Issue 8: Juxtaposition
noun. the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect.
A picture of a beach in the foreground with snow-covered rocks and pine trees in the background. Photo by Paulius Dragunas on Unsplash
Check-In:
On Sunday, November 7th I ran 26.2 miles through five boroughs as one of the 47,000 finishers of the NYC Marathon. As I ran through the finish line, I remembered to look-up, raise my hands and be grateful to be done. I didn’t know how thankful I was until I saw the pictures of me crossing the line. That facial expression showed nothing but 100% joy. I was physically exhausted but mentally exhilarated. Thankful knowing that I started 2022 with a ruptured disc that left me immobile and in excruciating pain. Thankful that I returned to running on June 6th and on November 6th I ran a marathon.
Running long distances is the quintessential juxtaposition for me. To push my body to its limit fills me. The hours outside calm me. Although long-distance running is an overwhelming ‘white’ sport within the United States, it’s the sport where I feel the most myself. It’s not about how fast I’m running but being in full control of my body, my breath, my mind, my soul. In Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body and Spirit, Mary-Frances Winters talks about how exhausting it is to be a Black person within the United States and if you add additional minoritized identities, the exhaustion exacerbates. That is why I run. My daily practice of getting up before sunrise and connecting with the environment grounds me and gives me the necessary energy to endure my day where aggressions through personal interactions or through the news of the day are a daily experience.
Nasif Rogers talks about the conscious efforts he is making to preserve his joy. Bettina Love talks about Black joy in her book, We Want to Do More Than Survive. She says, “Black joy is a celebration of taking back your identity as a person of color and signaling to the world that your darkness is what makes you strong and beautiful. Black joy is finding your homeplace and creating homeplaces for others. Black joy is understanding and recognizing that as a dark person you come with grit and zest because you come from survivors who pushed their bodies and minds to the limits for you to one day thrive,” (p. 120).
Where are you finding your joy amongst the fatigue of being a leader of the global majority?
#mondaymotivation: “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe: Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids, and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me.”― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Interview with Leader of the Global Majority:
Nasif Rogers was the Director of Equity for the Wauwatosa School District in Wisconsin for two years.
Mary: Tell me what have you learned about or unlearned about yourself since being in the role?
Nasif: I think at least in this past year things that I have learned is that whiteness and white supremacy are vigorously persistent. Whenever you think you're making progress, whiteness finds a way to reconstitute itself and find ways to destabilize the efforts, disrupt the efforts, to cause setbacks to occur.
Nasif: And I think the current rhetoric around critical race theory where it's being used as a chosen horse to just really stymie progress either within schools and more importantly it's been hijacked by politicians and far-right conservatives to not let equity and justice take root. And just seeing so much of those things that were covert become so overt.
Nasif: And things that are just happening under the surface and with the untrained eye you don't really know what's happening.
Nasif: And then things I've had to unlearn. I've had to unlearn to not take it home with me as much. And finding ways to protect my peace so that it doesn't impact how I show up at home with my family. So that's having to unlearn and I'm just in a process of unlearning and finding ways to protect my peace and joy.
You can hear more about Nasif when “Leading Within Systems of Inequity in Education: A Liberation Guide for Leaders of Color” is published in April 2023. Let me know if you would like to be interviewed and/or recommend someone to be profiled in this section.
What I’m Reading: Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body and Spirit by Mary-Frances Winters.
About the author: Mary-Frances Winters is the Founder and CEO of The Winters Group which provides training focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Book Audience: Black people, people of minoritized racial and ethnic groups, and anyone who wants to know why Black people are tired.
Book Overview:
This illustration is on the inside cover of the book. It is a drawing of a tree. The leaves are all the different ways that create Black fatigue. The branches are the different systems in which racism permeates. The trunk is Black fatigue with systemic racism being the root of everything.
“I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” -Fannie Lou Hamer
Mary-Frances Winters defines Black fatigue as “repeated variations of stress that result in extreme exhaustion and cause mental, physical, and spiritual maladies that are passed down from generation to generation.” She makes it clear that it is not the individual that is causing the fatigue but it’s the system and she comes back to the system again and again. “The problem is not the children. The problem is the system (p. 63)…Black people are not the problem,” (p. 177).
Winters gives examples of how fatigue is developed in all areas of life and compounded with additional identities such as gender or sexual orientation. She notes that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supposed to bring diversity in leadership roles but we are still in the same predicament. She brings this fact to light when telling the story of her friend Tracy who ended up retiring when her doctorate in chemistry, MBA, and experience were still not enough to be promoted to the executive level (p. 56).
School has broken children’s belief in themselves as young and gifted. And then we become adults. Racism is making us sick. Learning how to reframe some of our narratives to encourage positive self-talk is one way to minimize fatigue. Such as switching from “Being Black is exhausting” to “Racism is exhausting” and from “I don’t have time for self-care” to “There is at least one thing I can do for me every day to lessen the stress of living while Black.” (p. 94) To create a just world we need a system approach full of love.
Next Book: Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity: The Keys to Successful Equity Implementation by Floyd Cobb and John Krownapple. You can find a full list of my book recommendations here.
Resources:
· What are the most important lessons school district leaders should learn from the COVID pandemic? I shared my response in Larry Ferlazzo’s Education Week Classroom Q&A Column
· The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is in jeopardy with a case challenging the law, Brackeen v. Haaland. The Supreme Court finished hearing oral arguments on Nov. 9. If the Supreme Court rules that ICWA is unconstitutional, it could have devastating effects on the lives of Native American children and families. Support and learn more about ICWA by following @protectICWA.
If this is your first time reading, please go back and read my Introductions post.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think. If you like it, please share it with your network!