This a bold statement, but I'm going to make it: if everyone did a City Year, the Trayvon Martin tragedy wouldn't have occurred. This is a departure from my usual focus on action-oriented feminism, but it's a departure I feel obliged to make. There are so many reasons why national service should be a part of every young person's life, but they are often discussed in the abstract. This is an opportunity for what I believe is a real-life, concrete example.
City Year is a national education-focused non-profit organization that does work in closing the achievement gap and is powered by AmeriCorps. Young idealists sign on for a year of full-time service in urban schools, serving students who are slipping through the cracks and run the risk of not having the skills necessary to graduate high school. Please note that I do not represent City Year Inc. and everything written here are my words and views, and not those of the organization.
As I'm sure you can guess, this puts City Year Corps Member in contact with a whole lot of diversity. Not only does the organization do an incredible job maintaining a diverse Corps in each of the 25 cities it serves, but the public partner schools are usually either racially diverse or mainly made up of minorities. For someone like me - a white, suburban woman of middle class Wisconsin - it was the first time I had meaningful contact with a diverse population.
You can read one of my first posts (from when I was still trying to find my groove and wrote about oppression in general) about how getting a puppy forced me to interact with non-white people in my college community in a way I never had before, and how their immediate love and occasional baby voices used with my dog forced me to see their humanity and grapple with my own internalized racism. Reading that post would give some background that I'm not including here for space purposes. As I say in that post, I'm not proud of the fact that I used proclaim was no racist but would shy away from minorities, but I believe that part of being a white ally is admitting to your biases, your prejudices, and faults; only after acknowledging these things can you begin to work against them in yourself and others.
Serving in an urban high school with City Year took these interactions a thousand steps further, and I developed deep and meaningful relationships with my students of color as I spent a year tutoring and mentoring them. I was quickly able to see them for what they are: human beings with joys, sorrows, strengths and struggles; kids with smarts, wit, problems and potential. Slowly, I began to undo the racism that had been unknowingly planted in my heart and cultivated while growing up in a country and society that is home to thousands of little things that teach us white folks to see danger, not humanity, in those who don't look like us. I started seeing other kids of color outside of the school and smiling at them. I stopped casually putting my hand in my pocket, and around my mace, when crossing paths with a man of color if I was alone at night. In my red City Year jacket, I gladly stopped when kids said "hey City Year!" to talk them, ask them where they went to school, and wish them the best. I recognize that admitting these things might incur some anger, and that's valid. The point is that my year or service is why these behaviors are now in my past, and again, I think we would gain a lot as a country if white people were honest about their feelings, as this is the necessary first step for their work against racism to start.
I worked with high school freshman, most of whom were around the age of 15. Some had been held back and were older, and I also worked with many refugees who came from parts of the world that record age differently than in America, and whose parents had taken a guess as to what year they were born when filling out paperwork for the school. This is how I ended up working with a freshman - I'll call him Kareem - who was 15 on paper but said his real age was probably more like 17 - the same age as Trayvon.
Kareem dressed and looked like all the other African American students, was friends with them, and was growing up with much of their culture. He had only a trace of an accent. He was exactly the type of person that would have given me that little feeling of unease if I had come across him along at night in the town where I went to college. I recognize that a lot of this comes from being a women - we are rightly taught to fear men in certain circumstances, but I believe that I was taught to fear minority men more than white men. Despite the fact that a minority of white men rape women in equal numbers as the minority of black men who rape women, society had taught me to ignore that and only fear the men who didn't look like me. Perhaps therefore white men don't undergo such an extreme transformation like I did - and I'd love to hear more on that notion from people who can speak to it.
In the high school where I served, I began to observe that Kareem was bright, extremely funny, and had a talent for defending bullied students without incurring the wrath of the bullies himself. He was also well behind grade level in reading, and would sometimes lash out at other students who pointed out his lower reading abilities. The first thing Kareem did when I nervously explained to him that I wanted to tutor him to help him succeed in school was ask me a question: "can you help me with my focus? I have trouble focusing. And help with my anger, I need that too. Sometimes I just get mad and I can't help it." That first moment of us being open to each other marked the beginning of a relationship in which we both learned from each other, and has lasted to this day, nearly two years later.
Kareem amazed me in many ways. Throughout the year, a lifetime of subtly being taught how to be racist began to become undone. I underwent a complete transformation as I was forced, countless times, to recognize the humanity in my students of color, to recognize how similar they were to the white kids I was friends with at that age, and to admit that - although they sometimes fought, just as my white colleagues had done in high school - not one of them ever brought a weapon to school, or targeted a white person, or spent their free time looking for trouble. Not one of them aspired to live off of welfare programs - they are working towards becoming vets, teachers and mechanics. I had to face what I thought was true and admit that I was wrong. It was hard, but I'm glad for it.
This is why I now continue to embrace diversity, and, more importantly, why I don't come across and young black man and have a little part in the back of my head become immediately suspicious. I no longer see someone who inspires unease or outright fear; I see a kid on his way to school, going to his friend's house, or visiting his aunt. My experience has taught me that this is usually what's going on, and I now comfortably live in a community where I am the minority, and I know my neighbors and don't live in fear.
If George Zimmerman had done a City Year, or a spent a year serving with any of the other countless AmeriCorps organizations that work with diverse populations, he would have undoubtedly gone through a similar transformation. You can't spend 10 months working closely with students of color and not see their humanity; you can't learn their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, and still think of all young black males as up to no good and probably planning on robbing a house, like Zimmerman did. He would have seen Trayvon for what he was: just a kid. He might have been reminded of one of this students, and wondered where he went to school. He might have even known him, since his City Year helped him overcome his prejudices and had given him the ability to make meaningful relationships with people who look different from him; he might have given a nod and said "hello" as they crossed paths. He would have rightfully assumed that he had nothing to be afraid of. If he had worked with Kareem, he would have seen how similar their faces were and been reminded that it had been too long since he'd checked in on his old student and encouraged him to keep getting extra help in math. And Trayvon would have continued on to play video games with his friend while they enjoyed their iced tea and Skittles. He would have gone on to graduate from high school, for he was an A and B student. We as white people need to intentionally put ourselves into meaningful contact those who look different from us, and doing a year of service with an organization like City Year is an ideal way to do this. We need to undo what society teacher us without us even noticing it. We need to see each other's humanity.
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