"There's No Vaccine for Racism"

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Larry Galizio is the president of the Community College League of California, an organization established to "support locally elected trustees and community college CEOs serve their students and communities by advocating on their behalf at the state and federal levels, providing continued professional development, and delivering services that employ economies of scale to minimize cost."  Mr. Galizio posted the following essay in a letter to all CCC presidents and, with his permission, I'm sharing with you to illustrate one person's intensely personal journey in facing issues of racial inequity.

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There’s no vaccine for racism.

The unjust killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and countless other African American men and women by police provides empirical proof that racism is a virus that runs rampant throughout this nation. The American strain of institutionalized racism has resulted in higher infant mortality rates, less access to healthcare, inequities in education, fewer job opportunities, and housing discrimination among our Black brothers and sisters—heavily impacting their ability to advance in society. It demands an aggressive treatment protocol and disease management to confront our centuries-long plague.

 I resisted watching the video of Mr. Floyd’s death until I realized that I was demonstrating the very white fragility that is the subject of Robin DiAngelo’s book* and I had a responsibility to watch it. It took no act of moral courage on my part to watch the 8 minute and 46 second video. Apart from the agonized, muffled cries from Mr. Floyd as he endures the fatal punishment of four police officers pinning him to the cement, the image that is seared into my brain is of the white officer digging his knee even deeper as horrified bystanders anxiously urge the police to get off the handcuffed black man they were slowly killing. It caused rage, disgust, shame, sadness, and bewilderment. The last feeling – a kind of disbelief in what I had just watched – is perhaps the most telling. Therein lies my white privilege and ignorance of what it’s truly like to be Black in America. A person of color who has experienced racial profiling, discrimination, and even worse, doesn’t have the ability to look away when faced with police brutality. This is their lived experience.

I recognize that my skin color and maleness afford me a privilege that people of color do not have, and thus I can never truly comprehend the struggles, daily microaggressions, and institutional and structural racism that confronts people of color – and especially Black men – in this country. Nevertheless, I am committed to strengthening my own knowledge and understanding of issues surrounding white privilege, the lived experiences of people of color, and the systemic barriers impeding equity.

Mr. Galizio has announced that the League has passed a resolution affirming its commitment to black students, faculty, and staff and that the League will begin working in earnest to support the tenets of the Chancellor's Call to Action.

(*The book to which Mr. Galizio alludes is "White Fragility:  Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism" by Robin Di Angelo.)