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Peace For Communities Of Color

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A conversation between a Black woman and a white woman on Shifting Power and the need for Radical Imagination in the nonprofit sector.

An equitable Richmond would be a place where leaders of color have access to the resources we need to protect the people we love and build thriving communities according to our own vision — without adopting oppressive norms that exhaust, harm, and undermine our work. 

An equitable Richmond would be a place where people of color have freedom to reimagine a new way of being, one that works for all people regardless of race or identity.

An equitable Richmond would be a place where people of color can rest and be at peace.

My name is Lea Whitehurst Gibson, and I am the CEO and Founder of Virginia Community Voice. In the nonprofit sector, where I work, we are on a journey toward this vision, but we are in a constant tug of war with the status quo. The sector is founded on ideals of generosity, charity, and good works. Ostensibly, nonprofits and philanthropy fight injustice. 

But paternalism, colonialism, and white saviorism are also the legacy of nonprofits and they show up so strongly that we are often unable to imagine a new way of solving problems.

Tené Traylor of the Kendeda Fund says, “Philanthropy is really centered on this notion of charity and benevolence to its core. There are assumptions of privilege and power wrapped up in that. For us to see progress, it’s not just about trusting the black leader. It’s not just about having black folks at the table. It’s about right-sizing those investments accordingly. It’s about us trusting black folks to tackle black liberation and black solutions in a meaningful way. We need to continue to have the conversation. Certain folks need to get out of the way.”

Equity for Richmond requires a culture shift within the nonprofit and philanthropic sector. Despite an increasingly diverse nation, white people make up the majority of nonprofit executive leadership. Though local data are scarce, a 2017 report found that most Central Virginia nonprofit leaders are white women.

Lea Whitehurst-Gibson and Bekah Kendrick

White people in the nonprofit sector need to identify harmful norms and ways of being that keep us from seeing the issues clearly, that exclude people who actually experience the issues we’re trying to solve. These are norms that do not serve anyone who is truly committed to equity.

As a Black woman, a mother, a nonprofit executive, a community organizer, seeking justice for Black and Brown communities is already hard work. But adapting and conforming to the norms of nonprofit culture that are rooted in white supremacy and colonialism is exhausting.

I am tired of not being trusted. I’m tired of seeing how every system has been created to hurt me, my family, and the people of color I love. I’m tired of having to tell the same story. Of getting pennies on the dollar compared to white-led organizations. I’m tired of equity washing, when institutions say they are committed to racial equity yet the organization’s leadership is still all white, and there is no power sharing with directly impacted Black and Brown communities.

That is the truth. And my sharing where I am emotionally is an example of a different way of being. It’s a way to resist cultural norms that say emotion has no place at work.

We need a radical imagination for something new. 

An equitable Richmond requires something much deeper than policy change, diversity and inclusion efforts, racial equity training, or even targeted grantmaking to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) led organizations. All of these are important but they are intellectual approaches, and don’t heal the racialized trauma that people of color and white people carry around in our bodies. They don’t offer us a process through which BIPOC are trusted to radically reimagine our communities.

I have teamed up with my colleague Bekah Kendrick, who is a white woman, a mother, a nonprofit leader, fundraiser and former grant maker who leverages resources for Virginia Community Voice.

Together, we’ve named some organizational culture norms that show up commonly in nonprofits to exclude the voices of BIPOC and other marginalized groups in decision making and impede effective community engagement. 

We will walk you through what needs to be done to disrupt these behaviors, and share our success with a fundamentally different way of running a nonprofit.

POWER SHIFTING

Lea: I understand power to be the ability to help, or to hurt. Communities that have been historically marginalized typically do not have power in the institutional sense. 

A story might help illustrate what I mean. Last year, my husband and I tried to refinance our house. When we got to the bank, the loan officer took one look at us, asked what we were there for and said, “well there is a $500 dollar appraisal fee that you have to pay out of pocket, do you have the money to do that?”

We did of course. But we didn’t get the loan. Later, we inquired as to why and the bank said there were problems with our credit.

Both my husband and I had credit scores well over 720 (the minimum to get the most favorable interest rate) and very little debt. 

We asked what specifically about our credit was problematic and they told us it was unclear. 

But it wasn’t unclear to us.

Credit scores and so many things about access to wealth in this country were built to keep me, my family and people who look like us out of wealth building opportunities. And when we ask why, the answer is typically “well, it is something you did wrong.” 

It is always framed as a personal problem, which obscures the truth — that our legal and financial systems are not built for Black people. In fact, they are built intentionally to keep us out. 

My husband and I walked away from that experience feeling dejected, angry and powerless to change anything about that interaction. 

That loan officer, the system she is a part of and the algorithms that were used to determine whether or not we should get that loan, all had the ability to help or hurt us. Both historically and in 2020, they chose to hurt us. The system used past knowledge of what investments are safe and what is risky and they determined that we were not safe. 

That is what power does to maintain itself. People with power can make judgements about who they perceive to be safe or unsafe and build policies and practices around those judgements. 

It is hard to see this power sometimes, especially when it works for, not against you. 

That’s why power shifting is needed. A shift in power puts the ability to change unjust systems in the hands of people who can see injustice so clearly. If we are committed to racial equity, this is the path to seeing real change.

Until people who are directly impacted are the ones designing the solutions to the issues they have themselves identified, we won’t close the gaps in outcomes for all of our communities. If we build a more just and equitable decision making process, it will be good for people of color, yes, but it will also be good for everyone else too. 

Right now, paternalism in nonprofits says white and wealthy people, people with academic credentials, know better than the “disadvantaged communities” they serve. Until this assumption changes, we will not have equity. 

People of color having a seat at the table is the bare minimum. Equity demands more than this. People of color and other historically marginalized groups need to be building the table.

Bekah: White women have more socio-economic and political power than we like to acknowledge. Because of our proximity to white men, and our usefulness within a system of white supremacy, we have greater access to power. Disavowal of this power is harmful; it allows us to equate our experience of oppression as women with the fight for liberation by people of color. 

We honor the many white women suffragists and feminists who have experienced sexism. But historically, the bodies of white women and our children have been afforded more protection than those of women and children of color when we speak truth to power. We may be silenced, but less frequently are we killed. In fact, our protection has been used to justify violence against Black and Brown bodies throughout the history of this country. 

But what is demanded in exchange for this protection? For me, it has required a disconnection from my body, from my experience, from my humanity. To avoid feeling, I escape through intellectualizing, order and control, the written word, and “doing good.” I avoid conflict and defer to traditional authority. I conform to the capitalist belief that success and progress means bigger and more, and uphold unrealistic expectations for myself, my colleagues, and the nonprofits I’ve helped fund. 

My way of operating is inherited from my European ancestors and has gone unchecked in my churches, schools and workplaces where there was too little diversity of thought, and constant praise from white teachers and mentors for conformity. 

Though I didn’t build my house, I am responsible for it. For me, this means reschooling, unlearning, waking up to the reality that the ways of being I find effective and efficient… they hurt people of color and actually hurt me too.

TRUST

Lea: Trusting people of color to reimagine, implement solutions effectively, and allocate resources is a significant part of moving things forward. Part of the way that oppression has manifested itself in our communities is the way it makes us second guess ourselves when we do have a seat at the table. Trusting people of color (particularly black women) with money and power without reservation or second guessing is part of how we tear down white supremacy norms and begin to operate in radical imagination. 

Bekah: It takes courage to see the shadow sides of what we’ve been taught is normal. And whether or not we like to admit it, we’ve been taught not to trust people of color. Even if not overtly, through subtle messages surrounding us that showed us only white people in positions of power and leadership. 

What does it look like to trust BIPOC, especially women? For me, this has looked like decentering myself, taking on a supporting role in the organization, and being quieter. It means believing Black women when they say they see injustice and inequity. I may not see it at first, but that’s not because it isn’t there, it’s because I’ve been raised to not see it. If we cannot see clearly, how can we lead? 

I love this quote from Anastasia Reesa Tomkin, “A good white leader is a good white follower. If you cannot serve the cause of racial justice from the sidelines, instead of trying to be the superstar or the warrior hero, you’re not quite getting the concept of what black liberation entails.” I still mess up, but try not to let that derail me. Unlearning is a process.

REIMAGINE

Lea: At Virginia Community Voice, we have reimagined the process of community engagement and decision making. This looks like creating and holding space for people of color to step into their power as leaders. Our model of community engagement centers people who are directly impacted by racial inequity and injustice. This four stage process — Listen, Connect, Craft, Reflect — has been used to engage more than 1,000 neighbors in collective action along the Richmond Highway Corridor since 2017, through an initiative called RVA Thrives.

Bekah: As a white woman in a fund development role at a BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving organization, my daily work is to release the tight grip of certainty that white supremacy culture offers me and step into the unknown, trusting that what is on the other side will be more abundant, beautiful, and holistic. To check whether I am gatekeeping, by withholding or hoarding information and resources. And to be willing to have uncomfortable conversations with other white people, in particular donors and institutional funders about racism, colonialism, and other oppressive norms that show up in nonprofit fundraising. 

At Virginia Community Voice, we’ve taken bold steps toward equity in fundraising through the creation of our Courageous Fundraising Principles, inspired by the Community-Centric Fundraising movement. 

A WORD ON URGENCY

Lea: The kind of culture shift we are calling for in nonprofits, philanthropy, and across all institutions is long-term, lifetime work. We know this. And, what if racism, sexism, colonialism, and all forms of oppression could be eradicated in your lifetime? How would you act?

We act with urgency and we invite you to act with urgency as well. The lives of my loved ones depend on it. The norms we are referencing that need to change — they create a cultural numbness to the devaluing, harming and killing of Black and brown bodies. That is not OK.

It’s not okay that I feel fear for my black father, mother, sister, brothers, husband and friends every time they walk outside. I pray this will not be the same fear that I have for my five month old son as he grows up. I want a different future for him, in which he does not have to bear the perpetual fear and exhaustion of all of us who came before him. 

Will you join us? 

References: 

  1. Dismantling Racism Works adapted by The Centre for Community Organizations. (n.d.) White Supremacy Culture in Organizations. The Centre for Community Organizations. https://coco-net.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Coco-WhiteSupCulture-ENG4.pdf 
  2. Dorsey, C., Bradach, J. and Kim, P. (2020, May) Racial Equity and Philanthropy: Disparities in Funding for Leaders of Color Leave Impact on the Table. The Bridgespan Group. www.bridgespan.org/bridgespan/Images/articles/racial-equity-and-philanthropy/racial-equity-and-philanthropy.pdf 
  3. Medina, S. (2017, June 14). The Diversity Gap in the Nonprofit Sector. Philanthropy News Digest. Candid. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/columns/the-sustainable-nonprofit/the-diversity-gap-in-the-nonprofit-sector 
  4. Talley, H. (2019, August 12). White Women Doing White Supremacy in Nonprofit Culture. Tzedek Social Justice Fund. https://tzedeksocialjusticefund.org/white-women-doing-white-supremacy-in-nonprofit-culture
  5. Tomkin, A.R. (2020, May 26).How White People Conquered the Nonprofit Industry. Nonprofit Quarterly. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/how-white-people-conquered-the-nonprofit-industry/ 
  6. Wallace, N. (2019, July 9). Nonprofit Leaders of Color Speak Out About Struggles and Triumphs. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. www.philanthropy.com/article/nonprofit-leaders-of-color-speak-out-about-struggles-and-triumphs/?cid=gen-sign-in

Lea Whitehurst-Gibson is the Founder and CEO of Virginia Community Voice. Previously, Lea was the Director of Community Engagement at Thriving Cities Group. She used to be Executive Director of Richmonders Involved to Strengthen our Communities (RISC), where she organized 1,000 people annually from 20 diverse congregations to stand together for just practices. Lea has a degree in theology from Elim Bible College. She is a seasoned community organizer, a Black woman, a wife, and a mother. Lea and her husband are foster parents and live on Richmond’s Northside.

As Strategic Partnerships Director for Virginia Community Voice, Bekah Kendrick manages fund development and communications. Her previous roles include Technical & Grant Writer for Thriving Cities Group and Director of Community Impact at United Way of Greater Richmond & Petersburg, where she managed $1.8 million in grant funding to Richmond-area nonprofits. Bekah has a Bachelors in American Studies from The College of William & Mary and Master’s in English from Virginia Commonwealth University. Bekah is a white woman, a wife, and a mother, who enjoys being near the water with her husband and son.

This essay is part of the Richmond Racial Equity Essays series, exploring what racial equity looks like in Richmond, Virginia. It is reprinted here with permission. Check out the full project, the accompanying videos, and the podcast.

Editorial: Learn To Follow… The Work White People Must Do

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In a time of nation wide protests against racist police violence, RVA Magazine Managing Partner Landon Shroder urges white people to do the work, support Black protesters, and follow their lead in standing against a system of white supremacy.

When I worked in Iraq, I became familiar with the phenomenon known as the “fog of war.” The “fog” was an inability to properly understand events while they were happening around us. In the chaos of the moment, we became emotional, passionate, and zealous creatures — it was only after the fog lifted that we could assess the situation with clarity and purpose. 

America is currently in the fog of war; one part of this is white people who are struggling to make sense of what is happening around them. 

Photo by Christopher Brown III

The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have reminded us (again) of the very worst forms of structural racism in America. And as white people, we must repeatedly acknowledge this to one another. Their deaths were overt, cold-blooded, and malign. Yet as white people who are bestowed with privilege and access by virtue of birth, we can never truly comprehend what this might be like. Each of our assumptions in this regard is well-intentioned at best, villainous at worst. All white people are beneficiaries of systems and structures that have allowed these deaths to continue — then, and now. 

Our never-ending national neurosis originates from this unreconciled, morally bankrupt position, and a four-hundred-year history that is built on subjugation, oppression, and exploitation of Black communities. This is the hard truth that all white Americans must accept before we can move forward as a unified country with a common purpose. 

There has never been a more opportune time for us as white people to do the work. The uprisings in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, Atlanta, and in 70 other towns and cities throughout America prove that there are people out there willing to take risks to advance the cause of human dignity and respect — even if the result looks imperfect on the street and on the news.

For white people who have been caught unawares by the anger, rage, and spontaneity, I will say this: There is no way for us to truly comprehend the emotional and generational trauma that comes from hundreds of years of state directed violence, political and economic exclusion, and social marginalization against Black communities in America. 

George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery are only the most recent names, joining a centuries-long list of Black people who have been murdered with impunity in America. 

Because of this, silence can no longer be an option. White silence and our deranged ability to explain away the deaths of Black people at the hands of police and vigilantes, our impotence in having awkward but necessary conversation about race, and our inability to even show a modicum of empathy towards communities that have been forever divorced from the core values we claim to cherish as Americans has put us on the collision course we are now experiencing. 

Photo by Christopher Brown III

The intensity of the past week and the feeling of desperation on streets throughout America should not feel misplaced when viewed through this lens. And because our lived experience does not give us the tools to fully grasp this reality as white people, we have to remain self-critical and intellectually vigilant so we can be better: better friends, better colleagues, better Americans, and better human beings. 

Naturally, there will be those who read this and dismiss it straight away. That is emblematic of an America that will never change, lost to a culture war of their own making. But for those of us who want to put in the work, the uprisings this past week have presented an opportunity to grow beyond the limitations of our immediate understanding.

In this fog of war, understand that there is no strategy that will immediately alter the outcome — not today, not tomorrow. This is a long game, built on the longest game in American history. Yet within this complexity there is one strategy that we must all recognize: In this moment, it is our Black friends and colleagues who will take the lead and shape this movement in a way that is best suited to their own community’s needs. 

We do not have to be passive observers in what is happening though. We can be active participants in anti-racism by making space, supplying resources, and amplifying Black voices. 

As white people of a certain age, some of us will inevitably struggle (more than others) to make sense of what is happening on the street, negotiating the meaning behind certain actions: why curfews are being disobeyed, why people are “rioting,” what is acceptable collateral damage, and what relationship you should have with the police. This is ok — you can support this movement and still be uncomfortable with civil disobedience. You can recognize the police, but still understand they have abused their power and lack accountability. You can understand each of these things, while acknowledging that in 2020 things are still not equal in America — the ghastly murder of George Floyd by the police proved this. 

This is putting in the work. And where each of these things connect, the fog of war will be most dense. So hold the course, take direction, and make space, emotionally and intellectually for our Black friends and colleagues. The time has come for us to step up and be effective allies in the fight for the soul of America. 

To all of our Black friends and colleagues — wherever you lead, we will follow. We are right there behind you. 

Landon Shroder
Managing Partner, RVA Magazine

Top Photo by Christopher Brown III

Op-Ed: Bad Faith Broke Us. Only Good Faith Can Fix Us.

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“The soul of this nation is sick because of the bad faith of white supremacy. That bad faith both made us what we are, and continues to break us apart. But there is a cure.“

As 2019 approaches its end, and as the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts unveils Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War statue (a monument to black power and pride created as a direct response to Richmond’s Confederate monuments), it feels appropriate for us here in Virginia to take one last moment to recall that this year marked an important if ignoble anniversary: 400 years ago, in 1619, Africans were first sold into bondage in the mainland English North American colonies. And it happened right here in Virginia.

Over the course of two centuries, racial slavery became ubiquitous in those colonies that would become the United States, especially here in Virginia and in Richmond. By the onset of the Civil War, about 40 percent of Richmond’s total population was enslaved. In addition to being the capital of both Virginia and the rebel states, Richmond also had the dubious distinction of housing the nation’s second-largest slave market in Shockoe Bottom. Before 1860, our city’s single biggest industry was buying, selling, and trading enslaved human beings.

It is commonplace in many circles nowadays to call racial slavery America’s “original sin.” But it is impossible to understand — and ultimately atone for — the sin of racial slavery without first coming to terms with the mindset and conditions that created it in the first place. In recent years, scholars like Richmond’s own Rev. Ben Campbell have helped us understand that slavery “was a fundamental strategy” of the European conquest of North America, enabling the colonizers to displace and in many cases slaughter this continent’s indigenous populations and exploit its resources. It’s crucial to recognize that underpinning slavery and colonization was a religious doctrine.

It’s hard to untangle whether this theology animated the conquest and plunder of the New World or whether it was simply and cynically used as a justification. But either way, faith was a fundamental element of the European theft of this continent. Animating European exploration and colonization of the New World was something that has been called the “Doctrine of Discovery.” The Doctrine of Discovery held that European Christians were entitled to take as their own any property held by, and conquer any lands controlled by, non-Christians, and that Christians could subjugate, annihilate, or enslave any non-Christian inhabitants of captured territories.

It is important to note that those who advanced this doctrine of Christian supremacy could point to the Bible itself as justification. According to the Book of Deuteronomy, when the Israelites enter the promised land, they are to utterly wipe out the Canaanites who were living there. They are to spare no one — man, woman, or child — and they may seize the Canaanites’ property for themselves.

Within this framework, Christians, who had long regarded themselves as the new Israelites, could view the New World as a new Promised Land. And all non-Christians — like Native Americans — became contemporary Canaanites. In this religious spirit, European Christians asserted that their conquest of the New World was ordained by God Himself in the Bible. 

It is impossible to understate how influential the Doctrine of Discovery was. Eventually, legislators even enshrined it into American law. And it was the implementation of this Doctrine that gave rise to racial slavery in the New World. 

As colonists in Virginia established a tobacco economy on the land they took from the natives, they continually sought to maximize profits by looking for cheaper and more expendable labor. At first, Virginia’s wealthy landowners solved this problem by importing indentured servants from England. But as the tobacco industry boomed, they increasingly turned to African slave labor. 

Whereas a bondservant worked for a prescribed period of time, an enslaved person was presumed to be under the dominion of his master for life. A master could beat a slave as he saw fit. If a slave were to die as a result of his master’s wrath, the master could not be considered guilty of any crime. Additionally, slavery was regarded as a hereditary status — any child born to a slave was automatically to be considered a slave.

The legal distinction between an enslaved person of African descent and a bondservant of English descent came from the same mindset that produced the Doctrine of Discovery; that Christians were superior to non-Christians, and that Christians were commanded to dominate and enslave — or else, kill — inferior nonbelievers. Thus, the earliest slave codes in Virginia distinguished enslaved Africans from the rest of the population, not along racial lines but rather along religious ones: “Christian” was one class of people, non-Christian another, with “Christian” understood to be synonymous with “a person of English descent.” 

It is again important to note that those who advanced this doctrine of Christian supremacy pointed to the Bible as justification. The Hebrew Bible regards Israelite and non-Israelite slaves differently, and non-Israelite slaves could be treated much more harshly. Again, with the simple move of regarding English Christians as the new Israelites and non-Christians — like Africans — as Canaanites, people of English descent justified the slave system they developed and implemented as divinely ordained.

What complicated matters was that some enslaved Africans were themselves Christian. By the 19th century, many Africans practiced Christianity. Others were baptized prior to boarding the slave ships. Still others converted in the New World, some by choice and some by force. So, to maintain a distinction between masters and slaves, legislators quickly transformed slavery from a religious caste system into a racial one.

The fact of this transformation from Christian supremacy to white supremacy — which involved the very invention of “race” as a concept and the racist attitudes and systems that necessarily follow from it — can help us understand why those who perpetuated and defended racial slavery did so with religious zeal.

And it can also help us understand why, almost immediately after Richmond fell to Union forces, Richmond’s elite mobilized against extending legal equality to the newly freed slaves. It can help us understand why, as soon as Reconstruction ended, Virginia’s white leaders instituted a system of legal racial separation and inequality. It can help us see why white southern leaders in the 1950’s advocated “massive resistance” to school integration and desegregation. It can help us see why Richmond is today, sixty-five years after Brown v. Board of Education, more segregated by race than it has ever been in its history, and how the segregated map of the city correlates perfectly to inequities in everything from income to wealth to educational outcomes to access to healthcare to air and water quality to life expectancy.

In other words, there is a through-line from colonialism to racial slavery to Jim Crow and segregation to massive resistance and white flight to the drug war, mass incarceration, and the eviction crisis. That through-line is white supremacy, which is rooted in the Christian supremacist Doctrine of Discovery, which in turn is rooted in a distorted, demented, and dangerous interpretation of Scripture.

The fact that this through-line spans our country’s entire history and continues still today means that, while white supremacy’s roots are religious, it has over time become etched into the entire infrastructure of our country. Thus, whether one is Christian or not, religious or not, avowedly racist or not, we all in one way or another are impacted by or implicated in economic and social systems shaped by the oppressive theology of the colonizers. We will therefore never be able to heal our city, our commonwealth, or our country, without treating the underlying infection. The sickness at the heart of our society is bad faith. And the only thing that can overcome bad faith is good faith.

What might that look like?

In my experience as a faith leader, I have come to understand that the content of one’s faith typically depends on their spiritual and intellectual orientation and their interpretation and application of sacred text and received tradition. Many people assume that it would be the other way around. But that is a mistake. Take, for example, the famous biblical story of the Binding of Isaac (Genesis chapter 22), in which the Hebrew patriarch Abraham attempts to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Though Abraham is typically understood to be following God’s orders, upon close inspection of the original Hebrew, God’s command in the story is not so clear. Abraham could have understood God’s instruction in one of two ways: either God ordered Abraham to bind, slaughter, and burn his son, or God ordered Abraham to take him up to the highest of heights in honor or in homage. Which interpretation to follow depended entirely on Abraham’s spiritual orientation. Does Abraham believe in a God who would order an atrocity, or is Abraham’s God a deity who calls for the bound to be released, for the lowly to be lifted up, and for the broken to be restored?

It is similarly within the power of contemporary believers to choose whether ours is a God of domination or a God of love, whether ours is a God who instructs us to divide and conquer or to unite and uplift. And if we believe in a God who lifts the fallen, heals the broken, and frees the enslaved, then it is not only possible but obligatory to interpret sacred text and religious imperatives in a way that aligns with such a God, and similarly to reject understandings that could never emanate from such a God.

Those of us who don’t believe, or who don’t identify with a particular religious tradition, face a similar, if less supernatural, choice: are our most cherished values power and control, or kindness and equity? Are we guided by a desire for acquisition and dominion, or by an impulse for justice and liberation? And if we cherish the latter virtues over the former, then we must demand of ourselves and others alignment with those values, and that also includes our laws and social systems. 

Reorienting ourselves in these ways is how we repair what those first colonizers broke. Only by exalting love, justice, and peace as prime directives can we undo and utterly root out attitudes, customs, laws, and systems that mock the infinite dignity and equal value of every human being. Only good faith can repair what bad faith has torn asunder. Bad faith broke us. Only good faith will fix us.

Imagine, for a moment, what our city and our commonwealth could look like if our most deeply held belief, if our highest ideal, were affirming that every human being is equally and infinitely valuable, and that we are therefore all of us obligated to lift each other up. 

I imagine we would say that, 65 years after Brown v. Board, and 50 years after the Civil Rights movement, it was past time to dismantle the systems that perpetuate segregation and inequality. I imagine we would stop insisting that statues of Confederate “heroes” deserve prime real estate on Monument Ave. while tens of thousands of human beings in our city, — many of them descendants of the people Lee, Jackson, Davis, and Stewart fought to keep enslaved — don’t have access to adequate and affordable housing. And I imagine that we would demand one’s zip code no longer determine their life expectancy, and that the color of one’s skin no longer determine their prospects for escaping poverty.

As we complete the 400th anniversary of slavery in what would become the United States, white supremacy is ascendant, inequality is more rampant than ever, and our “Capital City of Slavery” remains segregated.

The soul of this nation is sick because of the bad faith of white supremacy. That bad faith both made us what we are, and continues to break us apart. But there is a cure. We can heal ourselves. For though bad faith broke us, good faith can fix us. As we approach a new year, in this city and a new decade — let’s let the healing begin.

Top Image: Painting by Richard C. Moore

Bigfoot Erotica, Politics, and the Culture of Kink-Shaming

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I love sex.

I know, it’s shocking to hear from a young cis woman from a Southern conservative background and family. It’s honestly shocking to hear from any person in America outside of a comfortable social setting, when you’re sitting around with your girlfriends in private, discussing which vibrators get you there faster or which of your ex-partners delivered the best orgasm. And honestly, some friend groups don’t have the confidence to discuss those details because if you look at numbers, 23 percent of public schools in America still teach abstinence as an effective form of birth control. Only about 50 percent of young adults learned how to use forms of birth control, and less than 6 percent of adolescents reported those classes including any information on the LGBTQ community. I know mine didn’t.

After Republican Congressional Candidate for the 5th District Denver Riggleman was busted for delving into the less popular, but very present, Bigfoot erotica kink on his private Instagram, it triggered his opponent to take aim. Leslie Cockburn proceeded to berate him on Twitter for the image, writing that he is “not what we need on Capitol Hill.” As if someone’s sexual preferences determine whether they are equipped to help run a country–definitely not his opinions, beliefs, or politics.

The fact Cockburn could use a poorly-drawn, poorly-photoshopped gag photo of Riggleman’s face on a crude bigfoot illustration to distract an entire population (outside a few angry fellow Democrats on Twitter) from the fact Riggleman has ties to white supremacists and has campaigned with Corey Stewart not only hurts her cause, but uses a fetish to both normalize and humorize the very dangerous rise of white supremacy, as well as shame yet another kink.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not into bigfoot erotica. I didn’t even realize that was a kink, but on reading about it, I wasn’t surprised. Internet Rule 34 should squelch any further astonishment. Around 75 percent of people have at least one fetish and in America, around 40 percent of people love good, old-fashioned whips and chains. Yet there isn’t a single form of widely, socially acceptable sex in America outside of the missionary position. Even with the rise of best-selling smut series “50 Shades of Grey,” main character Christian Grey’s backstory and unhealthy, abusive entrance into the world of S&M communicates that the people who engage fetishes are damaged, unstable people riddled with past abuse. Not to say the two are mutually exclusive, but it furthers the narrative that anyone who likes to wear handcuffs in bed is somehow illicit or depraved.

If you can look past the Amazon pulp fiction smut novels, one of which allegedly being Riggleman’s own creation based on years of inside jokes with his military pals, you’ll find just another group of people into cryptozoological erotica. Okay, so maybe not totally mainstream, but there are honestly weirder kinks out there and my philosophy is as long as what you do is safe and consensual, it shouldn’t matter what that thing is. Sex is just another part of being human, and it should be accepted as part of our everyday lives, just like brushing your teeth.

When I was in college, walking around half-naked on stage during our annual production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was my happy place. No body shaming, total absence of gender constrictions, complete acceptance of every sexuality under the sun, and absolutely no kink shaming. Rather the opposite. All that mattered is everything we talked about or did was safe, sane, and consensual. Consensual sex was a turn on because if someone was willing to let you tie them up and hit them with a paddle, there was a degree of trust, love, and arousal there that’s hard to beat.

The reality was harsher when I returned to Richmond and remembered there are people whose sexualities are still closeted, whose kinks and sexual desires are considered deviant, taboo, even sinful or evil (sometimes rooted in an antiquated religious foundation). There are people who contract easily avoidable STDs or friends that get pregnant either because they incorrectly used a form of birth control or they had no access to it. According to the CDC, as of April this year the number of people contracting sexual diseases in Virginia and Washington, D.C. has reached epidemic levels. Virginia has seen an increase in chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis cases.

There are many people who will never be sexually free. I’m currently experiencing an insurance drought, and cannot afford to spend over $200 each month on birth control pills because the government told me no. Perhaps if political candidates focused on improving healthcare plans rather than each others’ kinks, this wouldn’t be an issue.

Fostering the notion that sex, sexual education, or kink is wrong perpetrates the same unhealthy behavior that increases the number of teen pregnancies and STIs, and keeps LGBTQ sex education out of the conversation. This isn’t a new idea, but now this mentality has entered into political discourse as a weapon against a political candidate who has potentially dug his own grave. It calls into question why we are more offended by the idea that a political candidate has inside jokes with his friends or, god forbid, a sex life, than the fact he publicly flirts with white supremacists.

Degrading human life is the most insolent form of perversion we can achieve. When Leslie Cockburn tweeted that photo, she outwardly suggested that being horny for Sasquatch is more perverse than believing black, brown, and Jewish people are lesser than white people. And just so we’re clear, it’s not. Now, this hyper-obsession with sexual freedom is finding its way into our politics, it’s just one more malicious way to distract voters from visceral problems and oppress anyone who isn’t a straight white man who loves his vanilla life–boring. I’m a rocky road girl, myself.

Everyone needs a way to get their rocks off. Just add Bigfoot to the list.

RVA Global: Taking on Trump’s Tweet about “White” South Africa

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Last summer, my VCU study-abroad students and I stood in the dim but pretty interior of a little house made of corrugated tin in the Soweto township of Johannesburg, South Africa. With us was Thulani Madondo, a 2012 CNN hero, a vibrant, fast-talking South African who was recognized for founding the Kliptown Youth Program and supporting hundreds of Kliptown students in their efforts to “lift themselves out of poverty through education.” ‘

Kliptown is one of the oldest sections of Soweto, home to more than 40,000 people who live without running water, plumbing, or electricity. Overcoming this type of poverty is nearly impossible in South Africa, yet Madondo could tell story after story about the successful students he has guided through his programs, including the 17 Kliptown Youth Program students who have graduated from university. 

And yet, as we stood there in June of 2017, in the largest township in South Africa where more than 1 million people live in similar conditions, Madondo only wanted to talk about one thing: How we could have voted for [President] Trump when the world watches?  It was the same at every place we visited, and my students were no longer surprised. As soon as our American accents were noticed, South Africans would engage with us in a state of near-constant bewilderment. “This is who you picked to replace Obama? Don’t you know that what you do affects us too?”

This is what makes Trump’s tweet about protecting “white” farms in South Africa so troubling and obviously nefarious for both Americans and South Africans. For those of you who missed it, yesterday the president tweeted, “I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers. ‘South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.'”

Hearing the deep unrest from South Africans about the US election was a curious juxtaposition: Their concern with the US presidency felt like a warning from a people who knew and deeply understood the dangers of a corrupt president, and usually, our conversations ended with that same sense of bewilderment. At the same time, I was having these conversations in South Africa with my students, their highways were lined with political signs pleading with South Africans to rid the government, the country, of their own power-hungry and corrupt president, Jacob Zuma.

Like all townships in South Africa, Soweto is populated almost exclusively by black Africans. This history of townships in the country is intimately tied with South Africa’s apartheid past. As the government codified discrimination and racism into law – apartheid means “separateness” in Afrikaans – people in power enacted laws to move black and other non-white Africans from their homes and restrict their populations to townships like Soweto outside of Johannesburg and The Flats outside of Cape Town. It was a feat of brute force in response to a deep and basal fear: The European explorers who first touched the coast of South Africa in 1498, and colonized Cape Town by 1652, would become the white Afrikaners of today. However, this original Dutch colony and its modern descendants have always been just a small fraction of the overall population.

Photo by Zahra Natalie Govender

The fear that apartheid-era Afrikaners felt about their place in of South Africa and the domination they used to control it became part of their national identity, and shaped the apartheid regime into one that attempted to reduce access to resources and restrict the rights of Africans without white skin. 

The language of apartheid stoked that fear while hammering at what could be lost if whiteness were swamped. D.F. Malan enacted apartheid in 1948, telling other Afrikaners, “Let us stand together, let us preserve our nationality and with our nationality our national character.” In 1964, the Minister for Coloured Affairs, P.W. Botha, told parliament that “I am one of those who believe that there is no permanent home for even a section of the Bantu [black Africans] in the white area of South Africa and the destiny of South Africa depends on this essential point. If the principle of permanent residence for the black man in the area of the white is accepted then it is the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it in this country.”

This is language equating whiteness with being civilized, underlined by the fear of being attacked and overwhelmed by blackness. This kind of racist language has been adopted by white nationalists and supremacists globally – including here in the US.

When neighboring Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, a majority of the white people who had lived there, including Afrikaners, fled. Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe until a coup in 2017, eventually resorted to tactics including violent seizure of lands from white farmers in an attempt to redistribute farms to black Africans. These policies failed for a variety of reasons and plunged the country into economic chaos. Yet the discord in Zimbabwe illustrated for decades everything the apartheid-loving Afrikaners had feared: blackness coming for what white Africans had worked for. As they watched, it was easy for some Afrikaners and other white Africans to fall back on the original sin of apartheid: the idea of baasskap – white supremacy, or white domination, specifically in the face of an unstoppable black population.

So the words of Donald Trump wrote on Twitter stoke old and deep fears used to perpetuate the mythos of white supremacy and are racist at their very core. 

A classic dog-whistle to remind white South Africans – but more importantly, white folks in his fan base in the US, they are vulnerable to uncontrolled people of color. And that people of color must be controlled. As with everything the 45th President of the United States says, it is irrelevant that it is not true: deaths of white farmers in South Africa have dropped each year for decades, and they are but a tiny fraction of the overall murder rate in the country.

Additionally, the government of South Africa has been very clear in their response that no one, in fact, is seizing any land from white farmers. In fact, the South African government has already voiced their concern to the US Embassy. The South African Times has reported, “Dirco also urged the Charge d’Affaires to indicate to Washington that the people of South Africa‚ of all races‚ are working together through Parliament and other legal platforms to find a solution to this historic challenge and that President Trump’s tweet serves only to polarise debate on this sensitive and crucial matter.”

There are some profound similarities between South Africa’s apartheid history and US Jim Crow laws, segregation, and the Indian Removal Act. Trump’s Tweet is yet another call-and-response based on the vein that unites all of these policies: invoke the fears that cocoon the white supremacy of South Africa, and hear it reflected back from his racist fan base in the US. As my students learned, who we elect in the US does matter on the world stage. For both the US and South Africa, we have decades of reckoning left to achieve any type of racial reconciliation after the end of these policies. In the meantime, there are far more pressing concerns for each country than a false narrative about farms being taken. For both countries, the overwhelming concern is a black population in need. In need of clean drinking water, equal access to resources, and, as Madondo in Kliptown might say, opportunities for young people of color to rise out of the cycle of poverty. 

At a time when hate crimes in America are at a five-year high and white supremacists feel free to walk the streets and openly run for political office on essentially baasskap platforms, this Tweet from our President directed at white South Africa isn’t just about South Africa.  It’s about our lingering demons at home and is another aim at stoking the fires of white supremacy that are burning in the US and Europe to spread beyond the local to a global scale. 

White Nationalists Are Still Winning

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One year has gone by since James Fields, Jr. killed Heather Heyer and wounded 30 others at Unite the Right in Charlottesville last August, the largest gathering of white supremacists and fascists in decades. 

Since then, nothing has changed. In fact, things have gotten worse. After the tragedy, there were signs of encouragement that reduced some of the shock. The strong showing of anti-fascists, anti-racists, and the faith-based community in confronting white supremacy on the streets of Charlottesville was heartening, even if many of us believed that this kind of event would be a one-time occurrence. 

Faith Based Community Confronting White Supremacist

Unfortunately, that feeling was short-lived. The next day, President Trump took to the airwaves and proclaimed that “there were some very fine people on both sides.” By good people, he meant those chanting Nazi slogans like “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us.” And with his statement, he legitimized the fascist ideologies that brought thousands of white supremacists to Charlottesville.

Making synonymous white supremacists, white nationalists, Nazis, and fascists with those who would confront them only served the worst excesses and impulses of the American public. 

Can we really feign outrage that there are now four openly anti-Semitic white nationalists, one of whom is a self-identified Nazi, running on Republican tickets this mid-term? This is not a coincidence or stroke of bad luck; these men have been emboldened and legitimized from the podiums of their party. Their message connects with what they hear from the president and the condemnation they don’t hear from other Republican leaders. It has become legitimate. It has become mainstream.  

A literal Nazi ran unopposed in Illinois’ 3rd District during the Republican primary. After being exposed, he still received over 20,000 votes from people in his district. Why? Because he ran as a Republican and that was good enough. The particulars don’t matter  (#mainstreaming). 

And yet, the mainstreaming of white supremacy since Unite the Right doesn’t stop there. It has seeped into all aspects of our political discourse. One does not have to see a robe and hood or a swastika tattoo to recognize the engine driving this process. In fact, the groups that marched in Charlottesville remain on the fringe and are fractured (for now) even while their views become more publicly accepted. 

The White Supremacist Lines at Unite the Right

The new frontline has become the normalization of xenophobia, allowing sensible people to feel like there is a justification for interning brown children and separating them from their parents. It is the “othering” of Muslims in the form of a ban that is wrapped in the guise of national security; it is referring to African countries as “shit holes,” while praising historically homogeneous white countries like Norway; it is the public shaming of black athletes like Colin Kaepernick and Lebron James as unpatriotic and dumb; it is the fusing of populist resentment from the white working class with the worst kinds of nationalism to create a tribalistic worldview that perceives constant threats, both economic and physical, from grossly misrepresented black and brown communities. This worldview effectively says “you can only be safe when you are around other white people who think like you,” and it has revived the worst kinds of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and convinced 30 percent of America that the “liberal press,” the check on this kind of rampant misinformation, is their enemy. 

This is the mainstreaming of white supremacy and fascism, and we can’t even begin to comprehend the downstream effects of this movement.

America has always grappled with these demons, and it is naive to believe that Trump is the cause. He is merely the effect. Yet policy differences aside, we have always had presidents who could, at the very least, tame these demons and curb their worst excesses. Remember, civility in America always starts at the top. Without this, we are now playing constant defense. We are back to explaining to our friends, relatives, and colleagues why Nazis, white supremacists, and white nationalists do not deserve a right to rally publicly. We are back to rationalizing and bartering with people who feel they can openly discriminate – even if they are ignorant of what they are saying and doing. As one of my colleagues at RVA Mag would say, “they are colonizers.” We are back to defending the very notion of anti-fascism from the same generation whose parents fought to free Europe from the Nazi scourge.

I am back to explaining to my relatives who vote Republican that their candidate this midterm, Corey Stewart, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the very same white supremacists who planned Unite the Right last year. The same people who chanted “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us.” Nonetheless, they will still vote Republican. Because the mainstreaming process has convinced them they are under threat. Not from the Nazis or white supremacists who hate them, but from immigrants, communities of color, and the liberal media who are trying to silence them. 

Counter-Protestors at Unite the Right

This weekend there will be multiple events in both Charlottesville and Washington, DC. The event in DC will be attended by former KKK Grand Wizard, David Duke and Jason Kessler, the organizer of Unite the Right, upping the potential for violent escalation. From the map of the staging areas the DC police are attempting to keep both sides apart. But as we have seen from recent rallies in Portland and Berkeley, the best-laid security plans are only as good as the willingness of people to follow them. 

While I will be there in my capacity as a journalist, I will also be there in support of anti-fascists, anti-racists, and those who would deny a platform for ideologies rooted in violence and hatred. I have no other choice. We can no longer pretend that sensible moderation and conversation will somehow derail the mainstreaming process of white supremacy and fascism. Those of us who have the ability to raise attention to this must. Those of us in the media must not hide behind the thin veneer of neutrality any longer. To do so will be to our own eventual detriment.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in a new book titled “Fascism: A Warning,” summed up the state of play in modern America. “[Trump] convinced enough voters in the right states that he was a teller of blunt truths, a masterful negotiator, and an effective champion of American interests. That he is none of those things should disturb our sleep, but there is a larger cause for unease. Trump is the first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history.”

We must rally. We must resist. That is what we must remember one year later.