Living in a multi-family housing unit means if your neighbor has roaches, you have roaches. And if you don’t pro-actively eradicate the problem, it will only grow.
This is also true for racism in the workplace.
Racism is defined as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Kansas City Police Chief Darryl Forte shared his experience with racism during his plight to become Kansas City’s top cop at a Board of Police Commissioner’s meeting on Tuesday.
“Racism is real. It’s in housing, banking, sports, education, politics. Why would anyone think we would take an oath and that would go away with some of us? We have issues and we have to talk about those issues internally.” Forte said.
Reverend Rodney Williams, the pastor of Swope Park United Christian Church, agreed with Forte. He believes prejudices and racial biases are taught and created throughout ones life, and those biases and prejudices show up in every segment of the population, including on the police force. His son is a police officer.
“People have been taught falsehoods about people who do not look like them, people of different cultures, and they have embraced those different falsehoods,” Williams said. “As a result, we have people who come onto the force with racial biases.”
Williams said everyone, especially police officers, needs to be willing to examine their own personal beliefs and how they interact with people of color, and added that employers have to be willing to address systematic racism head-on in everyday life.
“White people can no longer remain silent. They have to be willing to speak up when it comes in injustice,” said Williams.
Lora McDonald is the executive director of MORE2, the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equality. She said part of their work is helping to unearth the undercurrent of racism that is present in everyday life to foster equality. McDonald said training is a huge part of their work.
“There’s a difference between how we are treated and how people of color are treated in this nation. For white people we often think we know a lot about race and have a lot of opinions about it. But we don’t know the lived experience of a person of color in this nation.”
McDonald encourages people to take the Implicit Bias Test. It’s available online on the Project Implicit website. McDonald believes it gives people a chance to gauge their own biases in a number of areas.
According to the Project Implicit website, an Implicit Association test measures attitudes that a person may be unable or unwilling to report. The IAT measures the strength of associations between concepts and evaluations or stereotypes.
The methodology behind the test is that a response is easier when it closely relates to one’s own innate belief system.
“It’s an interesting, thought-provoking test. You might be surprised at your results. Some don’t even realize they have a bias,” said McDonald.
A bias that can subtly creep into an otherwise pristine environment and quickly become an infestation of discrimination, bigotry and glass ceilings, for people of color.
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Lisa Benson can be reached at lisa.benson@kshb.com.
