Tulsa World: YWCA staff to focus on eliminating racism

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YWCA staff to focus on eliminating racism
The intent is to identify root causes of racism and open dialogue about it.

Mana Tahaie is the first director of racial justice at the YWCA, which is ramping up its efforts to eliminate racism. MICHAEL WYKE / Tulsa World

By SHANNON MUCHMORE World Staff Writer
Published: 7/20/2008 2:12 AM
Last Modified: 7/20/2008 2:51 AM

The intent is to identify root causes of racism and open dialogue about it.

The YWCA has created and filled a new staff position to increase the organization's efforts to fight racism in Tulsa.

"We're really taking our mission of eliminating racism to the next level," said Robin Green, director of marketing.

Mana Tahaie is the organization's first director of racial justice. She began the position July 16.

The organization already has in place programs that address racism and are intended to help minority communities. One program, Becoming ... Professional Women of Color, connects young women of color with successful women in the community and helps them visit and evaluate college choices. Last year's program involved 55 girls.

"They're all going to school," Green said. "That gives me chills just to say it, because that's a tangible result."

Tahaie said that while continuing and expanding the programs will be an important part of the YWCA's mission, she hopes to begin to uproot the underlying causes of racism and start a community dialogue about how to eliminate it.

"My dream is that this becomes Tulsa's thing to talk about," she said. "That you can't avoid talking about it."

Kim Nave, the chief operating officer of the YWCA, said this starts with the organization evaluating itself and its staff.

"We won't be authentic in our work if we don't do that first," she said.

Tahaie said Tulsa needs to heal from events in the past and, most notably, the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. The city can't move forward until it addresses and apologizes for the event and starts to heal.

"The root causes of that are the same," she said. "We have not in the past 80 or 90 years, as a community, moved past that."

A documentary that the YWCA hopes to eventually screen for the community states that North Tulsa had 30 grocery stores at the time of the riots. Now it has none. This goes against the thinking that North Tulsa can't succeed, Tahaie said.

The efforts to begin a community dialogue about racism will begin by talking to gatekeepers and leaders in the city. The hope is that they will start talking to their friends, neighbors and employees, who will keep the discussion alive, she said.

"This is obviously a pervasive issue that comes out in different ways depending on what environment you're in," she said.

The approach will also have to take into account geographical and economic divisions in the city, Tahaie said.

"Tulsa is a very segregated community," she said. "We suffer from racism in many forms."

When Tahaie thinks of racism, she is also thinking of other prejudice and bias.

She sees gender and race issues as one issue, she said.

"I see it all being linked and very intersecting," she said.

Tahaie plans to spend most of her time away from her desk, getting involved in the community and talking to people. She wants to collaborate with Tulsa leaders to elevate the dialogue about racism, she said.

The YWCA has some tools in place for addressing racial issues. One is a film called "Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible." It includes interviews with white people who discuss understanding the effects of their skin color, Tahaie said.

"It's just getting people to the place where they see that they have additional privileges," she said.

Many racial issues are subtle and underlying. Examining their foundations internally and externally isn't a linear, tangible progression, Tahaie said.

"There's not one way to be an anti-racist," she said. "But there is a path."

Shannon Muchmore 581-8378
shannon.muchmore@tulsaworld.com By SHANNON MUCHMORE World Staff Writer

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	Report Comment Dazed and confused, tulsa (7/20/2008 2:58:54 AM) . The city can't move forward until it addresses and apologizes for the event and starts to heal. ' It has been 87 years. Time to move on. If every war or incident that happened required an apology to get past it, we'd still be stuck in the stone ages. After 87 years, few are even alive from it. It was an awful thing. its over. time to move on. Not everyone needs an apology & noone's relatives need reparations from people who had absolutely nothing to do with it. Time to take responsibility for each persons own actions & get on with your lives.
	Report Comment Tavkaa, tulsa (7/20/2008 9:30:07 AM) The comment regarding "moving on" is the basic response whenever african-americans want repairations of past wrongs reciprecated. If it was a holocaust issue or a native american issue or a japanese issue, then dialogue would happen, but because decendants of the caucasian society cloak in the "i got mine, you get yours" attitude and "i didn't do it, they did it a long time ago" attitude the problems goes on. The fact is the local government assisted and condoned the destruction of the black community in 1921 and even though those elected officials are not still in office, the city government should repair the damage done in the North Tulsa community by allowing investors and business developers to look at North Tulsa as a prime area to build businesses. The excuse is that there is crime in North Tulsa and businesses don't survive because of the crime, but each and every day the crime that is reported on the local news is in south, west and east Tulsa. Its the age-old urban renewal plan -- once the generation owns the real estate dies out on North Tulsa and the young people move away or are locked up and the land is free, then we will see homes and businesses start to appear. The racism is in Tulsa's leadership.
	Report Comment tiger, (7/20/2008 12:28:32 PM) Tulsa continues to be one of the world's epicenters of racism, bigotry and racial intolerance. Programs like the YWCA effort is a great first start toward reconciliation of north Tulsa with the rest of Tulsa proper. Racial tensions in Tulsa have not progressed or improved in most respects since the 1921 race riot. Who or what is at fault.......no one knows for sure but racism must be addressed in this city if Tulsa is to ever meet its potential of being a first class city in America. We can not continue to ignore our past and our present. We can not choose to mask racism with phony rhetoric about "some of my best friends" are this or that and discriminate every chance we get. It is time for Tulsans to say enough is enough and let us join the world community in peace, love and mutual respect. Hate is a terrible thing and from the tenor of the messages above it looks like it take a very long time to extract that evil from our ranks. But, we must begin now and correct the mistakes of the past. Until every sector of Tulsa realizes its full potential, this community will never be the city our forefathers labored so hard to create. Give hope, peace and brotherhood a chance. Condemnation of any area of Tulsa condems us all.
	Report Comment TULSEY TOWN, (7/20/2008 6:15:44 PM) I STRONGLY AGREE that it will be an uphill battle racism in Tulsa. When you take the state's first law was a jim crow law that separated the state by race, who knows how many laws were created on the first law. We need to heal the wounds of yesteryear by lancing this cancer of hate. Until we do that... We keep getting what we got because we keep do the same thing. This is insane!
	Report Comment joop, (7/20/2008 10:34:52 PM) racism, bigotry and racial intolerance....oh yes..we have that here. I believe there's a spiritual root on it.Even though racism affects all, the christians (true ones) should be the ones working on that leading those efforts.
	Report Comment Makeda, Tulsa (7/21/2008 11:26:37 AM) North Tulsa was successful in the 1920's for several reasons, one was that blacks could not buy in South Tulsa, they were forced to buy Black. The money they spent was spent in the Greenwood District. They supported the businesses on Greenwood, with the end of segregation and people being able to shop where they wanted, many people spent their money outside of their community. Decades later, blacks need to spend their dollar in North Tulsa, but cannot because there aren't decent stores here. Crime is an issue, so is hiring inexperienced, unprofessional people to work cheap. North Tulsa has never recovered from the Race Riot. And who cares? Think about what our children would have access to, had a KKK infested Tulesa allowed blacks to keep their stores and prominent homes, schools, etc...MANY OF THE PEOPLE THAT WERE KILLING AND LOOTING IN NORTH TULSA during the race riot are still living, as are a handful of suvivors. As someone else said, Tulsa is very segregated, but this too shall pass. Everyday, you see more minorities in Tulsa, and the new breed, multi-ethnicities. Racism will decrease as we become more "colorful".
	Report Comment Dazed and confused, tulsa (7/22/2008 7:33:10 PM) No matter that the majority of the crime in north Tulsa is committed by north Tulsa residents. So the greenwood district was black & prosperous over 80 years ago. Good. Why not succeed now?No stores? get your thug teenagers & young men to quit vandalizing, robbing & shooting . Yeah there's crime everywhere. But the majority of the crime in north Tulsa is by its own residents.
	Report Comment TULSEY TOWN, (7/23/2008 6:38:50 PM) GET DOWN WIT DA GIT DOWN MAKEDA!

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