The powerful and heart-centered act of noticing (Part 2 of 5)
As I listened to Mike speak, I could feel my blood pressure rise.
Mike (not his real name), a White parent and board member working on deepening racial equity at his school, had reached out because he had hit some challenges leading this work—one of them being that the school staff had not yet taken a leadership role to chart a new path for the school.
But another challenge that I could feel was that Mike wasn’t approaching racial equity with the right level of solutions.
Let me explain.
Mike had reached out because he wanted to move himself and his organization towards solutions. Like so many of us, Mike cared about racial equity and struggled to find the right first steps. It was commendable.
Mike had some ideas, such a one-time training for parents on racism or an increased focus on Black History month.
And yet, as I heard him share his suggestions, I could feel myself becoming agitated. What came to mind was, “This is life or death. We’re way beyond the point of extra reading for Black History Month!”
It was a struggle, but I remained calm. And I thought about noticing and what that actually means.
In our last post, I talked about Barbara J. Love’s model of Liberatory Consciousness, which we learned about from Desiree Adaway. The first step in the model is awareness – developing the capacity for noticing.
For each of us, noticing must start with our hearts cracking open.
My heart cracked open a few years ago when I watched this video on Black parents explaining how to deal with the police and stay safe. If you are a Black or Latinx person whose community is targeted by the police, skip the video, it could be triggering to you. You may be too familiar with the content and not need the reminder. But if you are a White person who has the privilege of feeling that the police generally create safety for you, the video might wake you up.
As the video opens, a Black girl is speaking to her Black father. The father says, “At our house, we practice this thing. What is it?”
And the girl responds, “I’m Ariel Skye Williams. I’m 8 years old. I’m unarmed. And I have nothing that will hurt you.”
When I watched the video a few years ago for the first time, I started sobbing uncontrollably. As I watched it again to write this post, I was crying again.
As a parent – as a person! – I can’t accept the idea that any child, or person, should have to live with this level of violence and fear. As someone wrote in the comments on YouTube, “The kid is 8 and she is scared of her dad dying SHE SHOULD NEVER FEEL THAT WAY.”
You might be asking, if I’m working on change in nonprofit organizations, why did I start with police violence?
It’s all connected.
We need to notice that we live in a society that accepts violence towards Black and Latinx people, which leads to health inequalities, economic inequalities, wealth inequalities, and multiple levels of disparity.
We need to notice who is in the rooms we work in, who is in our schools and who is in our neighborhoods.
We need to notice this stuff isn’t random, it’s by design and baked into the system and the world that we live in.
Noticing takes effort. It requires us to take off the blinders that are put there to keep the system staying as it is.
And noticing is also heart-centered. At its core, noticing is to see and affirm that every person of every race, gender, ability and background deserves to live a life of safety, prosperity, opportunity, and health – and we don’t have that yet.
Please understand that I am constantly working on removing my blinders, practicing the act of noticing more and more. To me, it has always been important to see everyone in an organization – it helps me be most effective in my role. I have to not just see the directors of the nonprofit, but also connect with each person carrying out the mission. And, most of all, understand who they’re serving. In our line of work, we have to notice who supports our organization – I’m not talking about only donors, but the people who are on the front lines of this work, who volunteer when we need help, who do the work we’re unable to do, and who make us successful.
I’m not perfect and I don’t have all the answers. I just believe that a move towards racial equity requires that more White people like me speak up. It’s not enough – but Mike wasn’t seeking enough, he was trying to find a start. Our conversation pushed him to do more noticing before thinking about possible actions. I said I’d be happy to lead the conversation to support the group towards awareness.
TRY THIS:
How can you take off your blinders to observe data about your community or organization:
Who is in the room? Who is missing?
How can you get curious about the level of safety and encouragement people of different racial backgrounds are feeling?
To what degree are those closest to the problems able to weigh in on solutions?
Note: this is Part 2 of a 5 part series.
Read Part 1 here: Whenever given the choice, choose love
Part 3 here: Confronting resistance with love
Part 4 here: In a dangerous moment, take strong action
Part 5 here: For a more compassionate world, we need accountability