Tim Wise's Blog, page 19

George Zimmerman, Racism and White Denial: Radio Interview With Nicole Sandler, 7/17/13

My interview with Nicole Sandler, to discuss the Zimmerman verdict, race in America and the persistent phenomenon of white denial

George Zimmerman, Race and the Absurdity of the “Black Friend” Defense

Reaction to the Zimmerman verdict, from the Media Education Foundation blogsite (the folks who produced my upcoming film, White Like Me)

Tim Wise on CNN, 7/14/13: Race, Trayvon Martin and the Zimmerman Trial

Here’s my interview with Don Lemon from the day after the Zimmerman verdict, discussing the role of race in the case and public reaction to it. Note one correction: in the interview I note the way that many people have tried to rationalize Zimmerman’s fear of Martin on the basis of Martin being particularly tall and imposing, and point out that in fact he was not. In the interview I claim the coroner’s report listed Martin as 5’10″ rather than the 6’2″ or even 6’4″ that some others have claimed. In fact, the coroner’s report lists Martin as 5’11.” Still, hardly the oversized monster many have made him out to be, and thus the point remains.

Tim Wise on CNN – 7/15/13 Zimmerman Verdict and Race

My appearance on CNN Newsroom, July 15, 2013 to discuss the racial implications of the George Zimmerman not-guilty verdict

No Innocence Left to Kill: Racism, Injustice and Explaining America to My Daughter

You remember, forever and forever, that moment when you first discover the cruelties and injustices of the world, and having been ill-prepared for them, your heart breaks open.

I mean really discover them, and for yourself; not because someone else told you to see the elephant standing, gigantic and unrelenting in the middle of your room, but because you saw him, and now you know he’s there, and will never go away until you attack him, and with a vengeance.

Last night, and I am writing it down so that I will not forget — because I already know she will not — my oldest daughter, who attained the age of 12 only eleven days ago, became an American. Not in the legal sense. She was already that, born here, and — as a white child in a nation set up for people just like her — fully entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof, without much question or drama. But now she is American in the fullest and most horrible sense of that word, by which I mean she has been truly introduced to the workings of the system of which she is both a part, and, at the same time, merely an inheritor. A system that fails — with a near-unanimity almost incomprehensible to behold — to render justice to black peoples, the family of Trayvon Martin being only the latest battered by the machinations of American justice, but with all certainty not the last.

To watch her crumble, eyes swollen with tears too salty, too voluminous for her daddy to wipe away? Well now that is but the latest of my heartbreaks; to have to hold her, and tell her that everything will be OK, and to hear her respond, “No it won’t be!” Because see, even though she learned last night about injustice and even more than she knew before about the racial fault lines that divide her nation, she is still a bit too young to fully comprehend the notion of the marathon, as opposed to the sprint; to understand that this is a very long race, indeed that even 26.2 miles is but a crawl in the long distance struggle for justice. And that if she is as bothered by what she sees as it appears, well now she will have to put on some incredibly strong running shoes, because this, my dear, is the work.

This is why daddy does what he does. Now you know.

And yes, I am fully aware that there are still those who would admonish me for even suggesting this case was about race. Not just the defenders of George Zimmerman, with whom I shall deal in a moment, but even the state, whose prosecutors de-racialized this case to a point that frankly was as troubling as anything the defense tried to do. Maybe more. I mean, the defense’s job is to represent their client, and I cannot fault them for having done so successfully. But the prosecution’s job is to make it clear to the jury what the defendant did and preferably why he did it. By agreeing to a fundamentally colorblind, “this isn’t about race,” narrative, they gave away the best part of their arsenal before the war had really started.

Because anyone who still believes that this case had nothing to do with race — or worse, that it was simply a tragedy, the racial meaning of which was concocted by those whom they love to term “race hustlers” — are suffering from a delusion so profound as to call into question their capacities for rational thought. And yet still, let us try to reason with them for a second, as if they were capable of hearing it. Let’s do that for the sake of rational thought itself, as a thing we still believe in; and for our country, which some of us still believe — against all evidence — is capable of doing justice and living up to its promises. In short, let’s give this one more shot.

Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds — if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase — the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives. They must choose to leave the dots unconnected between, for instance, Martin on the one hand, and then on the other, Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell or Patrick Dorismond, or any of a number of other black men whose names — were I to list them — would take up page after page, and whose names wouldn’t mean shit to most white people even if I did list them, and that is the problem.

Oh sure, I’ve heard it all before. George Zimmerman didn’t follow Trayvon Martin because Martin was black; he followed him because he thought he might be a criminal. Yes precious, I get that. But what you don’t get — and by not getting it while still managing to somehow hold down a job and feed yourself, scare the shit out of me — is far more important. Namely, if the presumption of criminality that Zimmerman attached to Martin was so attached because the latter was black — and would not have been similarly attached to him had he been white — then the charge of racial bias and profiling is entirely appropriate.

And surely we cannot deny that the presumption of criminality was dependent on this dead child’s race can we? Before you answer, please note that even the defense did not deny this. Indeed, Zimmerman’s attorneys acknowledged in court that their client’s concerns about Martin were connected directly to the fact that previous break-ins in the neighborhood had been committed by young black males.

This is why it matters that George Zimmerman justified his following of Martin because as he put it, “these fucking punks” always get away. In other words, Zimmerman saw Martin as just another “fucking punk” up to no good, similar to those who had committed previous break-ins in the community. But why? What behavior did Martin display that would have suggested he was criminally inclined? Zimmerman’s team could produce nothing to indicate anything particularly suspicious about Martin’s actions that night. According to Zimmerman, Martin was walking in the rain, “looking around,” or “looking around at the houses.” But not looking in windows, or jiggling doorknobs or porch screens, or anything that might have suggested a possible burglar. At no point was any evidence presented by the defense to justify their client’s suspicions. All we know is that Zimmerman saw Martin and concluded that he was just like those other criminals. And to the extent there was nothing in Martin’s actions — talking on the telephone and walking slowly home from the store — that would have indicated he was another of those “fucking punks,” the only possible explanation as to why George Zimmerman would have seen him that way is because Martin, as a young black male was presumed to be a likely criminal, and for no other reason, ultimately, but color.

Which is to say, Trayvon Martin is dead because he is black and because George Zimmerman can’t differentiate — and didn’t see the need to — between criminal and non-criminal black people. Which is to say, George Zimmerman is a racist. Because if you cannot differentiate between black criminals and just plain kids, and don’t even see the need to try, apparently, you are a racist. I don’t care what your Peruvian mother says, or her white husband who married the Peruvian mother, or your brother, or your black friends, or the black girl you took to prom, or the black kids you mentored. If you see a black child and assume “criminal,” despite no behavioral evidence at all to suggest such a conclusion, you are a racist. No exceptions. That goes for George Zimmerman and for anyone reading this.

And here’s the thing: even in the evidentiary light most favorable to George Zimmerman this would remain true. Because even if we believe, as the jury did, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, there can be no question that were it not for George Zimmerman’s unfounded and racially-biased suspicions that evening, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman would be an entirely anonymous, pathetic wanna-be lawman, about whom no one would much care. It was he who initiated the drama that night. And even if you believe that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed by him, that doesn’t change.

But apparently that moral and existential truth matters little to this jury or to the white reactionaries so quick to praise their decision. To them, the fact that Martin might well have had reason to fear Zimmerman that night, might have thought he was standing his ground, confronted by someone who himself was “up to no good” is irrelevant. They are saying that black people who fight back against someone they think is creepy and who is following them, and might intend to harm them, are more responsible for their deaths than those who ultimately kill them. What they have said, and make no mistake about it, is that any white person who wants to kill a black person can follow one, confront them, maybe even provoke them; and as soon as that black person perhaps takes a swing at them, or lunges at them, the white pursuer can pull their weapon, fire, and reasonably assume that they will get away with this act. I can start drama, and if you respond to the drama I created, you are to blame, not me.

But we know, if we are remotely awake, that this same logic would never be used to protect a black person accused of such an act. Let’s travel back to 1984 shall we, and hypothetically apply this logic to the Bernhard Goetz case in a little thought experiment so as to illustrate the point.

Goetz, as you’ll recall, was the white man who, afraid of young black men because he had been previously mugged, decided to shoot several such youth on a subway. They had not threatened him. They had asked him for money, and apparently teased him a bit. But at no point did they threaten him. Nonetheless, he drew his weapon and fired several rounds into them, even (according to his own initial account, later recanted), shooting a second time at one of the young men, after saying, “You don’t look so bad, here, have another.”

Goetz, predictably, was seen as a hero by the majority of the nation’s whites, if polls and anecdotal evidence are to be believed. He was a Dirty Harry-like vigilante, fighting back against crime, and more to the point, black crime. Ultimately he too would successfully plead self-defense and face conviction only on a minor weapons charge.

But let us pretend for a second that after Goetz pulled his weapon and began to fire at the young men on that subway, one of them had perhaps pulled his own firearm. Now as it turns out none of the boys had one, but let’s just pretend. And let’s say that one of them pulled a weapon precisely because, after all, he and his friends were being fired upon and so, fearing for his life, he opted to defend himself against this deranged gunman. And let’s pretend that the young man managed to hit Goetz, perhaps paralyzing him as Goetz did, in fact, to one of his victims. Does anyone seriously believe that that young black man would have been able to press a successful self-defense claim in court the way Goetz ultimately did? Or in the court of white public opinion the way Zimmerman has? If you would answer yes to this question you are either engaged in an act of self-delusion so profound as to defy imagination, or you are so deeply committed to fooling others as to make you truly dangerous.

But we are not fooled.

We don’t even have to travel back thirty years to the Goetz case to make the point, in fact. We can stay here, with this case. If everything about that night in Sanford had been the same, but Martin, fearing this stranger following him — the latter not identifying himself at any point as Neighborhood Watch — had pulled a weapon and shot George Zimmerman out of a genuine fear that he was going to be harmed (and even if Zimmerman had confronted him in a way so as to make that fear more than speculative), would the claim of self-defense have rung true for those who are so convinced by it in this case? Would this jury have likely concluded that Trayvon had had a right to defend himself against the perceived violent intentions of George Zimmerman?

Oh, and would it have taken so long for Martin to be arrested in the first place, had he been the shooter? Would he have been granted bail? Would he have been given the benefit of the doubt the way Zimmerman was by virtually every white conservative in America of note? And remember, those white folks were rushing to proclaim the shooting of Martin justified even before there had been any claim made by Zimmerman that Trayvon had attacked him. Before anyone had heard Zimmerman’s version of the story, much of white America, and virtually its entire right flank had already decided that Martin must have been up to no good because he wore a hoodie (in the rain, imagine), and was tall (actually according to the coroner he was 5’11″ not 6’2″ or 6’4″ as some have claimed), and that because of those previous break-ins, Zimmerman had every right to confront him.

No, Martin-as-shooter would never have benefitted from these public pronouncements of innocence the way Zimmerman did.

Because apparently black people don’t have a right to defend themselves. Which is why Marissa Alexander, a woman who had suffered violence at the hands of her husband (by his own admission in fact), was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison after firing a warning shot into a wall when she felt he was about to yet again harm her.

And so it continues. Year after year and case after case it continues, with black life viewed as expendable in the service of white fear, with black males in particular (but many a black female as well and plenty of Latino folk too) marked as problems to be solved, rather than as children to be nurtured. And tonight, their parents will hold them and try to assure them that everything is going to be OK, even as they will have to worry again tomorrow that their black or brown child may represent the physical embodiment of white anxiety, and pay the ultimate price for that fact, either at the hands of a random loser with a law enforcement jones, or an actual cop doing the bidding of the state. In short, they will hold their children and lie to them, at least a little — and to themselves — because who doesn’t want their child to believe that everything will be alright?

But in calmer moments these parents of color will also tell their children the truth. That in fact everything is not going to be OK, unless we make it so. That justice is not an act of wish fulfillment but the product of resistance. Because black parents know these things like they know their names, and as a matter of survival they make sure their children know them too.

And if their children have to know them, then mine must know them as well.

And now they do.

If their children are to be allowed no innocence free from these concerns, then so too must mine sacrifice some of their naiveté upon the altar of truth.

And now they have.

So to the keepers of white supremacy, I should offer this final word. You can think of it as a word of caution. My oldest daughter knows who you are and saw what you did. You have made a new enemy. One day, you might wish you hadn’t.

Assuming That Facts or Logic Matter: On the BAR Petition Against My Speaking to Teach for America

And now it’s come to this.

I should say, and I quite sincerely mean it, that I have long respected the important analytical and journalistic work done by Bruce Dixon, Margaret Kimberley and everyone associated with Black Agenda Report. I consider BAR among the two or three most valuable left/radical blogs out there, and when asked — as I often am — for good web-based left commentary, BAR is always at the top of the list. And it will continue to be, despite the fact that as of today, BAR began circulating something of an indirect attack on me: a petition in opposition to my upcoming presentation to folks at Teach for America, scheduled for later this month. I should point out, by the way, that the date of that event is actually not the date Bruce mentioned in his editorial on the subject, but I guess insisting on the accuracy of details such as this would be unfair of me, so…moving on.

Aside from the inherent absurdity of suggesting that I am now “stamping the anti-racist ghetto passes for TFA” — which is insulting not only to me (big deal) but also the people of color who sought to have me come to this event in the first place — there is the larger problem with the underlying assumptions of Dixon’s editorial comment, which comment I replied to, directly to Bruce, via e-mail, but to which has not seen fit to reply.

Perhaps he hasn’t seen it yet in his inbox. Perhaps he’s doing other things and just hasn’t been able to get around to responding. No problem. But let it be clear: I answered in a respectful tone, and in a way that made it very clear that I took the concerns seriously, had thought about them, and yet, had a different perspective.

However, to the extent there are lots of other folks now chiming in, tweet-flaming me and creating oh-so-pithy memes about me and TFA (because hey, that’s movement building and radical and it beats work) — and who, unlike Bruce, have long taken any opportunity to take cheap, cowardly shots at me from a distance, and who unlike Bruce have never seen any role for me (or any white person really) in the antiracist struggle — it has become necessary to reply publicly to the matter.

And so here is what I wrote to Bruce Dixon in reply to the petition and his commentary.

At least if one is going to attack me, one should have the intellectual integrity to read it, think seriously about it (as I did the editorial in question) and engage. And not in some bullshit 140-character burst of verbal piss either…Bruce deserved that much. I do too. So does anyone.

(See below for the email to Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report)

________

Hey Bruce, hope you’re well.

So, about the petition. Please know. I get it. I know full well the issues with TFA, and their model. And to the extent you have long appeared to respect my intelligence, surely you must know that I know. Perhaps not.

That said, it seems to me the logic of this petition rests in a number of untenable assumptions.

1) First, that radicals and/or antiracist educators should not substantively engage with unjust institutions, lest they end up giving them social justice cover for their otherwise iniquitous activities;

2) Second, that TFA is fundamentally more unjust — and perhaps even much more so — than other institutions where I try and bring antiracist messages (and where I assume you don’t mind me doing so, as evidenced by the “someone’s gotta do it” comment regarding my work), and thus, is one place where I should especially refuse to attempt to educate folks; and

3) That if I do go to TFA to try and offer some antiracist perspective to their admissions team — the folks who actually select the “teachers” who will be placed in schools — and some of those teachers as well, that I am somehow guilty of contributing to the racist injury meted out by the TFA model to black and brown children in places like Chicago and elsewhere.

Taking these in order.

As for the first, by this standard, it is simply a truism that radical and/or antiracist educators could not seek to provide insights or educational analysis or trainings of any kind anywhere in this country, except perhaps by talking amongst ourselves, in our little leftist and radical echo chambers, which seems like a fool’s errand to me. As you and I both know, there are no prominent institutions in this society — be they in the corporate world, the K-12 education system (not just TFA and charters but the normal public system as well), higher education, and even most non-profits — who are not in fact engaged in massive injustice, be it racial, class, gendered, etc. If this standard were to be the one that I should operate under (or you, or anyone else), we could not give speeches on college campuses because they are inherently elitist institutions, corporatist in nature, committed to the maintenance of capitalism in almost every case, complicit with empire via the research carried on on their campuses, etc. We could sure as hell never appear in major media because those outlets are owned by defense contractors, or committed to the class system, consumption, heavily implicated in the perpetuation of neo-liberal paradigms of thought with regard to empire, etc. We wouldn’t even be able to really do presentations in normal k-12 schools because the entire educational system, top to bottom, is intrinsically racist and classist to the core. And every institution within that system, from teacher’s unions, to charters bent on destroying those unions, to prominent “reform” organizations, to corporate sponsors of K-12, to most teacher ed schools, to licensing programs (both traditional and non-traditional), to school boards, to private schools, to the ETS, to guidance counseling, to test prep rackets, is implicated in that system.

Is it possible that those institutions, when they bring me in to do a speech or training, may be hoping for antiracist cover, by being able to say “We had Tim Wise, so everything is cool!” Sure Bruce. Of course that is possible. That is possible when I speak at a college, or government agency, or nonprofit board, and sure as hell true for the handful of corporations I’ve presented to.

But is the possible benefit of me going also real? Well, probably not in the maximum sense. I mean, no, no college, company, non profit or other institution is going to fundamentally change because of a speech or training. Of course not. Just like they aren’t going to change because radicals boycott their asses, or blog about them, or write books about them. Or turn their entreaties for training and education down on the basis of principle. But it might make a difference in the following ways:

a. It might end up raising consciousness in the minds of enough individuals within that organization, such that some harm reduction takes place. And let’s not downplay the importance of harm reduction. Giving clean needles to heroin addicts won’t stop addiction but it saves lives, and that matters. To the extent an institution that already exists, and is going to exist whether or not its people get antiracist exposure or training, can be made less destructive (even while in our movement work we may be hoping for it to implode altogether), I feel we should try and make it less destructive. If some of the TFA teachers/staff deepen a consciousness around racism and white supremacy, such that they actually do antiracist pedagogy in the classroom, that actually does matter. I can’t guarantee that will happen of course. But I can guarantee that it will be less likely were I not to go to TFA and make the effort.

b. It might end up convincing people there that “Ya know what, maybe this isn’t for me after all.” This too can be important. Let me explain what I mean. So, my best friend who is a professor of education at Cal State Los Angeles, is charged as part of his job with preparing teachers, and administrators, for work in LAUSD. He takes it as part of his job to be so clear on the importance of antiracism in education — as a teacher or administrator — that anyone not entirely on board for that work, will simply quit the program and never set foot in a classroom or principal’s office. That is another form of harm reduction, right? It isn’t going to make the LAUSD a social justice org. It isn’t going to transform the district, overnight or perhaps at all. But by making it clear that to be a teacher is to be a radical, to challenge the fundamental structures of society and the very institutions that you work for, he draws a line in the sand (as I do whenever I train teachers, no matter what kind of school they are in), which can actually help some of the worst in that field to self-select out of it. That matters, and if that is all my time at TFA does, that might well be worth it.

c. It might well raise the consciousness of folks in TFA, whether they stick with them a while or leave, to pursue this line of thinking in their lives, not only professionally but personally and throughout the community. I know, for instance, that none of my speeches on college campuses have turned any of those campuses into antiracist, socially just spaces. But I also know — because this is the feedback I get back from people who have attended those speeches — that the insights, the information, the analysis, etc. changed their understanding of what was possible, for themselves and for society. And so they were now headed down a different path, professionally and personally, that they were now committed to challenging others and raising these issues in various settings, in ways they wouldn’t have before. So the ripple effects outside of TFA could be significant. Or not. But again, this is possible.

And here’s the thing: sadly, as you know, most folks (well, most white folks and people in positions of authority), are very supportive (and uncritically so) of the TFA model. I’d love for that to change, and I hope you trust that that is true. But if I don’t go to the event in question, we also both know (I assume) that such a boycott, even if there might be valid arguments to support it, will not change anything either. They will continue to do what they do. They will continue to be supported by most for doing it. They will have folks even less exposed to an antiracist message than ever, and all that will be gained is a momentary (and very momentary at that) P.R. kerfuffle, from which they will surely recover quickly. Meanwhile, and here’s the other point here:

I will have abandoned my promise made to people of color in that organization, to come and do what I can. It was people of color, not white leadership, who first extended this invitation. And it has been people of color in the group almost exclusively over the years who have asked me to come and tried to make it happen. Now, perhaps we both would prefer that all people of color just walk away from such a group en masse and in protest. That would make a statement, for damned sure. But we both know that isn’t going to happen. They are there. They are skeptical as hell about the role they are playing. They are trying to do what they can from within, but as you can imagine are having limited success. They are hoping I might be able to do some good. Their hopes might be misplaced. But I feel that as a matter of accountability and out of respect for their own struggles, I owe it to them to try. Just as I feel I owe it to try when training white educators in “regular” teacher training institutions or who got teaching gigs the normal way, without TFA, but are every bit as racist and classist as any TFA recruit, and whose schools and unions are no more truly supportive of them doing antiracist work than TFA has been.

As for premise number 2: Having spoken at hundreds of colleges and high schools, and middle schools, and other institutions, I have to say that I long ago stopped thinking it was possible to objectively rank some as more inherently venal than others. I mean, seriously, I have, for instance, conducted trainings at DEOMI (the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute), and at a few other military-related institutions/events. Now as someone who is opposed to the empire and militarism (and tells them so every time I’ve presented), I could as a matter of principle just say “screw you, you’re a bunch of fascists, implicated in the slaughter of millions,” and be done with it. But then again, such a stance, while feeling really good at the moment one takes it, and providing a few self-righteousness points (which of course would then be attacked precisely for being self-righteous), wouldn’t really do much. Have my trainings to those institutions changed the military. No. But have they perhaps changed some of the people who are in it, and who are going to be in it, whether or not I spoke to them? Quite possibly. And from the feedback I have received, the answer is actually yes. That, it seems to me is the job of the educator. To assume that the places where we’ll work are screwed up, and to be committed to trying to change them however possible. By radical change if possible. By increments and fits and starts if not…but I can’t quite understand how it would make any more sense for me to boycott TFA than to boycott the Ford Motor Co (where I’ve given speeches and directly confronted them with the racist history of their company, its namesake, and the town where it’s headquartered), or most colleges given that they contribute at least as much as TFA to the problems and crises of American education.

As for premise 3, I understand the argument: and to some extent it’s true. Any time we participate in unjust systems we contribute to the injustices perpetrated by those systems. But here’s the thing: every day we live in capitalism/white supremacy/patriarchy we are, by definition, contributing to those and other injustices, by consuming, earning money, spending money, eating food farmed, grown or processed under exploitative conditions, driving, wearing most clothes made under those conditions, getting an education, using medicines and thereby contributing to big pharma, sending our own kids to school, flying in an airplane, etc. I am having a hard time understanding how participating in a TFA event, specifically to challenge the way our educational system, including but not limited to TFA, contributes to the race/class marginalization of people of color and working class youth/families/communities, is somehow worse than those other things, about which you do not start petitions, encouraging Tim Wise, or others, to stop engaging. Likewise, by not participating (in this case as an outside educator), I would be doing nothing at all to actually limit whatever injustices TFA might be perpetrating at a given time, as with schools generally, other institutions, etc.

Taking the airplane flying example from above, for instance: I’ve always been amazed at the utter absurdity of people who think that it is an important thing for ecologically conscious people to refuse to fly (because of the fuel use, impact on the environment, etc). Fact is, unless such a boycotting of air travel were going to reasonably include millions of otherwise likely air travelers, making the personal decision not to participate in the eco-injustice that is air travel would be less than meaningless. In fact, it would be self-righteous, self-referential, ascetic bullshit. Because whatever plane the boycotter refused to get on, so as not to be complicit with evil, is still going to take off, with or without their butt in the seat. And in fact, they will have no problem finding someone else to putt their butt in that seat. With TFA, or any school, or corporation to which I might speak, the same is true: they are taking off, so to speak, with or without me. And they will find someone to give that speech that day. They aren’t going to leave the agenda with a 3 hour hole in it. Someone is giving a talk, and someone will likely be giving it about the issues I was asked to engage. The question is, is that person likely to come as clearly as I will, and as challenging as I will? Well, perhaps they would. I don’t claim to be the hardest fucker out there, or the most radical or militant. But I think you know I don’t pull punches either. And I assume you can reasonably estimate that if they were bringing someone else in, it wouldn’t likely be anyone more direct than me. I mean, if anything, they’d probably go softer, but for the efforts by the people of color in the group to force the issue.

So even though my involvement with them, even for the 2 days or whatever it is, could be seen as giving them cover, or using me for that purpose, or even me contributing to them and their agenda, I think it can also be the case that 1) I’m smart enough to ensure I do this on my terms, in my way, without compromise (i.e., I’m not so weak as to be played easily), 2) There are people there, whether I come or not, who need to hear this message, and who can benefit from it; 3) some short term harm reduction might actually come from it, even as we continue in our larger work to try and move the American educational system in a different direction — one in which the existing TFA model and that whole concept goes the way of the dinosaur, and 4) Telling the truth, even to people who don’t want to hear it (maybe especially them) has inherent value, and should be done whenever the opportunity presents itself.

In any event, I do appreciate your concerns in the matter, and greatly respect them, and you, and all the work you all do at BAR, as you know. I know this whole thing wasn’t personal, and I don’t take it as such. I just thought you should know where my head is in all this. And ya know, in the end, you might be right and I might be totally off base. But I feel an obligation to do my best to bring this message to the folks there, and hope you can understand and respect my efforts, as I respect yours in challenging them.

Take care

Tim

_____

Tim Wise on All In With Chris Hayes, MSNBC, 7/8/13 Discussing George Zimmerman Trial

Here is my appearance on All In, to discuss the Zimmerman trial and issues of race surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin

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Tim Wise on HuffPost Live, July 8, 2013 Discussing His Upcoming Film, “White Like Me”

Here’s my appearance today on HuffPost Live with Marc Lamont Hill, to discuss racism, white privilege and my new soon-to-be-released film, White Like Me. Joined by Michael Eric Dyson. We ended up squaring off against white supremacists/nationalists, Jared Taylor and Matthew Heimbach…entertaining to say the least…

Tim Wise on CNN 7/2/13 – Discussing Social Media Reaction to CNN’s Special on the N-Word

My appearance on CNN with Ashleigh Banfield, Don Lemon and Safiya Songhai, discussing reaction — good, bad and otherwise — on social media, to Don’s special on the N-word from the previous evening…

Tim Wise on CNN – Racism and Racial Slurs (Part Two) 7/1/13

My second salvo on CNN tonight, discussing racial slurs and racism in America. In this clip, LeVar Burton discusses how he responds to police, and I discuss how fundamentally different the white experience is with law enforcement…