I Love What Dr. Kate Slater Is Doing

"If I’m trying to impact social justice and disrupt whiteness in the spaces that I'm in, what’s the plan?"

Hello, all.

The world is very, very, profoundly, deeply hard and heartbreaking right now. It’s terrifying, it’s traumatizing, it’s really fucking depressing. I am sending immense love and compassion to my Palestinian friends, my Jewish friends, my Israeli and Arab and Muslim friends, and to you, yes you, whoever and wherever you are. I wish you peace and grace and safety and liberation. I wish that for all people, all over this precious planet.

I admire so deeply the folks who are able to process it all through their writing right now. I am not there yet. I hope to be soon. I am trying my best to care for my family and self and community, to stay off social media and to attend to the humans I know, especially the ones mostly directly and personally impacted by the war, by antisemitism, by Islamophobia and anti-Arab hatred, and by the generational trauma this is bringing up for so many, and to advocate for my beliefs in specific, actionable ways. Like calling and emailing my reps and demanding a ceasefire.

Please contact your representatives and demand that they support a ceasefire. NOW. It takes less than 5 minutes. There are scripts available. Like the one in the previous link from Jewish Voices for Peace, and this one, from the Quakers.

I started this newsletter because I wanted to share stories about people I know whose work and actions give me hope when everything seems hopeless. That’s why I’m sharing this interview with my friend Dr. Kate Slater, a white anti-racist scholar and educator and mother of two who is running for one of the most critical and potentially impactful elected offices in the country: her local school board. Or as they call it in her small-ish town of Amesbury, Massachusetts: school committee. In states all over this country school boards—and the local citizens who get elected to them—have become ground zero for America’s current iteration of white supremacist Christo-fascist culture war bullshit.

This story is important because Kate is very honest and clear about why she’s running, and what she’s risking. She’s putting herself on the line, and I hope her decision and campaign can be a model for others who see what is happening in school boards across the country and want to do something about it. Like run for a seat.

Here is my conversation with Kate, who shares a first name and last initial with me, and who also shares a penchant for profanity and a deep desire to talk about and disrupt the fuckery of whiteness. We talked a few weeks ago, before the latest iterations of global horror and assault on humanity, so it’s taken me a bit to get my shit together and share this, but here ya go:

Is this the most relatable campaign photo ever? It says a lot about Dr. Kate Slater that *this* is one of the three campaign photos she sent me. Love it. No notes.

Dr. Kate Slater, Ph.D. is currently the National Director of College & Career Success at BUILD.org, an entrepreneurship program for underserved high school students. Previously, she was the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at Brandeis University and the Associate Director & Manager of Programs at the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers, a nonprofit that promotes racial equity in the American educational sector. She also teaches at the University of New Hampshire in the Department of Education, where she has taught Teaching Race, which explores the history of race and racism in America, and Issues in Education, which explores curricular policy and challenges in the K-12 education system. She is the co-creator of the Anti-Racist Roadmap and a frequent contributor to NBC Today. Her doctoral research centers the experiences of underrepresented minoritized students who participate in bridge / access programs as an entry point into higher education, and in particular, at predominantly white institutions. She also investigates white racial identity formation and how racism operates individually, organizationally, and systemically. She leads facilitations, trainings, and affinity groups with K-12 institutions and universities, as well as with private organizations.

KATE SCHATZ: Dr. Kate Slater! You’re running for school board—school committee, rather. Can you please tell us why?

KATE SLATER: When it comes to school board—or any kind of local politics—the personal is very political, right? My kids are going to be in the school system. I'm deeply invested in my own students’ success, and I'm invested in the success of the school for every single student who walks in those doors. 

The notion of “cleaning my own backyard” is something that I've been wrestling with for a while, as I basically try to figure out: “okay, if I’m trying to impact social justice and disrupt whiteness in the spaces that I'm in, what’s the plan? Where do my skill sets uniquely place me to have a big impact? What are the areas that I have access to where I need to make an impact that maybe I haven't had the guts to step into yet? 

I had a tough conversation with a friend this summer. She made me realize that what I think of ‘vulnerability’ in online spaces is…selective. On Instagram I share my foibles, I share this antiracist journey, this work that I'm engaged in. It's vulnerable, but it’s also selective. Like I can leave. I can leave Instagram, having shared my deep secrets about my own racialized conditioning to an audience that by and large receives it. Then I can go down the street and pick up my kid from daycare, and no one no one is going to take me to task for that. I think doing justice work online is important, but if that's the extent of the work then we're missing the mark. 

That conversation really made me think about what it means to actually be a co-conspirator—not just an ally, but what it means to actually risk social standing, to risk safety, and to take these risks in the spaces that you have access to by putting your beliefs on the line and fighting for them. And that's why I decided to run for school committee. 

By the way, I'm running against a card-carrying Mom For Liberty.

SCHATZ: Whoa! I didn’t realize that.

SLATER: Yup. She’s full-on anti-vax, anti-CRT. Running for school committee while she homeschools all eight of her kids. Shows up at school committee meetings and yells about being muzzled with the masks, called previous school committee members “Stalin” and “Hitler” for teaching history. She’s really like the greatest hits. And she is running a campaign! It's a contested election: there are three seats, there are four people running. 

The town that I live in is predominantly white, and like many towns in America is going through this moral crisis where there's an older generation that is being taxed out of the town. Low income housing is disappearing. You can't resource the schools and lower taxes, you can't resource the library and lower taxes. The crisis asks: what are our values around cultivating inclusive, welcoming spaces, not just for us, but for the next generation? In the midst of that, I decided to throw my hat into the ring. 

I realize that everyone and their mom has an opinion on how things should be run. But when you're like, “Ok, please step up and lead” there's an ethos of “Oh no, that’s not for me.” I think there are a lot of reasons we talk ourselves out of that. I’m a hetero woman with a certain amount of socio economic privilege and educational privilege privilege, and even with that privilege, I have talked myself out of these spaces. I don't think I belong there. I've never pictured myself running for public office.

SCHATZ: I'm very fascinated by this dynamic. I see this so much with women who have absolutely been in leadership positions, who have been in charge, have been in front of a room, have been in positions of authority—yet when it comes to running for office and being in those spaces, there's a barrier. 

SLATER: I've experienced it myself, and I've watched it happen. I could talk to any number of women who would be infinitely qualified, super, super, super qualified for this position, who are just like, “I don't think I can do that.” I do know whether it's because of societal pressure, whether it's because of our jobs, whether it's because we have to be all the things all the time. At the same time— I don't mean to be so binary and gendered about this, but—I'm watching dudes with a fraction of the experience and talent be like, “Yeah, I'll throw my hat into the ring. Why not? I belong here.” 

SCHATZ: What scares you the most about making the decision to run? What scares you about doing all this?

SLATER: There's a lot that scares me right now. The immediate fear is threats to personal safety. I got doxxed two years ago. All you have to do is Google my name. I'm just waiting for someone to get to the second page of Google search results and blow it up on the town Facebook page. These are people in my backyard. These are people who know my address. So the threats to personal safety feel imminent, especially with this moment that we're in in terms of gun rights.

I have no expectation of my own safety. And that's a really scary thing, right? I actually used to expect that, like, I'm gonna run and people might be pissed about it, but no one's gonna come hunting me down. And I don't expect that now. That actually feels more like a reality than it ever has before. And that's terrifying. My husband and I had some very intense talks about what that would look like.

This entails personal risk. When I announced my candidacy I had to do this audit where I went back through all my social media, knowing that every single thing I’ve posted and said could be put out there again and misrepresented or mischaracterized. In the end I do I stand by what I’ve said, and I didn't delete a single tweet. I didn't delete a single Instagram post. 

At the end of the day, if what I say is misconstrued or misunderstood or deliberately taken out of context, I know that when it comes to the true message of what I'm trying to say I have absolutely fucking nothing to apologize for, nor will I. I won't soften the message. I wouldn't change that message. I might take out some swear words when I'm running for school committee. I'm not going to say that's not a terrifying decision to come to because what I would like to do is shut my entire Instagram down and make it private until after this election is over,, and then come back into the world and be like okay, I’m back! That might make me feel safer. But I can't in good conscience run for a position when I know that I have to shut that part of my life up. I'm running for this because of that part of my life, because of what I believe.

I am desperately hoping for the best with this campaign. And I'm anticipating the worst. 

Here’s the version where everyone is technically smiling

SCHATZ: I know that you’re a white woman who is deeply invested in talking, honestly, about white woman-ness and our racist bullshit. To what degree did you weigh this when deciding to run? How do you navigate the dynamic of being the white savior who jumps in with the answers and the ideas, versus the position of stepping stay back and not taking up too much space?   

SLATER: I don't know how I navigate it. And I don't know that I am navigating it. That dichotomy is imperfect, it’s a false dichotomy really, because it’s not just one or the other. If someone just told me, “Hey, Kate, we need you to show up by never stepping up. Take a big backseat and amplify, and that's it, that's your calling for the rest of your time” that would be easy. Or at least it would be easy to navigate because that story wouldn't change. But tthere are moments where we, as white people, very much have to show up, because we have access to spaces that racism has made inaccessible to other people. And we have access to voices and platforms that racism has made inaccessible. 

I was thinking of something my friend Tina said: she pointed out that white people love to learn from black people, but they listen to other white people. Her context was feeling like every white woman under the sun started following her online, trying to learn about a life experience that's not theirs, trying to learn in service of doing better. But, she asked: “Do they listen to me? No. They don't know how.”

And that's the paradox: in order to divest from whiteness, we actually have to first reckon with what it is, which actually means taking it out and airing it out. There's no easy answer on how to do that, because different communities need different things at different points in time. When it comes to school committee I do worry that I am like “Hey, I'm the Great White Anti-Racist Hope of Amesbury!” But I also know that almost every other person throwing their hat into the ring is a white person or someone who has proximity to whiteness. There are four people running for three seats. So if my papers weren't in, potentially this Mom for Liberty would be running an uncontested election. 

Sometimes we just have to show up. And I think this was one of those moments for me where the change that I have an opportunity to be a part of made that decision easier for me.

SCHATZ: What have you learned about yourself during this process of deciding to run and then actually running for an elected position?

SLATER: My god, what a great question. I learned that it's I learned that it's okay to be scared. I think I really thought that I would have to work through that fear. And I haven't, it's just there. And I'm doing the damn thing anyway. And that's okay. 

I think that I learned I actually can be a good listener than maybe I think. As a very strident loudmouth, four-letter-word-favoring person person, I’ve always pictured myself as a bit of a steamroller. Which I certainly am in certain contexts. But when you're having conversations with your neighbors, and these are people that you're going to see every day for the next however many years, there is a willingness to listen that I have not been as attuned to in the online space, because quite frankly, often it isn't there. Even if we disagree—I have experienced more willingness to learn and to understand from people when they're in my own backyard. I'm actually proud of that. 

SCHATZ: Talk to me about this concept of “cleaning your own backyard.” Why is the metaphor about a backyard? Not a front yard?

SLATER: You can clean your front yard, sure. But many of us do that already, to keep up appearances. The backyard is where I hide the shit that I don't want anyone to see. I have like six broken down wheelbarrows back there. That's where we dump the compost, it’s the place we haven't gotten the energy to clean yet. 

I think that when a lot of white people think of doing social justice work, they're like, really ready to show off. This metaphor might fail, but they're really ready to show off their front yards. They're like, “I read this book! Next time I'm at a staff meeting and my boss says something shitty, I'm gonna speak up and tell them why that's racist!” There's a lot of willingness to interrupt racism when you confront it, but there's less willingness, I think, to do the messy and ever present work of having tough conversations that actually are responsible for the slow shift in our country. 

When I talk about cleaning up my own backyard, I mean that I’ve done anti-racist workshops through the roof. And until this summer I'd never actually sat down with my parents and been like, “Hey, I love you guys. I love you for showing up for trans rights, etc etc, but you can do this other thing and I don't think you're doing a good enough job yet.” I felt super shitty. I had to have some conversations about my own attitude. I've been putting that conversation off for years because it felt messy and I knew that it wasn't going to feel that sweet, sweet rush of righteousness that I feel when I take down some asshole on the internet. 

If anything, school committee is never going to feel that way, right? School committee is going to move progress at a glacial pace. It is going to be me going out of my way to have long, invested conversations with people who, even after many years of work, may never see eye to eye with me. But that's also that's also where the real work begins. That's the messy work, right? The ever present work. That’s cleaning my own backyard. 

Follow Kate’s campaign here! And here! Go Kate go!