1. Learn the issue.

This is an emotional issue all around. But don’t be that guy who says “cooperate with cops and it’ll be fine,” or “for every suspect killed by police, there’s a police officer killed in the line of duty.” I saw that comment recently, and: NO, wrong! Check on which jobs in the USA are the most deadly, and police officer isn’t even in the top ten. (This is why “Blue Lives Matter” is nonsense.)

Check what the evidence shows, on MappingPoliceViolence.org and more: implicit bias leads police to kill black Americans disproportionately, and they’re only charged with a crime 3 percent of the time. (This disproportionality is why “Black Lives Matter” makes more sense than “All Lives Matter.”)

2. Learn allyship.

This one is mainly for my fellow white people! “Privilege” and “ally” are suddenly trendy buzzwords that I have mixed feelings about. There is a ton to read online, but here’s a handy reminder from Kayla Reed on twitter:

A- Always center the impacted
L- Listen & learn from those who live in the oppression
L- Leverage your privilege
Y- Yield the floor

One little way to Leverage white privilege is to speak up about race to fellow white people, like I’m doing with this blog post.

3. Join SURJ / White Noise Collective.

In addition to your conversations, learn how can white privilege be leveraged collectively. The people of Showing Up For Racial Justice have ideas! The SURJ chapter here in RI is coordinated by the White Noise Collective. Sign up to stay posted on local opportunities for involvement, and maybe I’ll see you at the next demonstration.

4. Join DARE

No, not D.A.R.E. that educates kids about drugs. Rhode Island is the proud home of DARE as in Direct Action for Rights & Equality, which includes a committee on policing and incarceration. If you’re an Eastsider like me, going to DARE might feel a bit odd, but do it anyway. DARE has a track record of real victories for RI social justice.

5. Back the Community Safety Act

First, consider this list of 15 Things Your City Can Do to End Police Brutality. It looks great, but even harder to accomplish than the average “Things You Can Do to Burn Fat” online list. The good news for Rhode Islanders is the pending Community Safety Act for Providence. DARE is part of the coalition promoting this bill. Learn about it so that you can mention it to your City Councilor when you see each other. Speaking of which: do you know who your elected officials are? (Level two: do your elected officials know who you are?) Electoral and legislative work has its limits, but it is absolutely worth paying attention to.

Some people want to be on campaigns and in hearings; some people want to be marching in the streets; both have their place and support each other. You can do some of each, or just find your lane and stay in it. There are lots of ways to do something. Don’t do nothing.

It looked to me like RI Future’s Bob Plain confronted a fork in the road last week. The road began with the RI Future headline, “When the NRA jerks her chain, Doreen Costa barks.” I share the disdain for elected officials who are beholden to the NRA, but it wasn’t those politics that caught my attention. It was the sexism of portraying a woman in office as a dog on a leash. A couple of us commented on the post, objecting to the headline. And that was where the fork in the road developed.

It would have been easy, and familiar, for the post author and editor to dismiss the objections as feminist hypersensitivity. We’ve heard that one before, fellas, about a million times. (Play along with a bingo card.) In fact, “lighten up” is a time-honored defense – or really, more of a derail. If you shoot the messenger, you’re also announcing your complete dismissal of the message.

At this fork, the other path to take is to consider – not automatically embrace, but truly consider – the message you’re getting. I’m really pleased that RI Future took this path (which included inviting me to write this post), because this fork in the road has consequences.

Before I discuss those consequences, I must also mention the muddy middle path that people often try to take. People get in this mud when they respond, “it was not my intention to cause offense, and I apologize to anyone who was offended.” We call that a fauxpology or a nonpology, because it’s just a slightly nicer way of dismissing the received objection and absolving the actor. A real apology acknowledges: “I messed up.”

So, what’s so important about these forks in the road? They are little decision points that affect the climate of an organization, a space or a virtual space. As a sociologist, I’ve spent a lot of time studying how privileged people hold on to their privileges, or sometimes share them. And yes, managing a space is a privilege, often accompanied by other (race/class/gender/ability/etc) privileges. Whether the “space” is a group blog, a workplace, a country club, or an occupation, there are some parallels in how they might be protected or shared.

The easiest, and least generous, way to share is to accept different other people as long as they make no issue of their difference. I interviewed a country club member who quipped about their admission of African-Americans, “okay, I’ll be the well-behaved WASP with dark skin.”

The more genuine way to share is to consider how your space, and your own routines, might need some adjustment in order to become truly welcoming. Part of privilege means that you typically don’t have to do that reflection.

Once, a group of us were talking to a professional baseball scout. A woman who loved baseball asked if any women did his job. He said no. A little later he was trying to describe the process of evaluating minor league players. He said it was like when people evaluate women: anybody might be able to say “she’s an eight,” but the scout is able to articulate the specific elements that combine to yield that evaluation.

Gosh, I said, I wonder why no women are in this occupation. Some people don’t want to reflect on the ways their spaces are welcoming/unwelcoming to different sorts of people. As I said, you don’t have to. But if you would like to attract more different other people, do it! I have no sympathy for those who only do the former stingy version of space-sharing, and then bemoan the fact that “diverse others” are not filing in. I’ve heard that repeatedly. But whether it’s a strategic derail or oblivious ignorance, I will object. Impact matters more than stated intentions.

Thank you, Bob, for listening, considering the impact, and staying off the low road. That road only leads to the same good old boys’ club, and not to fairness and justice.