24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY june 8-14, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com walked past. After this, Noah punched Williams in the face, breaking his jaw in three places, and Tricia jumped on his back. In December 2020, a jury found Noah Boewer guilty of felony assault and Tricia Boewer guilty of misdemeanor battery—but found both not guilty of a hate crime. At the Boewers’ sentencing, Williams spoke to Monterey County Superior Court Judge Andrew Liu and those present in the courtroom, delivering a poetic history of how this one moment fits into the larger experience of being a Black man in America. “The lie Tricia Boewer told to the police and this court when she said I physically accosted her is more than a lie, more than an insult. It was a direct and deliberate attack on my life,” Williams said. “The court wants to know the impact she has in my life? Well, after calling me a nigger several times, she employed the oldest trick in the book when it comes to interactions between white women and Black men. “A white woman lies,” he said, “and by the thousands, Black lives are devastated.” Judge Liu replied that Williams had been heard, and noted that the jury’s failure to find a hate crime was perhaps not surprising, as proving a hate crime is a high legal hurdle. “I cannot say I personally understand the experiences you describe, but they are also not foreign to me,” Liu said. “The phrase that has repeatedly come to mind as I thought about this case...is that the march toward justice does not move in a straight line, but it does move forward. “I think perhaps too often we think of racism in stark terms. It is not simply or merely a hatred of people of color or other groups. Everyday racism takes on varying forms with varying degrees of subtlety.” It was in this context that Williams, an Air Force veteran, minister and community activist, founded the Black Leaders and Allies Collaborative (BLAAC). The organization, which gained nonprofit status in May 2021, holds a mission to “[help] leaders and change-makers achieve racial equity through dialogue, unity and shared values.” Toward that end, BLAAC hosts movie nights, pop-up community conversations and, of course, facilitates Euro-Centric Cultural Reflectionism, known in shorthand as ECCR. Williams initially began developing ECCR thinking it might apply most readily in a college context—in December 2020 the California State University system updated the CSU General Education Breadth policy to include an ethnic studies requirement. Starting with students who began their degrees in the fall of 2021, all CSU students now complete at least one ethnic studies course. Locally at CSU Monterey Bay, there are dozens of courses on offer to fulfill this requirement—from a class on slavery and race in the Americas to “Art of the Aztec Empire” and “Multicultural Poetry.” Williams has a specific vision for the progression of the course. The first few weeks are devoted to “learning of self”—students practice identifying their emotions and using certain tools to go deeper, like a pyramid method for breaking down thoughts and feelings into their component parts. Starting with emotions is important, Williams says, “because that’s where the problem exists.” As Williams sees it, all of the corporeal facts of racism, from outright violence to discrimination, are a result of the way people process (or fail to process) their guilt, fear and shame. Next, students “learn of the problem,” discussing things like the wealth gap between white and Black Americans (the median white family had $184,000 in wealth in 2019 compared to just $23,000 for the median Black family, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) the school-to-prison pipeline, or the ways in which religion has upheld white supremacy. Finally, students “learn of others”—and conduct research into Black history and the cultural, political and technological contributions of Black Americans. The course also features extensive discussions on white saviorism (a pop culture trope where a white person rescues people of color from some perceived plight) and the importance of curiosity and compassion in being a good ally. After creating the ECCR curriculum, Williams decided to pilot it with community members outside the college context, and that’s where it has remained—Williams is not currently looking to bring ECCR into any formal education system. Instead, he is focused on developing additional courses—ECCR 2 will focus on the Constitution of the United States, and the inequality written right into it; ECCR 3 will explore questions around reconciliation and reparations. ECCR was not created exclusively for white people. But it does contain a distinct goal for white participants: “ECCR was written from a Black perspective…that would have white people reflect on issues they never talk about,” Williams says. “The goal for white people is to see themselves as a racialized group—everything else comes out of that.” Colleen Ingram chose to participate in ECCR as a way to deal with the emotional turmoil of 2020. During and after the Black Lives Matter protests, the 15-year P.G. resident says she noticed a distinct “hostility” to diversity in her town. This hostility became even more apparent once Ingram started attending meetings of P.G.’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force—the task force, created in 2021, has done significant work including writing the city’s officially approved apology for the 1906 burning of the Chinese fishing village at Point Alones. It has also faced continuous criticism, including from recent Task Force candidate Marie Hunter, who acknowledged in her application that she doubted the usefulness of the DEI Task Force and said it was wrong “to point fingers at a particular race dominating and suppressing another.” (In spite of this, Mayor Bill Peake recommended appointing Hunter to the task force following the 2022 election— her appointment was ultimately not approved by City Council.) “You need education to be able to counter that,” says Ingram, who is white. Both the information presented in the class—data on income and wealth disparities between Black Americans and white Americans, the Black-white homeownership divide, the school-toprison pipeline, etc.—and the conversations have been eye-opening, Ingram says. “It was really the first time I looked from the ground up at how our TERMS AND CONCEPTS: A GUIDE Anti-racism—the policy or practice of actively opposing racism and promoting racial equality. Ally—a person or group that provides assistance and support in an ongoing effort, activity, or struggle; a person who is not a member of a marginalized or mistreated group but who expresses or gives support to that group. White savior—A pop culture trope in which a white character rescues people of color from a perceived plight, often for self-centered motivations. school-to-prison pipeline—Practices and policies that disproportionately send Black and brown youth into the criminal justice system. According to the ACLU, Black students are suspended or expelled three times more than white students; students who are suspended or expelled are more likely to come into contact with the juvenile justice system. 1619—The year that the first 20-30 enslaved African people arrived in Virginia, then a British colony. The 1619 Project, an initiative of the New York Times and writer Nikole HannahJones, argues for seeing 1619 (rather than America’s independence in 1776) as the foundation of the nation. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)—Organizational frameworks that seek to promote fair treatment of all people, especially groups that have been historically underrepresented or marginalized. Critical Race Theory—The academic study of how historical racism is ingrained in law, politics, the media and other cultural institutions. Despite being a central term used in discussions about what should or should not be taught in American history classes, Critical Race Theory is most often taught in law school. Euro-Centric Cultural Reflectionism (ECCR)—An anti-racism training developed by Dirrick Williams that aims to prompt white people to see themselves as a racialized group, and help all students learn to identify, process and control their emotional response to racism. White supremacy—The belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups. “The march toward justice does not move in a straight line, but it does move forward.”
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