Joy Sewing June 5, 2020 Updated: June 5, 2020 12:28 p.m.Comments7

If there’s anything we’ve learned from the global protests against racial injustice and police brutality over the last two weeks, it’s that speaking up speaks volumes. Calling out racism is a crucial step to healing, said Dr. Rheeda Walker, a Ph.D. licensed clinical psychologist, University of Houston professor and author of “The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health.”

“This is an important time in history and an important time to speak up against racism and injustice,” she said.

Still, Walker is cautiously optimistic that the protests will have real impact in dismantling racism in America.

“Even though white people seem to be hurt by what black people have been experiencing for generations, their hurt is not going to impact the day-to-day pain of black people,” she said. “They have hurt feelings, but we have real pain. We’ve learned to endure. What you see now is people tired of enduring.”

Walker, along with her 9-year-old son, attended the protest to pay tribute to Houston native George Floyd in downtown Houston last week. An estimated 60,000 people congregated at City Hall to admonish police brutality and racism in the wake of Floyd’s brutal homicide by Minnesota police last month. The protest was organized by Houston rappers Bun B and Trae The Truth.

Four police officers have been charged in Floyd’s death.

“It was important for my son to be a witness to this,” Walker said. “He’s had a lot of questions and he’s still trying to understand why police officers would do this.”

She added that the stress of racism and its impact on mental health are so deeply engrained it will take much more than protests to reverse the damage. “It may give some relief, but it will be temporary. We have been enduring this so long that many of us don’t realize we’re in survival mode.”

Cherry Steinwender, executive director of the Center for Healing Racism, is hopeful.

“This feels different,” she said. “There have been many protests over the decades, but this is the first time I’ve seen it worldwide. I’ve been trying to get this country to use the word, ‘racism,’ for 30 years. We’ve been afraid to talk about race. Now, we’re seeing so many white people use the word — that’s hopeful.”

Steinwender is hosting virtual “I Can’t Breathe” workshops to talk about racism and its impact. It’s referencing the words uttered by Floyd minutes before his death, “modern-day lynching,” as she sees it.

“Racism isn’t a black problem. It’s a white problem, and their silence is violence,” Steinwender said. “But it’ll take white people to call out other white people for real change. When black people speak their truth, we are called angry or accused of using the race card. We are looking for white people to speak out.”

Steinwender has unique perspective, given that she’s been married to Austrian-born Siegfried Steinwender for 39 years. The couple met a garage sale.

“He was looking for junk and found a treasure,” Steinwender joked, but she admits she concealed the fact she was married to a white man for years because she didn’t want it to confuse her message. She said her husband often has shared some of the racist water-cooler conversations that he would hear; his co-workers just assumed he felt the same. She used those conversations in her educational training and programs about racism and stereotypes.

Racism is the cause of stress in the black community, Steinwender said.

“We know stress is a major cause of illness. Black people are living a life under stress every day,” she said. “That fact that you are black and living under a racist systerm is the cause of stress. That’s why we have underlying health issues.”

Self-care is crucial right now, Walker said. She advises pulling away from TV news and social media. Constant messages about racism and police brutality can further traumatize.

“We don’t realize what we’re watching because the goal is to continue to survive,” she said.

Now’s the time to get creative.

“There are some big ideas in black minds, but they have been so bound in racism that they haven’t had the opportunity to be come reality,” she said. “We need to come up with plans. It’s time to for us to get out from under racism and create our own way moving forward and not wait for the system to fix itself.”joy.sewing@chron.com

The post Silence is Violence: the Houston Chronicle interviews Cherry Steinwender appeared first on CENTER FOR THE HEALING OF RACISM.

Examples of anti-Asian bias in Texas range from attempted murder to stereotyping and hate speech. On March 14, a Burmese father and his young sons (ages 2 and 6) were attacked and stabbed in a Midland Sam’s Club by an assailant who said he targeted the family because he thought they were Chinese and infecting people with coronavirus. In early March, while standing in line at an early voting site in Irving, a Vietnamese-American veteran of three deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan coughed after taking a sip of water and began to choke. The woman ahead of him chastised him for being sick and told him, “All you Asian people are spreading that coronavirus.” Here in Houston, on April 8, a woman pushing a shopping cart through a Kroger parking lot on Buffalo Speedway began screaming at an Asian-American couple to “Get out of our country! Get out of the United States, you ugly [expletive]!” The couple, owners of a restaurant in the same strip mall, was shocked, terrified and humiliated. And, indeed, they were in their own country.

The rise in anti-Asian rhetoric and violence related to COVID-19 is tacitly fueled by elected officials at the highest levels who refer to the virus as the “Chinese virus” or blame China and Chinese people for being “the source of a lot of these viruses like SARS, like MERS, the swine flu, and now the coronavirus.” Never mind that MERS is an acronym for Middle East respiratory syndrome and the swine flu began in North America.

As the pandemic threatens the wellbeing of virtually everyone on the planet, this is a good time to remember that we’re all in this together. People of good conscience can help their Asian and Asian-American neighbors by becoming allies to them.

The first step is recognizing that we are all members of the human race, a category that is vastly bigger than any one racial, ethnic, language, religious or other sub-group. Indeed, we are far more alike than we are different. The second step is to try a few of these suggestions when the opportunity arises or when you feel moved to seek out the opportunity yourself:

Say something when someone is being targeted or demeaned for their race or ethnicity. This takes courage, tact and quick assessment. Obviously, you don’t want to endanger the targeted person, yourself or anyone else. A recent online workshop jointly organized by Hollaback!, a nonprofit that works to end harassment, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) offered a number of actions that could be used by bystanders when they observe harassment. They include:

• Causing a small distraction, such as dropping your purse, your phone or a handful of change or asking for directions. Just something to distract the harasser and break the tension.

• Enlisting the help of someone nearby, such as the person sitting next to you or someone in a position of authority (a bus driver, salesperson, etc.). Although it’s best not to call 911 or a law enforcement officer without asking the victim’s permission first.

• Whenever possible, if someone else has stepped in to help, try to capture a video of the situation (you can pretend you’re checking your emails). When the situation calms down, ask the person being harassed if they would like a copy of the video.

• When the situation is under control, check in with the person who was being harassed, “I’m sorry that happened to you. Would you like me to sit with you, or can I help you with anything?”

Reach out to Asian and Asian-American friends, neighbors and co-workers to express your support for them. Tell them you’ve read about racist acts and comments related to the coronavirus. Ask if they’ve been targeted and let them know you support them.

Educate yourself about the Asian and Asian-American experience in the United States, especially about the history of anti-Asian discrimination. The Chinese were the first major wave of Asian immigrants to come to Texas in the mid to late 1800s, leaving the U.S. west coast following the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Emancipation had also left southern landowners and businesses without a source of cheap labor, and the Chinese were reputed to be industrious and docile. In Texas, as was the case throughout the United States, they and subsequent Asian immigrants were shunned and mistrusted for their appearance, language, culture and all manner of suspicions about them.

Examine your own biases with respect to Asian people and cultures. Don’t be ashamed to admit to yourself that you have biases. We all have them. You can’t grow up in a racist society without them.

Take action, no matter how small, to counter racism in any way you can.

The post You can help end the spike in anti-Asian bias during the coronavirus pandemic, as featured in the Houston Chronicle April 29, 2020 appeared first on CENTER FOR THE HEALING OF RACISM.