Author – A. Agnello

Five things I observed growing up in Baltimore that shaped my views on race:

1- In my AP classes, which had 15-20 students per class in total, half of the students were of color.

2- When I was talking in a parking lot with friends one evening and the police showed up, they immediately assumed my black male friends had ill intentions toward me which was nowhere near the truth. We definitely spoke up.

3- I was only given two books in my high school years that were written by a white man out of the 12 we read in total those three years.

4- Everyone was taught to never say the “n word”.  We didn’t say it.  Ever.

5- Neighborhoods were not divided by race.  Every suburban neighborhood had a true mix of residents.

I would have to say, because of my upbringing, my eyes had always been wide open when it came to issues of prejudice or equality.  I was surrounded by diversity and consider myself lucky to have grown up this way.  I was able to understand that I should see color and advocate for the times when someone was mistreated because of it.  I was able to see that if diversity was respected, there was a lot less division and I was able to know that I would never go wrong arguing for what was right.

Fast forward thirty years or so, and the horrors I had observed involving race were quickly multiplying.  Living now, on Long Island, things were not what I’d hope they would be.  All around me were people so comfortable in their racism that they didn’t even know when they’d shown it.  In fact, watching the news, there were messages of hate daily all over the country.  Some of the hate had caused deaths. One of those deaths was George Floyd.  My frustration and anger had been growing steadily over the years with the steadily growing numbers of black men who had been murdered in front of our faces.  People have a lot of theories as to why Mr. Floyd was the straw that had done the breaking in so many of us but whatever it was, I, with so many others, were completely broken.  How in the world could anyone fix this?  What could I do to help end the pattern that we as a society, had become so complacent in?  Enter my principal, Kevin Dougherty, and his idea for a book club.

Three things I learned from our first Book Club selection- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander:

1- The prison system is set up to keep men of color incarcerated.  They are more likely to be arrested for minor, non-violent crimes, yet the fact that everything is stripped from them ensures they lose their chance to ever start over.  Lives are wasted away and no one seems to care.

2- Politicians use buzzwords and the same rhetoric over and over to create a buy-in from their poor white voters.  The idea behind this is this crowd of voters needs an enemy to fight against.  They want someone representing them that will be “in their corner”.  Politicians have continued to perpetuate the divide to benefit themselves. 

3- For many white people, the only representation of people of color have come from their screens.  The media has portrayed black men over and over as the negative stereotypes passed around and because of this pattern of exposure, white folks accept these stereotypes as truth.

On some level I guess I knew these things to be true before having read them but there was something so strong in seeing these words on paper.  I couldn’t wait to talk about it.  Apparently, neither could 15 other humans.  Book Club had begun.  Over the course of the Summer of 2020, we would read a chapter and then meet up over Zoom to either discuss Mr. Dougherty’s planned questions or to allow our conversation to flow organically.  These first sessions were so important as we had to trust each other right away.  Luckily, the knowledge of why we were there created a built in trust.  We dissected the book and related it to experiences we had had.  Something about finding this community of like minded individuals, all coming from somewhere different, to really, honestly work out our feelings together was beautiful.  Some days we cried, some days we laughed, most days we understood that there was so much more to understand.   It was a true bonding experience and we became a team- a family.  I’m so grateful that we gave ourselves up to this and put the energy into it that it truly deserved. I had learned so much about the world around me and the worlds in which my co-workers – now partners in this cause – lived. We had all come together with the commitment to find our focus- we had made a strong foundation.   I’ve heard many of us say those sessions were like therapy to us.  It’s true. After each session I felt lighter- more focused on what the work ahead of us was.  I was no longer the teenager in Baltimore, but these book discussions brought my mind- and state of hope- back to those days.  

Four things I decided to do after that first section of Book Club to be the advocate I always wanted to be:

1-  Abandon the traditional English curriculum in my classroom to demonstrate that we can and should utilize diverse materials instead.

2-  Check in regularly with my daughters’ schools to see how they are working more representation into their classrooms.

3-  Be vocal – online and in person- about being anti-racist.

4- Continue to educate myself – with my book club teammates- on how we can continue to fight to make things right.