Wiping Out the Effects of Racism and Discrimination in U.S. Institutions: Guest MINDSETTER™ Haig

Monday, January 23, 2023

Guest MINDSETTER™ Theodore Josiha Haig

 

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Theodore Josiha Haig. PHOTO: Haig

The Racial Equity and Social Justice initiatives throughout the United States are intended to address the fundamental causes of systemic racism and discrimination that impact America’s historically marginalized populations.

Their core objective like the social-justice organizations they reflect is to achieve equity, political rights, and social inclusion by advancing policies and practices that expand human and civil rights, eliminate discrimination, and accelerate the well-being, education, and economic security of black people and all persons of color, through some unique vehicle. As a social conscious entity at its core is the “woke” movement, which is deeply philosophically based in social-justice. The same one that Florida’s governor “finds oppressive and anathema to the concept of a ‘Free Florida’, which has become the rallying cry as he weighs a run for the White House.

“Woke” according to DeSantis’ lawyer, on behalf of the governor, “is the false belief that there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” As the state’s leader the governor’s naivety continues to perpetuate this mystical notion of shielding this enigma with a “Cultural of Silence.” No doubt, a slap in the face of these socially conscious organization’s tireless efforts to address the consequences of racial injustices in America.  

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Part of the complexity of living black in America says James Baldwin, “Is that America’s original sin has never been addressed to its conclusion.” How do you separate people by their color? Then get to a place where you own them creating a system or ‘value gap’ built around this insane belief that, “White people matter more than others,” say Ed Glaude, a scholar from Princeton University.

Glaude clarifies, “We are not talking about loud racist or people walking around with Swastikas.” No, its coded so that it “animates our social practices and our political and economic arrangements while distorting our character and deforming our democracy.”

The country is organized based on this “value gap” and this notion of 'white supremacy, Glaude argues. It is in its DNA. Difficult to address because it informs public discourse and translates systemically to the point where it is maintained and sustained by all of us…this “Culture of Silence.” Racial inequities are perpetuated through the social networks we create. We are so entrenched in 'white supremacy' in America we have to even convince 'white folk' that it is happening.

The mystique of this “Culture of Silence” is that it strips away the "oppressed" and "oppressor’s" natural inclination to be humane. So, we hate, accuse, lash out, or remain silent claiming “we don’t see what we should have been able to see.” And our “sense of humanity” gets lost along the way. Compassion, sympathy, empathy, and “love thy neighbor,” loses its place in our institutions. It also manifest itself in our institution’s policies and practices. Even our ability to be objective can become dehumanized. Especially, when incidents of discrimination are raised.

I believe that both the “oppressor” and the “oppressed” must be liberated from this mystique by regaining their “sense of humanity” through a process called “consciousness development education.”  Where each must constantly be “rethinking its way of life” within the institution and examining its roles in maintaining and sustaining the system, so we can regain our “sense of humanity.” It must be viewed as a “continuous process” that along the way allows each to begin looking at the “world”  through the ‘lenses’ of a compassionate and sympathetic person; one that exhibits generous behavior or disposition towards another human being. Calling for dialoguing and interacting with people and institutional laws, policies, practices, rules and regulations, that emphases striving for a ‘greater’ humanity.

In order to regain our “sense of humanity” in America leaders like Governor DeSantis and ‘institutions’ they oversee have to be liberated. Whereby each go through a process of rethinking its ‘way of life’  and 're-examined the roles’ each played in maintaining and sustaining oppression and the infrastructure of racism and discrimination in America.


Theodore Josiha Haig, graduate of Providence College ’70, is a former superintendent of schools in both Hartford, Ct. and East Orange, New Jersey, and currently functioning as an author and international educational consultant. Ted lived in the state of Qatar, the Middle East, for eleven years and holds both a doctorate from Boston College and a law degree from the University of Florida, College of Law. 

A native New Yorker and former Providence College basketball player, Ted served as the first president of the Afro-American Society at Providence College and the college’s first director of the Martin Luther King Scholarship program. Among all his accomplishments Ted is a six-time published mystery-suspense novelist. His recent release is “BALDWIN VILLAGE.”

 

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