From Wikipedia:
Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to provide equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination, and/or working to change personal racial biases.
Getting defensive when people bring up race is not anti-racist. Saying "I don't think that's racist" is not being anti-racist.
Working through those knee-jerk reactions is anti-racist.
This is what helps you be able to make conscious efforts and deliberate actions. Anti-racism is about ACTIVELY DOING THINGS to confront and combat racism and the ways it oppressing the majority of people in the world.
It's hard for me to write about this because the "alternative media" has taken such a strong stance against anti-racism and has done it in ways that it really has impacted the way a lot of the new age sees this.
It's made the new age community as a whole more reactive when racism is brought up.
Which serves to stop the conversations.
Which keeps systemic racism in place.
It shouldn't be so controversial to say "let's stop giving carte blanche to our white fragility responses" because we can do better.
If you've done any healing work at all you should have the capacity for anti-racism work.
If you have any empathy at all in you, you can see that racism is killing people every day.
Here in Canada, there are suicide epidemics about Indigenous youth which are caused by colonization which is an extreme form of racism where white people go to a new country, sign treaties with the people there, totally disregard the treaties, go on a genocidal campaign to kill 90% of the native people, forcibly remove the survivors from their lands to give that land to white settlers, lock up Indigenous people on reservations and, generation after generation, take their children away at gunpoint to residential schools where the best case scenario for those kids is a childhood of being taught to feel shame for who they are and spend their lives pretending/wishing to be white.
And then, in the white schools children are taught that colonization is this great thing where we signed treaties with native people and now we get to have this land all for ourselves. Native people who are fighting for the country to honour the treaties are seen as "radicals".
And then we wonder what Indigenous parents are doing wrong, why the suicide epidemics among their youth? Or we think "that's so sad" and feel like it's got nothing to do with us.
This is the world we are dreaming in. But in truth, we are all one.
That's what I wrote at the end of my blog post about how we move towards unity when we're all so divided.
And it's true.
We're all connected. We're all related. The human race is one race.
And our dreams are definitely connected.
It's not that there is PRESSURE on your dream that it is SUPPOSED TO save the world or anything.
But our dreams come from the truest parts of us.
The parts of us least impacted by all the fuckery in the world.
The parts of us that ARE connected.
Our dreams draw on each other's dreams, our dreams support each other's dreams, our dreams hold space for each other's dreams. Everyone dreams are connected through a complex web.
I see it ALL the time.
Look at the video I shared last week with Michael Redhead Champagne. Notice at how IT FELT to hear about his dream - you can feel his dream nourishing your dream. And you can see how it will impact the dreams of all of the young people who will read the book.
Our dreams are not racist.
Our society is extremely segregated.
Personally, I made an effort to follow MORE Indigenous news, leaders, teachers, writers, artists and activists than white people because otherwise.... I am only getting white news/ideas/perspectives.
My whole young life I equated white with "normal".
White people on tv - normal.
Black people on tv - Black.
Note how it's ok to call Asian people Asian etc etc etc but when we call a white person white.... whoa.
That reaction that white people have to being called white - that's white fragility.
Yes, maybe we need a better world for it that doesn't minimize your feelings.
Because your feelings are valid. Always.
AND the ways that the world has always told you that "You're just a person. You are normal. You don't need a label" IS racist when everyone who isn't white is always labeled.
We need to be able to question that. It should not be controversial to call you white, if you can call Black people Black.
And if you read this and think "I'd rather just not see race" do know that not seeing race erases the injustice. It allows you to go on wondering WHY there are suicide epidemics among Indigenous youth in Canada, instead of doing anything at all to help stop them. Is that who you want to be?
Our WORLD is segregated. Our DREAMS are not.
Our Dreams need other dreams - as fuel and support systems and space holders and inspiration and friends.
Some Dreams need VERY SPECIFIC things from VERY SPECIFIC dreams in order to be activated.
Again - back to the video I shared last week - when I asked Michael where he started with his dream, he pointed to a book he read: Building A Movement To End The New Jim Crow. That book was a dream, which was a midwife for so many other dreams.
We just don't know whose dreams are going to help nourish and midwife OUR dreams
Like the title of Michael's book - We Need Everyone.
We need everyone's dreams, too.
Being anti-racist doesn't take anything from you.
It gives you ways to take some action towards making the world better and helps you live more in alignment with your values. If you're not racist then it feels good to ACTIVELY work against racism.
Suggested actions:
Read: My Grandmother's Hands | So You Want To Talk About Race | Or any anti-racism book that looks good to you.
If you are listening to media that is encouraging you to NOT do this work, ask yourself why. Really sit with the discomfort of the question.
Look at all of the media you consume - news, books, podcasts, whatever. What percentage of them are white? How can you diversify? What if only 50% of your media sources were white?
You can google white fragility if you feel brave, and look at the documented forms that it takes. White fragility is just about the way that white people react when confronted with racism. It speaks to how protected we are from racism, that we get this uncomfortable when it's brought up.
(I am deliberately NOT recommending the book by that title, I think it's best to learn anti-racism from people who are not white and I am guessing that over 90% of the books you read are by white authors anyway and you can make some space in your bookshelf for other perspectives)
