In this issue I’ll look at racism (including my own) in the electric bus context, and ways to work on overcoming it, since feeling sad about the murder of George Floyd isn’t helpful by itself. First, a few resources.
Coming up June 9: Forth’s Electric School Bus (ESB) Webinar, register here, will look at ESB’s at a high level, since Forth advocates for electrified transportation in general. CTE, as electric bus experts specifically, now offers ESB learning resources online from the three-part ESB webinar series we concluded yesterday. I was honored to instigate that series, and implement it with my wonderful CTE colleagues. And, Pacific Power has just posted its funding opportunity for Electric Transportation grants.
How is racism relevant to the electric bus world? We are the good, progressive people, right? Well, most electric bus programs are developed without input or guidance from the communities of color that buses serve (King County/Seattle’s program is a notable exception). Our staffing and especially our leadership are mostly white, and so don’t reflect the bus riders we are serving. Many school districts, including those deploying and ordering ESB’s, punish, suspend and incarcerate black children at sharply disproportionate rates. At least one district with an ESB program has been successfully sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for that reason. It’s not enough to clean up the air that disadvantaged kids are breathing if those kids are being sytematically sent into the well-documented school-to-prison pipeline.
What can we do about insitutionalized racism? One thing Forth did this week was to issue a statement of solidarity with Black Lives Matter. It’s made meaningful less by its words (though they’re good) than by Forth’s consistent work over the past years around diversity, equity and inclusion. Another thing we can do is support our colleagues of color. I just renewed my membership in Conference of Minority Transportation Officials ($125 for individuals, $500 for nonprofits). You can be any color to join. As a white, I see my role here as one of listening and supporting.
A key thing I’ve learned to do recently to is own my own racism. This book has helped me do that.
I’m sad to report that I have some racist tendencies. I’m slightly happier to report that I’ve been working on them for years. It’s impossible to grow up in a culture built and controlled by whites and not learn on a deep, unconscious level, to see blacks as other than, different from, scarier than oneself. Please stay with me here, even if you’re uncomfortable.
Here’s an example of the power of racism. Sura, age 24 and from West Africa, has been living with me and my husband since last September. We are putting him through college. (If you ever get to talk with Sura about what he’s done so far in his life and his vision and plans for the future, you will get a sense of why.) Sura calls me Mom. I love him, and he is essentially my adopted son. So, my racism is defeated, right? But it’s not.
In the thousands of times I’ve looked into Sura’s animated, dark black face, I have never “not seen” his color. Instead, I think: he looks so different from me. I hold my purse closer to my body around black people than white people. I’ve assumed a black person in a retail store worked there (they were a customer). I’ve assumed that black and brown people I’ve met weren’t college graduates when they were, and the list goes on. My point is that racist tendencies are in the air we breathe.
We need not the right beliefs but anti-racist actions to be on the right side of history. We have all kinds of roles we can play here, and I’d love to hear about your role. Since I’m a writer, I will write a newsletter soon on Laying Whanels To Rest, in which I’ll supply a list of speakers of color in our industry (please reply with any suggestions for this list). Whanels are white-only speaker panels, and are too common, similar to male-only speaker panels, or manels, which I wrote about in my last issue. Here is the latest version of Laying Manels To Rest, updated with additional women’s names supplied by various readers – thank you!
Thanks!
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)Electric School Bus Newsletter
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.
Whose land are you on?