What I Learned About Inclusion and Why It Matters

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT INCLUSION AND WHY IT MATTERS By: Brooklyn Sawyers Belk

Safety and Litigation Counsel, Lyft, Inc. Visiting Professor, University of Tennessee College of Law

WORDS MATTER – JOIN THE CONVERSATION

The U.S. Supreme Court’s (USSC) words in two historic cases illuminate America’s history with race that influenced today’s race relations. Achieving successful race relations starts with addressing that history and moving forward. Words matter: Join the conversation!

The slave trade brought millions of Africans to the U.S. to be bought and sold as chattel—reducing humans to merchandise in slave traders’ eyes. Those who challenged a system as “American as apple pie” suffered.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), the USSC held that slaves’ descendants could not be citizens. The Court explained, “In no nation was this opinion more firmly fixed or more uniformly acted upon than by the [English], who seized them on [Africa’s coast and sold or held them] in slavery for their own use, but [also] took them as ordinary articles of merchandise to every country where [profit could be made].” The USSC added, “The opinion entertained and acted upon in England was naturally impressed upon the colonies they founded.”

The Court explained that, Africans “had for more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race,” “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” and that “the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” The Court added, “And, accordingly, a [negro] was regarded by them as an article of property,” and “[held, bought, and sold] as such, in [all] thirteen colonies . . . No one seems to have doubted the correctness of the prevailing opinion of the time.”

In 1861, America engaged in a great civil war, in part, over slavery and intertwined economics. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in rebellious states, followed by three Constitutional Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment granted former slaves’ citizenship and created certain equal protections. The Fifteenth Amendment granted voting rights and prohibited states from disenfranchising voters.

If the Scott Court was wrong, but the post-Civil War Constitutional Amendments course corrected, explain the Plessy decision. Is it inexplicable accentuating the law’s corrective inabilities at the time?

In Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), the Court found separate, but equal railway cars constitutional, and while the Fourteenth Amendment established legal racial equality, separate treatment did not imply African American inferiority. The Court reasoned that the statutes implied legal distinctions between the races–distinctions founded in skin color and that “must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color.” Other case quotes include, “If the races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other’s merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals;” “Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences;” and, “If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution cannot put them upon the same plane.”

The dissenter argued that the Constitution is color-blind, the U.S. has no class system, and all citizens should have equal access to civil rights. While novel for the time, someone’s words differed, and words matter!

Plessy’s rhetoric is offensive—creating the separate, but unequal doctrine ensuring Jim Crow segregation—inapposite the nation’s Constitutional equality guarantees. Despite these Constitutional advancements, Jim Crow era provisions allowed race-based atrocities— including murder—to persist for almost another century, which is longer than most individual lifetimes. Eventually, USSC civil rights decisions, including Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) and the 1960s Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts brought change. Why did it take almost a century to enforce the Constitution? Perhaps, the USSC answered that question in Scott and Plessy, making these dated decisions relevant. In Christianity, there are generational curses and blessings—things passed down generationally. From England to the colonies and, once in the colonies, race-based division became something engrained, fixed, and acted upon uniformly. Did that disappear with time or laws; or rather, was race-based division passed down further, even to today?

Words matter! If alive, Emmett Till’s mother might explain that Till, her child on vacation in Mississippi, allegedly—the accuser recanted— violated a Jim Crow practice, and a person’s false accusations led to Till’s murder. His murderers gouged out his eye, beat, shot, and threw him into the Tallahatchie River, with a cotton gin fan attached as a weight. Till’s mother had an open casket funeral. Thereafter, Jet Magazine published photos of Till’s body, a Jim Crow brutality. Yet, the jury deliberated for under an hour returning an acquittal.

If still too dated, consider the 2000 Alabama Interracial Marriage Amendment to amend Alabama’s 1901 Constitution’s interracial marriage prohibition. Yet, it only passed with around a 60 percent approval—to remove a Jim Crow era law contrary to the USSC’s Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) precedent.

Born in 1908, 1913, and 1955, my prior two generations spanned Jim Crow—a Plessy-mindset world. Born post-Brown, my mother still attended segregated schools—the USSC’s “all deliberate speed” integration forced her from segregated to integrated schools, and the associated trauma infected her education, self-esteem, and worldview until she died carrying that pain.

Perhaps, your immediate ancestors lived during Jim Crow. Scott highlighted a superior v. inferior mindset that came from England to the colonies. While not there, is it a fair deduction from historical fact that this mindset was passed on to our ancestors as recent as one-to-three generations? If the USSC’s rhetoric is justified as temporally acceptable, does that logic mean our recent ancestors were influenced by the same temporally relevant prevailing views? Could our ancestors-parents and grandparents—lived unaffected by the times? Possible, but probable? Is it farfetched to ask whether the Plessy thinking, through generational passing, influences leaders addressing the race question today? A series of rhetorical questions for your consideration.

Perhaps, the USSC words helped set the stage for why society grapples with race and why some choose to make an immutable characteristic—something unchangeable—divisive. The mindset incapsulated by the USSC’s painstaking explanation of people’s hearts and minds is an influential legacy that stings. Has that worldview: us and them, superior and inferior, a chosen race and a marked race—the USSC’s words—helped create a legacy of failed race relations? If so, fix it!

Successful race relations start with conversations because words matter. Humans have more in common than different. Many categories used to define people are social constructs that lack real meaning other than to divide. Join the conversation and work to eliminate that divide. Ideas to start follow.

Self-examination. Read these cases, ask yourself whether race divides, and, if so, resolve to change that. The past impacts the present, and perhaps implicitly influences our day-to-day interactions. Are we doing enough to broaden our mindsets and experience others?

Look at your photos. Do the photos reflect any diversity? Photos capture weddings, graduations, anniversaries reflecting our intimate relationships. If the photos reflect a monochromatic group of people, ask why. Then, go out of your way to befriend all types of people. You might have much in common with “others.”

Legacy. After people are in my presence, I want them to feel blessed. I do not want anyone to get to the end of life, and feel like I hurt them. I want to be the hero or at least a positive—a Brown, and not a Plessy. The focus is impact—not intent.

Listen. Listen to diverse perspectives. The impacted individual is best positioned to explain her life experience. Accept her experience as her truth regardless of your agreement or understanding.

See something, say something. Silence is complicity. The conversation will change if we speak up because words matter. Say—“I do not think that man is a thug,” “I will not tolerate racial slur use even when a person the slur is meant to offend is absent,” “The ‘N word,’ when used as a racial slur, should offend everyone even when people of color are absent, as the ‘B word’ should offend men when women are absent.” Stand up for decency.

Build authentic relationships. You do this the same way with diverse and non-diverse people: genuine and organic, curious and nonjudgmental, over shared interests and community, open to learn and love, and one-on-one when possible.

Create an equal playing field. Question things that are non-sensical. If your workplace is non-diverse, change it. Ask questions that include inclusion principles, retention details, and recruiting specfics. Recruiting is often employee referral based, which is flawed when the employees have non-diverse networks and, therefore, the hiring process excludes diverse candidates. Create a diverse network and referral sources. Remove systemic barriers to achieve a diverse, inclusive, equitable workplace.

Challenge stereotypes. Why do you define professionalism the way that you do? Why do you set the professional standard for everyone? Do you clutch your purse or change sides of the street when you pass certain people? When you see news coverage of a confrontation involving minority and non-minority people, do you automatically associate the minorities with criminality? Soul search and identify and challenge stereotypes.

Educate yourself. Resources are everywhere, just look. I have resources that I will share.

Do not blame others. “I did not own slaves.” “I am not privileged.” “I do not see color.” “We value diversity but will not lower the bar” (assuming diverse candidate inferiority). These statements miss the mark. Take individual responsibility as a change agent.

D I C T AEDITORS’ NOTE:

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