I am extremely excited to be nearing the end of my dissertation journey and of course terrified on many levels. Hoping to see lots of familiar faces at the art show/reception I am holding directly following my defense. Here’s hoping that both go well.
Until I was asked to do so by my friend Nadia (author of Listen Girlfriends) to blog my thoughts about Miley Cyrus, I wasn’t aware that I’d already incubated and in fact unknowingly birthed a principled argument against doing so. Unbeknownst to me, my thoughts had already coalesced like the layer of fat on a cooling pot of greens. I would not add to the already out of control Miley Cyrus media machine by contributing my voice to propping up someone so undeserving.
And now, mere hours after coming to this realization, I am throwing this vow out the window. Why? Honestly, I am not sure. But I am guessing that it has to a lot to do with the fact that I told friend that I would and I enjoy being a person of my word. But more-so, because I believe the Listen Girlfriends community is the right place for these kinds of conversations and if Nadia thinks it’s worth me writing the Web’s 14 billion blog entry on Miley Cyrus, I am going to take her word for that and trust she wont take me to task on my not-too-sunny impression of Ms. Cyrus.
Enough disclaiming…
This all started on New Year’s Eve. I was, as a result of circumstances involving a broken down vehicle, a wedding, two dogs, and three cats, alone watching TV at my outlaws’ house (I would call them my in-laws, but Virginia has some marriage equality problems). Given the opportunities to watch other people’s cable, I somehow find myself compelled to watching things I would never give a second thought to in my own home. I call this phenomenon “Hotelevisuality,” and it inspired me to settled on Fuse (a channel I actually have at home and have never previously watched). The channel was featuring a “Miley Cyrus Takeover” and–overcome by boredom, despair from the absolute beat down my beloved Hokie football team took in the Sun Bowl, and a severely misplaced sense of justice–I committed to investing some time and thought into an hour or more Cyrus related programming.
In fact, I was feeling proud of myself, open-minded, committed to doing the kind of in depth immersion necessary to making the Survey of Popular Culture course I am teaching during the 2014 spring semester that much more successful. I was being non-reactionary, liberal-hearted, generous in recognizing how unfair it was of me to have talked trash about someone, something I wasn’t as familiar with as I needed to be.
An hour and a half later, I found myself mourning each of the 90 minutes I’d contributed to Fuse and felt profoundly disappointed in the paucity of trash I’d been talking…I’d really dropped on that one.
There was much Facebook commenting, as 2014 drew closer and closer, about the mind-numbing experience of watching Miley Cyrus videos and related media content for 90 minutes and her remarkably unfortunate performance on Dick Clark’s (Ryan Seacrest’s) New Year’s Rocking Eve. The thoughts presented here are the collected, organized, and cleaned up rants that began that evening.
When you dare to have a problem with Miley Cyrus an interesting thing happens; you immediately get branded a conservative. I found that not matter how I tried to shape my objection, what those who I was involved in friendly debate with read was the generalized shock, horror, and outrage we might attribute to cardigan-wearing minivan pilots in the WASPy suburbs of Americaland. As I ranted, albeit inarticulately at points, I was genuinely confused that the responses I received seemed to assume that 1) I thought Cyrus was being too sexual, 2) that I thought she was not intelligent or conscious what her choices meant, and 3) that I intended to infantilize Cyrus, denying her access to womanhood and the agency that comes along with that condition. Examples of these responses are below:
“I don’t agree with her sexualization of women of color, but did you see her SNL appearance?? It was hilarious, and her interview for Rolling Stone was witty. I think she’s a smart, smart girl.”
“Miley is uninhibited by her sexuality and doesn’t seem to give a shit that guys think she’s slutty.”
“I think it’s strange that people want to keep her as this Hannah Montana figure…is she supposed to stay 16 years old forever??”
Little could be further from the truth on all three of these accounts. In truth, I don’t have a problem that Miley Cyrus is brazen about displaying her sexuality…I have a problem with HOW she does so. And my problem isn’t of the sort that advocates censoring her videos or announcing that she is a danger to young girls or demanding that she be a more responsible celebrity. My problem is of the sort that will keep me from wasting future minutes on her music videos, turning the dial when I hear her voice, and rumbling with generalized curmudgeonism about how profoundly Pop music sucks these days.
My thoughts are pretty simple. The Miley Cyrus reinvention is obnoxious because 1) it’s tacky, 2) it’s boring, 3) it’s unoriginal, and 4) it’s based on difference-mongering that exploits the living shit out of some well-worn racial stereotypes. I have no issue with Miley being as sexual as she wants (in fact, I think it might actually be interesting if she pushed it lot further), but the fact that her public sexuality is played, contrived, inauthentic and fraught with race issues.
The Disney darling turns crazy bad girl story is literally so oft told these days that I find it inconceivable that it still carries any significance for anyone. I find Britney Spears’ version way more interesting and, frankly, more authentic. I really believed she went crazy and loved her bald head for it; Cyrus seems to be playing at crazy, but I don’t really buy it. Fergie is a more natural badass than Cyrus. Aguilera has the chops to justify her diva antics. Cyrus may never match Lohan’s impressive Bad Girl body of work. And Raven-Symoné’s romance with gender-queer America’s Top Model Contestant AzMarie Livingston is a world of fabulous post-Disney defiance that I simply cannot get enough of. Before she even started, Cyrus was outclassed.
On the same token, when looking at Cyrus’s new affinity for provocative videos with arbitrary nudity and nods to sexual deviance, we again see a hierarchy of skill that firmly lands Miley at the bottom. If we control for pop stars with questionable vocal abilities but a flair for making media buzz, I would have to say Gaga does this exponentially better. And the Cyrus team clearly knows this. There are an unbelievable number of shots in Cyrus’s videos that are thematic rip-offs of Gaga’s, from the use of monochromatic environments, texture and reflection, to surrealistic/hyperreal storytelling devices.
Cyrus’s new “I don’t give a fuck attitude and identity reinvention” is literally embarrassing when considered against the moves of masters of the form like Madonna, who makes her look like first week contestant on American Idol whose Dad told her that she could be anything she wanted to be because she is “special.”
And finally, the most glaring aspect of this reinvention, Cyrus’s emergent identity as the new white girl to run with the hip-hop set…still Cyrus is blazing paths on long paved sidewalks. Princess Superstar, Iggy Azalea and Kreayshawn can actually rhyme and don’t seem to exude that ‘I’m only here because I’ll hook up with anyone who asks me’ vibe. Not that those hook-ups aren’t hers to allocate, nor do I think there’s anything wrong with that. I just think it’s tacky as hell.
My point is that all of the things that are getting Cyrus attention are imitations–poor ones. Everything…from enlisting a little person as something of a stage mascot (Kid Rock), to attempting to twerk (Bounce/strip club culture), to dating her a bad-boy producer (extensive list), to pushing the line with racial stereotypes, to self-aware hipster irony… has already been done and it’s been done BETTER. And given that I DO believe she is smart, AND given that she grew up with a multi-platinum record selling recording artist for a father and thus presumably had more resources, exposure, contacts, training, grooming, educating in being marketable, and privilege than most pop artists, you’d think she could do better.
Cyrus’s reinventions seem incredibly calculated, strategically “shocking,” and totally dependent upon the sensibilities of others…so much so that she doesn’t even look “natural” in her own reinvention. It looks like a cobbled together hand me down that she’s desperately trying to fit herself into. And the axe that I REALLY have to grind is that this hyper public, enormously popular reinvention is fraught with some extremely problematic interpretations of blackness.
FACT: Miley Cyrus straight up told song writing duo, Rock City, (whom she only recently started working with), “I want something that feels black” when advising the force behind hits from Drake, B.o.B., R. Kelly, Rihanna, Ciera and more about what she wanted in her new song. Her VMA performance, more recent forays into “rapping,” and the fact that she clearly conflates her “turn to the dark side” as a “turn to the dark side” is not only strategic it’s silly and if you have the patience to take it seriously….insulting. The fact that she is now a “bad girl” and that being a bad girl equates to adopting black cultural forms, sexualizing the black female body to the point of objecthood (more on this later), singling out black masculinity as her preferred object of sexual desire, and exploiting the shock value of brazenly playing out fascination with other categories of difference (like grinding on and squeezing the breast of the random little person she keeps on stage with her these days), amounts to a rather calculated and coordinated effort to push buttons that are based on rather sloppy re-deployments of age old stereotypes, well-worn persona, and recycled visual imagery. It’s just plain lazy…and profitable.
I think she is so fascinated with what she is appropriating that she is diving in head first. This is fan culture at its purest. And I think that many artists who make changes in the material they produce start as fans of something that inspires them. Through study, appreciation, exposure, mentoring, reverence, practice, experimentation and more, they find virtuosity in an art form that is not native to them. But they run before they walk. They understand the rules before they break them. They become familiar with something before they wholeheartedly critique or celebrate it.
Cyrus is obviously a fan of hip-hop, bounce, R&B and other “black” cultural forms. But she’s skipping over all the “understand and get good at this” part and simply appropriating the most visible, most shocking, most deviant symbols and imagery because they feel good (like leaning up against the washing machine during the spin cycle) and get her the most publicity. She’s riding the cameo bangwagon and is using her substantial riches to hire people who ARE good at these forms to produce and write the music for her. Sadly, the end result is the resounding statement, “that’s really all there is to these cultural forms.” Even worse she’s being celebrated as an original, as if she is doing something produced from her own talent, knowledge, sensibilities, or experiences.
Specifically, Cyrus seems to have some sort of fascination with what you might call black strip club culture, which might arguably be said of American culture at large if you consider how many commercials have co-opted the phrase “make it rain.” This fascination for Cyrus, however, seems to translate to attempting to twerk with her tongue out and physically harassing (slapping, grabbing, shaking, and motorboating) the rear end of every black woman in the vicinity. I challenge any reader to watch one of the most recent Miley Cyrus videos and find a black women on camera that is not treated in one or more of the following ways: 1) the black woman is not all the way in the frame (aka is reduced to a floating ass), 2) has her back side to the camera (that’s the side that matters apparently), 3) is being freakishly aggressively slapped, grabbed, or shaken (not stirred) by Cyrus or, 4) are involved in some sort of “circle-twerk” with Miley.
EXAMPLE: Let’s take the video “We Can’t Stop” (consequently, a song produced by Rock City). If you can make it through all the product placements you will see the following instances of the four phenomena I detailed above.
Here’s what’s even more amazing.
“We Can’t Stop” is a classic house party video in the tradition of the Beastie Boys’ “Fight For Your Right (to Party),” Janet Jackson’s “Go Deep,” and Gaga’s “Just Dance,” however in EVERY SINGLE party shot in this video, among the scenes packed crazed party goers, we see a bunch of skinny hipstery types, a couple of “thuggy” black dudes (one of which is literally eating money), but there is interestingly NO TRACE whatsoever of the three black women that cast in the scenes I detailed above. In the narrative arc of this video…and in Cyrus world write large, they were not “invited” to the party, not part of the general social atmosphere, but serve a very specific…and I would argue…rather disappointing function.
Again, my problem isn’t that Cyrus wants to celebrate this culture, but how.
If one were going to be fascinated by and want to give a nod to “black strip club culture,” one might want to do it like Rihanna did in her Pour It Up video. Not only is this video beautifully made, it interestingly celebrates strip club culture without including a single male person in the video. Moreover, Rihanna seems to inherently understand that she is not a master of this form and allows the skilled entertainers who are, to come to the forefront rather than flank her as she perpetrates a poor imitation of what they are doing. Far from some tacky tongue out antics, there are truly interesting uses of light, color, and composition in this video. The addition of water brings something both new and titillating to the strip club setting. And most importantly, this video highlights the remarkable amount of strength, coordination, flexibility, practice and stage presence it takes to master this art. In particular the world class athletes who do high level pole stunts. THIS feels like a celebration…not an exploitative rip off…and it is straight up SEXY.
So there it is Nadia. You have your blog post. I hope your Girlfriends enjoy and I will be resuming my vow of silence on Cyrus from here on out.
This morning was the first back from our fall break at Piedmont Virginia Community College and marked the official half way point for this fall semester. Wanting to take some time to reboot, refresh, and reflect, I lead students in a class activity intended to start a conversation about expectations of our roles in the classroom.
THE ACTIVITY
I asked students to write two job descriptions–one for a college student and one for a college instructor. I assured students that their responses would be anonymous, ungraded, and thoroughly appreciated. I gave them about 10 minutes and then collected responses and moved on with my planned lecture for the day.
After class was over, I aggregated the students responses into two typed documents–one for the instructor job description and one for the student job description. I then used each document to create a word cloud using an online generator. These generators are keyed to frequency. The one I used groups similar words and lets you exclude words of your choosing.
After getting the students’ clouds complete, I created my own. I wrote my own job descriptions and then used supplemental documents to add some depth to the pool of words for each. For the student job description, I added text from my syllabus, course contract, assignment instructions, and class participation rubric. For the instructor job description, I added my statement of teaching philosophy.
THE RESULTS
Below are the word clouds created for one of my sections of Public Speaking. The differences are remarkably instructive. I’ve just distributed these images and invited students to share their thoughts in an online Discussion Board. I’ll also be setting aside a bit of time in our next class meeting to discuss what we’ve come up with here. I’m really interested in what kinds of feedback I get and I’ll update this post with what I learn.
It’s been some time since I have posted something on my blog. To be honest, I have been stalled in the middle of my series on Race and the Craft Brewing Industry; Part 2 has been in progress for some time and I haven’t wanted to break the continuity by blogging about something else.
Things, of course, change.
Recently, I have been thinking quite a bit about the nature of public debates about race and racism, inspired by the headlines on Treyvon Martin and Paula Dean, incidents and apologies from professional athletes like Riley Cooper and Jeremy Clements, and most recently discussions I have been involved in surrounding an article from NPR News about the lack of diversity in craft beer and a response from Rod Dreher in the American Conservative. In each of these cases and in many, many others, I have noticed increasingly adamant and sometimes quite hostile responses to the recognition of racist language, ideas, and acts. In fact the recognition of racism is clearly being experienced as a serious accusation, an indictment of character–one that many believe is being leveled too often by unscrupulous liberals and minorities playing the infamous “race card.”
Sadly, in each of the cases I mentioned above, sorely needed discussions about complex racial politics in America were completely ignored in favor of useless debates about whether or not an individual should be called a racist or not. These debates are often heated, contentious and serve to completely nullify the potentially positive effects of having difficult discussions about race that simply do not fall into black and white camps.
I believe the only way to get out of this escalating pattern of recognition and backlash and move toward productive discussion and debate is to upgrade our understanding of racism–Racism 2.0 if you will. As I began spending more and more time thinking through what a more productive understanding of racism would look like, a somewhat unlikely parallel presented itself in Christian perspectives on sin. This was unexpected because I do not personally identify as Christian and my understanding of Christian doctrine is limited to what I have experienced in the churches I attended in my youth (Southern Baptist and then a non-denominational Evangelical congregation), those I have periodically attended in adulthood (Presbyterian and Episcopalian), and theological conversations with Christian friends and Religious Studies colleagues in academia. I am speaking, only, from what I know and have observed and I warmly invite anyone with other perspectives to share those.
Racism Defined
I’ll begin with as much precision as possible. My definition of racism is twofold. One part is taken from the dictionary. The other is grounded in cultural theory. Racism is:
You will notice that neither of these definitions includes anything about maliciousness, intention, or questionable character. They do not gesture toward severity, whether or not someone “got hurt,” or whether such sentiments are made public or privately held. Neither dictates who can or cannot do racist things, think racist thoughts, or speak racist words.
These, I think, are vitally important things to remember.
Sin is not Always a Matter of Scale or Intention: Neither is Racism
I have listened to countess sermons that revolve, at least in part, around discussions of sin. Many of those that were the most influential, I recall, were those that challenged members of the congregation to examine their own ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. Many of these sermons held a mirror up, allowing folks of all persuasions to recognize sin in their own lives. The sermons were not about murder or adultery or heroin use. They were about small everyday acts, about turning your back on people in need out of fear, about failing to stand up for your principles in a bind, about white lies and short cuts. These sermons acknowledged that most people can keep themselves away from “big sin,” but that it is the small, largely intentional or well-intended sin that can aggregate and lead an individual, a family, a community down a dark path.
Similarly, it seems that most people can keep themselves away from “big racism,” from overt acts of violence and discrimination. They can manage not to lynch anyone, beat anyone, or burn crosses on people’s yards. However, everyday acts that are based on essentialist notions of race are ingrained in our most banal habits and these are far more insidious. The fact is that the effects of “little racism” are real and profound–they are evident in yawning wage gaps for people of color, patterns of bias in hiring hiring and promotion, differential lending practices by banks, longer prison sentences and more frequent convictions for people of color who commit the same crimes that whites do, and any number of other well-documented instances of systemic inequality.
I don’t believe that church going Christians and others enjoy having their thoughts or actions characterized as sinful, but there is a willingness on the part of most to own their sin when it is recognized and use it as a springboard to get better. To be shown you have committed a sin, is not to be deemed an awful human or to be likened to those committing the worst atrocities. It is to be shown you have done or said or thought something that within particular theological parameters counts as sin AND (more importantly) have been given an opportunity, an invitation to improve.
Imagine a world where the recognition of racism isn’t greeted with knee-jerk defensiveness, with denial on the grounds that the act was not significant or intentional or malicious enough to “count” as racist? What if we could all own our racism, accept the discomfort that doing so inevitably causes, but then also accept the invitation to improve? Imagine how much ground we might cover. I believe this has to begin with understanding that racism is not an unfortunate exception; rather, it is the norm.
Sin is Not Exceptional: Neither is Racism
As I consider almost all of my experiences in Christian churches, I am struck by the number of times I have heard the phrase “I am a sinner,” the admission uttered without shame or defeat or despair. I have heard it spoken by ministers and priests, deacons and elders, regular parishioners and two-mass-a-year types. Though sin is almost universally understood as a dark and dangerous element of humanity–one that threatens the very fabric of Christian well-being–it is also nearly universally accepted that it is omnipresent and that it does not have to define those who have it. I learned that to sin, is not to be damned, is not to be evil, it is not to carry an inherent maliciousness in your heart; but rather, it is to be human. The understanding and acknowledgment of sin in oneself–through reflection, confession, prayer, and repentance–is understood to be a necessary part of the process of self-improvement and a contribution to the betterment of the world we share.
We as a country who grapples with the residue of our complicated (and not very distant) history of slavery could benefit tremendously from a similar kind of acceptance of racism. Though I don’t believe that racism is an essential part of human nature (as many believe sin is), I do believe it is a fundamental part of American socialization. It is, to offer a metaphor, in the water.
We have unfortunately become a culture of stone casters when it comes to racism. We see in others what is equally part of our own make-ups, but refuse to acknowledge this reality. I make it a point to be vocal about claiming my own racism and understanding where it originates. I am a 35 year old black woman, who is months from completing my forth college degree, a PhD from an elite public university. I learned and habituated, as a part of obtaining my position of educational privilege, racist ideas about intelligence. Up until not too long ago, I had a tendency to don what I called my “ghetto” voice in some very problematic attempts at humor. “Ghetto” voice was an amalgamation of dialect and slang, hyperbole and ignorance, that was (though I did not really examine the fact while I was doing it) supposed to be understood as “blacker” than my normal speech. It took me a long time to understand that my “performances” were only funny because I was wielding my privilege to secure a position of intellectual superiority based on the assumption that blackness and ignorance were essentially synonymous (but that I had somehow overcome this condition). I recognize now, that my “harmless jokes” had the unintended consequence of authorizing this kind of thought, action, and speech for the largely white community around me.
Experiences like this and countless others have brought me to the point where I can shamelessly, undefeated, and without despair say, “I am a racist.” I am not afraid to admit this. I am not only a racist, but I have racist ideas about people of my own racial heritage. I recognize this to be a consequence of being socialized in the United States. And I know that only through the honest acknowledgment of racism in myself can I hope to improve and contribute to the betterment of the world we share.
A Life without Sin is an Ongoing Project: So is an Anti-Racist Life
The kind of recognition I just described was not a one time occurrence for me. It was one part of a process that I have committed myself to…indefinitely. Because I understand racism to be a part of the status quo, to evolve and change, fracture and multiply, I understand the project of anti-racism to be an ongoing one.
I have watched friends and loved ones attend church from week to week, and pray and read the Bible from day to day, in a constant state of vigilance. None of these people have ever assumed that they have or are likely to achieve a totally sinless life. But they accept that to commit to a Christian life, is to sign up to work at it everyday and they do so willingly with the understanding that the work is worth it…for themselves, for those around them, for their children and their children.
The assumption that a person either is or is not racist is, in my estimation, one of the the biggest barriers to making progress on race relations in the U.S. There are, simply, too many people who either don’t acknowledge the need to adopt anti-racism as an ongoing life project; too many who acknowledge the need, but do not recognize that it requires constant work; and too many who decide that the work is not for them to do (i.e. the belief that people of color are the only ones who need to work on the problem of racism).
Moreover, as I learned as a teenager attending youth group meetings, being attentive to sin in yourself and in others and committing to work on it daily can make one highly unpopular, isolated. It is, in short, a risky venture. I learned that I might take some abuse and have to weather the storms of ridicule and rejection as a result of sticking to the doctrines that were intended to structure my budding Christian life. As a teenager, I wasn’t willing to put in this work and my behavior reflected this…loudly. I don’t think that living as an anti-racist is much different–it can be profoundly alienating to be the one who has to call out friends on telling inappropriate jokes or using terms that (while “not meant to be mean”) are harmful, dis-empowering, and/or reinforce dangerous stereotypes.
I am reminded, 20 years later, of a boy who called me to tell me that his parents would not let him go to a dance with me because they discovered I was black (a detail it did not occur to him to share) on the way to pick me up from my house. I still remember the hurt and confusion I felt, wearing an outfit I’d just bought for the event. I told my own parents that I just didn’t feel like going anymore. His explanation, “they aren’t racist or anything, but they just don’t want people to say bad things about me” is common enough and I have never been angry at him or his parents about this incident. Even at that age I understood how strongly the instinct to protect our children can be. However, I now understand that making the decision to “protect” our children in this way is also making the decision to accept the truth of the bad things people say. It was, in this case, to act in agreement with the assumption that his being romantically linked to me (even as a teenager) is a character flaw for someone like him, a danger to his reputation simply because of the color of my skin. I don’t believe these decisions were easy for his parents. Nor do I think they are bad people just because I think they made the wrong ones. I don’t believe decisions to live as an anti-racist are easy. If they were, we might be much further along in achieving social justice.
Ignoring Sin Does Not Make it Go Away: “Colorbindness” is Equally as Ineffective for Eradicating Racism
Finally, Christian perspectives on sin offer an interesting way to think through what I believe to be a particularly problematic stance taken by a lot of very well meaning individuals. I have heard dozens of people proudly announce their colorblindedness–the fact that they “don’t see color” and “accept people as just people” with out even thinking about race. For a long time I was happy to hear such a statement. Now, I believe I will tell them to think harder. Colorblindness, is becoming the #1 excuse to abdicate the personal responsibility to think about, deal with, and work to eliminate racism.
The parallel I have extended for the duration of this blog is instructive in this final aspect as well. The Christian spaces I have navigated and observed seem to accept that sin is real, has real consequences, and cannot simply be ignored. If we choose to focus on the good in people, the bad does not simply go away. It may be personally satisfying, but it is not collectively productive. And sadly, the notion that a nation which such a fraught history of racial injustice, might spontaneously adopt colorblindness from coast to coast thereby eliminating the need to grapple with racial politics, is little more than a beautiful fantasy and too often a justification for outright laziness.
Racism 2.0
If you have reached this part of my blog post and concluded that I am offering Christianity as the solution to racism, you have missed the point entirely. I have tried to show that a particular theological perspective on a large, complicated, dark and dangerous force can act as a productive model for a 21st-century understanding of racism that I believe will allow us as a society to more productively work on the problem. We are, at this current historical moment, stuck in a highly unproductive loop that is leading to nothing but escalating polarization.
Racism 2.0 is an understanding that racism is not defined by scale, effect, or intention. It does not matter if acts of racism are not overt and spectacular, if no one was harmed or took offense, if an individual doing racism “didn’t mean it that way.” Racism 2.0 is understanding that racism is not rare or exceptional but a product of the time and place in which we live. It is accepting that we are all not only capable of racism, but prone to think and act and speak in racist ways without knowing we are doing so. Racism 2.0 is being willing to own our racism when it is recognized and understanding that this ownership has to be the first step in getting beyond it personally and collectively. Finally Racism 2.0 is committing to anti-racism as ongoing project, to put effort into recognizing and resolving racism in all parts of our lives with the understanding that if we pay it forward all of us with reap the benefits of a more just world.
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I recognize that this is nothing short of a paradigm shift on racism. An abandonment of a culture of accusation and the embracing of a culture of problem solving . I recognize that this perspective will be unpopular with many. But I also know that some of you will find promise in what I have shared here and I hope that some of you will feel inspired to join me in developing and learning within this space I am calling Racism 2.0. If this describes you, please contact me and share your ideas. I’d love to develop some sort of collaborative project with people who also believe that to beat racism we have to do a better job of understanding our relationship to it.