I am currently completing the Nonviolence365 training developed by The King Center | The Center for Nonviolent Social Change. In that that training I have been introduced to two new concepts: 1) Beloved Community which is defined in the video and Worldhouse.
Worldhouse
The Center defines Worldhouse as “The concept explains the world as a large house in which all people, regardless of ideas, culture, and interests, must learn to live with each other in peace. ‘All inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors. This world-wide neighborhood has been brought into being as a result of the modern scientific and technological revolutions.’ Dr. King explains that we must ‘re-establish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice’ or we will ‘destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.”
How can we move forward in creating a beloved community in the Worldhouse?
Let’s have the dialogue here by replying to this post. Note: Please allow 24 hours for your post to appear so that I may filter out inflammatory posts or hate speech posts.
If you have a child, friend, parent, relative, or any person that has benefited from Section 504 protecting the rights of the disabled and providing equal access to education, thank the Black Panthers.
Artwork by Austin Wells, Used by Permission. Text of Black Lives Matter and White Silence = White Consent added by Brett Cook-Snell
I have not written in quite a while. Yesterday, I participated in the Sonya Massey National Day of Mourning by marching in our areas protest march. How I heard about the murder of Sonya Massey was not on the news, but by two Black Female students in one of my classes. I’m shocked, disgusted, and saddened that I saw no mention of it on any of my social media feeds or the news until afterwards. The two students told me they were apprehensive about calling the police now if they should need to ask for help. That statement speaks volumes to me.
Participants in the march included members of the Black Panther Party. Which brings me to a truth that I was never taught growing up during the visibility of the Black Panthers in the 70’s. The images I saw on the news were only ones militancy and hatred.
Just like not hearing about Sonya Massey, I did not hear about our see images from the 1977 cover story from their weekly newspaper reading, “HANDICAPPED WIN DEMANDS – END H.E.W. OCCUPATION” (Schalk, 2022). This victory resulted in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
If you have a child, friend, parent, relative, or any person that has benefited from Section 504 protecting the rights of the disabled and providing equal access to education, thank the Black Panthers.
Picture: Sonya Massey National Day of Mourning and Protest March, Norfolk, VA, 7/28/24. Brett in his Kilt, holding the sign “Black Lives Matter – White Silence = White Consent with art work by Austin Wells. Members of the Black Panther Party present with their Flag.
For more information on how the Black Panther Party advanced Disability Rights, read Sami Schalk, Black Disability Politics, Duke University Press, 2022.
The wisdom knot is a “symbol of wisdom, ingenuity, intelligence and patience.”
The Wisdom Knot
In the culturally inclusive instructional design I teach, one group facilitated a discussion on religious discrimination. They played the following video below. I found it an extremely touching presentation on the blending of faith based practices through multicultural expressions.
The wisdom knot is a “symbol of wisdom, ingenuity, intelligence and patience.” An especially revered symbol of the Akan, this symbol conveys the idea that ‘a wise person has the capacity to choose the best means to attain a goal. Being wise implies broad knowledge, learning and experience, and the ability to apply such faculties to practical ends.'” from http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra/nyan.htm
The wisdom knot is a West African symbol of wisdom often weaved into Adinkra cloth. “Adinkra (ah-DEEN-krah) cloth is a hand-printed fabric made in Ghana. Developed by the Ashanti people, Adinkra cloths were traditionally made for royalty to wear at religious ceremonies. Through the years, people have also decorated the cloths to tell a story or to express their thoughts or feelings.” from https://www.pbs.org/wonders/Kids/cloth/cloth.htm
Dr. Brett H. Cook-Snell talks about White Fragility
As I teach a course in instructional design and technology on culturally inclusive instructional design, I try to model what I teach. This video was made for my grad students in having courageous conversations.
I’ve been in drag three times in my life. The first time was when I was three and my sister put a dress on me. The second time was in high school, and we read a short story titled, “Travel is Broadening”, in which four characters told the same story from their perspectives. Two characters were men, and two characters were women. We had to act the story out on stage. The group I was in was all boys, so two of us had to dress in character as women. The point here is not that I was in drag for this second occurrence, but that of the story of my character was different from the other three. Looking at an event from one perspective is dangerous and can reinforce systemic issues associated with the -isms of our society.
And the third time I was in drag … well that’s another story…
Learning about racism against the Native American community
It’s been a minute since I’ve posted. Doing the work often precludes talking about the work. Walking the walk is more important than talking the talk. And sometimes, my Higher Power in my faith community makes their presence known through signs and signposts. It seems as if all of the signs and signposts have been pointing to issues on the Native people of the land upon which I write, and their descendants as rightful heirs of this land that has been bloodied by settler colonialism. It’s time for me to learn and live into disrupting and dismantling settler colonialism’s lawless legacy inflected upon Native people and educate my white peers to call them into action to do the same.
If I asked you to tell me your history, what would you tell me? Would you tell me about your family, growing up, and adventures and misadventures? Or would you go deeper?
In the picture is my great grandmother. I am the blonde-headed kid with my back to her, crying. I’m crying because I do what kids sometimes do you don’t really know the weathered and gnarled hands that hold yours. I didn’t understand then the history of my great grandmother, whose roots go back to the time of the first reconstruction and Jim Crow. Her presence in my early childhood connects my history to hers.
My great grandmother
At times, it’s easier to query the past instead of looking at the present. I can approach the past intellectually, and with empathy, yet remain disconnected and woefully unaware of the events that have shaped me. In my activist work and education, I have been preoccupied with rushing into history looking for answers. I have neglected at the events that occurred within my own 60 years, and the lifetime of my parents, my grandparents, and my great grandmother.
I ponder now how the history of which I am connected through my great grandmother has shaped me – a history of white power and privilege, white Christianity, and American exceptionalism. I realize the oppression, kidnapping, enslavement, dehumanization, brutalization, and murder of black and indigenous persons is closer than dates convey.
The history-of-the-way-back-when of the family members new reverberates in my history-of-the-now. I am a child of the 60’s, not the flower power children most associated with that decade, but a literal child born at the beginning of the 60s. My life has been shaped, unknowingly, by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Jr., and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It has been shaped by the declarative racist acts and words of Governor George Wallace of Alabama. It has been shaped by the Black Panthers, Audre Lorde, and Malcom X. All these events have shaped me, whether I was aware of them or not.
The history of racism from beyond the history-of-the-way-back-when is important to know; that is the history of how the capital “C” church encouraged and upheld the capture, kipnapping, enslavement, and murder of black and brown people, and how colonialism supported these acts, enacting these same brutalities on the Indigenous of the land. The history of the way-back-when of my family is equally important, that is Jim Crow and Civil Rights. But if I am to call to my contemporaries to awareness and activism, it is through the history-of-my-now, and the history-of-their-now, to which I must appeal.
We must see through our collective histories – past and present – and use both to disrupt and dismantle systemic racism. We must draw both and find the courage to speak truth in the streets, in the halls of local, state, and federal governments, and in the voting booths.
Those voices of the way-back-when connect me to the first reconstruction. Those voices of my history-of-now connect me to the second reconstruction of the civil rights movement of my childhood. It is my own voice that connects me to a third and sustainable reconstruction.
In the late 60’s of my history-of-the now, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began his Poor Peoples Campaign for equality. The Poor Peoples Campaign is alive and well today in a new incarnation of the same name, calling for not only equality, but equity. We can only study so much, learn so much, and talk so much, before we but feet to pavement.
I ask you again, What’s your story? What is your history-of-the-now? And, what will you do with it? How will you join me in making a difference?
Dr. Cook-Snell at the June 18, 2022 Poor Peoples Campaign rally in Washington DC.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about systems lately. If you think in terms of a thermostat, you set the temperature, the AC or heat kicks on, when the temperature gets to the desired degree, the AC or heat system holds the temperature constant until you manually change (or disrupt) it again. You are external to the AC or heat system, put you participate in its output of cooling or heating. In many ways, this as a way to think about dismantling systemic racism.
Cog (Stcynine, 2008)
Another way to think about it, are cogs in machines. You take one cog out and the system may fall apart or work less efficiently. Sometimes cogs rust, teeth break, or get stuck, and the only way to break them free is to apply some oil and a use wrench, chisel and hammer, or what ever tools you have to remove the cog.
I used to think that dismantling systems requires working within the system to change it. But that is only partially true. Sometimes it takes one person to step outside of the system to to apply the oil and disrupt the system enough so those that participate within the system can change it. In other words, it takes both internal and external work. Internal work may be examining how you see through your own positionality. As a white-skinned cisgendered male, I had to examine how my own colorblindness was itself a racist assumption. As someone who works within many systems such as academia, faith-based, and community systems, I am able to speak into them against systemic racism because others have been brave enough to step out of those systems. Externally, as a white-skinned Queer male, I try to be a visible witness against systemic racism and speak into the white-skinned male supremacist patriarchy in hopes to influence someone to think differently about systemic racism. Realizing that I alone cannot change the world, I may influence someone who has authority and power within the system to change how it operates.
Deconstructing racism and disassembling systemic barriers requires challenging a worldview system that has privileged whiteness and, in my case, interrogating my white-skinned assumptions.
Every now and then, my own implicit bias rears its ugly head and exposes my racist attitudes in new and unexpected ways. I have been listening to The anti-racist writing workshop: How to decolonize the creating class classroom by Felecia Rose Chavez (2021).
Chavez (2020)
However sincere my intentions were, Chavez (2021) has me asking what are the underlying assumptions am I making in my teaching? The truth is, my white-skinned savior complex has been operating under the guise of helping. I have been guilty of working harder with black-skinned and brown-skinned students to ensure their success by showing and telling them how to improve their writing, speak their voice, locate references for their topics, and citing their sources in APA 7 format. Point blank, I have been assuming that black-skinned and brown-skinned need that extra help. I am guilty of upholding the white-skinned supremacy of institutional and systemic racism in my battle against the same. I have been playing the role of white savior in my classroom.
Deconstructing racism and disassembling systemic barriers requires challenging a worldview system that has privileged whiteness and, in my case, interrogating my white-skinned assumptions.
What assumptions are you making with your well-intentioned anti-racist work?
References
Chavez, F. R. (2021). The anti-racist writing workshop: How to decolonize the creative classroom. Haymarket Books.
DiAngelo, R. (2021). Nice racism: How progressive white people perpetuate racial harm. Beacon Press.
I read the book, The Shack (Young, 2007), well before it became a popular read, the movie was produced, and it was a topic of discussion in Christian book circles. I loved the character of God in the book, who was a Black woman named Papa. The juxtaposition of a feminine God with a masculine name combined with the narrative of God as Black versus the white patriarch character I had been introduced to in my Christian journey resonated with me.
In an early post on my blog, Racism – How very white of you, I have a blog entry titled, What Color Is Your Jesus? (Cook-Snell, 2020a). In that I write, “So why do we (white Christians) usually portray Christ as white? Of those pictures that show a black Jesus, most are associated with the crucified Christ versus the everyday living, breathing, eating, and miracle working Jesus (Marsh, 2004). Marsh (2004) posits when we (white Christians) see pictures of everyday black Jesus, we cannot relate and cannot see ourselves in a crowd of black and brown people following a Black Jesus.” Depicted in that entry is the Cristo Negro de Esquipulas, a Black crucified Jesus (Cook-Snell, 2020).
Black Madonna of Częstochowa (n.d.).
I hold these images in my mind while I currently listen to God is a Black Woman, written by theologian Christena Cleveland (2022). Cleveland’s discussion (and I’m only in chapter 2), brings in the feminine God and counters the B.C.E. and C. E. imagery of God. She challenges the Indo-European, Greco-Roman, and westernized traditions of a masculine, white-skinned God. She questions how this imagery continues to relegate and push to the margins of Christianity those who have been held captive to doctrine, racism, heterosexism, ableism, genderism, and the other “-ism’s” plaguing both the secular and the sacred.
Realizing the capturing and enslavement of black and brown persons fed both the European and the subsequent rise to dominance of the settlers on stolen land that was colonized by white-skinned individuals was sanctioned by the capital “C” church as authorized in the Doctrine of Discovery (Cook-Snell, 2020b), it is time for the capital “C” church to question how we have depicted God and the harm this has perpetuated and continues to perpetuate. As a member of the United Church of Christ, I am thankful that our denomination has, and continues to, stand in the gap for marginalized, minoritized, and underrepresented persons, but we still have more work.
Marsh, C. (2004). Black Christs in white Christian perspective: Some critical reflections. Black Theology, 2(1), 45-56. https://doi.org/10.1558/blth.2004.2.1.45
