By Julia Lopez, community reporter
Three local black residents were part of a panel discussion this week that focused on what it’s like to live in a “hyper-white space” like Eau Claire.
The panel, “Being Black in the Valley,” was part of Converge Radio’s “Conversations in Color” series that airs every Monday night at 7:30 p.m. on 99.9 FM. The program was livestreamed from the Pablo Center at the Confluence, as it will be each week.
Selika Ducksworth-Lawton, a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire history professor, moderated the discussion together with Ed Hudgins of Converge Radio. The panelists – Delisha Bates-Hansen, Rachel Pride and Raymond Clayton – discussed topics ranging from their own experiences with racial discrimination in the Chippewa Valley to what local white allies can do.
Ducksworth-Lawton opened the conversation by explaining that only 1.9% of Wisconsin’s population is black, including incarcerated black people. However, that statistic drops to 0.937% if you don’t include black people who are in jail, she said.
“Wisconsin just hasn’t had a lot of black people in it,” she said.
Panelists’ comments
Pride, who said she is biracial, said she struggled to fit in as she grew up in Eau Claire.
She said she has experienced micro-aggressions her whole life, from being followed through retail stores to having strangers grab her hair.
“I have to decide what kind of clothes to wear so I don’t get judged differently,” Pride said.
She added that she would make more money waitressing during high school when she styled her hair or had a weave in than when she wore her hair neatly, but natural.
“It affects your money, the way you feel about yourself, jobs,” Pride said.
Bates-Hanson agreed that she had experienced similar microaggressions as well as more extreme demonstrations of racism. She pulled out a list of incidents in response to a viewer’s question asking if the panelists had experienced racism in the Chippewa Valley.
Her personal examples ranged from being spit on and enduring racial slurs from a stranger, to experiencing mistreatment at hospitals, to not being taken seriously in her professional environment as a social worker.
“I want white people to see us so they’re not just getting that stereotypical black person on TV,” Bates-Hanson said. “You see me, we’re normal people, we go grocery shopping…we love our children just like you love your children. We have people we care about.”
Clayton agreed that he had experienced racial discrimination at various levels in Eau Claire.
“When you’re black and you go into a place that is all white, they’re gonna see the black,” Clayton said. “And that’s what you have to deal with every single place that you go in Eau Claire. So I’ll just stay home.”
He added that he has felt singled-out by the Eau Claire Police Department on multiple occasions, and Pride agreed that has been pulled over for “silly” reasons several times.
Discussion of Jacob Blake shooting
When the discussion turned to Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old man shot Sunday night by police officers in Kenosha, Pride said she was unable to watch the cellphone footage of the incident but is happy the recording exists.
Bates-Hanson agreed that the documentation of violence on social media has been overwhelming.
“We have this [cellphone footage] happening and then you still have those people who are denying this,” she said. “We watched a police officer murder a black man [George Floyd,] you murdered him and we all saw it. And yet you have these groups of people who want to deny that and that right there is so painful.”
Pride said she felt the Eau Claire community needed to keep momentum going when fighting racism.
“I feel like we’re not doing enough here in Eau Claire,” she said. “I mean they put a mural up. I’m like, ok, cool, but it seems like things happen and we just forget about it.”
Ducksworth-Lawton added that part of “white allyship” is not seeing people of color as “different.”
“It’s working together with us and being a partner,” she said. “If a person of color tells you something’s offensive or they correct you, the best thing you could say is, ‘thank you, I’m going to do better.’”
Fighting racism must start young
All panelists agreed that fighting racism should start at a young age and that progress can be made through exposing children to more artists of color or people of color who have made history.
“When I look at my experience as a child growing up in Texas,” Bates-Hanson said, “everything was in color. It was so beautiful and everyone was celebrated. And then coming to Chippewa Falls, everything was black and white. There was no celebration. We don’t acknowledge race and we don’t acknowledge differences.”
Clayton agreed exposure at a young age is important.
“Why don’t we start teaching these younger generations just not to be racist?” he asked. “You’re not born racist. Let’s start with the kids.”
Pride said racism doesn’t affect just people of color. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the cop that shot Jacob Blake or you are just doing microagressions,” she said. “Any kind of racism is harmful to everybody. All of us. White people, black people, brown people, all of us. People.”
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