Steven Thomas Has It Right

Steven Thomas will graduate from Wells College this May as a psychology major and an art minor. You can view Steven's whole series -- not all of the cartoons are about psychology! -- by visiting Steven's Facebook group called, "Uncommon Ground." The group is open to everyone.

Telling it like it is, mi gente.

Ithaca City School District Found Guilty of Discrimination: Will Anything Change?

Photo: ERICA THUM / Journal Staff

Amelia Kearney, right, and her attorney, Ray Schlather, second from right, hold a press conference Wednesday at the Tompkins County Human Rights Commission to answer questions about the recommendation of a New York state Division of Human Rights judge in Kearney's discrimination case against the Ithaca City School District.

By Topher Sanders
Journal Staff

ITHACA — Amelia Kearney and her attorney met with members of the press Wednesday to give their reaction to the recommendation recently issued by a New York State Division of Human Rights judge in Kearney's discrimination claim against Ithaca City School District.

Administrative Law Judge Christine Kellet's recommendation in the case was released Monday. It includes $1 million in damages for Kearney and her daughter along with staff training to recognize discrimination and a revision of the district's discipline code.

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Perhaps other educational institutions in this region will take notice of this result and be proactive in their efforts to educate faculty, staff, and administrators with regard to the harm discrimination causes, not just to the individuals targeted by bias and prejudice, but to the whole community. Whether or not the Kearney's will be awarded the full amount of damages recommended by Judge Kellet, it's clear that the amount will come out of the ICSD operating budget. The damage will be felt by everyone in Ithaca.

The shame is that it could have been avoided but everyone in the school district turned away from what was right in front of them because they did not want to confront an "inconvenient truth"; yes, a liberal Ithaca educational institution can be racist and so can its School Board and Superintendent.

Racism is not just about people in white sheets burning crosses at night. It is also about white people who do not confront their own biases and unearned privileges which are woven into institutional practices which favor people who are white over people who are not. This systemic racism which Peggy McIntosh has written so well about is called, "the invisible knapsack." In this "knapsack" are lots of things that if they are unpacked you will see how many things white people take for granted without giving it another thought, these are unearned privileges, that people of color do not have. This is institutionalized racism which is at the very core of how schools and colleges operate.

I am sorry for the pain and suffering of the Kearneys of Ithaca. I hope their struggle for justice brings about profound change at the individual, institutional, and community levels. Don't let this happen again, Ithaca.

Lest We Forget: An open letter to my sisters who are brave

I HAVE COME home from a long stay in Mexico to find – because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar.

When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all white girls as "Miss" when they reached the age of twelve.) She would never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys would.

I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo. Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I knew I could not.

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.

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BY ALICE WALKER | TheRoot.com
March 27, 2008