June 16, 2020 To the Ursuline Academy of Dallas Board of Trustees: Besides the moment when I sat alone in a Brescia classroom in 2001 taking a make-up test when I heard over the intercom that we needed to pray about airplanes flying into the World Trade Center, I don’t know if I’ve ever had the feeling of “experiencing” history like this year. The COVID-19 pandemic has awakened us as we’ve all gone through the first wave of this “unprecedented” season together. Now our country’s shameful history is brought to light while we all sit at home. Humans are being murdered in the street by our own government. How has the call for dignity and basic rights for Blacks taken us this long? Looking back throughout history, I’m trying to understand how “unprecedented” the opportunity to create equality with our Black countrymen actually is. Early on in this upheaval of life called 2020, my husband entertained the theory of a societal regeneration every 50 years. Since then, I’ve called upon the spiritual wisdom of a mother trying to get through 1968 while taking in everything I can learn about that time. MLK was shot and killed, there was the tumultuous Democratic Convention, RFK was killed, the nation saw more men being sent to Vietnam than ever and Black rights protests took over during the playing of the national anthem on the world stage of the Olympics. I thought this SpaceX storyline we’re seeing develop in 2020 was some sort of plot outlier until I remembered the U.S. orbited the moon for the first time in 1968. Man was evolving, and to create the new world it was becoming clear that we needed to look at our troubled past and make change for equality. The Civil Rights Act was passed and Star Trek was the first show to feature an interracial kiss on TV. I like to think that the glue holding it all together was The Beatles releasing The White Album. Did it seem then like we had fixed racial disparity in our country? We had more access to information of what life was like for a Black person in America than ever before. In a July 1968 interview with Esquire , James Baldwin said, “ No one has ever considered what happens to a woman or a man who spends his working life downtown and then has to go home uptown. It's too obvious even to go into it. We are a nation within a nation, a captive nation within a nation.” For more of a quantitative approach to understand the awakening of 1968, The Kerner Commission Report fascinates me. This President LBJ-commissioned report on the race tensions of 1967 surprisingly declared that white racism was at the root of the destruction and distress. The 11-member committee from the National Commission on Civil Disorders pointed to ineffective policies in policing and the justice system and unethical practices in credit lending, housing and voter rights for Blacks as well as lack of employment opportunities that created understandable unrest which was only escalated by an ignorant and under-trained police force and National Guard. Just like voter support for Black Lives Matter has increased as much in the past few weeks as it had in the previous two years, I imagine the 1968 were really grateful to have this perspective on the Black community and that they went to work creating sustainable change. Isn’t it crazy, after taking this walk through history, that Ursuline Academy of Dallas was still holding Senior Slave Day as late as 1979 with girls photographed and memorialized in the yearbook wearing Blackface? Can you imagine living through the Civil Rights Movement and still allowing the Senior intramurals theme Blue Klux Klan in the 1970s? How did we miss this? As the “premier educational institution and center of culture and faith,” it feels like we kind of missed the mark of looking outside our own bubble at the development of our world and seeking God’s wisdom of how to keep our relevance while remaining these things mentioned above. How do we educate our girls about cultural events as the premier educational institution? How do we respond to our world’s pain as the center of faith and culture in our community? While I find the lack of white response to Black oppression in the past horrifying, I am around for this new Civil Rights Movement and I am committed to doing everything in my power to question what loyalty is more important to me than the dignity of another human being. While the genocide of our Black neighbors seems new to me, I have come to understand that it’s not new - it was only kept from me. This will not happen again. The difference that I hope exists between 1968 and now is the promise of white allies today to head the warning of Kwame Ture from 1966 that “one of the most disturbing things about almost all white supporters of the movement has been that they are afraid to go into their communities - which is where the racism exists - and work to get rid of it.” In gratitude for my privileged upbringing, the right thing for me to do is to take the time to tell you as honestly as possible how complicit Ursuline Academy of Dallas is in the formation of children into white supremacists. I know this because, until awakening to my ignorance and trying to learn more just a few years ago, I was one myself. Does the word “children” sound strange because I only recall being referred to as “young women” at school? It’s easy to see now we’re little babies and under the age of consent, ages 13 up to 18 (I took my curtsy at 17). While our psyche at this age develops opinions and beliefs into truths that carry us into our young adult lives, we still want so much to please the adults around us. Unchecked white supremacist narratives around this age group are perhaps the most dangerous. This is a serious claim, though, and I wish to be transparent in my discovery process. As I began much deeper anti-racism work only a week ago (I remain far from any mythical finish line), I’ve read more about mico-aggression and micro-oppression initiatives against Blacks as the real reason that white supremacy continues to exist in the book Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups It would be an understatement to say that Ursuline Academy’s fixation on excellence and order above authentic inclusion (both for themselves in the community and amongst the children they teach) is a large part of the formula for how white supremacy is upheld in our culture. Perfectionism Oppression of Black people was not necessarily taught at Ursuline through hateful words or public disdain for another race (but I will cite examples of those around the corner here). White supremacy at Ursuline was instead mostly upheld through a tradition of perfectionism that made Ursuline a breeding ground for shame. The shame we feel in ourselves and our inability as children to meet the impossible (and frankly, outrageous) standards of excellence creates a hatred for self that becomes a trap for comparison and hatred for other women, instead of celebrants of their success. Much worse though, is the otherizing of women of color who have the strength to live in their cultures, which we are taught is inarticulate, improper and far off the narrow pathway to success which you tell girls they must follow for worthiness. Meditating on this recently, I recalled the only time that I went before the Honor Council. I had copied my web design homework from another student. The Honor Council asked me if there was anything about the situation that they should know. I said yes, that during the week that I had copied the homework my father had been hospitalized for attempted suicide for the second time during the spring semester of my senior year. I received a zero on the assignment, which killed my grade in the class and my GPA. The real consequence though was that the Honor Council moderator and my web teacher both stopped being able to look me in the eye from that point forward because of their discomfort in my honesty and my situation. I count this as a moment when I was taught that if a person can’t make mistakes in the darkest valleys of life, no one can. Criminals are criminals. People must be punished. If we want Ursuline Academy of Dallas to be truly inclusive, it must become a place that preaches and exemplifies inherent belonging to the whole girl over posturing of academic success and external validation as exemplary. Distributive Injustice of Social Capital The Ursuline website states that 26% of the student body attends through the help of financial aid. However, as an Ursuline student I was aware that there was a financial cost of belonging beyond simply the cost of tuition. What I wore, where I went and even which events my parents attended and participated in with the school community were all important social capital. I understood how much I needed a brand-name jacket to belong and how much I needed to go on out-of-town Spring Break trips with my friends to feel like I had a place in the culture. The financial costs of the lifestyle of families of influence at the school put a serious strain on both of my parents. Family life became far more about working to be able to vacation and participate in this affluence than simply about getting a quality education. At my senior retreat, a classmate shared that while she had attended the school for four years on scholarship, she felt that she never belonged. The cost of tickets for Homecoming and prom was more than she made working to help support her family. This was before factoring in the cost of a dress and the normalization we all created of a day of grooming appointments and hired private transportation. This applied to almost all school events which kept her out of collective conversations at school. How many parents of students on scholarship are able to integrate into the community when tickets to the annual Mardi Gras begin at $200 each and the event features $25,000 auction items? Even smaller school events that I’ve attended as an alum are typically hosted in private Preston Hollow estates with passed catering and valet. For as much as the social aspect of the school is touted as a pathway to developing well-rounded women, school programming is not developed with the needs and accessibility of all students and their families in mind. If we want Ursuline Academy of Dallas to be truly inclusive, it must provide all social programming opportunities in ways that are financially feasible for all members of its community to attend, starting with a transition to more on-campus events without paid admission. Cultural Imperialism An ”Ursuline woman” subscribes to a very specific, esteemed culture of excellence. We monitor this not by denouncing others but by reminding ourselves, especially at a school that carries much generational legacy in attendance, that we are here to follow tradition. So what is the response to tradition as the world evolves? Thinking about this, I recall my Sadie Hawkins dance. I had met a Jesuit student at one of their campus events and enjoyed being around him a lot. He was Black. My mother, who attended Ursuline Academy of Dallas from first grade through high school and keeps her Ursuline friends as her innermost circle, demanded that I uninvite the boy. “Trust me,” she told me, “this isn’t about the boy. This is about culture. They are different than us. You have no idea what people are going to do.” She was right about the last sentence. My English teacher heard about my date and announced to my class he was happy I was taking “a brother.” He did this every day for the entire month leading up to the dance. Progressive teachers pulled me aside to tell me they were proud of me and not to worry about what people were saying. What were people saying? I just wanted to go to the dance. It didn’t feel intuitive to me, but maybe everyone was right that it’s just socially too much work at 15 to try to socialize with Black people. As some of the adults explained to me, they didn’t want me mixing with their culture anyway. If we want Ursuline Academy of Dallas to be truly inclusive, we must recognize that diversity of the student body and diversity of school culture norms are two different things. The school must begin active anti-racism training with all students beginning in the Fall 2020 semester. Myth of Meritocracy Defined by British sociologist and politician Michael Young while studying the effect of the British class system on the development of personality in the early 1940s, the term ‘meritocracy’ “represents a vision in which power and privilege would be allocated by individual merit, not by social origins.” I always felt good knowing what I was taught at Ursuline about racism, which was that even if racism did exist in the past, now we were all judged and given opportunity based on our merits alone. That’s why things like affirmative action and the 10% public university acceptance rule were injustices that Ursuline emboldened us to fight against. The Ursuline community helped me understand that the 10% rule wasn’t fair because that meant a student from any school could just work hard on their academics and get into a premier state university. What about us? We could probably pay the tuition of private universities but frankly, the vibe and parties at the University of Texas were just so much better. That’s where we wanted to go and the fact that the State was catering to those in greater need was our perceived injustice. “Can you imagine the shame of getting into college thanks to affirmative action?” we asked ourselves. Thank goodness I can stand tall on my own merits which I was able to cultivate thanks to my privileged access to education. I had the luxury of generational funding for things like SAT prep classes and I also had leisure time for pursuing personal development and extracurricular hobbies for my resume. The reality that other students faced of needing to work part-time to put food on the family table were not on my radar. In fact, I felt superior to others and believed that my place in any college that I felt like attending was deserved since it was due to my dedication to my goals and not a hand-out. This furthered the feeling that I was being robbed by things like the 10% rule. What did I just give up my childhood for, spending hours each night doing homework instead of playing outside? Was this to not be able to attend any college I wanted? Maybe if these kids from other schools and races tried a little harder, they wouldn’t have to use the system to get in. The shame we experience from the pressure put on us to meet the expectations of the Ursuline graduate college acceptance rate does not stop with us. It instead cultivates an Ursuline student to become narcissistic in her pursuits of achievement, concerned less with the greatest good and more with the needs of herself. After all, someone will always be coming along trying to unfairly take what you earned. If we want Ursuline Academy of Dallas to be truly inclusive, we must educate Ursuline students on the racial biases that exist in our country and we must celebrate programs that bring our country toward equality. I bet they will cover this in your anti-racism training. Tokenism Defined by Webster as “the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing,” tokenism is probably the micro-aggression towards BIPOC people I took from my Ursuline experience most enthusiastically. I remember the days of the year when we would be asked to ditch our pajama pants and wear our blazers for photos for the admissions catalog. The Ursuline students with melanin skin tones were escorted to the small private courtyard in the center of campus for their close up. They seemed a little more popular to the advancement team for photo ops than the student body numbers actually represented. The best example of the racism of tokenism was during my junior year when Ursuline Academy of Dallas was a victim to wanting to build a new soccer field in the middle of a residentially zoned neighborhood and being denied permits. This ‘oppression’ would not be tolerated by the school, and we prepared for a fight. Many girls were invited by the school to be taken to a city council meeting to demand their need for a soccer field. The issue with the initial guest list was that none of the girls invited to the meeting actually played soccer. Instead, the girls in attendance were chosen based on the color of their skin to make the student body seem very diverse in the eyes of the city council. Finally, it decided that the original guest list of it seemed every BIOPIC student at the school as well as the actual soccer team could attend the meeting as a school sanctioned activity. Do you think that, during this time there was any discussion with the BIPOC students who were asked to be the face of our petition? Were they consulted about how they might want to use a recreational field, what their opinions were on our athletics programs or how they felt about representing Ursuline Academy on community issues? Working in marketing and non-profit development for the past 10 years, I’ve often told myself that I’m being progressive for tracking down a person of color for visual representation in client work. What I’ve learned and understand now, is that photographic representation is not enough. I’ve since resolved myself to create work that represents diversity of voice and ideas and is relevant and exciting for a more diverse community. Tokenism was the most racist behavior that was modeled to me by Ursuline Academy’s practices, along with white saviorism of Serviam-ing my relationship with the Black community as a way to side-step true societal integration while feeling good about myself. Today, I am learning how to commit myself to anti-racism through advocating for the rights and equality of Black people in my voter and consumer choices and making a concerted effort to forge deep relationships with people of color. If we want Ursuline Academy to be truly inclusive, it needs to commit to a 50% increase in BIPOCenrollment for the 2021-2022 school year. Ursuline Academy of Dallas should also hire a Black-owned education consultant for a full audit of curriculum, administrative and marketing tactics. Right to Comfort When I opened my email from Ursuline Academy in response to our nation’s call for change in the murdering of Black citizens by police and systemic inequality, I noticed immediately your right to comfort. This email was sent out during a time when the communications industry halted for the amplification of Black voices. The message was clear that even in a time of deliberate white silence throughout our country, the current alumnae and advancement departments of Ursuline Academy of Dallas believe in their right to “the show going on,” that no matter how the world turns, the “Class Standings of 6/1/2020” email must go out. The best thing to do is slap a grey-scale logo at the top with a message of “unity” that should keep everyone happy. As we’ve come to learn with recent events, if any response to our nation’s awakening to our history of racial atrocities feels comfortable, it’s probably not enough. Right to comfort has been the response I’ve seen most from my Ursuline sisters and I can only assume that I’ve taken it on myself as well to some degree since our nation’s shadow came into better focus since 2015. For a white person who experiences little impact in the need for immediacy and tenacity of response, there is always a more dignified, lengthier process of doing things that typically is a pathway toward failure to act. When we think of white supremacy, our minds conjure images and actions from angry white men. In truth, it is the apathy and narcissism of white women like the members of your advancement team that sustains the effort to oppress our neighbors, trains our children to hate and upholds the culture of not acting for change. If we want Ursuline Academy of Dallas to be truly inclusive, you must join us in a public stance on the Black Live Matter Movement and commit to not only your current diversity training but specific anti-racism training. Ursuline Academy of Dallas must issue a public apology for their handling of its messaging and ask the Chief Advancement Officer to resign. Controlling the Narrative Ursuline’s racist right to comfort is what gave your team the feeling of a right to control the narrative for a Black issue when your June 2 email was sent out. In my background in crisis communications, I’ve worked on messaging for responses such as Hurricane Sandy and the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion. The amount of power an institution feels it holds over its constituents can easily be seen by how it holds or passes the mic in times of crisis. The most glaring experience of racism I have from my time at Ursuline was when students across campus walked out of their classrooms to a barrage of white printer paper taped to the lockers and littering the floors. Hundreds of pieces of paper with racial slurs and threats of violence in the name of white supremacy were scattered throughout the school for students to find upon switching classrooms. The more I go back to this experience in my mind, the more shocked I am that Ursuline claimed to have cooperated with an FBI investigation, yet the school somehow found no tangible evidence or security video footage. The subsequent response from Ursuline Academy of Dallas followed the “hold the mic” format. BIPOC students were welcomed to speak at an internal assembly but I noticed had to film media interviews on a residential road across the street. When Ursuline sent the student response to the media, the story consisted of images of “love posters” that students hung around campus in response. Excluded from the official response was any plan from Ursuline on how to eliminate white supremacy in the school. Within a few weeks, everyone felt back to normal - I assume besides the students of color who had to continue to show up at a school where threats against their lives had been made. We cannot let this happen again. Pass the mic. If we want Ursuline Academy to be truly inclusive, you must commit to Black presence on your board, executive team and faculty of at least 25% in addition to a BIPOC student board that meets regularly to discuss their vision for a more equal student body. The Antidote of Mercy Looking at this honestly isn’t easy, but the cost of our inauthentic response to our country’s race relations that predate our school’s inception in 1874 is too great for us to look away. Human lives are on the line. I care too much for Angela Merici’s mission to “do now what you wish to have done when your moment comes to die” to caretake Ursuline Academy right now. Still, I have empathy for the pain of seeing oneself as complicit in racism for the first time. When my daughter was still a toddler, I had recently gone through inter-racial adoption training while receiving awards for my volunteer work in the community. One day while I was in my office break room, I saw on national news the viral video of Jesuit Dallas graduate Parker Rice shouting “N*****” on a frat party bus (with many other of his Jesuit brothers riding along). My first thought wasn’t “Who would do such a thing?” but a cold pit in my stomach and prayers to God in gratitude that there were no phones with cameras during my high school and college experiences. This was a sign that I had underestimated how racist my upbringing was. Not only had I not been anti-racist many times in my life, I had been many forms of the worst types of racist with a feeling of impunity. I committed to re-educating myself on Black life in America and to begin to change. The grace that comes from the collective pain we’re experiencing now allows us to surrender to our true identity of stumbling, ignorant little children of God. I pray that the Board and Ursuline executive team, always so tidy with their messaging, will release their grip on the concept that they are all-knowing and fall into the palm of God’s hand in surrender. Rest while you listen with open hearts, re-learn as much as you can and be an instrument of authentic peace over order. As I stumble with you in this process, I fall back on the words of Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Now you know better. So do better. Signed, Lilly Neubauer, class of 2003