To the Editor: 

First, I sympathize with your position to be an impartial forum for community discussion, particularly in your opinion/editorial section. However, I was relieved to see the response letter from MaryGrace Brogioli, who is incensed, as I am, at the assertion from a presumably white reader that systemic racism does not exist.

Denying that racism is systemic is damaging and inappropriate for anyone in America, but particularly by a person who cannot and does not seem to be willing to try to understand what it means to be historically oppressed in our country. I believe that racism will continue as long as implicit biases remain unexplored and oversimplification, free of statistical data or anything other than anecdotal evidence, persist.

I, with my friend Dr. Sarah Thomas of Mattapoisett, co-organized the Black Lives Matter protest on June 5 in Mattapoisett. Until this event, I have never participated in a protest before, nevermind organized one. But by nature of my profession—a college writing instructor in an urban environment with many low-income and disadvantage students—civil rights come up, and so do indigenous rights, prisoner’s rights… in other words, human rights.

One thing I teach my students is to “consider the source” of anything they read. My dad actually taught me this. When people insulted me, or said unkind things to me growing up, he would say, “Well, Stacie, consider the source.” In other words, their words are a reflection of their character and not your actions, your personality, or your being.

Another thing I teach my students is to look for an agenda. When you are reading, or watching something on YouTube, look closely. Who is behind those words? What do the authors or speakers do for a living? Whom do they work for, and what do they stand to gain from writing this article, or making this video?

This is a helpful exercise, and of course every teacher I know will say these are basic, rhetorical principles that are absolutely required in a thinking, reflective society that is allowed so much freedom of thought and judgment as the one we fortunately share in the United States of America.

So it is our duty not just to read the headlines, or the cover, but the actual meat of the argument—its intricacies, its nuances, its purpose. When we do this, we become informed. We read “around” the argument. What else is going on here? Who refutes these ideas? Why? Who is better equipped to make a case?

Let’s take Mr. Correia’s argument for example that systemic racism does not exist. I would ask my students to help me unpack this: How do we know systemic racism exists? Here is what they might find out, upon further investigation: Today, black families earn ten cents for every dollar white families earn. Redlining is a historical fact with present-day implications.A recent documentary by Sara and Ken Burns, East-Lake Meadows, is educational in this regard.

Our criminal justice system is punitive and needs reform, and sentencing affects people of color at a staggeringly higher rate than white people. Two Harvard scholars recently write in the Washington Post that “systemic racism has had its knee on the neck of the African American community since America began.”

If systemic racism did not exist, we would not need projects such as the one at Harvard University or Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, which aims to highlight disparity and search for remedies—first and foremost admitting that America’s past is rooted in racism and being color-blind is denying that a legacy of slavery still exists.

Mr. Correia asserted that the public-school administrators in the Tri-Town should not take a stand and support the peaceful protests against the murder of George Floyd and the system that allows a police officer like Derek Chauvin to gain his salary from the very community he has traumatized. The stand they took, and the purpose of the protest, was human rights, not a political statement.

He mistakenly stated that the focus of the Black Lives Matter movement is to abolish the police as we know it. He called the organization anti-cop. First of all, the focus of the BLM movement is not police at all. Defunding the police is a new tenet of theirs, which I will address in a moment, but the catalyst of the BLM movement was the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a white man who shot a black teenager, presumptively guilty because of a hooded sweatshirt and black skin color. In simply shifting the attention away from black people and onto the police, Correia calls attention to the racist assumption that implies the importance of the police over the secondary concern of black people.

In truth, the BLM organization seeks to “ [create] a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power to thrive…” and in addition, they are an inclusive organization. “We work vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people…To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others.”

Defunding the police is not as inflammatory or radical stance as it sounds. One has only to learn about what cities such as Camden, New Jersey have done. In Camden, New Jersey in 2013 there was a “public safety crisis” with the homicide rate in that city being “18 times the national average” and comparable to that of a developing country. Through re-vamping their police force in Camden, with the goal of “[minimizing] harm and saving lives” Camden saw a 95% reduction in excessive force complaints, and a homicide rate of “65 in 2012 to 27 in 2019. 

The initiative asks communities to rethink the way money is spent, and intentionally invest in preventative community initiatives that promote public safety. As the former Chief of Camden, New Jersey said, “I would have traded 10 cops for another Boys and Girls Club.” In other words, the police in that city went from having a reputation as “warriors” to that of “guardians.” Finally, if anything has come to light in the wake of the pandemic and recent events that led to the killing of unarmed black men and women in our country, it is that the time for white people being the loudest voice in the room is over. Listening is what we should be doing now; amplifying black voices so that we can be a more educated and equitable society is why we should all support the protests. People are angry, people are frustrated, and the younger generation is shouting because those in power have been deaf about issues of race—in fact, denying they even exist—for far too long.

In Solidarity,
Stacie Charbonneau Hess

Instructor of English, Bristol Community College
Writing Program Instructor, Bristol County House of Corrections

P.S. In case there was any doubt, since the previous correspondence did not specifically address the message of the march on June 5, Chief Mary Lyons was informed and consulted prior to the peaceful march. She and organizers worked together to be sure it was a safe, family-friendly event. Second, the Dartmouth Police recently issued a statement on their Facebook page in solidarity with the protestors in their town. Chief Levesque writes that “…my door is always open to those of you who would like to discuss how we, the members of the Dartmouth Police Department, can do better in playing a role in building a society which is based on fairness and equality.” It would be wonderful to see more town officials and police departments issue similar statements.