Every
other month the Southwest Michigan Black Heritage Society holds a Book Club
meeting at Kazoo Books. The Race Initiative Book Club is founded out of the
SMBHS’s Racial Healing Initiative, which is a program that maintains that the
“lingering legacy of historical injustices must be addressed through” four
steps: facing history, making connections, healing wounds and taking action.
The Book Club is a drop-in club that fits into this structure by opening up a
space for people to read and discuss books that promote racial healing and
reconciliation. As the newest member of the SMBHS team, I jumped on the
opportunity to join.
I arrived
to Kazoo Books for my first Book Club meeting on a rainy, chilly November
night. Inside I was welcomed by an intimate and cozy room shelved floor to
ceiling with used and new books. A reader's paradise. Fluffy, grey cat
included. Although I’ve visited this little bookshop on Parkview dozens of
times, it was nice to be greeted by a community of like-minded activists,
questioners and curious souls. A dozen or so women and one gentleman (yes, only
one…) said their hellos and pulled up a chair for me around a large table.
After old friends and first timers introduced themselves, Donna Odom, Executive
Director of the SMBHS, passed around a tin of cookies and we were handed a set of
guidelines they call Boundary
Markers. Used at the Racial Healing Retreats, this set of practices is used
to “create and protect safe spaces.” Talking about race is not always easy—as “Clybourne
Park” demonstrates—so having a full page of ideas like, "Speak your truth
in ways that respect other people’s truth," provided the other members and
me with tools to handle our discussions with respect and consciousness. I
thought it was a great way to start off what can often times be a difficult and
sensitive topic. After a brief chat about these Boundary Markers, we
began.
November’s
book choice was actually a 2009 play written by Bruce Norris called “Clybourne
Park.” Written in response to Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” the
dark, confusing and sometimes hilarious play fearlessly tackles issues of race,
gentrification and housing in an all-white suburb in Chicago—which actually
ends up being Any City, USA.
The first
of the two-act play takes part in 1959 around a white, middle-aged couple, Bev
and Russ Stoller, who are packing up their modest home to move into a new
neighborhood. Throughout the first act, the Stollers are visited by a group of
characters, including their neighbor Karl Lindner, who discloses that the
family buying the Stoller's home is a “colored” family. Tensions rise as Karl
does all he can to convince them to back out of the deal, afraid that desegregating
the neighborhood will bring property values down and encourage other black
families to move in. As the conversation escalates among the small crowd, each
character is confronted with their own biases and judgments. Act 2 is set in
the exact same home as Act 1, though it takes place 50 years later, with the
house in visible disrepair. The neighborhood has become an all-black
neighborhood, and our group of characters sits discussing housing codes. There
is a white couple planning on buying and remodeling the house, who are
negotiating with local housing regulations and neighborhood organizations,
represented by a black couple. We quickly discover the meaningful connections
these characters have to Clybourne Park: the black wife is a relative of the
family that bought the house in 1959, and the lawyer representing the white
couple is the daughter of Karl Lindner. She mentions quickly that her family
moved out of Clybourne Park right around 1960. Discussions of housing codes
quickly dissolve into debates and arguments filled with racial tension and
resentments. By the end of the short play, the characters and readers have been
forced to look racism and gentrification dead on.
The play
brought on a much welcomed discussion for me at the Book Club. As we spent time
going over the scenes of the play, I was happy to hear members of the table
bring forth their own experiences and perspectives on racism in housing—sometimes
challenging one another on our levels of knowledge and acceptance of racism and
gentrification in our own Kalamazoo. I hadn’t recognized what some members
considered the causes and beginning stages of gentrification in some of our
neighborhoods. It was nice to be challenged to think more critically about
this. I also valued the comfort I felt around the table. Although there were
clearly disagreements, everyone was in that space to learn, speak and grow. The
Racial Healing Initiative has done a good job, in my opinion, on creating that
safe space where people can challenge themselves—and ask to be challenged by
others—without the fear of saying the wrong thing or feeling ignorant. I left
the meeting thinking about housing in a way that my privilege, youth and
diverse upbringing has not forced me to think of it until this point, and I am
grateful for the discussions and the people that opened this up for me.
One
member reminded us that there exists in most of us a deep fear of the unknown. Y ou
cannot truly know a thing, you cannot truly know a person unless you are in
close quarters with them, until you become familiar with their culture, their ideas,
their history. This takes commitment to ideals of integration. It takes, in
many ways, for many people, courage, I think. This club is one of the many
spaces Kalamazoo has to take up this courage and talk about these issues, so
please join! The next club meeting is Thursday, January 16th at
6:30p. We meet at Kazoo Books at 2413 Parkview and we will be discussing A Stronger Kinship: One Town’s Extraordinary
Story or Hope and Faith by Anna Lisa Cox. This book explores the attempts
of the people of Covert, Michigan to defy racism and create an integrated city
as far back as the 1860’s—despite the laws and standards of the surrounding
world.
Plus, (lucky
us!) “Clybourne Park” is coming to the Zoo. Come see the 2011 Pulitzer Prize
winner for drama, 2012 Tony Award winning play here in Kalamazoo. It is showing
at Farmer's Alley beginning Friday, February 7, 2014. For more information or
to buy a ticket, see:
http://www.farmersalleytheatre.com/current-season/clybourne-park-feb
And
lastly, if you find you have some time on your hands, check out This American Life's timely
broadcast of housing and racism.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/house-rules