Oakwood University
Black History Month
Keynote Address:
“Ghosts in the House: Reconciling Pasts to Ensure Equitable Futures”
Good Evening and thank you so much for inviting me to share observations, insights, and community. I would first like to thank my host, Amanda Ringer for her invitation and great insights when crafting my remarks. I would like to thank, you, the members of the audience for your generous invitation. This is indeed a very special moment for me. As a historian of the 19th century and in particular on race, this land has tremendous meaning for me–more on that later. As I unfold my observations, please feel free to jot down questions, challenges, insights and observations. My argument is simply this, in order to move through past and current racism to ensure equitable futures, we must acknowledge the presence of ghosts in our houses and on our land. These ghosts are manifold. To clarify, we have the ghosts in the form of historical people. These are the people who lived, experienced and challenged oppression. We must remember these giants upon whose shoulders we stand upon. Next, we have the ghosts on the land—these are the sites where tragedies and triumphs occurred. We must honor the sacredness of this land and process the ways in which land serves as actors. To further clarify, think about how this space, or racialized spaces like Philadelphia, Birmingham, Selma, Ferguson and currently campuses impact how we perceive, access, understand, and incorporate equity or inequity into our consciousness and actions. Next, must consider the historical and contemporary racist policies and systems that exist as ghosts in the room. Metaphorically, with their heavy hands, these policies and systems empower, normalize, and innovate inequity and oppression against people of color. We must also consider the ghosts that live within us—connected to our identities and our experiences, these are the ghosts of implicit/explicit bias, our anxieties, and our hopes and dreams.
Before I dive in, I think that it is important that I share a bit about myself. When one enters the spaces of racial reconciliation and equity, they must be transparent about their privilege, positionality, and motivations. I am so very humbled to be allowed to speak to you today. As a historian, I am honored to stand on land rich with history. From Dred Scott, the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and the fact that this is an HBCU— all with stunningly rich traditions in the fights for equity and equality. You may wonder why I am even here. I get that . I know that because I am not African American nor am I descendent fromAfrican Americans, I must accept immediate suspicion. People who look like me have perpetrated some of the worst crimes against People of Color. My whiteness means that I owe an explanation. I wish to say at the outset that people with my skin color should listen more than they speak. But because I have been invited here today, here is my brief story. I am a devout Jew. My faith commands me to fulfill, known in Hebrew as “Tikkun Olam,” “repairing the world.” I take this responsibility very seriously. I am the descendant of pogrom and Holocaust survivors, and civil rights and social justice advocates. The term “Never Again,” goes beyond Jewish experiences with oppression. As a Jew, I understand that when racism and oppression are allowed to exist against one population, no one is safe. As an American and a believer in democracy, I understand that freedom, my opportunity, and my access are intricately linked to the freedoms, opportunities and access of others. We also know that in a democracy, when one group is denied constitutional rights, our democracy is broken, unfulfilled, and at risk. know that when one group is unfree, we are actually unfree.
A life-transforming anecdote–after existing in Detroit’s foster care system for the first four years of my life and then miraculously lifted out of poverty and into mind-blowing privilege, the matriarch of my family and the participant of many justice movement, Frieda Stollman, remarked when I was six: “You were born on Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, January 15th in the year of his death, 1968. You have the responsibility for fighting for equality and justice. Honor your birthright.” Throughout my childhood, my father carried me to several civil rights marches in Washington, D.C. Fast forward to my working with the Winter Institute. After chasing and fulfilling the expectations of an academic, I decided that I was unfilled. I taught and advised folks on justice and anti-racism but after 911, as racism and fear swelled, I felt I was not doing enough for the equity. And so I put aside the responsibilities as a departmental chair and decided to become an educator/activist. I left a ski town in Colorado and headed for Mississippi. For three years, I have worked across the region to provide professional anti-racism and inclusivity trainings, develop curricular and co-curricular events designed to educate and promote discussions about racism, and crisis management. I am an ally and I feel that I can, through my efforts and actions, impact this work. That being said, I recognize my privilege, the limits that my positionality holds, and I must always critically self reflect.
Let us shift and pause. In this moment, let us think about those who have come before us, the ghosts that sit in this very room. Let us remember this house, this land, and the people who struggled and triumphed. Let us remember that without them, without their courage, their determination, their strength, their ability to push through psychic and physical pain, we would not exist in this state of grace, freedom, and privilege. We would not be students and scholars, educators and activists. I humbly submit that we are beholden to them—our ancestors. Listen carefully. We can hear the ghosts on this land and in this house. They beckon us. They demand we never cease to fight for our freedom and opportunities and those of others. If we listen closely, we can hear their cries born from violence and victory. If we take the exquisite risk and listen to the land and the walls, we can hear directions for our next steps. While we listen, let us look around at our friends and neighbors in this room, and see the history, the hopes they carry, and their tremendous potential to build an equitable future. Each of us carries the spirits of our ancestors, the individuals and the communities of the past. Whether you claim direct lineage to this land by birth or DNA, we are privileged to carry the mantles of the ghosts in this house and on this land. They are our guides and we have a duty to listen and fulfill the dreams they fought for. Behold! It is awesome and inspiring, perhaps a bit frightening, but not impossible. The ghosts in this house and on this land moved past the impossible and created our present and future possibilities. We are blessed and out of respect for the past and our ancestors, we must carry on the work begun and continued by our ancestors.
Black History Month–such a magnificent month. This time requires us to step back from our daily lives and examine the manifold struggles, successes, challenges, and contributions made by African Americans and their descendants. Yet, as contemporary movements, national conversations, and enduring inequity persists, we must understand that it is not enough for Americans to know or even understand the past. In fact, we must understand that the legacies of inequality exist as living actors in our political, social and economic lives. They are in fact, “ghosts in the house,” “ghosts on the land,” and “ghosts in our hearts and minds.” As such they govern the thoughts, assumptions, policies and systems in our worlds. With that in mind, Black History Month demands that we take a fully cost accounting of the impact that past racism has on our lives today.
Countless numbers of individuals, formally and informally trained, have worked across historic time and space to get past “race.” At the Winter Institute and in concert with thousands of others, we have discovered that a mere awareness of race or committing yourself to anti-racism is simply not enough. Race is tricky, unwieldy, and is so powerful because it is threaded into every aspect of American life. As such, creating an equitable future that allow us to fulfill our joys, needs, and potential requires a comprehensive approach and we must marshal all of our resources to ensure that this will happen.
An insidious aspect about racism is how protean it is. It is a crafty and powerful entity. Racism has a stunning ability to render some of it most dangerous forms as invisible thereby normalizing it. Another problem with racism is a failure to fully know and comprehend the impacts of racism. The history of American racism is long, frightening, devastating, shocking, embarrassing, and deeply uncomfortable. Most non-people of color would prefer to abandon that past, instead opting for a less comfortable approach and favor a “reboot.” The complexity of racism and its devastating impacts seems simply too overwhelming for people to comprehend and therefore, hostility in the form of phrases like “I don’t experience it,” “get over it,” or “I don’t see color” poorly mask the discomfort and pain. We dismiss the impacts and damage that historical racism has had on People of Color and whites alike. We fail to admit that if we don’t comprehensively acknowledge racism, we simply cannot overcome it. Regardless of our race, class, gender, religion and our proximity to power, we must accept that we have built this system and sustained it. We must understand how racism and inequity was institutionalized, formalized, and threaded into the very fabric of our political, economic, and social systems. Without such knowledge and acknowledgement, we cannot break racism’s dizzying cycles. We cannot overcome our past.
Despite the fact that racism still exists, we must understand that we are not powerless to eradicate it. In fact, much has been accomplished. We must remember that from the moment where racism emerged during the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, African Americans and their allies always resisted oppression and violence against their hearts, minds, souls, and bodies.
Let’s get local for a moment to frame our discussion on how to effectively navigate the past to ensure better futures. Of course, here we stand on one of the most important spaces in American history where several instances of reconciliation occurred. The subject and defendant of one of the most important court cases in American legal history which shaped our national concepts of corporeal, mental, and spiritual freedom worked this very land as a slave. Dred Scott refused to accept his slave status and petitioned for his freedom. The Dred Scott case exists as one of the most significant miscarriages of justice in the history of this country. Dred Scott demanded, in front of our nation’s highest court, an acknowledgement that he was in fact, a human being and therefore possessing inalienable rights. His actions spurred countless historic conversations and movements related to civil rights and equity.
Additionally, the founding of our nation’s HBCUs and in particular, this HBCU, also demonstrates the demand for equality and equity as well as a reconciling of the past. After the Civil War, short of family reunion, free and newly manumitted African Americans understood that higher education held the most important key to freedom, and economic, political, and social power and opportunities. Subsequently, under the philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois, African-American communities across this nation opened colleges, institutes, normal and trade schools to strengthen communities and to educate African Americans in ways that would advance their goals. Finally, the Seventh Day Adventists proclaimed an ardent anti-abolitionist stance. Rejecting past ideas of black inferiority and incapability and lifting up morality and freedom, Church leaders like Ellen White, spoke up for African Americans and boldly demanded that American citizens defy the devastating Fugitive Slave Act. And of course, Frederick Douglass who was moved by the Church’s theology, abolitionist stance, and demands for African American equity, chronicled his own experience in the triumphant autobiography, My Bondage, My Freedom calling for blacks and whites to fulfill their moral and democratic promises to extend tangible freedom to the enslaved and the free. His words still echo in our ears. this wonderful campus exists as a model example to the nation for how we can navigate a problematic past and move to a better future.
And so, let us remember that the land that we live, love, and pray on is holy and is rich with history. Not one single inch of this American land is without history related to inequity and inequality. And in the stillness of silence, gravity reminds us that this country’s economies, its agriculture and architecture, was largely built on the backs of slaves and exploited cheap African-American labor. Recent scholarship has alerted the nation to this fact, and we must continue these efforts to uncover the relationships between this labor and the building of this nation. We must remember the souls whose efforts in blood, sweat, and tears planted the seeds, laid down brick and mortar, and created this nation’s infrastructure. Their ghosts can be heard as the wind sweeps across the fields, as we marvel at our campuses, and our cities. We must better memorialize these histories. Better signage and commemoration enables us to have a more accurate understanding of our histories and honors the sacrifices and efforts of our African-American ancestors.
We must also acknowledge and understand the ways in which the trauma of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery, Jim and Jane Crow, and the continued physical and mental violence committed against African Americans impacts most directly, African Americans and all Americans. In the last few years, we have come to accept the veracity of post-traumatic slave disorder, the sociological impact of trauma, and the newest field of epigenetics which argues that trauma causes genetic changes which are passed onto subsequent generations. This seems so simple and fundamentally logical and we must consider this as we devise and implement strategies for reconciling our past relationships with racism.
To navigate the ghosts of our past, we cannot forget to continue the projects of justice. Countless illegal, violent, degrading, and often deadly recent and past events have gone unprosecuted. Of late southern communities, plagued by their violent histories, have sought reconciliation through indictments and prosecutions. One such case was in Philadelphia, Mississippi. In 2004, community members were sick and tired of being “that racist place;” the yearly site of reporters commenting on the anniversary of the 1964 murders of civil rights activists, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Dedicated to the project of racial reconciliation, members of the community decided to push for the indictment and prosecution of the crime’s mastermind, Edgar Ray Killen. After a lengthy investigation, trial, and due to the exhaustive efforts by community members, Killen was found guilty of 3 counts of manslaughter. He is currently serving 60 years in Parchman Penitentiary—essentially a life sentence. Philadelphia, MS is no longer just known for being home to one of the most violent episodes in civil rights history, it is also known for carrying justice to its home town and its nation. Through the process of the Welcome Table developed by the Winter Institute, community members continue to meet in dialogue, to determine the community’s assets and challenges, and devise strategic plans to undo racism’s knot in this small rural town. In order to navigate our past, it is crucial that we replicate this process across the region and the nation. Unaccounted for incidents of violence and breaches of civil and human rights have lasting impacts on our collective abilities to move forward. If we do not deal with past injustices, we cannot expect people to move forward in trusting and sustainable ways. Justice unfulfilled is justice denied. It is our continued responsibility to bring to light these incidents, prosecute where possible, and community members and governments must publicly acknowledge, put it through due process, and apologize.
To navigate our past and ensure equitable futures, we must also investigate and be knowledgeable about the many historical equity and justice movements developed and sustained by African Americans and allies. We need not always invent the wheel, nor must we be so arrogant as to assume that we know how “to do it better” without knowing what “it” is. Individuals before us created fantastically effective resistance and integrated movements. As history details, previous equity and anti-racist activists understood systemic and infrastructural racism, how it operated, how it could be combatted, and how it could be eliminated. Every aspect of race and society has been targeted and somehow addressed. It is our responsibility to research the efforts of previous advocates to see what can be effective. We save ourselves a great deal of important energy by learning about and building upon these previously utilized methods and strategies.
Crucially, we must continue to develop, encourage, and support with resources and visibility, local and nationally connected protest and awareness groups. Over the last two years, we have seen new civil rights movements. Movements like Black Lives Matter emerging in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston, are crucial for informing the American public on the extreme and insidious forms of racism. Additionally, campus student groups from across the country have heard the clarion call of these cities and taken up protests designed to illuminate and undo racist and inequitable conditions in educational access, opportunity, and advancement. Reconciliation groups like those formed after the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, are especially designed to deal with the unique histories and forms of inequity. Historically and currently, faith-based institutions have been especially useful in building bridges across differences. Additionally, the power of social media serves to educate, galvanize, and strategize. Social media has connected folks across the nation and individual community’s actions are promoted and applied to people’s own circumstances. The fact is that we need more of these local to global movements. Real and sustained change requires critical mass. We cannot nor should we rely on the efforts of others. We all are responsible for navigating the ways in which the ghosts of racism impact today’s people in power.
To navigate the ghosts on the land and in our houses, we must enter into meaningful and serious dialogues in African-American communities and across lines of difference. Oftentimes we assume that only the latter is important. I humbly and respectfully disagree with this. It is absolutely crucial that African-American groups and individuals reflect upon, process, and decide on strategies and priorities for ending oppression. Concurrently, white people also need to meet to discuss the ways in which they have benefitted from these systems and been complicit in their sustenance, and enjoyed the privilege these systems afford. They must be able to listen and understand how historical and contemporary macro and micro aggressions have impacted People of Color. White allies must become informed about excessive privilege, power, and accesses to resources and be willing cede that powers to others, even if it means economic, political, and social discomfort.
Crucially, individuals and communities across racial and other lines of difference must engage in long-term dialogues to ensure that communities build and sustain trust, work collectively to identify community assets and challenges, and develop strategies to resolve these challenges. The Winter Institute believes that such dialogues and community trust building are crucial for building links from our past to our future. Learning how to dialogue, share stories, hear from individual members of the community about the impact that racism’s many forms has had on them is crucial to reconciling the ghosts in the house and on the land. But this is easier said then done. Oftentimes, good intentions and good will get interrupted by pain, misunderstanding, anxiety, and deafness. Anxiety, fear, hurt, and anger lead to misunderstandings, then to communication fractures and then, to chasms between communities and citizens–a devastating outcome. The key to dialogue success is to “build a bridge of trust that can bear the weight of the truth.” This cannot be accomplished by checking a box for “diversity” training or in “one and done” conversations. No–a long term commitment to sustained dialogue leading to building trust, and thus creating spaces to discuss the aforementioned ghosts on the land and in our houses is crucial for undoing and eliminating racism and inequity. I direct you to The Winter Institute’s Welcome Table program. Designed to bridge the divide between racial equity and racial healing, it is a process that takes approximately two years and has several phases. Rooted in dialogue, these phases include open and honest communication, group relationship and trust building, truth telling to the broader public, evidenced based and community driven advocacy, and equitable policy reform. All of this is accomplished through the implementation of effective dialogue techniques, trust building exercises, and education and anti-oppression skills development.
I firmly believe in this long term commitment and believe that if we are truly dedicated to moving beyond our past that the Welcome Table process and similar programs must be replicated across our communities. The voices of our past must be the voices of our present and our future. We need to be intentional when we enter into conversation. Over decades, racial reconciliation practitioners have honed the crucial tools for effective, compassionate, and meaningful communication. Over the next few minutes and because of it’s importance, if you will permit me, I would like to delve more deeply on this subject and outline the 9 most important conversational guideposts. I and other members of the Winter Institute have effective used these tools hundreds of times. Because racial reconciliation must take place in everyday spaces and everyday conversations, I would argue that if you take nothing else away from my remarks, heed and implement these tools and on a most micro and immediately productive level, you will be able to navigate the ghosts on our land and in our houses and move towards an equitable future.
Here are the tools: 1. Be present and welcoming. In dialogue, be 100% present. Set aside the usual distractions of things undone from yesterday, things to do tomorrow. Bring all of yourself to this work of ending racism and inequity, and participate fully. Practice hospitality. We all learn most effectively in spaces that welcome us. Welcome others to this place and this work and presume that you are welcomed. 2. Listen deeply to learn. Listen intently to what is said; listen to the feelings beneath the words. Listen to yourself also. Strive to achieve a balance between listening and reflecting, speaking and acting. 3. No fixing. Each of us is here to discover our own truths, to listen to our own inner teacher, to take our own inner journey. We are not here to set someone else straight, or to help right another’s wrong, to “fix” or “correct” what we perceive as broken or incorrect in another member of the group. 4. Be a community of learners; set aside perfectionism and fear of “messing up.” 5. Suspend judgment and assumptions and seek understanding. Set aside your judgments. By creating a space between judgments and reactions, we can listen to the other, and to ourselves, more fully, & thus our perspectives, decisions and actions are more informed. Our assumptions are usually invisible to us, yet they undergird our worldview & thus our decisions & our actions. By identifying our assumptions, we can then set them aside and open our viewpoints to greater possibilities. 6. Speak your truth and respect the truth of others. Say what is in your heart, trusting that your voice will be heard and your contribution respected. Your truth may be different from, even the opposite of, what another in the circle has said. Speaking your truth is not debating with, or correcting, or interpreting what another has said. Own your truth by speaking only for yourself, using “I” statements. 7. Maintain confidentiality. Create a safe space by respecting the confidential nature & content of discussions held in that space. What is said in the space, stays there; what is learned here, leaves here. Everyone gets to tell their own story for themselves. 8. Respect silence. Silence is a rare gift in our busy world. After you or someone else has spoken on racism, take time to reflect, without immediately filling the space with words. Look inward and listen to yourself in the silence. 8. When things get difficult, turn to wonder. If you find yourself disagreeing with another, becoming judgmental, shutting down in defense, try turning to wonder: “I wonder what brought her to this place?” “I wonder what my reaction teaches me?” “I wonder what he’s feeling right now?” You do not have to agree with another’s story; but you do have to respect their right to tell their own story. 9. Trust the circle of community members. In this circle, all voices are valued equally. All gifts are welcomed and respected. Within each circle is the genesis of renewal and community well-being. The circle can be the instrument for creating a new community narrative for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
Finally, most importantly and perhaps the most difficult strategy for navigating the ghosts of the land and in our houses to ensure equitable futures is to focus on ourselves. In this work, we quite often and easily find fault with movements, strategies, resolutions, and others but it is most important for us to to be willing to examine ourselves. We cannot count on controlling the efforts of others, but we can self reflect and act. Navigating our own “ghosts” can be difficult. But, regardless of our identities, we must ask ourselves these questions and be honest: “What are my relationships to racial inequity? How knowledgeable am I regarding how oppression operates? Do I know the forms of oppression and its crafty nature? What biases do I hold from the ghosts of our families and cultural seepage? How am I impacted by these systems—both from positions of oppression and privilege?” Every single day, we should be asking ourselves: “What daily steps am I taking to interrupt and dismantle systemic and interpersonal racism? How dedicated am I to equality? Can I commit to daily work? Am I willing to ally with folks across difference? Am I willing to work with others who challenge me?” There are many more questions. The key here is to take a full accounting of our own attitudes and actions. Truth begins within our own hearts and minds. We cannot expect others in this movement to conduct hard work that we are unwilling to do. In changing our own perspectives, in encouraging our actions, we are ensuring that at least one person is actively engaging to build an equitable future. Don’t underestimate the power of one. Think of our great social justice, civil rights, and human rights activists. The process begins in our own houses and on our own land.
As we come to a close, please let me underscore that the goal for ensuring an equitable future is not to silence the ghosts on our land and in our houses. No, we cannot, nor should we aspire to that. These ghosts are our sacred ancestors and they will forever be crucial members of our present and futures. Making space and acknowledging their continued presence is an important step towards ensuring equitable futures because these ghosts represent how inequity as appeared in our country and how we have dealt with that inequity. Without them, we cannot be sure of how equity and equality should appear. The symbiotic relationship and the links between our ancestors and our descendants serve as constant reminders that our future is unbreakably connected to our past.
And so after we have done the hard work of acknowledging the ghosts of our land and in our houses we must provide them with seats at our social, political, economic, and community tables. And as we sit elbow to elbow and knee to knee, we can pose this question: “What does an equitable future look like?” Before we answer this, let us take one final moment to listen to the voices of the ghosts at the table. What sort of future did they imagine? What whispers on the wind do we hear? I hear the wishes for equity as it relates to access to mandatory daily resources needed, fairness in education, health care, criminal justice, employment, citizenship, and as community members. I hear the voices, soft and loud, saying equity means valuing each other across differences. I hear that equity means that in all spaces we are inclusive of those we have excluded, dismissed, and injured. I hear the voices of the previously ignored, I see the bodies that we have rendered invisible and broken. What do you hear? Add what you hear to this conversation.
And now the voices at the table are loud, with new ideas of equity. We can hear family, booming with conversation, each competing with the other to be heard and all are. And finally, we hear the harmony of the ghosts next to and within us calling for a complete revision of our nation, demanding that we turn our national and constitutional aspirations of equality and equity into reality. When we leave this table, we must continue to hear, acknowledge, and follow these voices for they are the only sure way that we can effectively navigate our pasts to ensure an equitable future. Thank you for your time and attention. I am profoundly humbled.