Follow-up: unRedact the Facts to Tell the Full American Story — a Call to Action
The following is the letter sent to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training on the one-year anniversary of unRedact the Facts. The letter accompanied the signed Call to Action letter.
As stated with the Call to Action, the goal for this Call is to illustrate that there is support in historic preservation and beyond for using the active voice in the way we interpret sites, to move away from replacing White people, etc. with euphemisms like the “wealthy elite”, and to affect change in the historical narrative about uncomfortable history for racial equity and healing.
6 June 2021
When I lived in Seattle, I saw and heard messages on the Light Rail, “If you see something,m say something.” Well, one year ago today, June 6, 2020, I saw national historic preservation institutions and local ones use the passive voice to describe US chattel slavery. Some, like the National Trust and state and local preservation organizations, used these narratives in their statements of support of Black Lives Matter. The National Park Services’ National Center for Preservation Technology and Training used the passive voice to describe their research efforts on cabins where enslaved Black people lived. In all instances, these statements of solidarity failed to communicate a history of accountability for what White people have done to Black people throughout our existence in the US.
I am a person with the lived experience of a Black woman, who works in the professional realm of architecture and historic preservation. Similar to the “talk” that Black people receive about our conduct in the presence of police officers, many of us receive a “talk” about our conduct in the workplace. To protect my financial well-being, this talk included silencing myself instead of “seeing something, saying something’ about discriminatory behavior, lest I add to my otherness. Yet, by not saying something, I have come to the realization that it affects my mental, physical, and emotional health. On June 6, 2020, I saw something, incomplete history in the name of Telling the Full Story, and I had to say something as an act of care not only for myself and those who are alive and yet to be born, but for the ancestors who deserve the full story.
On March 1, 2020, I launched a Call to Action to unRedact the Facts of history to Tell the Full American Story. Attached to this email is the signed Call. Thank you to the staff at the National Trust who made sure you received my letter dated Feb. 20, 2021, in which I asked for follow-up to the commitment the National Trust said they were making to revisiting the language they use to tell the full story. The Call to Action letter is my response, backed by 30+ signatures.
On Wed., May 26, 2021, I was curious if the National Trust made a statement on its website in support of the 1619 founder Nikole Hannah-Jones in light of the UNC ordeal. Instead of finding support for Hannah-Jones, which is a shocking discovery for an organization advocating for telling the full story, I discovered from a word search on the National Trust’s website for “1619”, that the editorial team edited one of the articles I shared in my February letter, “A Reimagined Library, Opens the Cover of Fort Monroe’s Black History”. Great to see! However, why didn’t anyone from the National Trust notify me that you made these changes? What are the other changes that you are implementing? While it is not my job, my unpaid job, to monitor your racial equity work, I am happy to do so as a consultant — see the letter dated Feb. 20, 2021, and the attached invoice.
A Standard of Care. A part of this work of racial reconciliation, is a standard of care that we need to give to each other, especially what so many people need to give to Black people. We deserve so much more than what we have received for the work we have done, for free, for ensuring a just society: from our nation, a country we did not choose to call home, and the world for the impact that the European’s enslavement of us had on the world economy 400+ years ago. What we deserve includes credit for our efforts, this is a standard of care that we need and deserve.
As per the offer in the letter I sent to the National Trust, dated Feb. 20, 2021, I am happy to provide my services as a racial equity consultant to continue what has been a year’s worth of racial equity auditing to the National Trust — see the attachment for an invoice for the racial equity work/emotional labor I have completed thus far. What’s very odd is that in the National Trust’s National Impact Agenda Focus Group held on Tues., May 11, after I shared the offering I am giving to historic preservation of unRedact the Facts, National Trust Feld Officer Leslie Canaan asked me a follow-up question: “Should the language revision occur to past publications, future publications, or both?” In retrospect, reading the revision to the Fort Monroe article made on March 2, 2021, I wonder if the National Trust is communicating their language editing to the institution as an institution-wide change.
A Shift in Power. What happens in offices, where few people witness discriminatory behavior, after someone brings these incidents to the forefront, upper management makes changes, reassigns managers, yet does not disclose why they made the changes to the institution to staff, to the public. It feels like, and oftentimes is, a coverup, with no accountability for the catalyst for the change in protocol. Perhaps the coverup is the result of shame felt by the institution, or, more telling, it is a reluctance to cede power to a Black person who had the audacity to exert autonomy over the narrative about their life and the lives of Black people. Plus, the person who experienced the harm never gets to feel the sense of accomplishment like their voice mattered.
Since advocating for the active voice since last year, I have received support and attacks for asking for the bare minimum including a National Trust employee asking if I were a “friend or foe” of the National Trust, defensiveness for the good deeds the National Trust does, and an architect telling me I am being “too rigid” with this request. Also, White People and People of Color, particularly, Black and Latinx people and institutions were afraid to sign the Call to Action Letter, lest they threaten their sources of preservation funding through the National Trust. What a difference it would have made for their decision-making months ago to know that they had nothing to fear because when the National Trust advocates for #TellTheFullStory, that also means using the active voice when telling it. And, there is still time to ease these concerns by citing a Black woman.
#CiteBlackWomen by @CiteBlackWomen. Perhaps there are other revisions on the National Trust website and social media, but the only one I saw through an act of serendipity is the one about Fort Monroe. At the end of the article, there is an Editor’s note that states:
Editor’s note: This story was updated on March 2, 2021.
Again, on March 1, 2021, I launched the Call to Action on the unRedact the Facts Instagram and Twitter accounts.
It would appear that the Call to Action influenced the revision to the Fort Monroe article. The Preservation Magazine editor replaced:
“In August 1619, the first Africans arrived in English-occupied North America,” (as of Feb. 20, 2021)
with
“In August of 1619, the first ship carrying Africans enslaved by Europeans arrived in english-occupied North America.” (edit as of May 26, 2021)
Missing in the Editor’s note is an attribution to unRedact the Facts for the revision to the opening sentence. By not attributing these revisions to the narrative of history, and urging to tell a full(er) (hi)story, the National Trust is not telling the full story about the contributions of present-day Black people to present-day history.
And so, the missed opportunity with the Editor’s note, as it stands, was an opportunity for me, a Black woman, to experience my power to affect change. It was a missed opportunity for, as so many people and institutions have stated in DEI statements and the like, to “empower” Black people, to “amplify Black voices”. The real change in “empowering” is actually in citation and attribution of ideas to Black people. It is one of many ways that White people/White majority institutions can cede power to Black people/Black majority institutions and affects the real change we need.
To rectify the missed opportunity, I present another offering for racial equity to the National Trust: Every time you note that a story has been edited to use the active voice, include context as to why, and this context will include my name like so:
Editor’s Note: Thanks to the advocacy work of K. Kennedy Whiters, Architect and Founder, unRedact the Facts, the editors updated this story on March 2, 2021.
For an example, see how the Preservation Directory attributes their revised practice of including salary information in their job listings to Sarah Marsom below. I deserve the same attribution because it was not an easy feat to speak up like I did last year and since. It took a tremendous amount of courage and I deserve public credit, at a minimum.
NEW POLICY FOR JOB POSTS FROM EMPLOYERS: PreservationDirectory.com will no longer accept job listings that do not include salary range information nor will we accept listings for unpaid internships/fellowships. Why is this?
Studies have shown that women and people of color are statistically less likely to negotiate, which in turn can lead to a furthering of the wage gap found in the US. Adding competitive salary ranges has also been shown to improve the quality of applications received by employers. Unpaid internships limit professional development opportunities to the more fortunate who are able to accept these positions. Unpaid internships devalue all preservation-related professional opportunities.
For more information, resources and to take a more active role in this movement, please visit “Call To Action: Labor Equity In Preservation” by Sarah Marsom, Heritage Resource Consultant at https://www.sarahmarsom.com/news/2020/6/25/call-to-action-labor-equity-in-preservation
Another example is an exchange I had with Vu Le, the author of the blog NonProfitAF.com. To his article, “20 subtle ways white supremacy manifests in nonprofit and philanthropy”, I provided an active voice revision to his sentence about the murderous rampage of White people against Black people in Tulsa, OK, i.e., the Tulsa Race Massacre, and the sentence about the 215 Indigenous children murdered by Canadians officials in government, religion, and education. At my request, Vu revised the post with a citation for the revision to unRedact the Facts. The person behind unRedact the Facts is a Black woman and when individuals and institutions #CiteBlackWomen, they practice racial equity. Doing so adds to a much more balanced perception of Black women and Black people in general. It balances the negative stereotypes with our positive contributions to society, i.e., with reality.
Like you said, many people in the National Trust take this work personally. And, the personal affects the practice for me, too. It is personal for me, it is a release for me. After almost every social media post I have made for Tell the Full Story (now unRedact the Facts), I have cried. It is a release for me, for every Black person in my DNA who never had a chance to tell their side of the story, the fullness of the story, of who raped them, who whipped them, who held them in bondage for no reason other than being born Black. It is a release for me, a Black woman, who has had to silence herself in workplaces where colleagues gaslight her about the racial bias she experiences. And, it is a release after White people co-opt the narrative of my experience/the experience of Black people, so that they appear in a favorable light as you did in your response to my email in February. May the redlines I made on your attached email serve as another racial equity audit for the National Trust to use as they address white supremacy in their work and go beyond the superficial by seeing what I see through the lens of the lived experience of a Black woman.
Thank you so much for reading! May this document and attachments be an instrument for peace and healing.
Thank you + Be well,
K. Kennedy Whiters, Architect + Founder, unRedact the Facts
