From Violence and Trauma to Action

You don’t have to watch …. You don’t have to subject yourself to that trauma. It should not require another [violent event] … for anyone to understand that … [we have] an urgent, devastating issue.

Bernice King

in response to the killing of Tyre Nichols

A week ago, 11 people were killed while celebrating the Lunar New Year. Two days later, 7 more lives were taken–in each case, almost all of the victims of Asian descent. Our CEO surely spoke for all of us in “mourn[ing] the heartbreaking loss of life.” A colleague from the NAT team, Kathy KimJuhn, did the important and difficult task of saying the names from the first of these “tragic and senseless act[s] of violence.” Closer still, Tiffany Jones, Deputy Director for Measurement, Learning and Evaluation (MLE), made sure to hold a moment of silence with and for her team, an acknowledgment offered again by Summer Acharya, Program Officer on the MLE team, in our most recent Postsecondary Success Leadership Team meeting. I am incredibly grateful for colleagues who are able, as KimJuhn is, to find and to offer up a genuine sense of “hope and light.”

For me, these moments are hard. There is indeed a trauma revisited by these violences, moments we seem to imagine will instigate change, as if bearing witness to the horrors this time will make something new and different happen. Maybe this time will change the way we think about gun laws; or maybe this time will change the way we view and provide sustained support for mental health. Or perhaps the events this time will bring about what feels to be among the most pressing, necessary, and obstinate of changes–the way we understand and deal with the deep historical connections between race and violence in this country.

In the very thoughtful statement from Mark Suzman about the shootings in California, I would offer up one important alteration. It isn’t that “violent events targeting a specific racial or ethnic group have become far too common in the United States,” it is that they “have been and remain” far too prevalent. And sorrowfully, for the third time in a week, we are again asked to stare at the cold brutality of a violence.

The killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis manifests in a different context than the shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay. But there is a commonality of inhumanity and a resulting trauma for an entire community of color that is painfully consistent.

I tried to abide the guidance to not watch, but I also knew that my failure to comply would not cost me my life as it did Tyre Nichols. “You don’t have to watch … to understand” the need for change. But certainly seeing the exchange that takes this young man’s life should make any human being weep and demand we do things differently.

Just a short while ago, I shared that together with hope, one needed realism and “an urgent commitment to inclusive action” to generate optimism about the future. Less than three years ago, it seems as though we were standing in the same place. I recall then, my first reaction was much more realism than hope or action, and therefore likely didn’t conjure much optimism. Ideas about what to do came much later back then.

But to draw on King yet again, there is absolutely a “fierce urgency of now. … there ‘is’ such a thing as being too late” or too slow. “This is a time for vigorous and positive” and inclusive “action.” So, as I think about the communities of color on college campuses in particular–the faculty, staff, and most importantly, the students–I am asking myself:

• What actions might I, might we take to help support AAPI, Black and other students, faculty and staff on campuses engaging (or reeling from) these issues today?

• What should we be doing to check in on each other and with those with whom we do our work in this moment?

• What can we be proposing to those with greater authority, power and resources at our organization or in our orbits?

I welcome you to think with me, but this is also a plea for help in trying to quickly move from ideation to action.