Great Falls Citizens Association held a virtual town hall during which five neighbors of color provided short vignettes of their lives, sharing their personal experiences and commentaries on racism. A Q&A followed. The event was held Wednesday evening, Sept. 30, Rev. Livingstone Dore, Pastor, Great Falls United Methodist Church, Kimberly Greer, Principal, Langley High School, and residents Sujatha Hampton, Ph.D., Salima Singletary, and Matt Truong participated. Moderator Bill Canis, president of GFCA, said, "I know some of our panelists tonight are going to think are we crazy, why don't we know all this stuff already? But we don't and so I'm delighted that they're here to have this kind of conversation."
Seventy people turned into the Zoom webinar, which remains available on the GFCA YouTube Channel. According to Peter Falcone, Co-chairman of the GFCA Communications Committee, he saw the town hall as part of an ongoing process to look for helpful ways to bolster communications and facilitate public-spirited discussions. “Engaging the community is an essential strategy in driving decision makers towards solutions benefiting Great Falls and its neighbors,” he said. “I would hope GFCA can continue efforts to bring interesting topics to our members and the community. In my view, a forum like this event promotes authentic community engagement and awareness and also supports our organization’s chartered purposes by strengthening efforts to build effective coalitions in our neighborhoods—the core strength of any community organization.”
Highlights of the Q&A
Q-Have you encountered systemic racism here in Great Falls?
A-We would like to think that at Langley High School, we are immune from having to deal with issues of race...As principal, I needed to help our community be able to address this in a manner that was going to be constructive and positive, and so what we did was we actually did host two town halls, with a group of students serving as panelists...It brought to light, there's a lot of pain that has been experienced by students here at Langley High School who do not fit the mold, and the mold is based upon race. But it's also based upon... sexual orientation..(and) social-economic status... There is a group of children here that Langley is not a safe space. - Greer
Q-Are there microaggressions you regularly observe in Great Falls that the white community members might be committing unknowingly?
A-Those are the ones I tend to really spend time talking with... (They) are interested in learning something different.- Dore
A-If you're not quite sure, or you are uncertain, appeal to them... Ask. Clarify. Don't assume that they're saying something that they're racist toward you. If you're not quite sure, you want to verify because you don't want to make a judgment call and do the wrong thing. - Truong
Q-What other steps could be taken to increase understanding beyond this little program?
A-For me, it's about making sure that we're raising young people who are good people and the academics in a lot of ways are secondary... Academics are important, but it's more important to really be someone who is looking out for the greater good of everyone.- Greer
Race Issues: Personal Experiences
Panelist and community member Rev. Livingstone Dore, Pastor, Great Falls United Methodist Church
Originally from St. Kitts, an island in the West Indies bordering the Caribbean Sea, Dore said before the bishop assigned him to Great Falls United Methodist Church as pastor, he served congregations in Virginia and Pennsylvania. "In all of my experiences in the church, my parishes have been predominantly white dem. My presentation will be coming from that perspective."
According to Dore, class status, not race, was the issue in the Caribbean. However, racism became a matter when he got to the United States. In college, he was one of five Black students. He remembered walking down the street in an off-campus housing development. "A kid was walking by, and as I walked on the sidewalk... (he) was just yelling the most obscene thing at me for no reason other than he saw somebody who didn't look like him. I was suddenly that 'niger'; and I listened to that all the way to the college campus." Telling the admissions director, Dore said she had no idea how to address it; however, when he transferred to a larger, more diverse school, it was a different situation.
"I had professors who were open-minded and actually challenged me to many degrees on the whole issue of race and social justice." Racism added another level when he worked in the banking sector, he, a black man who sounded different, became a supervisor. Dore noted that Blacks did not see him as Black; they saw him as white. "My values were not theirs and that was an adjustment. That was an eye-opener."
Panelist and community member Kimberly Greer, Principal, Langley High School
Originally from a small town in South Carolina, Greer said the first time she felt isolated because of race was when she walked into her first Girl Scout camp as a child. “That was my introduction to people having a different mindset and approach when it comes to interacting with people who may be traveling a different path and look a different way.
"It became very clear that I was the only person of color within the hundreds of girls who were camping...That was jarring enough but there was one girl who befriended me. In short order, she arrived back at her camp after a day of us being friends, and all of her things were sitting outside of the tent. Her tentmates had basically kicked her out and said because she was a nigger lover.”
Greer said the first year of college presented challenges. Her white roommate said she did not know how to live with a black person. A contentious semester followed. After winter break, a new roommate arrived, a different experience. "That's why it's so important that you can't allow one negative experience with one person to influence how you may then perceive an entire group of people." When offered a job with Fairfax County Schools in 1992, Greer said she and her family spent a weekend here. “As my family was preparing to leave, my mother looked at me and said, Are you going to be okay? I said, why would you ask me that, and she said, I haven't seen anybody who looks like us."
Greer said that is similar to what she experiences in Great Falls. Days can go by without seeing someone who looks like her. "(I) had to be okay with that... to be okay with staying in this area." Greer's twenty-five-year professional career has been with Fairfax County Public Schools and while the school division became more diverse, she said that Langley, by far, is the school that has the least amount of diversity in which she has worked.
Panelist and Great Falls resident Sujatha Hampton, Ph.D.
A Great Falls resident since 2006, Hampton, an Indian, was born in the United States. At age three, she attended a childcare center. "They locked me in the bathroom with this Greek girl because I was the N-word...What I can remember from those times, is I was very afraid...I was afraid that someone was going to kill my dad, because he was brown... I felt that fear all the time… People didn't love us; they didn't love me the way they loved each other."
Hampton moved to Fairfax County when she was seven and educated in the FCPS system. She later earned a doctorate in special education with a focus on serious emotional disturbance and learning disabilities. Hampton is the Fairfax NAACP education chair, an activist, and as she announced, the newly appointed Fairfax County Dranesville District Library Board Trustee.
Hampton said she wanted to leave people with a couple of thoughts about racism. "I don't think people sometimes understand the trauma that happens to children, when they recognize that their world is not fair, not safe, not equal. That there's something arbitrary that is happening you really just don't have any control over it, and it has something to do with your color or something you don't know what it is.
"There is no justice without economic justice...There's environmental justice, racial justice, social justice, economic justice. There's justice in all these fields, but really, the primary gravitational force of the universe is money. So, when you are not able to understand the economic impact of racism, you've got another issue, which is more of a systemic thing.”
Panelist and Great Falls resident Salima Singletary
An African American Muslim, Singletary grew up in Annapolis and attended mostly black elementary and junior high schools. As a child, she experienced racism, not because of race, but because she was from the north and had come to a small southern town. "I was different. I was Muslim. I had a scarf on." She spoke of participating in Odyssey of the Mind, a creative problem-solving program ending in a competition. A local newspaper reporter covered the event. When it came time for the picture, Singletary was instructed to sit at the far end. When the paper came out, somebody had cropped her out of the picture and out of the article.
Singletary's husband is white. When they moved to Virginia, she said, people stared at them, but now people in Northern Virginia are subtle about staring because it is rude.
Asked about racism, Singletary said, "I’m not going to walk around with a Star Trek device trying to detect racism everywhere... Why would I miss out on opportunities to have relationships with people and just have a happier life by not always assuming malicious intent?" After working for University Press in the District of Columbia, Singletary is in Great Falls enjoying the scenery and nice people.
Panelist and Great Falls resident Matt Truong
"As you can tell from my name, I'm not Black." Truong is Vietnamese. His family settled in Elizabethtown, Pa. when he was young. When Truong arrived, he spoke two English words, yes and no. Growing up in Elizabethtown, Truong said he knew of only one other Asian family. He learned the culture of Elizabethtown quickly and assimilated. "I grew up driving trucks, listening to music, going hunting. I didn't see myself as Asian at this age, just another boy in school in E-town...I never thought about race... because that's the way it was," he said.
According to Truong, it wasn't until he entered college and the workforce; he encountered racism. His reaction was to pull individuals aside and ask, "Hey, are you treating me differently?" Truong said he experienced reverse racism where others thought since he was Asian, he must be smart and do well in math. "I see (racism) from both sides, and sometimes I sense it. Sometimes I feel it. Sometimes I walk away... But then in some cases, I do stand up for myself. In some cases, I even stand up for my friends as well...In my personal opinion, we need to tone it down a bit. We need to recognize each other."