Reflections from Allison and Belichick

Today, my 8 month old puppy Belichick discovered the frigid reality of the oft- invisible blanket that is whiteness. Just like any other morning she asked to go outside. As she went to step outside on the front porch, however, there it was! Puzzled and slightly fearful, Belichick looked up at me. The bad owner that I am, I motioned for her to go ahead with little warning about what she was entering. At first, Belichick was very excited. She had never actually seen whiteness, only heard stories about its ubiquitous presence. This isn't so bad she thought. I'm a black dog and I'm having a great time pouncing, peeing, and pooping on whiteness. I can even retrace my footsteps and eat it! I'm leaving my mark all over this dominant structure HA HA!  After awhile however, Belichick's high began to wear off. I had her come clean the whiteness off of my car with me. Without doing so, we can't see the actual beauty that is my Honda Prelude. Nor could we move around and do the things we wanted to do in our daily life. Unfortunately, cleaning off whiteness is never as easy as it looks. It won't let the wind shield wipers move as they wish, doors that are usually open are frozen shut and when you go to get warm water to poor on the whiteness you usually slip on more whiteness on your way back to the car and fall flat on your back, spilling the water on you in the process.  Luckily, none of that happened this morning but Belichick did get her fair share of whiteness dumped on her as I wiped it off my car. She looked at me scornfully and shook it off refusing to hide her black, shiny coat. Although she wanted to continue jumping around in the whitness and make holes in its blanket as she dug and stuck her head deeper in to see what it was made of and what exists under it, I kept her on the leash near me as we worked to free Prelude. Belichick eventually sat down on the whiteness, surrounded by it in all directions as it continued to fall from the sky. I could tell she was uncomfortable, but I had to work on one problem at a time.  When we went back inside, Belichick was wet from all of the whiteness that had melted on her. She went and laid in my bed, damp and tired. I had little objection, as she had just been introduced to a very chilling and harsh reality. Although I tried to explain to her that this whiteness isn't always as visible and obstructive as it was today, during this time of year you could wake up to it at any time.  I hope all of us, like Belichick, will continue to brave this sometimes unexpected (yet always present) storm that is whiteness. Perhaps we can learn from her initial excitement when she pounced, pooped, peed, and chewed on whiteness (this excitement only seemed to fade when she spent to long in the whiteness of I limited her potential movement with a leash).  Happy 1st snow of the season everyone! 

Allison

Third Dialogue Reflections

As you know, the third dialogues wrapped up last week. We brought up previous responses to the discussion of whiteness, which provoked a variety of new responses (meta-responses?) and sent us off in new directions around statements such as "I don't think talking about race helps anything" and why they might come out of the mouths of all students regardless of race/ethnicity but might mean very different things to white students and students of color.

The discussion of Allies and Actions steps provoked genuine interest, feelings of helplessness and occasional ridicule. For some white students professions of hope or avoidance seemed to be the road to panacea, and for others the complexities are just beginning to emerge. For students of color hope was/is the riskiest response, and only seemed to occur when they saw white students being vulnerable and there was a sense of collective responsibility for change. Hard to believe but it did happen, and the reflections indicate as much.

Enough for now. Please post your own reflections. I'd/we'd love to know.. . .

Leda