face of a world that works to attach deep shame to dark Black women without the right body type.

This is my story. I share it because if you are an educator who has never faced their story as it intersects with the various social locations that shape how you show up in our schools and in our world, then you are destined to do this work irresponsibly. What are the stories that shaped your view of the world? What people and places socialized you into accepting the norms and values that script your life either knowingly or unknowingly.

If you were to stand before the Mirror of Erised, what would you see?

What hopes…

What pain…

What deep and desperate desires…

The question is a paradigm shift for many of us who are used to approaching social justice work in ways that are strangely divorced from personal wellness work. Stephen Covey (2004) ² refers to paradigms as maps of how we view the world. Our current paradigms for social justice work broadly rarely priori-tize the immediate shifting realities of our mental health, family dysfunction, triggers, traumas, and all of the heavy things that impact how we show up to our classrooms. But before we can enter into a conversation about what it means to broach the sociopolitical struggles of racism and white privilege, we must enter into a conversation about how you navigate struggle within your self. Our personal histories matter deeply to our capacity to contribute to social justice so that what Yolanda Sealey Ruiz refers to as ‘the archaeology of the self,’ is a crucial excavation process for us all.

When I was 10 years old, my father taught me how to ride a bike on Empire Boulevard in pre-gentrified Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Well … he attempted to. I sat on my bright pink bike, and over and over again gravity defeated me as I fell sideways onto the ground. Eventually, in a Trini accent as thick as cassava, my father said, “Jamila, yuh have balance?” How would I know? I looked at him confused, and understanding my expression he directed me to “stand on one leg.” After a few attempts, I finally found some semblance of balance on one leg. “Get back on de bike,” he said after a few minutes of my awkward attempt to find stability on one foot. When I got back onto the bike, to my shock, I rode straight down the block. What my father taught me in that moment is that if I did not have balance within myself, how in God’s name could I expect to have balance outside of myself?

Many of us leave homes where the most toxic, unbalanced relationships fester as they intersect with our personal mental health issues, childhood trauma, triggers, and systemic oppression and then enter into our classrooms confused about why we cannot find balance in any aspect of our work. How in the world are you going to address the sociopolitical systemic magnitude of racial injustice without deep self-awareness of how to navigate your own personal struggles? Social justice requires personal wellness. Public impact requires private introspection.

Take a few minutes to enter into this visualization exercise with me. This exercise, inspired by Adele’s “Hello,” came to me after reading an interview where Adele shared that the song “Hello” is more than a romantic love song. She shared that this song was essentially a message to herself saying, “Hello from the other side of what I have been through.” After reading this interview, I developed the following visualization exercise, which I have been blessed to lead people through all over the country. Each time the room is full of tears, and deep emotion, and we are then ready to embark on true dialogue and action toward racial justice.

Take a moment in a quiet space by yourself, to think of a struggle that you are navigating in your life right now. It may be a struggle that is invisible to the rest of us, but it is palpable for you. It may be a struggle that you feel is insurmountable … it has loomed over your life for years … its teeth have a grip on your past and are gnashing at your future.

After you can think of this struggle very clearly, close your eyes, and visualize yourself on the other side of that struggle. Who is the “you” that has overcome this seemingly endless mountain? What do you look like on the other side? How do you feel in your body? Who is that person? Make it real.

Now after you’ve conjured up this version of yourself in your mind, take a few moments to write a letter to yourself of today from yourself on the other side of your struggle. Do this before you read any further.

Most people find themselves in a state of pain, hope, rage, possibility, confusion, and catharsis after doing this exercise. How can all these polarized emotions exist at the same time? It is because, once you speak to the version of yourself on the other side of what you are going through, that person is likely compassionate, championing you and giving you a roadmap of what it takes to get over! It is that roadmap that is the key!

What will our world look like on the other side of white privilege?

This exact question was on my heart in the days, weeks, and months following the 2016 election. So when I opened my e-mail on an early January 2017 morning, I was pleased to see a message from the folks over at TED inviting me to write and record a poem at their headquarters. The election results for the 45th president of the United States produced a muggy social climate. It felt sticky. Cloudy. Uncertain. Who could have forecasted this? The people who reached out to me from TED certainly did not. The tone of the email was “we need … something … some word … some words … some hope … something to offer the nation in this deeply divisive moment.” No pressure!

I gladly accepted the invitation. The resulting TED Talk, “2053,” imagines how we will look back on this historical moment in the year 2053. In the face of such deep national struggle, I needed to find hope … from our selves on the other side of this history. The final line of “2053” is

healing is not the absence of pain. It is the decision to act in the service of your development, rather than your defeat.

Vision-driven justice is a paradigm shift that requires you to enter into a deep, honest assessment of who you are, where you are, and what you are up against as you fight toward who you need to become. This process of self-awareness means that before you can enter into social justice work … Before you trip yourself up with an ego-driven approach to justice that is rooted in a white savior complex or an internalized inferiority complex that lowkey reiterates white supremacy, you have to be honest about your private and personal stuff, your “stuff” as it intersects with your social identities (i.e., race, class, gender, language, etc.), and your social identities as they map themselves onto your motivations, habits, and behaviors that may lead you to the point of having the best intentions for changing the course of racial justice but the worst approach.

Healing is Not the Absence of Fear

The trick about gearing up to change yourself and to change the world is that … it’s too much! The pain you’ll have to endure, the uncertainty of the outcomes, the fear of loss, the lack of tools that you are sure about, the chaos of working with people across lines of political and social difference … dis tew much! You’re right. It is too much. Change is a lot. Think about what it felt like to speak to that person on the other side of your struggle … even after such a powerful conversation, taking the first step forward can feel impossible. The fear of changing yourself is not far off from the fears that come up as you truly think about changing your classrooms and, even more, changing the course of white privilege as it manifests itself in your part of the world. On top of all this, a true fight for racial justice requires those who benefit and find comfort in white privilege to give something up. These are big questions, but throughout my time working with educators, many fears about endeavoring to see and confront white privilege within themselves, relationships, and institutions have come to light. Some common concerns are the following:

• ♦ What if I become a target in my school and risk getting fired?
• ♦ What if my attempts to confront white privilege are viewed as racist?
• ♦ What if my family stops speaking to me because I finally say what’s on my mind when they are being racist?
• ♦ What if I reject white privilege and embrace my racial identity as a person of color and then I lose opportunities/access?
• ♦ What if a parent comes up to the school and doesn...