Undoing racial bias won’t happen with one training, it’s a lifetime of work

I was either four or five when I was first called a nigger. I was outside playing in my front yard when a car drove by and a male passenger yelled the word from the car window quickly followed by a glass bottle that smashed on the concrete. Lucky for me I wasn’t hurt. Confused but not hurt.

When I was in kindergarten I quickly learned our head teacher preferred the white kids to the black and brown ones in her class. To her I was a problem student. She even recommended to my mom I should be transferred to a class for kids who have learning disabilities. Lucky for me I had a mom who challenged the recommendation and had me tested. I didn’t have a learning disability, I was hyperactive.

When I was 13, my mom bought her first home in the east end section of a neighborhood in Waterbury. I think we may have been one of the first black families to move into this area. This was in the early 90s. I remember being followed by a police car as I walked all the way to a friend’s house. He didn’t leave until I was inside of my friend’s house.

I also remember going into a small plaza with a gift shop with my best friend and being told we weren’t allowed to be in the store because we weren’t 18. The woman didn’t want us in the store because we were black.

Back in 2007 I was returning from a foster parent conference and dropping off some of some of the young advocates when I was cut-off by a young white male and called a nigger.

Last year, it was night time and I was in BJ’s parking lot in my hometown of Waterbury, Connecticut putting my groceries away when an older white male in a pickup truck drove up to me and said, “Thanks for being a real nigger” and then drove off. There weren’t many people around to witness this. I guess I was lucky that’s all that happened.

These are just a few of the many events in my life where I’ve been impacted by bigoted views and/or racial bias. The sad truth is this is part of a black person’s experience in the United States. So when I see videos of police brutality against black men and women, or the recent Starbuck’s video that’s sparked a national outcry I’m not surprised. Angry, sad, but not at all surprised. This is how we live. You can be rich, or a black celebrity and it won’t matter. Just ask Beyoncé, Lebron,Tiger, Rihanna, Oprah, and the many others. It’s an unfortunate reality of the black experience in this country.

Due to the warranted public backlash, Kevin Johnson, Starbuck’s CEO, has been on the defensive. He’s apologized to the two black men who were arrested and has taken a further step and is closing all 8,000 of their U.S. stores to have racial-bias training for employees. Make no mistake, this is a PR move, and while I think the training is a good step for the company to take, this is bigger than Starbucks. 

Racial bias stems from institutionalized racism that’s created a system of white privilege in our country. And despite the viral videos and the media attention they garner, as a nation we still can’t manage to have real, authentic conversations about race, racism or bigotry. When we do it’s reactive not proactive. If we want to effectively resolve this problem our thinking and actions must change.

It’s what civil rights leaders like Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, W.E.B Du Bois, Dorothy Height, Jo Ann Robinson, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and countless others spent their lives fighting for. I won’t deny that we’ve made progress on many fronts. However, when I look back at my own life experiences as a black person in this country I know more can and should be done. It starts with the individual; you and me.

Frederick Douglas famously said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” To get to the progress I hope to see means as a society we’ll continue to struggle with race and racism.

I am slightly encouraged by the fact that white people in the store and across social media acknowledged the racial bias and actively questioned why these men were being arrested. It’s a small step in the right direction, but it’s just a step.