Claiming Our Identity as USers and Discharging Oppressor Patterns
There was a workshop in February 2021 on claiming our identity as USers and discharging oppressor patterns. It was led by Jo Saunders (English, white, owning class, and the International Liberation Reference Person for Owning-Class People). She was assisted by me, Olivia Vincenti (African heritage, a USer living outside the United States, middle and working class, and the Area Reference Person for part of London, England), and Seán Ruth (Irish, middle class, Catholic, and the International Liberation Reference Person for Middle-Class People). The workshop was organised by Leslie Kausch.
I said the following at the workshop:
I made a decision a while ago to face everything. That meant doing things that terrify me, like doing this does. I feel like waiting until I am ready, until I know more and have done more, but I know that is an excuse for not acting now. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Maya Angelou
I do not want to die without having tried to be every atom of who I can be. I want to reclaim all of my human capacities of intelligence and creativity, caring, connection, curiosity, beauty, and sexuality.
I continue to cry, rage, shake, yawn, and laugh to heal the hurts and undo what can feel like the never-ending damage caused by racism, sexism, and classism that impacts my mind and my body.
I am at this workshop to face the truth and reality of what the United States is, has done, and is doing and where I am complicit and privileged. I don’t want you to think that this is easy for me to do.
I want to hold up to discharge everything that I have been told about the United States and being a USer and to look at the unbearable-to-face ways that I have hurt others.
I am here to reclaim and redefine what it means to be a USer, based on reality.
I was born in New York City, USA. I moved to London, England, when I was twenty-eight years old and have lived outside the United States for forty-two years. I have also had the opportunity to travel in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean, which has allowed me to notice that I am a USer, to be conscious of my privilege as a USer, and to notice what is “USer” about me.
As USers, we have been fed on a diet of misinformation. It’s an empty-of-calories diet devoid of real nourishment. We have been given a false, distorted picture of who we are.
We who are People of the Global Majority and Indigenous people (PGMI) need to find things out, learn about ourselves and our peoples. As we do this, we will learn some truths about how the United States behaves here and all over the world.
For those of us who are African American, Native American, Korean American, Chinese American, Filipino/a American, Mexican American, born and/or raised here in the United States, the treatment we receive communicates overwhelmingly that we do not belong, that we are not wanted. It is hard to reclaim being a USer when the United States does not want you.
Black people and other PGMI have been and mostly continue to be excluded, obscured, erased, ignored, misinterpreted, and lied about in mainstream history and culture. The racism, colonialism, imperialism, and genocide are covered up.
When we go back to the place of our parents and ancestors, there is the relief of finally being in the majority, of not sticking out [being visible], of finally belonging—but it can be short-lived. Even before we open our mouth, we have been marked as not being from there, and we feel and see the pain of the separation.
I have had to face that I am a USer, no matter how I have protested in my mind about how I am treated in the United States.
Facing this means facing the unbearable pain, outrage, terror, and grief from the atrocities, violence, and other cruelty heaped upon us, and the consequent impact on our and our people’s lives.
Every once in a while, some of the truths erupt. They explode through the fog of consumerism and individualism to finally appear in front of our eyes and in our consciousness. Last year George Floyd’s murder was one such horrible event, a modern-day lynching for all to watch. Breonna Taylor was murdered by police, and no officer was charged with her death. Ahmaud Arbery was murdered in Georgia (USA) while jogging. Their taken lives reveal the systemic racism and white supremacy that run as a deadly current through the United States. COVID-19 is disproportionately killing Black people. There are also the environmental disasters—such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisana; the water contamination in Flint, Michigan; and the Dakota Access Pipeline—that disproportionately affect PGMI.
Just prior to the Biden-Harris inauguration in the United States, the U.S. Capitol was stormed by white supremacists. Most, if not all, newscasters said, “This is not who we are.” I was practically screaming back, “Yes, this is exactly who the United States is!”
Unless we see how oppressor patterns are running and interfering with the transformation to a more just society, little will change. We need to do the discharge work to get our minds back, to get a clearer picture of reality, and to act in all of our best interests.
However, time is running out for our planet. Don’t wait to be ready, because it will feel like you never will be. Don’t wait another moment—act. Decide, act, and discharge!
The work on U.S. identity and discharging oppressor patterns has the potential to change the RC Community. And I have an even bigger ambition. I think that this is the work that every USer needs to do if we want to see the end of the destruction of our planet and the end of capitalism, imperialism, and other oppressions. We are after [we are seeking] transformation.
SOME THINGS TO TRY
How do we work on the distress? Here are some things to try:
- We can “work early” [discharge on the early hurts].
- We can work on early separation.
- We can work on any place that feels unbearable!
- We can ask ourselves, What are all the things I was told, heard, or saw about the United States as a young person? What did those things lead me to think or do?
- We can use directions such as “I am a USer” and “This is my country.”
- We can use the RC commitments for United Statesers, Southern United Statesers, and U.S. Midwesteners.
- We can work on various aspects of our oppressor material. How were we controlled or dominated as a young person? What responses did we adopt to survive? What elements of our background (education, employment, money, language, race, gender, religion) place us in a position to dominate? What is our first memory of dominating? Can we go back in our mind as an ally to the young person we were and discharge?
- We can notice oppressor patterns in our behaviour—for example, getting irritated with someone, adopting a strange tone of voice, being distant or aloof, feeling more important than or superior to someone, wanting to have the last word, lashing out with anger. We can talk through, in detail, the behaviours that we notice. (We may not be aware of them at first. If we don’t know what our oppressor distress looks like, we can ask the people closest to us. They will probably have seen it—and have told us about it several times already.) We can ask ourselves where the behaviour may have come from in our early life.
- I asked my Co-Counsellors who live outside the United States how they are affected by U.S. patterns. They were happy to be asked!
London, England
(Present Time 204, July 2021)