I felt very welcome in Sunset Park and made many friends. East LA was different. I found myself in the middle of a political conflict between older Latino leftists and younger, nationalist proponents of La Raza, i.e., political and community organizations devoid of gringos. I had arrived in the barrio when the older guys were the activists. So long as I worked hard and deferred to them, they accepted me and mentored me, introducing me to East L.A., its several neighborhoods and its leaders. I had had a similar experience when I first got to Colombia, when the father of the family I lived with for a year mentored, I might even say adopted, me, as his well-meaning but naà ¯ve and ignorant gringo son. I thrived in both situations because the men who helped me, Latino men, wanted my respect and deference not my subservience. They wanted to see me grow and took pride in that. Back in East LA, even though I was good at what I did, the La Raza advocates wanted me out, so I left.
My first Black American mentor was a woman, a professional social worker from Philadelphia, and a pioneer in developing curricula to teach mental health professionals the importance of their own and their clients' ethnic identities. I eventually led workshops for her on identifying key characteristics of Irish- and Italian-American families. She was also an expert and leading proponent of Intensive Case Management for persons who had been diagnosed as having severe mental illnesses, and was serving as lead consultant to the ICM program that the New York City Department of Health was developing. This was in 1988. I had just been hired by the Hunter College School of Social Work, which had the contract to train the new Intensive Case Managers, to write the training curricula and oversee its implementation. Anita took the job of showing me the ropes, teaching me the in's and out's of municipal and state government and how to argue a point without antagonizing the higher-ups in the room. I was a trained community organizer and provocateur and instinctively viewed those in authority as adversaries and barriers to change.
Anita recognized me as an ideal advocate and teacher, but also saw me as the proverbial bull in the china shop. While she was prone to patronizing me, Anita resisted any authoritarian impulses she might have had and patiently taught me -- we would de-brief after every meeting with city or state officials we attended; and, after, a time trusted me sufficiently to engage me in in-depth discussions-- I was a systems thinker and quick to analyze the power struggles and alliances constantly taking place before us. It took me several years -- my views invariably differed from those in positions of authority -- but I learned to effectively negotiate systems and situations akin to minefields, a skill which stood me in good stead when I founded and directed a new ICM program for a large New York City non-profit.
It was there that I took the next and perhaps most important step towards discarding my sense of white privilege, of white entitlement -- establishing and maintaining an egalitarian workplace with mental health workers, a majority of whom were women of color. My mentors were my staff members, including the supervisors, who taught me that my leadership and teaching skills were appreciated, but my often harsh criticisms of staff when clients were not served as I believed they should be were experienced as insensitive and disheartening. To many of my staff, I was another white man who thought little of them and was too ready to disrespect them.
In 1993, I had become director of the program, which was charged with working with parolees presumed to be seriously mentally ill and with individuals diagnosed with substance abuse disorders. We had a rough few years, but had established an effective program by 1997. Not too long thereafter, the several members of my staff who had been most disappointed by me, filed a complaint of racial insensitivity against me with our HR Department. An investigation essentially corroborated their complaint, and I was obliged to apologize to the entire staff, which I did willingly. I have never had great difficulty in taking responsibility for mistakes and anticipated that an honest apology would clean the slate and allow for a fresh start; which, fortunately, it did. By the time I retired in 2010, I can safely say I was a man who was regarded as pro-staff as well as pro-client; a director who treated everyone fairly, who had my staff members' backs; who encouraged and supported their efforts to pursue advanced degrees and further their careers. As a good director and mentor should. In short, my staff taught me how to be an effective and caring leader.
I've always been a systems outsider, always assessing when and how I should enter that system to effect change. My mother was also an outsider who taught me about equal treatment and social justice for all, who nurtured in my inclination towards empathy. I have never sought mentoring from white men in any system: in my youth, I had to associate with Irish-Catholic men, mostly priests and teachers, whom I found too impatient and too authoritarian. I suppose I was a skeptic from birth. I invariably found persons of color, Latinos and Blacks, more helpful to me and more validating of me. After all, they, too, were outsiders. I guess it takes one to know one. As I trust is apparent, Dr. Karenga's comment to me about white privilege has had a lasting impact on my life. I've sought to understand its meaning for me by examining the impact of white privilege, a polite term for white supremacism, on those most adversely affected by it, persons of color, and have turned to them for help. Their generosity towards me, when I examine it as I do here, is breathtaking, particularly when you consider, to extemporize on Dr. DuBois, that the problem of the color line is a white problem since it was we who drew it.
The lesson here for whites who still bridle at the term white privilege is that they, too, are outsiders, persons with little or no control over the decisions made by those who make them, the eponymous ruling class, the folks whom I refer to as the one-percenters. We've been gulled into thinking that we, unlike Black Americans, can readily participate in the wealth that the one percenters continue to accumulate; but the travails suffered by Blacks since Reconstruction that I described above have also been experienced by many white folks, albeit to a less extreme degree. Promises are made and broken; the official white unemployment rate might have dipped under 5% since the Great Recession of 2008, but the new jobs developed by the corporate one percenters are, in the low main, low-paying and dead end. Once you're over fifty and get laid off, you're screwed. Our natural allies, dear friends, are our fellow outsiders, persons of color and women. Since white privilege is the myth on which white supremacy rests, we must join with them to abolish it.
If my many words here have impacted you similarly to the few words Dr. Karenga said to me so many years ago, seek opportunities to meet Black Americans in ordinary social situations. We all fear what or whom we don't know; and our understanding of Black folks usually comes courtesy of corporate-controlled media who are eager to demonize our fellow Black citizens. Remember the several rallies held in Ferguson to memorialize the one year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown -- peaceful, save for one incident, seized upon and featured on the front page of The New York Times (August 10, 2015): the alleged and apparently unverified shot fired at police by a bystander. How easy to depict peacefully protesting Black Americans as treacherous thugs.
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