Defeating White supremacy: Racial apartheid and the path to justice – Anchorage Press

Alaska can seem far-removed from the Jim Crow South, but when a sitting legislator advertises his membership in the white supremacist organization Oath Keepers, and when another legislator introduces legislation to ban the teaching of certain aspects of racism in U.S. history, we all have an obligation to confront white supremacy right now.

Rep. David Eastmans membership in and defense of the white supremacist organization Oath Keepers, which played a leading role in assaulting the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020, has led to widespread demands that Eastman be expelled from the legislature. In addition, legislation (HB 228) has been introduced that would prohibit the teaching of racist practices, institutions, and violence documented by the New York Times 1619 Project. These facts should compel us to ask ourselves about our own role in confronting our nation and states history, and what our individual responsibility might be to create equal opportunity and honor the human rights of every single one of our neighbors.

House Bill 228 would prohibit teaching basic historical facts, including the nature of the slave trade and how it brought African-Americans to the American colonies; the relationship between slavery and early political power struggles in the United States; the nearly incomprehensible violence on plantations; the Jim Crow era and laws that established segregation in so many aspects of U.S. society; and the relationship between segregation and our built environmentfrom forgotten slave markets to the location of interstates. Denying this history, or prohibiting the teaching of it in schools, wouldif successfulmake it impossible to rectify inequality by making it impossible to understand racisms roots.

I believe nearly everyone wants to live in a world founded in respect, equity, fairness, and celebration of our unique differences and commonalities. None of us were alive when these terrible moments of history took place, and most people are not consciously or intentionally racist. For example, I have no reason to believe the sponsor of HB 228 wants to advance racism. This is not about vilifying or pointing fingers. We all have a responsibility to do what we can to create a better future for all. That starts with understanding we have inherited systems and institutions that have a legacy of harm. By no means should any of us feel guilty to be born into a society with longstanding inequality and racist power structuresinstead, we should be liberated to see those power structures honestly, and consider our role in building a society with truly equal opportunity for all.

Thanks to the work of countless activists, we have normalized an ethic of racial equality over the last half century. To truly achieve that vision, we have to face our history and do our part to recognize the inherent biases we all learn from a young age. No one is immune from bias and prejudice in a racialized society, including those working every day to address racism. But by no means should any of us feel guilty to be born into a society with longstanding inequality and racist power structuresinstead, we should work together to see those power structures honestly, and consider our role in building a society with true equity for all.

As someone who grew up in the South with school boundaries drawn to separate kids by race, I saw firsthand how diversity was extinguished by tracking wealthier, whiter students into advanced classes and poorer, darker skinned students into standard or remedial classes. The most prominent boulevard in my hometown was lined with statutes of traitors who led the effort to destroy the United States in order to create a new nation shaped around slavery. The interstates in my city were placed to obliterate middle class black neighborhoods, a central function of the criminal justice system was to keep Blacks locked in a cycle of joblessness, poverty, and crime that could feed further racist fears. None of this was exceptionaltowns across the South still have statues of murderers, traitors, terrorists, slave owners, while most lack the most basic memorial to the more than 4,000 blacks who were murdered through lynching. Even today, many people dont know that lynching was a form of public terrorism, a well-organized spectacle of fear that included public advertisement, picnics, festivities, and postcards to commemorate the occasions. That public vigilante execution of Black Americans was so normal speaks to the depth of racism in America, to speak nothing of the acts of violence that happened to Indigenous peoples across the country, and other people of color. These acts of racism were also not limited to the South. Similar examples of systemic racism can be found across our country, and in our great state of Alaska.

I understand that the sheer magnitude of these crimes and violence make them difficult to think about, to acknowledge. But we have to be honest with ourselves about what happened, its effects on the present day, and our responsibility to each other, right now. That includes realities of racist violence in Alaska, including similar Jim-Crow era segregationist policies such as No Dogs/No Natives which was held by many establishments, the enslavement and internment of Unangax people, the theft of Native land, to the bombardment of Kake, Angoon, and Wrangell, and the kidnapping of Native children into a boarding school system rife with abuse. This is our history in our nation and in Alaska a history that belongs to everyone and denying it prevents our future generations from learning the lessons of this history and creating a better society for all. We are doomed to repeat history that we cannot teach.

Racism happens beyond the level of the individual. Structural racism is a set of public policies, institutions, and cultural beliefs that perpetuate racial inequality. It is critical we focus our attention on making change at this level. Yes, changing individual views is important, but this is not about a puritanical crusade against the individual, this is about making sure we can learn from our history so we can change the systems that continue to harm our fellow community members and neighbors. To address these issues is an act of love for our fellow neighbors, it is not an act of blame or an attempt to vilify, and we should not give into fearmongering tactics that pit us against each other. Let us focus on policies and structures that can most certainly be changed, all while attempting to understand how racist mores may manifest themselves in our own views of the world.

We cannot wait until we are all perfectly anti-racist before we start this work. We are all imperfect and we are all still learning. Yet we can all take steps to work towards a more racially just society. So what does progress really look like? What should our agenda and responsibility be for an anti-racist society? Here are some policy ideas.

Recognizing that anti-Black racism is inextricably related with land theft from and genocide against Native Americans, in Alaska it is particularly important to support public policies that finally recognize the right to Indigenous self-governance and stewardship of the lands we call home. This basic premise has myriad implications, from tribal recognition to partnership on child custody to adequate provision of funds for rural schools, to compacting over public education, to prioritization of subsistence harvests to funding for rural public safety, to returning land back to Indigenous peoples, and other measures of uplifting tribal sovereignty.

With the understanding that racism is a cultural phenomenon, and that eradication of racism is only possible when children are allowed to see each others humanity, we must remain committed to an adequately funded and de-segregated school system, in urban as well as rural communities. Our schools are the most powerful institution that can create equal opportunity, but they can also be the most powerful institution to perpetuate racism, which is why racists fought so hard to maintain segregated education.

Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasized racial equality is impossible amidst profound poverty and economic stratification. We have to leverage statutes, institutions, and cultural norms to defend and expand the middle class, including a strong role for public employment, robust unions, and meaningful norms that make mistreatment of working people taboo. When poverty is most acute among minorities, equality demands an economic agenda around wage growth and economic mobility.

Follow the leadership of community-based organizations such as the Alaska Black Caucus, the NAACP, Native leadership, and other BIPOC groups, who are closest to many of these issues and understand how best to address them. That includes protecting voting rights in statute, for which civil rights organizations have advocated.

None of these public policy goals are possible if we deny the very existence of racism in our schools, or emulate totalitarian societies by censoring our history, particularly self-evident history as documented by a press whose freedom is enshrined in our Constitution. The Jim Crow South may seem very far from Alaska, but there is no place in the United States that has not been touched by racism policies and practices. At a time when white supremacists are trying to unravel our democracy and normalize Neo-Nazism, and legislation has been introduced to censor history in our classrooms, we cannot pretend that white supremacy is a distant threat.

Zack Fields represents Downtown Anchorage in the Alaska House of Representatives.

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Defeating White supremacy: Racial apartheid and the path to justice - Anchorage Press