Dismantling White Supremacy and Patriarchy on MLK Day

Jen Lumanlan 00:01

Hello, everyone, it’s Jen. And I just wanted to do another live episode as it were in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group because I did one recently for the events after the US Capitol siege. And responding to that, and actually looked at the analytics on it and found that it was one of my most recently downloaded episodes. So, this is sort of just another informal episode. And we’ll be back to regular programming next week, but wanted to share some thoughts on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is today here in the US. And I think this is actually the special—the first holiday recorded an episode that I’ve done ever. So it feels kind of cool to be doing it for this particular day for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And I wanted to share some thoughts that actually I concepted on a bike ride, which tends to be how these things come about when I have some time to think. And I’m really sort of thinking, “Okay, what is it that parents need to know in this right now? What’s important about continuing Dr. King’s legacy?” And I talked in the episode from last week about the events in the US Capitol, about the anti-racist work that we’re doing, and that is so necessary that has to continue, yes, we have to keep doing that. We also need to do things like learning about the achievements of Black people, both in history and today. And at all that I really enjoy for that is, if you’re not watching on Facebook Live, I’m holding up these Black history flashcards. They’re published by an organization called Urban intellectuals, which I believe is a Black-owned company. And we’ve actually been storing them in a little teacup on our dining room table, and my daughter will request that we go through at least one and up to three of them, I draw the line at three because then I don’t get to eat dinner at the dinner table every day. And we talk through not just sort of the what are the bullet points on the back of the card that each of these individuals on the cards did.

 

Jen Lumanlan 01:55

But what does it mean? What does it mean that to say that they were entrepreneurs, trappers, and traders in the 1700s is one of the people that we read about last night was what kind of circumstances came into place to even make that possible when the vast majority of Black people in that period who were over in the Americas were enslaved. What kind of circumstances and personality and situation were involved in this? And so I think that that is really helping us to put some kind of context around. It’s not just that there were millions of Black people here in the US, and they were all enslaved, and they were sort of this monolithic entity. But these were individual people who had individual lives and individual concerns, and they made incredibly valued and undervalued contributions to our culture, you know, inventing things and setting up one of the people we read about last night set up the city of Chicago, he founded a settlement that turned into the city of Chicago, the leaders, former leader of Kenya and Ghana, who negotiated independence from the UK. And so obviously, that focus is very much on history. And we also need to be talking about the work that Black people and other people of color are doing on an ongoing basis today. But it’s just sort of an additional way that we are making this because of sort of baking these ideas into the fabric of our everyday lives.

 

Jen Lumanlan 03:18

And then, yes, we need to do our overtly anti-racist work, we need to be talking with our children about these ideas that don’t just leave them with the impression that Black people were victimized and victims of their circumstances that they had agency in their lives and continue to have agency in their lives. And don’t need rescuing. They don’t need us to come and save them, they can tell us what they need and we should be listening to that. But I think it goes even deeper than that because I’m not sure that many of us myself absolutely included, fully understand the ways that White supremacy and patriarchy, and even capitalism show up in our lives. And so we’ve discussed before on the show, the interview with Dr. Carol Gilligan, and a bunch of times since then, in a variety of other episodes, about how patriarchy operates and how that shows up in ourselves. And one of the ways it does that is through creating separation, both within ourselves and between individuals. And so it separates, it crazy separation in ourselves by setting up these sort of arbitrarily masculine and arbitrarily feminine qualities. So masculine qualities might be things like logic and reason and, and assertiveness and confidence and all these things you stereotypically associate with men.

 

Jen Lumanlan 04:39

And then the feminine categories might be things like intimacy and tenderness, and unconditional love, and sort of the soft, feminine sides. And of course, the point here is that we all have all of these characteristics. There’s nothing inherently masculine or feminine about any of them, but by dividing them, we’re able to privilege one set, we’re able to privilege the masculine set and say, Well, this is what we should be working towards, which is why we tell our girls that they should go and do STEM careers and, and exceed in traditionally male-dominated fields. But we don’t tell either our girls or boys that yeah, it’s okay to care about other people, it’s okay to be in caring professions, and to want to have that be your life’s work. So there’s that sort of split within ourselves, but it also separates individuals by, in a way sort of policing our behavior and telling us what’s acceptable and what isn’t. And one of the ways it does that is by making it really difficult to ask for help, or even to offer help. And because we’re all supposed to project this image of, “Well, I’ve got it together, everything’s fine. There’s no problem here, things are under control.” And if that’s not the case, for any reason, then we can always buy something to help us fix that circumstance, like, we can buy a service, like a cleaner or somebody to outsource a part of the work that we’re feeling is not in control too.

 

Jen Lumanlan 06:07

And so it’s not even okay to offer help, I think, because that sort of breaks down the idea that the person you’re offering to has it all together. And even if we offer, then the person sort of supposed to say, “Well, yeah, I’m okay, thanks, everything’s fine, I don’t really know of anything you can do.” And then we as the offer are sort of just supposed to stay in our lane and let it go. And I think the reason for this is that we are under a patriarchal White supremacist capitalist culture. We’re not supposed to have this true sense of kind of community, because if we had that, we wouldn’t need to buy as much stuff. Because we would just help each other out. And so there wouldn’t be this need to just buy stuff to fill the gaps that that we have in our lives because we aren’t able to be in true community. For example, my neighbor is running down to the store the other night, she was going already, and she lean down the car window on the way pass and she said, “Do you need anything?” And I had just been to the store early that day. And forgotten to get yogurt and said, “Hey, would you mind get me a quarter yogurt?” And so I didn’t need to call down to Instacart. I didn’t need to go down to the store again, myself. It was just a simple, you know, do you need anything, and me saying yes, rather than, “Well, I don’t want to burden her or, you know, I don’t want to go upstairs and get money right now.” And of course, when you do this often enough, the money can just kind of flow back and forth and it becomes less of a big deal. But she offered help. And I said, “Yeah,” in that moment, I would love to have some help. Thank you very much.

 

Jen Lumanlan 07:41

And so this holiday weekend, one of the things that I’m focusing on most closely, and I think my focus sort of shifts every year as I learn more, and I feel like my the ideas that I want to look at change. So for this year, what I’m doing right now is taking steps to reach out to my community, and specifically a community that was right around me. And so, I emailed the listener for all the people who live on our street. And I told them about all the things that my daughter Carys is interested in, which currently includes salamanders and invertebrates and fungi that are popping up around our neighborhood when it sometimes rains, not so often as it should be at the moment. And asking for their help and finding these things. And so we immediately got inundated with information like, “Is she interested in spiders?” “Oh, I have some orange fungi in my yard. I’ll try and remember to bring them over.” We had one neighbor who said, “Hey, can we do a trade? I have a photography assignment for a class that I’m doing. And I have to photograph children expressing various different emotions.” Of course, your daughter is welcome to come and look in my yard whenever she likes but could we also do this trade where I get to photograph her and fulfill this goal for my assignment? And so we went over there and Carys got to turn over every rock in my neighbor’s back yard. And my neighbor was just fascinated by by watching this and how curious Carys is about all this stuff.

 

Jen Lumanlan 09:02

And I got to talk with his neighbor who is probably four doors down the street from me whom I’ve seen in passing, I knew her name before, but I had no idea about the things that are important to her and what she spent her life doing. And we were able to deepen that connection just because of that simple email that I had sent out that I wasn’t even offering anything in particular, you know, yes, I had also added something to the button to say you know, if your kids are homeschooling or interested in anything at all that we might be able to help with feel free to reach out. But she just said hey, you know this, this is relevant to me. I’d love to be able to get some help with this. This is relevant to you. Can we work together? And yes, it was. It was a really lovely way to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon. Another way that we’re doing this is by getting closer to our neighbors and actually proposed a meal-sharing arrangement with them where we would cook an extra meal one night a week and then give it to them, and they would cook an extra meal one night a week and give it to us. And so, it’s literally almost no extra work. It’s like 5% extra work. And it gets the other family a night off from cooking.

Jen Lumanlan 10:09

Another thing that I’m also doing with my neighbors is that they have two kids who are in school, in zoom school most of the day, so they’re not available in the mornings. But in the afternoons, they are basically running around the house and both parents are trying to work from home and get stuff done. And of course, I’m working from home too. And what I’ve finally realized is I can give up the illusion of feeling like I need to be shut away in a room to get work done. And rather than be interrupted every 15 minutes with my daughter who would literally walk past my husband to come down to the room where I’m working and ask for a snack, rather than have that continual interruption. I can actually work more effectively if I put a deck chair out in the driveway and sit sometimes bundled up in a lot of down jackets in the sun, in the winter. And Carys is playing with their kids and they’re kind of running in between the two gardens wearing masks and looking for salamanders, exchanging rocks, bouncing a ball around, and just doing things that basically keep themselves entertained. And yes, I’m not in a quiet room. And now I couldn’t do it on a day when I had a lot of calls, but it’s it takes so much pressure off my neighbor who now doesn’t have to worry every minute about what our kids are getting into, why it’s quiet in the living room, and that she knows that they are having fun interactions. And it’s basically no more work for me either. And so, I think that that is really sort of deepening our connections to each other as well.

 

Jen Lumanlan 11:38

One more example, I was out in the street yesterday morning, and our neighbors announced he was going to the store and renting a rug cleaner. And I thought, “Oh, thank goodness. Carys had actually peed on a rug by accident six months ago,” and we couldn’t get the smell out. It’s been rolled up; I haven’t been able to get to the store to get a rug cleaning myself. I said, “Hey, can we go in on that with you? Can I just pay you half of the rental cost? And we’ll use it for 15 minutes to try and get the smell out of this rug?” And he’s like, “Sure, of course, why not.” And so I didn’t have to go to the store and get the thing, which is the thing that’s been holding me back for the last six months, he got a bit of help on the rental cost and was happy to help out. And again, we deepen the sense that if you ask for help, other people are more likely to ask us back, because they sort of in the beginning it kind of feel like well, I don’t want to ask them, they never asked me for anything. And so I don’t feel like I want to ask them. But if we put that first handout and say, “Hey, can I ask for your help with something?” Then they are much more likely to come back around when they need something. And that’s what builds our sense of community. So yes, we can also offer to help people of course, particularly on a day like today, when we’re thinking about what is our impact on the world. How do we want to leave our mark on this world? What are some of the ways that this is truly meaningful for you? Maybe helping scientists to catalog plant and animal species, that’s one of the things we’re going to be doing in a BioBlitz.

 

Jen Lumanlan 13:16

Where we’re helping scientists understand what species we’re finding in our neighborhood. Maybe we have a bit of a platform inside the company that we work for, and that we can use that to ask for change for things that seem really meaningful right now, and that you see that need to happen. Maybe like my neighbor, the photography friend, who we just met yesterday, properly is going out to protests at the invitation of the organizers and taking photographs of protests that are happening, and then giving them the images and donating them so that the organizations can use these images in their marketing materials and on their websites. And so they get high-quality images and my friend gets to feel as though her unique skills and talents are actively contributing, you know, yes, she could just show up to the protest. But she’s going one step beyond that to share the unique skills and talents that she brings to the world. So the one thing I do want to say about this is if we do live in heavily segregated communities, as many of us do, it can focus on our very local communities and can end up hoarding resources. And that’s one of the issues that I have with the Buy Nothing groups, particularly the ones that require that you live in a certain area to be a part of them. Because what that ends up doing is saying, “Well, you know, they all if all the people in my neighborhood are relatively well advantaged, we’re only going to trade stuff within my neighborhood.” And that just ends up sort of hoarding and consolidating the resources available in that community is the people in that community to trade all of their expensive equipment. And people in a very different community have access to very different resources.

 

Jen Lumanlan 14:47

So I don’t think that this focus on your tight local community is the only answer. But let’s do these things in parallel. Let’s do a bit of this and let’s also do some reaching across community lines. Let’s continue our anti-racist work. Let’s continue the conversations we’re having with our children. Let’s build our communities up on a variety of different scales, as we are working to dismantle the old systems. So I really hope that you’ll join me in this work. I would love to hear about what it is you do as a resource for your community and also this so you’re thinking about ways that you’re going to be offering help to the community, but also, how are you going to ask for help from your community? What is it that you can identify that’s like, “Oh, I’m going away for the weekend and the trash cans need to be out Monday morning, could I ask somebody to help put my trash cans out?” Just some tiny little thing like that gets you in conversation with your neighbors gets you on a different level of interaction than just saying hi, that you are offering something or asking for something, and that that will make it more likely that they will do the same in return. And that’s how we build community.

 

Jen Lumanlan 15:57

So, thank you so much for joining me for this. We’re gonna be back to regular episodes next week, and our episode for next week will be on red-shirting, whether or not you should red-shirt your child. It was actually one that I wrote over the holidays and it was a very, very in-depth episode. And of course, there are lots of connections to social justice issues related to whether or not you should hold your child back from kindergarten for a year, which is what we mean by red-shirting for those of you who are outside the US. So stay tuned for that lots more research-based information coming as usual, but I just wanted to share these thoughts with you and not let this holiday go by without sort of offering something to maybe help us all a little bit. Just move the needle, just move the needle a tiny bit in our local communities, and also much broader than that as well. So thanks so much for joining me and I will see you again soon.