Carmen Van Kerckhove

On Martin Luther King, Jr. in 2010, we’re all too aware that race relations are still very tense in America. Carmen Van Kerckhove (pronounced KIRK-cove), founder of the popular, award-winning and influential blog Racialicious.com, which covers all things having to do with race and pop culture, took the time to speak with Campus Progress at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she delivered the opening lecture for the University’s 23rd annual Martin Luther King Jr. symposium.

Van Keckhove, president of the diversity education firm New Demographic, specializes in working with companies and individuals to facilitate relaxed, authentic and productive conversations about race. She also hosts the podcast Addicted to Race, and publishes the blog Anti-Racist Parent. She is a compelling writer and speaker who has made a name for herself by not dancing around the edges when it comes to handling issues of race and racism, but going right to the core. Here, she shares with us her views on racism today, advice for young people of color as they begin their careers, and challenges she faces as an anti-racist and social justice activist.

Campus Progress: How did Racialicious.com get started?

Carmen Van Kerckhove: The blog started in 2004 under a different name, Mixed Media Watch. The original blog mission was to track media representation specifically of multiracial people, and interracial couples and families. Then over about two years, the blog audience grew. I personally became interested in issues outside of that narrow niche. So, we started expanding and talking about race and pop culture in general. In 2006, I decided to change the name to Racialicious and to change the mission.

Part of what you do is give career advice specifically to people of color. How is looking for work different for a person of color? And what are some advice you have for young people of color who are seeking to begin their career?

Looking for work in this economy is obviously difficult for everybody. There are much fewer jobs available, and a lot more people that you are effectively competing with. What I think makes a difference for people of color is that, on top of those obstacles that everybody is dealing with, they have to deal with an additional layer of challenges, which has to do with race.

A lot of people of color are going to have to adapt to the existing stereotypes out there. When I say "adapt" I don’t mean that they should simply bow down and accept those stereotypes, but the reality is we need to navigate around them. An example I like to use is myself—myself as an Asian American woman. Every job that I ever had, I get the same feedback—I’m too quiet, I need to share my thoughts and feelings more. Now, the reality is that I’m not quiet; I am pretty outspoken. I share my feedback with my team, but that’s still the feedback I get. And a lot of this is based on the internalized stereotypes that people have without even realizing it.

So, people of color in the workplace often have to calibrate their behavior around those stereotypes and perceptions that other people have. In my case, I find myself having to really project an exaggerated version of myself just to be considered normal. And having to calibrate that way is really exhausting; and at some point it is something that you may choose to stop doing all together. I think that is also a reason behind these statistics we see that show a disproportionate number of mid-level executives of color leaving their positions to start their own companies.

My generation is often described as multicultural. We tend to be more exposed to different cultures than previous generations. As an anti-racist educator, what does this mean? Is it easier to talk to us about race, less relevant or more difficult?

One of the challenges is that young people may assume that race is less of an issue for their generation. So, initially there may be some reluctance in engaging in the topic at all. But what I have found is that when you push past that initial layer of resistance, young people start to share their experiences. And you will find that they realize that race is very much an ongoing issue; and that they experience and see the same patterns of racism that affected previous generations. I often fear when people say "Oh, I live a very diverse life", "I live in a very diverse community", "I work in a very diverse workplace"... A lot of us walk around assuming that we are doing pretty [well] when it comes to diversity. But when we dig a little deeper, the reality is not quite so rosy. A friend of mine, who is also an activist and educator, does this exercise in one of her workshops. Basically, she gives people a white foam cup, and a bunch of different colored beads that is meant to stand in for different races and ethnic backgrounds. She asks [participants] a series of different questions: Who is your dentist? Who is your child’s homeroom teacher? Who is your primary physician? Who is your best friend? Who is your religious leader? And [participants] keep dropping these beads into their cup. [The exercise] is meant to make you think about who are the people that are most important in your life—that influences you and your family the most. Even if you don’t do this activity physically, you can do it mentally. We will find that a lot of our cups are going to be much less colorful than we might initially think.

So, even if you live in a diverse community, you don’t necessarily interact with all of those neighbors who are diverse in you community. When it comes to the actual relationships that we have and that are important to our lives, there is much less diversity than we would like to think. Relating this back to young people, that may be the case as well. Just because you grew up listening to hip-hop, and seeing diversity on MTV, it doesn’t necessarily translate to an enormous amount of diversity in your personal life. So, I throw that out there as a way for people to question that assumption that a lot of us walk around with.

What is your take on Harry Reid’s debatable gaffe on race, and the reactions that it has elicited?

There was a kernel of truth in what he was saying, and he relayed it very clumsily. Certainly a lot of the language that he used was, as my friend Tami Winfrey Harris said, "The use of the word Negro was a little 1964." So it definitely shows that [Reid] is out of touch with the current terminology. I sometimes find these incidents to be really frustrating because there tend to be these huge flare ups over race. Each side puts in their two cents about "Oh that was messed up," or "Oh, he was just telling the truth. Get over it. Lighten up." And then you have the third and fourth level of commentators coming in and saying, "Well, the way this conversation is evolving is stupid." Then you have another level jumping in and saying, "Well, the person who says that this discussion is stupid is stupid." So this whole debate seems to play out in the exact same way. We see the same patter over and over again. I don’t have a deep philosophical answer or better solution. But it definitely frustrates me as an activist to see that it seems like we just run in circles; and at the end of these so-called learning opportunities, nothing is really learned.

How has the economic recession affected racism?

People of color have been disproportionately affected by layoffs. I’ve seen that from a lot of surveys and polling, and also from anecdotal evidence from my friends and colleagues telling me what’s going on in their workplace. My biggest concern is that the little progress that has been made in workplace diversity over the last ten, twenty years could effectively be wiped out just in these few years. There are serious consequences for workplace diversity as a result of this recession. It may take a long time before these companies and organizations start thinking about diversity again. A lot of companies are focused just on surviving, and diversity is not at the top of their list. So, it may take quite a few years for diversity to inch back up to the top of their agenda; and I am worried about what is going to happen between now and then. Are there going to be further erosion in the progress that has been made?

You deal with race in your work. Race is unavoidable in life. Do you ever get sick of it, considering that you receive tons of emails from people all over describing their experiences with racism, and I presume that you get your fair share of hate mail as well? Does it get stressful or hurtful; and if so, how do you deal with it?

The answer is yes, yes and yes. It’s definitely challenging to engage with this topic. It’s really important to be able step away sometimes and unclog—in some ways, to turn off that part of your brain. I think I’ve been fortunate in having been able to maintain a pretty healthy balance between dealing with that topic all day long [and] then also finding some release from it. People who engage in issues related to race or other social justice issues need to take care of themselves. Sometimes people who are involved in activism are of a certain mindset. It is sort of in their nature to give more than receive. But it’s important to keep in mind that you can’t do much good if you’re not taking care of yourself. It’s important for activists to be able to take care of them physically, spiritually and mentally because otherwise the work that they do is just not gong to be as effective as it could be.

As an anti-racist and social justice activist, how do you deal with your own prejudices?

Awareness is an important first step. Over the years there have been a lot of different prejudices that I didn’t realize I had until something, some incident happens and it alerts me to the fact that I have these emotions beneath the surface that I have not been honest with myself in thinking about. From there, I try to think back to where these feelings come from; what are the experiences that I’ve had in the past that may have led me to feel a certain way about a certain kind of people. It’s really important for activists to constantly monitor themselves, and be aware of their own thoughts and feelings. It’s an ongoing process. I like to say that anti-racism is a journey, and not a destination. There is never going to be day when we wake up, and we have arrived and reached that nirvana. We need to keep working on it.

Related Stories

• Facebook IPO Draws Attention To Privacy Controversies
• iSweatshop: Growing Concern Over Apple Manufacturing
• United States Lost Press Freedom In 2011
• Four Reasons The U.S. Should Close Guantanamo
• Inequality in 2012 by the Numbers