No One is Whispering About the R Word Anymore, They Just Come Right Out and Say It.
Authored by: Ashley Milton, PhD
Freedom is a concept that often escapes words as we often understand our state of freedom based on the oppression that is placed upon us. For me, I describe freedom as the ability to read and to write, which to me equates to access and mobility. My love for reading was not always strong. I remember my time at 42nd Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, California where I did not like to read. I was slow, I stumbled over words, and I could not find the connection between Jan, Stan, and Dan running with illustrations of White children who looked nothing like me and whose names sounded nothing like the names of my fellow classmates. My love for reading became an intentional decision to rebel against a system that did not want me educated, to counter negative stereotypes about books and Blacks, and to pay homage to those whose shoulders I stand on; my ancestors who were beaten and even murdered, for daring to open a book.
“....educators are not comfortable having uncomfortable conversations.”
I matriculated through a school system based on a legal mandate to be educated or face truancy. Further, the required curriculum that taught me I was a slave and then limited the extent of discourse on my “Black History” to the 28 days of February. I know first hand the harm of restricting a child from asking questions about why inequalities exist because educators are not comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. Instead, we allow teachers to weaponize inquisitive kids in their classrooms as disruptive because, as a nation, we are uncomfortable talking about diversity and encouraging diverse perspectives. In his 1852 speech entitled What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Frederick Douglas asked this powerful question. And some 171 years later, on Juneteenth 2023, I am liberated and free, and reflecting on what this holiday means in terms of my journey, my story, and my role in the history of Black Africans who were enslaved in America as I now do my part to connect the global African Diaspora.
Today, as a member of academia who works on One Health and Transdisciplinarity --which is another word for diversity, equity, and inclusion, racism does not escape me nor the topics or communities where my research occurs. As the founder of a consulting and advisory firm, I see firsthand the toils of racism and the impact it has on growth, development, and the tools to access financial capital for Black business owners. And, as I celebrate this Juneteenth, 158 years after the inaugural commemoration of Juneteenth, 127 years after the “separate but equal” ruling of Plessy v Ferguson, 69 years after the “school desegregation” Brown v Board ruling, and 59 years after passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act, I know my role is to “disaggregate the data.” This means I can track and prove shifted baselines and chart pathways forward. Black people perceive themselves to be free. The problem with that self assessment is that it does not acknowledge the blatant obvious, which is systemic racism has made anti-Blackness a global phenomenon. Individual racism, which is the belief that Black people as a group are inferior to whites because of genotypic and phenotypic traits, and that furthermore those traits determine social behavior as well as moral and intellectual qualities. These beliefs are then validated as legitimate and ratified by white institutions to justify inferior treatment and cultural practices. Therefore, I've chosen to commemorate the Juneteenth holiday over the past two decades by learning to restore.
Ashley Milton on the first day of school in 4th grade at 42nd Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, California.
Dr. Ashley Milton PhD graduation ceremony from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
“No one is whispering about the R word any more, we just come right out and say it; reparations.”
I realize the intentionality of the system not seeing, acknowledging, or caring for my matter or my physical state of being. I consider myself to be on a similar mission to Harriet Tubman, as she exemplified that freedom is the ability to care for and to protect your matter. Therefore, I mostly describe freedom as the ability of choice and mobility. Freedom is living and thriving in place without the crushing realities of racism stippling every movement, every action, every breath one takes. Freedom is freely being oneself without the persecution of being Black. For me, sometimes I describe freedom as a distant memory from early in my childhood, before I was awakened to the world, stripped of my innocence, and forced to reckon with the truths of a racially unjust world. No one is whispering about the R word any more, we just come right out and say it; reparations. But, freedom today for many Black people is something we barely think about. Something we barely discuss. It's a sign that we continue to allow outsiders to drive that conversation in our community.
Dr. Ashley Milton reading Black Skin, White Mask by Frantz Fanon at Chuck Brown Memorial Park in Washington, DC.
Dr. Ashley Milton playing with school children around Lake Mai Ndombe in the Bandundu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I know freedom is not suffering in silence while making other people feel comfortable. I also know that many of us have many examples of what freedom is not, but do we collectively have examples of what freedom can be? Today, I live in Accra, Ghana, and in West Africa, racism looks different. It's at the treaty level, the national level. Sadly, it's also in the eyes of my fellow Africans when they treat me differently. That difference being tinged in hateful rhetoric or deeds, of me as a reflection of them. Yes, I have compassion because I know the same person who taught them to hate, once taught me to do the same. And I think about ways to reach them, despite the white lens through which some see me. As I write this on Juneteenth in 2023, my freedom wish is for us to take the time to remove the perceived lens of inferiority from our eyes, collectively. It’s a wish for us to come together to celebrate our culture, our languages and unique styles of communication, our family, our resilience to persist, and our goal to reach freedom together.