Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion Maja Hazell gives her perspective on how the legal community can act as an Ally of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Years ago, at a social event, a partner at a leading law firm remarked on a series of police brutality cases in the press at that time and earnestly asked me why the black community in the United States had such a strained relationship with police forces. My response, I believe, led him to understand better the historical context for the relationship and has helped make him a better Ally today.

In the past few weeks, a series of incidents similar to many throughout U.S. history have ignited a necessary national conversation on anti-black racism.

They include the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd by police; the killing of Ahmaud Arbery by a former police officer enacting vigilante justice; and a conflict in New York’s Central Park where a white woman, Amy Cooper, told the police falsehoods about a black man, Christian Cooper, evoking the trauma of Emmett Till in the collective black American psyche.

We appear to have arrived at a watershed moment for global learning and change. The world is watching America to see how it will address our current civil disruption. Yet few countries are less adequately prepared for that conversation.

My role in corporate America as a diversity, equity and inclusion professional focuses on understanding the challenges to inclusion and promoting dialogues about difference that lead to positive change. As a black American woman raised by a family that taught me about the issues of race in stark terms from a very young age, I would like to bring a similar unflinching perspective to the current discussion.

Here are some perspectives on anti-black racism in the U.S. and how everyone can be an effective ally in stopping the horrific, crippling impact of racial bias.

America, race and our collective amnesia

American culture is powerfully rooted in the founding precepts of individual ‘liberty and justice for all’ and a ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ meritocracy, where everyone who works hard can achieve the ‘American dream’.

But our dependence on a narrative of exceptionalism – so critical to our identity as a global power and a ‘first-world’ role model – includes a strenuous unwillingness to examine other truths.

The U.S. government shunted millions of Native Americans from their own lands to unfamiliar areas, with millions dying in the process, and it exploited and murdered millions of enslaved Africans during nearly 250 years of a brutal trans-Atlantic slave trade.

I have always been curious about why Americans refuse to discuss this core aspect of our origins, particularly in light of the actions of other countries.

For example, in the last 70 years, governments in Germany, South Africa and Australia have acknowledged their wrongdoing and taken steps to right the wrongs of prior generations.

In 1952, West Germany and Israel negotiated an agreement on reparations, where West Germany agreed to pay $845 million to compensate Holocaust survivors, followed by Germany’s engagement in Vergangenheitsbewältigung – a process to come to terms with the past.

More than 20 years ago, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Act opened a path to talking about the individual and systemic wrongs committed during 43 years of apartheid.

Australia’s Reconciliation Act Plan is a framework that encourages workplaces, schools, government and community organizations to acknowledge the history of exploiting Aboriginal peoples and make amends.

These types of acknowledgement stand in stark contrast to the U.S., where the contributions of black Americans are severely minimized in stories of founding and building our nation. U.S. educators seem only willing to focus on the civil rights movement.

Myths common in U.S. textbooks for generations included that some slave owners treated enslaved people kindly and that black Americans were better off enslaved than free.

Today we have different versions of history textbooks for ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states. Not until 2016 did the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture grace the nation’s capital, following decades of efforts to highlight the contributions of African Americans.

Why don’t most of us understand how we got to this point today?

America’s myth-making regarding our identity and founding ignores slavery, to avoid underscoring that the capitalism we revere requires understanding the brutality of slave plantations. It avoids acknowledging how American democracy is rooted in the belief that some people are entitled to more rights than others.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series The 1619 Project reframes U.S. history to view 1619 as our nation’s birth year, when a ship arrived at Point Comfort in the colony of Virginia, bearing a cargo of dozens of enslaved Africans.

The editors note this places ‘the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country’.

Out of slavery and the anti-black racism it required ‘grew nearly everything that has made America truly exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system… its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality … and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day’.

So what is the impact of this abridged history lesson and collective amnesia?

Most Americans have a poor understanding of why the majority of black Americans have a vastly different, and decidedly more negative, lived experience than the majority of white Americans.

The pain of this is beautifully illustrated in Proctor & Gamble’s The Look. This negative experience typically has come from white Americans, and particularly at the hands of law enforcement.

Even advanced education, wealth and other forms of class pedigree do not exempt black Americans from the dangers of different treatment.

My answer to the partner’s question was this: a significant source of trauma experienced by enslaved Americans and their descendants came from the slave patrols charged to protect human property – the progenitors of our modern day police forces.

Many law enforcement officers were members of the Ku Klux Klan, formed in the post-slavery Reconstruction era, and wore their badges as they terrorized members of the black community.

A white supremacist presence still remains in many American police forces. Black American mistrust of law enforcement, often activated to defend unjust laws, runs long and deep.

Privilege and white supremacy

One of the strongest tools in bolstering America’s collective and socially reinforced amnesia regarding its legacy of slavery and racism is the myth of white supremacy.

The refusal or hesitation to discuss slavery or acknowledge the white supremacy that enabled it requires a willful blindness and silence regarding its discriminatory present-day impact.

On a personal level, in my work as a diversity, equity and inclusion professional, I am often struck by how strenuously some deny the existence of bias or privilege, even without realizing they’re doing so.

In just one example, several years ago I worked on a project to increase diversity in the legal profession.

One of my colleagues was a partner from a different law firm. After several weeks of cordial, productive meetings, I was surprised when he informed me that he ‘hates when people say he has privilege as a white male’, explaining that it implied he had not worked hard to achieve partnership at a major law firm.

As I discussed in the podcast Heels of Justice last year, one of the biggest issues that keeps me awake at night is the existence of backlash to diversity and inclusion initiatives, viewed as a threat meant to take something that ‘fairly belongs’ to one group and ‘unfairly redistribute’ it to another.

I didn’t believe he was a bad guy whom I would label a racist, but the continuum that spans from racist to ally includes a range of blind spots and unconscious biases.

A graphic called The Racism Scale illustrates comments and thoughts that reveal biases, which initially might not seem hurtful. Many of these biases stem from America’s general ignorance regarding our history of white supremacy and constitute serious microaggressions in their impact on those who are not white.

Comments like ‘I don’t see color’, ‘We should focus on what unites us, not what divides us’, ‘All lives matter’, ‘I support peaceful protests’, and ‘I’m not racist’ harm in all the ways described in the following article: www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/subtly-racist-things-to-stop-saying

Peggy McIntosh’s seminal work White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack explains that many are taught to see racism only in individual acts, not in the invisible systems that confer dominance on their group.

Further, even if we’re able to see some as disadvantaged and want to help, we are far more reluctant to see how society might provide us certain unearned advantages such that our ability to progress is made easier.

As a white woman, McIntosh served as a powerful ally by identifying 50 daily effects of white privilege in her life that her African American co-workers, friends, and acquaintances could not regularly rely upon. Re-reading her last condition gave me chills: ‘I will feel welcomed and ‘normal’ in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social’.

Acknowledging that racial difference drives inequality is difficult. Neuroscience shows human beings overestimate the disadvantageous headwinds they encounter in life and underestimate their advantageous tailwinds.

Barriers and hindrances command attention because they must be overcome; benefits and resources can often be simply enjoyed and largely ignored.

Four things lead to a breakdown in awareness of racial differences and racism:

How to be an Ally

The key to progress forward is educating ourselves on the truth of our past and its impact on the present, followed by acting to mitigate the destruction of so many lives caused by anti-black racism.

Even through my great sadness and pain at our current state of affairs, my hope in love and humanity endures. This strengthens every time I see someone step up to act as an ally instead of as a bystander.

Start by educating yourself on the issues marginalizing black Americans. Explore The 1619 Project podcast and the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s web portal Talking About Race, which is designed to help individuals, families and communities talk about racism, racial identity and how these forces shape society.

I recommend an article by Issac Eloi on racism in the UK, America’s ‘parent’ country. Finally, I will always look to the brilliant Toni Morrison to help America understand its racism.

Note that I said educate yourself. Unless a person of color offers, please don’t place the onus of explaining racism, its impact and how you can help solve it on those suffering its burdens.

People of color, particularly black Americans, are utterly exhausted by the centuries of work to make white people understand and become comfortable with our very existence.

Survey your sources of privilege and use them to help others. Awareness begins with ourselves, and that self-inventory is not easy.

Ask yourself: What sacrifices are you making to progress those who are disadvantaged by bias? Who are you shielding from consistently being overlooked for career-defining work assignments, leadership opportunities, or promotions?

For whom are you stepping aside so they can take center stage on a pitch for new business or an important meeting with a client? Are you only providing access to the same homogeneous groups?

Become an anti-racist and fight the systems perpetuating racial inequality.

Americans are taught that being fair means applying the law and all other rules in society to all equally. This approach is not sufficient to achieve fairness in a world shaped by historical, unearned privilege.

Achieving equity requires understanding not only the current experience of marginalization and oppression, but also the historical legacy of slavery, disenfranchisement and exclusion from most forms of opportunity: housing discrimination, voter suppression, lack of investment in education, employment and wage discrimination, and much more.

It requires understanding that not everyone starts at the same place, and more must be done for those historically left behind in order to achieve fairness and a level playing field. Ask yourself: How can you step up publicly to support equity?

Let’s all start with advice from How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi, who notes it ‘requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination’.

While it will require a painful acknowledgement of America’s origins and original sin, there is no better time to embrace the worst of who we have been in order to finally embody the truth of the greatness we claim.

More on Black Lives Matter in the next issue of Reporter Quarterly