Are we exhibiting a“bargain-basement” attitude to the conversations about Race, and Racial Disparities, when speaking with our families.

Ever had the feeling “they” were talking about you before you arrived, there are warning signs that give you that, “flag raised feel”. You know, you “just” walked into the house, get together, dinner party, and/or reunion or celebration for Xmas, Thanks Who is that guy again who discovered us who were already there …, and someone announces you have arrived. You drop your coat, sweater, jean jacket in the designated place and you may apologize for getting there late or so. “You were at this gathering, meeting, and or place where you and your friends, co-conspirators, allies, were organizing the next Race and Racism talk, training, conversation, and or protest”. Then, right there, in between the Hola Nena, how are you smile on cousins Betsie’s face you spot it, a smirk, or a slight eyebrow lift, and depending on how long you have been pedaling “Bargain Basement” Anti-Racist / Anti-Oppression attitude (to be explained in a bit, just keep reading) to your fam, co-workers, old but not so woke friends, aunt Carmen shouts out, Okay okay we are here for a good time okay… and you climb into your “these people” head trip and strap on your “I will just have to school them” bla bla bla bla, holster, cause you are ready to go for it in the name of the cause, the movement, the righteous thing.

Now, the truth is tia Carmen has been in New Jork ( not a misspelling a phonetic one) for 63 years she arrived in her teens and has been working ever since to help “su gente” in the island on the block, in college, and in jail for always, BTW, those people are your family too, she raised her three kids always worked Tio Herman has always been there too and he takes a back seat to her (their agreement and it works and don’t even think about messing with that man, cause, more on this at another time), took your Mama and Daddy in when they got to the States and celebrated your birth by wet-nursing you when your Mama was unable to, so she is like your other Mother and you are about to school her on what??? Girrrrrlllllll, Ay Dios Mio…

Sound familiar, in any way? I know, I have been there and my peoples were all deep into political discourse, Papa a Machetero, Mammie could run a fortune 500 the way she managed that household and us seven kids, mi gente were Sabios, in ways that only became clearer to me way after they had transitioned, Ibaey to all of them!

There are so many different ways to start up this conversation, I am going to make my point and then move to support it. Mira don’t laugh I was trained in the Gringo (White) school, Anywho, Let us start with the fact that any conversation we have about Race and Racism will be froth with messiness, period. As People of Color, Black. Indigenous, Asian, or Latinx, living, breathing (or not, some of us are panting) trying to make it, and trying to move the bar for better, we shoulder some big and visionary ideals for our peoples, our families, and our own futures. Our intentions are solid, determined, and committed. Yet, we are getting side-eyed by our own peoples. For Why, as my Dad would say and follow up with, wellllllll Let me telling you (with a j sounding y) one question?!

I am clear that my deepest and most important Anti-Racist work is and has been done within me and then with my family. Discovering my voice and my ancestral wisdom about Race and Racism was life-giving, affirming, and enhancing, Yet, in my excitement and lack of clarity I was prone to forgetting whose I was, rather than banking on who I was. That “I” came right out of the “White Socialization Model, 101” and caused me to forget and even disrespect the humanity, deep knowledge, and lived experience of those, that had come before me and who had prayed me up to be. So, I strapped on and went to town, with my family, friends, and neighbors, I was going to show, tell and show again how much of an antiracist “I” was. I would speak truth to power, falling prey to my own rhetoric and the sound of my own voice. I was doing “bargain-basement attitude”, cheap swipes, stolen stories, and poor comebacks, and was not doing anyone any justice, I was so busy talking I could not hear, and the worst part was my people, our people are pretty good at spotting seconds, we may buy them, but we are not fooled by them, so that incredibly knowledgable Tia, Tio, and Elder in the Community, just puts her foot down literally and says not in my house you don’t, punto! there might have been a few explicit like “cono, carajo puneta” , (so hard to get the right effect with the wrong spelling, each of those words should be spelled and pronounced with Spanish nlle, the n letter with a wiggly ~ on top). Anywho…

This story can possibly be adjusted and retooled by most of us if we are honest about our process I just created it out of hundreds of stories told to me and some of my own experiences in my early Antiracism and Antioppression work. We can very easily lose our gentleness and tenderness for each other as we witness the disparate outcomes for BIPOC in every single institution, process, and way and means no matter how much effort is put into the work. Yet, there is so much intelligentsia, intellectual capacity, strategy, and knowledge in our peoples if we simply allow it the mic, and listen with an open heart and mind. The moral of the story is we can distance ourselves from our own people, those for whom we say we are in the movement because, we can intellectualize our process and learn all the right jargon, Yet, if we do not take the hard trip from the head to heart, down to the gut, and back again in gentle lovingness for those whose we are, we have failed in the most fundamental of tasks as antiracist liberation activists since our first and most important Antiracist / Anti-oppression task (as long as it is not putting us in fiscal or psychological danger, we must be strategic) is to go home to our people and hear their story! Now of course this is the highest form of compassion and most earnest pathway to liberation. Going home listening, being grateful for the work, struggle, and all the wonder of joy and capacity in those to whom we belong. Listen, I know that I am because we are, and that truly keeps me warm in the coldest and most dehumanizing experiences and I have lived and will live through and BTW that is not always in the presence of those that “have come to be known as White” in this country, but at the sad expiation of the Oppression Olympics and Ethnocentrism of my fellox BIPOC, when we are preaching, en calsonsiyos, in our underwater, or also known as our confused cousins, as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva stated in his book, Racism without Racists, we don’t need white people in the room to keep us towing the part of the line we collude with. I believe we need to know this with and pepper it with Radical Love! Asta…