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Williamstown DIRE Committee Talks About Need for Historical Accuracy
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
01:17AM / Thursday, February 04, 2021
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — With the town's Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee meeting on the first day of February, it was a perfect time for its chair to note the arrival of Black History Month.
 
And although Mohammed Memfis noted that he likes to think of every month as Black History Month, February is "a great time for people to learn things about Black history that they may not have known before," he said.
 
"And to realize that American history would be not [just] incomplete but incorrect without the story of Black people in this country and the histories of Black people."
 
The story of Williamstown and its historic association with racism has been a topic for the DIRE Committee since it was formed last summer.
 
Again on Monday, Bilal Ansari said he wants to see the town reckon with one of the more troubling piece of local history.
 
"I look forward to the day Williamstown incorporates their own racial history with 'N*****r Hill,' which is what White Oaks was called here in town for many years," Ansari said. "This is really, really important to understand that history and that language and that being part of our history and that this 'Village Beautiful' was not always beautiful. Beautiful is a work in progress.
 
"That needs to be taught, the true history of Williamstown and its Black residents of White Oaks."
 
Jeffrey Johnson agreed and noted that the accepted histories of the town were written through lenses that were "a little skewed to say the least."
 
Correcting that vision, Memfis said, is about restorative justice for marginalized people, not attacking those who benefit from institutional racism.
 
"I know a lot of people, especially white people, have felt that continuously hearing about all these negative aspects of history is like attacking a history or existence that you or your ancestors may have been related to," he said. "I want to point out that that's not the purpose of this at all. The purpose of having these discussions is that ignoring these realities for so long is what has led to us having to deal with these issues today. We're only going to cycle through the same things over and over and over and over again.
 
"I would love to get to the point where I don't have to talk about why diversity, inclusion and racial equity is such a major problem. … Addressing these problems, being honest about it, you should look at in the light of saying, 'This is an opportunity for me to be more productive and gain a different type of enlightenment about the world my ancestors lived in the, the world I live in and contrasting that to the world you want to see moving forward.' "
 
Williams College took a step toward adding accuracy to the nation's historical narrative on Tuesday when it announced a partnership with Brown University's Center for the study of Slavery and Justice and Connecticut's Mystic Seaport Museum on a three-year project to generate "new insights into the relationship between European colonization in North America, the dispossession of Native American land and racial slavery in New England."
 
The three institutions are sharing in a $4.9 million grant from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, according to a Tuesday news release from the college.
 
Closer to home, a more modest grant will help provide more accurate, inclusive lessons at the local middle-high school.
 
"There's a group that recently received a grant from the SEE Fund, which supports a variety of different activities at [Mount Greylock], to help develop a curriculum to be led by Heather Bruegel of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community to be included in Mount Greylock curriculum at the middle school and high school teaching about Mohican history and culture and homelands," Andrew Art said at Monday's meeting. "That work will be under way this spring."
 
Mount Greylock was very much on the minds of the DIRE Committee members Monday for another reason. The full committee met for the first time since a racist incident in a ninth-grade virtual classroom in late January.
 
The members of the panel largely agreed that the school administration did a good job being transparent and proactive in its communication to the community about the Jan. 21 event. But a comment from the floor of the meeting sparked a discussion about whether the committee members knew whether the targeted student and their family was satisfied with the school's response.
 
"I'm wondering if any specific outreach has come from either this committee or from the School Committee or from any of the other elected bodies or representative bodies in town specifically to the family and to the student," Jude Higdon-Topaz said.
 
Aruna D'Souza, who said she spoke to the student's parent the day of the incident, told her colleagues she would reach out again on behalf of the DIRE Committee.
 
"I think it's important as we think about how to respond to the school's response to these events that we make sure we've talked to the family and know how they're feeling in relation to the response," D'Souza said. "If it feels appropriate to the other members of DIRE that we make that outreach, I'm happy to write to the family and say: We know what happened, we've been watching with concern and is there anything else you'd like us to know about how this has all gone.
 
"I think Jude is making a really good point about our assessment of whether the school is doing enough is actually based in how the family is feeling and how the student may be feeling and not just some external sense of, 'This seems reasonable.' "
 
In other business on Monday, the committee talked about the town's effort to review and revise its policies for town employees and how to encourage the town and college to make strides on the issue of accessibility.
 
"It's about damn time," Johnson said when asked for his thoughts about making town government more accessible. "Some people can't get into the building. There's no reason in this day and age that we're not [Americans with Disabilities Act] compliant across the board. And I think there's an ignorance when people think of ADA compliance. It's more than bathrooms and doorways being wide enough and elevators. It's all the other aspects."
 
Johnson pointed out that the town should be offering things like documents in translation for people who don't have English as their native language, and Memfis asked whether the town provides an American Sign Language interpreter at town meeting.
 
"I'm using that as an example to think about some of the changes we could make to promote that more dynamic and 21st century aspect of town policy and practices," Memfis said.
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