Justice through Creativity...
Rev. Clovice Lewis is an avowed "anti-racist". He is opposed to the concept of race and its consequences. As an African-American man he has a lifetime of experience living with those consequences, while others deny that reality. His diversity training workshops based on the Harlem Voices© musicals offer an immersive, transformational, and embodied way of understanding the corrosive impact of white supremacy and systemic racism.
Rev. Clovice Lewis' 2023 Juneteenth Celebration - No Holds Barred Address
Rev. Clovice Lewis delivered a powerful, thought-provoking speech at the Juneteenth Celebration held at the Middletown Art Center in Middletown, CA. He commemorated the emancipation of enslaved individuals in the United States and shed light on the ongoing struggle for racial justice and equality.
Rev. Lewis explored the deep divisions that exist in the United States from our founding as a nation to the present day around race and ethnicity. He noted that what is now celebrated as the “final” day of emancipation for African Americans is the result of misinformation and oppression. Drawing attention to the suppression of information and misinformation employed by white supremacists during the Civil War era, Lewis draw parallels to the present day. Rev. Lewis asserts that there are individuals today who, like their white supremacist ancestors, use misinformation, deceit, propaganda, and violence to further their political ends. They seek to rewrite history and deny the existence of systemic racism, prejudice, and racial bias that has plagued our nation. Lewis addressed the urgent need to confront these issues and dismantle the stranglehold they have on the true potential of our society. |
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The Fallacy of Race
Race is a social construct with no basis in science or fact. It was created to justify the enslavement of people and is still used to control the formerly enslaved. Racism... the belief that some races are innately superior to others because of hereditary characteristics... persists. It permeates nearly all societies and it is manifestly wrong. [1]
NAACP President Derrick Johnson defined systemic racism (also referred to as structural racism or institutional racism) as "systems and structures that have procedures or processes that disadvantages African Americans." Glenn Harris, president of Race Forward and publisher of Colorlines, defined it as "the complex interaction of culture, policy and institutions that holds in place the outcomes we see in our lives." [2]
Along with systemic racism we see a vigorous denial of it, especially by white people. Robin DiAngelo describes this denial as a consequence of "White Fragility". In her "White Fragility" paper published in 2011 DiAngelo wrote: White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress be- comes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. (International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, Vol 3 (3) (2011) pp 54-70 ) A wonderful example of white fragility was experienced in 2021 when Clovice Lewis had told the story of how his company was the victim of systemic racism by Lockheed Integrated Solutions Company on a public radio show. A man called in to the show to explain to Clovice how he misinterpreted Lockheed's racism as simply "hard business" that all big companies practice. Click here for a transcript of that interaction. |
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Racism and The Thin Blue Line Flag
Racism has insinuated itself into our political system. This is not a new thing... it was written into our DNA as a nation. What surprises many is how, after a generation of social progress and civil rights, we've slipped back into an era when racism has gone mainstream. Sophisticated, and subtle methods are being used by some to reshape our nation in their image. An example of this is the use of powerful symbols and memes, such as the Thin Blue Line Flag, to bypass necessary discourse.
Many people seem unaware of how the Thin Blue Line Flag has been usurped by White Supremacists. This symbol, once only identified as a tribute to fallen law enforcement officers, has been raised alongside Neo-Nazis, Confederacy, and other such White Supremacy flags. In 2019 Clovice created this movie to explain the controversy in detail. It was presented as part of a theological project for Faith Based organizations. Recently he had a conversation with a member of the clergy who works with law enforcement, but was unaware of the racist use of this symbol. That inspired him to post this movie. Clovice believes everyone should be aware of how the American flag has been perverted from being one of inclusion to one of exclusivity and division. |
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The Reality of Systemic Racism
Anatomy of Hate - The Inner Workings of Systemic Racism in Corporate America
Clovice wrote about his Lockheed experiences in a book called "Anatomy of Hate... Lockheed and the VA: The Inner Workings of Systemic Racism in Corporate America". Click here to visit a website describing how Lockheed practiced systemic racism in the mid 1990s.
When he was 33 years old the consulting company he started nine years before, landed a $10 million contract with a subsidiary of the then Lockheed Space and Missiles Company called Locked Integrated Solutions Company (LISC). His company, Technology Media Enterprises (TME), was instrumental in helping LISC to secure a $750 million award from the Veterans Administration to develop a program called the Nationwide Office Automation for the Veterans Administration (NOAVA). TME had developed software that provided computer-based training which emulated other software on all platforms with help agents and sophisticated computer-based testing (in 1990!). This is exactly what the VA wanted. TME also developed desktop management tools that were compatible across all hardware platforms. These were things LISC could not do that were essential to their winning the contract with the VA. Months went by after the award. LISC kept delaying TME's start, telling it the VA was dragging its feet coming up with final specs for the computer-based training requirements of the contract. Sales of TME's desktop management tools were far below what TME knew to be solid projections. After a while Clovice discovered that LISC was selling TME software to the VA using a phony invoicing scheme. LISC was paying TME only 10% of the sales they were actually making to the VA. Clovice found out that LISC had been telling the VA that because TME was a minority-owned firm they discovered TME could not do the engineering it claimed it could to provide the VA with such sophisticated computer-based training software (even though TME clearly demonstrated that we could). So, while LISC told the VA was delaying the start, LISC was negotiating with the VA for a waiver to replace TME products with videotape training programs. When Clovice confronted LISC with what he found out about their schemes he was called into a meeting with the top management of the company. In that meeting of five white men Clovice was told they had determined that $10 million was too much money for “someone like you”. They welcomed Clovice to sue them, saying that they had an army of lawyers who would make sure TME's case would never see the light of day. Those men were wrong about the first assertion, but correct about the second one. |
Lockheed Martin Company was sent this movie, along with a 5-page cover letter and nearly one hundred pages of documentation, in November 3, 2020. Clovice asked for $11 million in reparation in exchange for foregoing publication of his story. Click here to see their response on February 17, 2021, as well as other communications.
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Generational Systemic Racism
"In My Father's Voice" is part of a multi-part series of excerpts from candid interviews Clovice recorded with his 87-year-old father about how systemic racism has affected his life. The recordings were made on May 24-25, 2021. The topic was his experiences in the US Army and Air Force from the mid-1950s through 1973. In this excerpt, Clovice's father, Clovice A. Lewis, Sr., describes a devastating act of racism against him.
Clovice published these excerpts for several reasons:
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