89% of the people in Fort Collins, CO are white.
This is an important number for you to have in your head when I tell you I went to the MLK March in Fort Collins yesterday.
If I tell you 1.21% of the city’s population is African American, the picture might become clearer.
One could begin to take these numbers, consider facts like recent electoral math, and start to develop a rather bleak picture of the chances of any good dialogue or cultural proficiency happening in the city (or Colorado writ large).
I know that was my predilection as I stepped onto the square Monday morning. Then, it occurred to me that this overwhelmingly white crowd made up of people who are statistically likely to know 1 black person out of every 100 people they know in the city, well, they still showed up.
One of my fears and one of the things that is easiest to do in a monoculture is ignoring you are in a monoculture. And, as a queer man, I realize many rooms aren’t going to have a conversation about or consider the perspectives of marginalized groups unless members of those groups are there to speak up or make it too awkward to ignore their presence.
I can’t speak to the levels of cultural proficiency within the group of people who showed up to march yesterday morning. I can’t know if they’re showing up to their offices and classrooms today ready to be actively anti-racist. I can’t be certain their dedication to building a community of equity and social justice extends beyond showing up once a year to march a few blocks with homemade signs quoting Dr. King.
I can’t know any of this. What I can do, though, and what I’m choosing to do is believe the white people who showed up yesterday are willing and open to taking action toward these better versions of whiteness. The work of undoing systemic racism and examining personal racism cannot wait for those oppressed by those systems and beliefs to call for action or activate guilt that moves toward action. This comes from an internal individual drive to examine our own actions and complicity in supporting those systems and then doing the work.
This is what I believe the other white people showed up to do yesterday.