Confronting Bigotry: A beautiful conversation

By Kimberly Harris, M.Ed.

www.DistinctiveVoiceConsulting.com

March 2022 

While having coffee in January with some long-time girlfriends that I hadn’t seen in a year due to Covid, I was thrown off-guard by a comment that one of my friends made. She was responding to a comment that I made about closing the Canadian border because of the crowdedness that occurs in our small town when our Canadian neighbors come across the border to shop. Though my comments could be construed as anti-Canadian, I assure you as a woman of color in the United States, they were not racist. According to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Racial Equity Resource Guide, Racism, within the context of the United States, is defined as, “a complex system of beliefs and behaviors, grounded in a presumed superiority of the white race. These beliefs and behaviors are conscious and unconscious; personal and institutional; and result in the oppression of people of color and benefit the dominant group, whites. A simpler definition is racial prejudice + power = racism.”

My friend’s reply to my comment about closing the Canadian border that caught me off guard was, “We should close the Southern border.” For context, she is a white woman in the United States where currently white folks are the dominant group. Though her comment was similar to mine in that we were both referencing border closures, I had the suspicion that those two comments were not alike. I inferred my conservative friend’s comment to be about undocumented immigrants coming to the United States to “take over,” a right-wing news media fear tactic of misinformation being disseminated to create division in our society. Because she is of the dominant culture, i.e., white in America, making a seemingly oppressive statement about people of color using a legal system to come to America for sanctuary, her comment appeared racist where my comment  referencing Canadians coming to America to shop then return to their home country, did not.

“What should I do? Should I address the comment on the spot,” I wondered. I continued with our light girl talk but I felt badly letting the comment slide. After my friend’s comments, the tenor of the gathering had changed for me. As a woman of color who has compassion for people leaving dangerous environments to find safety elsewhere, I felt guilty not speaking up in real time. How could I, a diversity, equity and inclusivity trainer and consultant let that comment go in the moment? I decided that I did not want to confront her in front of our other friends so I did nothing at the time.

In my Allyship classes I teach how to address people concerning their comments around bigotry and prejudice. The model I teach is:

1.     Identify the bigoted, prejudice and/or non-inclusive comment

2.     Use inquiry to ask the person what they meant by their comment

3.     Seek to understand their point of view

4.     Discuss their experience/understanding of the topic

5.     Explain how you understood their comment and make it a teachable moment

6.     Appeal to their principles

7.     If the person does not understand or is unwilling to discontinue the behavior, set limits on their behavior around you to include a consequence

I was convicted about not confronting my friend a week later while teaching one of my Allyship classes. I was covering my bigotry conflict model and realized that I was avoiding talking to my friend. I confessed to my class what happened and vowed to talk to my friend that week.

I was nervous about confronting my long-time friend. After all, she probably didn’t mean any harm. And she did attend one of my classes once about the Colin Kaepernick protests and said the class helped change her mind about his protest. In short, I was getting soft. I swallowed my anxiety and called her up one Saturday evening. I followed my model and told my friend that I had a good time seeing her at coffee but had a question about a comment that she had made about closing the Southern border. I told her it sounded like it was about race and that it made me sad. She shared that it was not about race at all, but about economics. She told me that millions of illegal immigrants were crossing the Southern border daily and that our country is bussing them throughout the United States giving them housing, food, and free money. I asked her where she heard about this number of Southern border crossings and shared that I watch the news daily and had never heard about such generosity. She told me her media outlet and then shared that the left-wing media outlets don’t want people to know. She went on to share how our current president is allowing the migration in order to win the next presidential election.

I shouldn’t have been surprised since I know she watches conservative media outlets but I was. I continued with my inquiry and reasoned that I didn’t think it was possible to keep a secret as big as millions of people illegally crossing the border daily and how such a mass influx of people was not sustainable.  She agreed and stated that the source of her comment stemmed from conservative U.S. media. The inquiry worked because she thought about what I said and admitted that it probably wasn’t millions of people a day but it was a lot. I then shared with her what I knew about immigration: that anyone has the right to come to the United States to seek asylum if they believe they are in danger of survival in their homeland. I told her that if I were in the same situation as the asylum seekers I’d do the same thing. The conversation then took a turn in a beautiful direction of compassion and empathy and three things occurred.

1.     My friend admitted that she too would try to come to the U.S. if she were in the same situation;

2.     We both agreed to do more research concerning each other’s perspectives;

3.     I heard my friend’s heart and understood her fear.

Fear: a motivating factor that can manifest itself as hate. Fear is used in our media outlets to manipulate our feelings and divide us. That is why I have pledged not to watch any program/consume any media that makes me angry after watching it.

 

I then understood my friend to be a victim of fear-mongering which motivates racism and othering. My eyes were opened wide as I understood her fear. She is a single, hard-working woman who is close to retirement age. Her fear is that she’ll work until she drops, unable to save for her or reach retirement because she is supporting illegal immigrants with her hard-earned tax dollars. I felt compassion for her too, in addition to the folks at the Southern border. Through my inquiry, I learned, and my compassion grew. Rather than seeing my friend as a racist, I now saw that she and the people at the Southern border have something in common- wanting a good life.

I closed the conversation by sharing how what she said sounded racist and said that I knew she was a caring person. I told her that I understood her concerns but cautioned her to listen to the words she is saying and choose to say things in a loving way.

I didn’t need to use step seven of my model because I felt my friend understood what I was saying and would look at immigrants at the Southern border differently as a result of our conversation. The conversation took an hour and I thought to myself, allyship takes time and understanding. But in the end, it is worth it because allies use their time, energy and privilege to dismantle bigotry one conversation at a time.

 

If you have interest in a workshop on allyship for your organization or group, please visit www.DistinctiveVoiceConsulting.com