Reflection on Race

https://newslit.org/

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception:  How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation."  In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information.  They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1.  Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2.  Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs.  Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3.  Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp.  Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4.  When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5.  Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.  

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source:  Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

This writing is from a study of how my religious denomination is responding to the need for racial equity.  The effort of Unitarian Universalism to address bias in their own hiring practices has exposed a systemic problem within our faith tradition on how we look at race and what we can do to try and fix it. What we are facing within our religious community is the same as the we are facing as a country.

I am republishing this piece because I shared it this past Sunday at a Worship service designed to inform our congregation on what our denomination is doing to right it's wrongs. 

Widening the Circle Reflection

It was the last day of the COVID-shortened 2019-20 School year.  I was seeing my Sixth Grade students for the last time that year.  We had been conducting classes remotely since late March 2020 and we were ready to put the past 2 ½ months behind us and get on with the Summer

I was learning how to teach using digital tools and was beginning to feel comfortable with distance teaching.  I was meeting with three of my classes on this particular day and I had prepared a fun quiz game for the last day of school.

During the last class of the day, a parent came onto the screen and shared with me and the class that her daughter, one of my students, a wonderful 11 year-old was offended by a cartoon that I had opened the quiz with.  I know now that I had committed what is known as a micro-aggression.  I felt embarrassed and a little hurt.  The student was African American.

The impact of that moment on me has driven me to get educated about race in America and more importantly about race in Bruce Halen.  What did I know, what did I not know?  How could I have hurt one of my students and not fully understood why they were hurt?

That event has motivated me to learn more about racial differences in this country.  I have read and listened to several books on the topic of race in America.  More specifically race as it relates to being African American in America.

I knew about slavery.  I was raised to believe that skin color really didn’t matter.  I had learned from observing and interacting with middle schoolers over a long teaching career that skin color didn’t matter.  I was taught that racism was bad.

What I had not been taught, or perhaps just hadn’t learned was the depth to which people of color were systematically being treated as second class citizens or far worse by the people who have made the laws, set the policies and enforced those laws and policies.  I started paying attention to issues affecting people of color in disproportionate ways.  Things like incarceration, arrest rates, racial profiling and violence targeting people of color simply because their skin was a different tone.  I have taken a deeper dive into slavery and how it affects race relations to this present day.

What I have learned has changed me profoundly.  How do I say this gently yet powerfully. The culture, the society, the country that I have learned about since my childhood, does not really exist…Yet.

The lesson that I learned from the mother of my precious Sixth Grade student was that I would, from then on, become an anti-racist person. 

My participation in the Widening the Circle Study/Action group is my latest effort to learn how to be an anti-racist.  Never stop learning, never stop growing.  I am a 65 year old student yearning for learning on how to be part of the solution to bringing our American ideals to life.

What can you do?

*Widening the Circle is a movement within Unitarian Universalism to welcome a broader range of groups into the denomination.

The link below is a collaboration between the American Reparatory Theater at Harvard University and the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It offers a way forward as we transition from Pandemic full shutdown to re-opening of public places.

https://americanrepertorytheater.org/roadmap-for-recovery-and-resilience-for-theater