Insidious Racism

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Before I begin my reflection for today, I want to say a quick thank you to all the people who have gone out of their ways to open up museums for us and to meet with us, despite the snow, both yesterday and today.
Today we went to Medgar Ever’s house and the site of his 1963 assassination. Decades later, there were still bloodstains everywhere. On the night he was killed, his family had to drive him to the white hospital in the back of a station wagon and fight really hard to get him admitted. Many years in the future, his murderer died in the same hospital, having been freely admitted. After we were done there, we went to meet with Ms. Flonzie Brown-Wright and then on to the Rosedale Freedom Project. At RFP, we met kids from the Rosedale school system. We sang freedom songs together like we’d never sung them before and we had some conversations about their core principles and our various stories. The problems we face at my school paled in comparison with the issues they faced there. For instance, when I was younger, my school principal yelled at me when I asked her for a bandaid. At the time, this felt like a huge injustice and it is still an unpleasant memory. However, while we were at RFP, one of the girls told a story about how her principle intentionally spit in her face with no provocation and she had to focus really hard on her education to keep from responding in kind. It’s sad that there are so many people who can’t worry about the little things in life, because it means that they have worse problems. I was really inspired by the drive and optimism of those kids and I want to continue volunteering with them. Afterwards, we watched part of a film about Little Rock Central High 50 years after integration and I noticed so many insidious ways that ignorance and racism crept into the minds of well-meaning people. This is a huge problem at my school, because we have an idea of what it means to be the good guy which doesn’t account for micro-aggressions or small injustices. Because everyone thinks they’re being the good person, and doesn’t want to unpack that and challenge their self in that regard, nothing changes. I want to give an assembly with Kendall when we get back to school and talk about biases and issues at Park and how to confront them.

-Rachael

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