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Barbara's Participation in Glamour Magazine's Panel on Women, Race & Beauty

Barbara took part in a panel discussion on November 27 at Glamour Magazine’s headquarters in NYC. “Women, Race, and Beauty” consisted of a conversation about race among a diverse group of six women, plus a moderator from NPR. The event was sparked by a racially charged incident at Glamour, and Barbara contributed a sociological view of women and race to the conversation. Coverage of the event will appear in the March 2008 issue of Glamour.

The following is Barbara's reaction to the event.

Ashley Baker—a former staffer at Glamour—said at a luncheon at a law firm in NYC that Afros are a “Glamour Don’t.” The African American women in her audience, who refer to their natural hair (that is, hair that has not been straightened, permed, or otherwise treated chemically) as afros, were offended, and said so.

Ashley messed up, and from what I can gather, she felt awful about it. I know that feeling. Hopefully all of us do. If you aren’t aware of having messed up in the same way Ashley did—by saying something stupid—it’s likely that you just never noticed or you never say anything about race matters.

People who never say anything that could be considered racially insensitive avoid saying anything about race. The resulting silence, however, is a big part of the race problem. White people avoiding race cannot be a good idea when what we need to be doing is finding out more about race matters.

The question we should ask ourselves is not, “Am I racist?” but “How am I racist?” Our goal should be raising our race awareness, not avoiding race matters for fear of saying something stupid. At least Ashley was in the racial arena, where we all should be.

We have grown up in a racist society, in a country that was built on overt and blatant racism that did not disappear in 1964. Yet white people generally, even those who are well meaning, feel little to no responsibility for racism. And we should. Who is causing all the racism and racial inequality if not us?

I read this on This Week In Race recently: There are only two types of people in this world: those who are racist and admit it, and those who are racist and deny it. The major difference is that those who admit that they mess up at times are able to do something about it. Those who do not admit it—or cannot admit it—are stuck, and contribute to the problem. Ironically, Ashley is contributing to the solution.

Ashley’s statement has little to do with her as a person and everything to do with how racism still matters in our culture. Whether she is racist or not is irrelevant. She is; so am I. What really matters is why comments like this keep happening. We can all name the culprits that were exposed publicly: Dog Chapman, Don Imus, Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, Mark Fuhrman, Marge Schott, and on and on and on...

What matters more than whether we are racist is our level of race awareness. Most white people, including well meaning ones, know next to nothing about racism or race matters. In school, we learned about ending slavery but not about slavery, we learned about ending segregation but not about segregation. And, we are all too willing to believe that racism ended with the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s. News flash: It didn’t.

In my study of silent racism in well-meaning white women, I discovered that the participants with very high race awareness had close friendships with women of color. They understood racism in a way that most of us do not because we cannot see racism at all, much less through the eyes of someone who experiences it. They could see it because they learned to see it through the eyes of people they care about.

Even when white people do recognize racism, we rarely interrupt it for fear of insulting someone. After the media blitz in Jenna, LA, white people began to say, “Oh, I thought the unfair treatment of the black kids was wrong.” But that situation had been going on for over a year before the media got in on it. Where were these well-meaning white people then?

Well-meaning white people are much too timid. I understand this. I am timid too. It’s scary to interrupt people’s racism. But that’s no excuse. We have all done scary things. Well-meaning white people don’t interrupt racism because we don’t feel invested in it.

Senator Bill Bradley said it best when he was running for the 1996 Democratic nomination: When was the last time you had a conversation about race with someone different from yourself? If you can’t remember, you need to make it happen for yourself. The best conversations take place between close friends. If you do not have close friendships with people of color, you might ask yourself why not. It is an excellent place to start.

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