My New Perspective on Working on Racism
I recently became an Area Reference Person and have been thinking about how I want us to tackle [work on] racism in my Area. I want to get at the core of the problem and accelerate the work.
It dawned on me [occurred to me] that both inside and outside of RC, much of our attention has been on trying to eliminate racism at the level of effects.
I’m thinking about two levels:
- Cause: This is the root of things and answers the question, why?
- Effect: Something has already happened—and cannot be changed because it has already happened.
To change something, we need to understand what caused it. We need to understand that our thoughts create our actions—sometimes awarely and often unawarely. This must be true of racism.
Racism does not exist in nature. The idea of racism came from someone’s imagination. It was made up [invented]. “Scientists” and “intellectuals,” supported financially by the elite and the governments that the elite controlled, promoted the idea that, based on skin color and physical features, people could be classified into a hierarchy of value—with “white” people at the top, Africans at the bottom, and other groups in between. Thus, something that did not exist before came into being by the force of some people deciding to put the idea out into the world. And then they convinced the masses that racism is a thing. Racism is a fiction. It is a mental construct that exists only in our minds. It is because of our belief in it that it continues to be created through our thoughts and actions. It exists in the world because people continue to believe and act as if it exists.
With this new awareness, I realized we have a clear path forward. We need to begin tackling racism at the level of causality (rather than trying to deal with its effects).
To eliminate racism, we have to do two things:
1) Eradicate the idea of racism from our minds (thoughts)
2) Stop behaving as if racism exists (actions)
Directions for white folks:
1) You must reject the lie that you are superior in any way to Black, brown, and Indigenous bodies. You must come to know in every cell of your being that Black, brown, and Indigenous people are as fully human as you are.
2) You must refuse to participate in any action that imposes control and domination over Black, brown, and Indigenous bodies. Despite the myth of white supremacy, you do not have the moral authority to do so.
Directions for Global Majority and Indigenous (GMI)* folks: [*The peoples of Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and those descended from them, and Indigenous people, are over eighty percent of the global population. These people also occupy most of the global land mass. Using the term “Global Majority and Indigenous (GMI)” for these people acknowledges their majority status in the world and interrupts how the dominant (U.S. and European) culture assigns them a minority status. Many Global Majority and Indigenous people living in dominant-culture countries have been assimilated into the dominant culture—by force, in order to survive, in seeking a better life for themselves and their families, or in pursuing the economic, political, or other inclusion of their communities. Calling these people “Global Majority and Indigenous” contradicts the assimilation.]
1) You must reject the lie that you are inferior in any way to white bodies. You must come to know in every cell of your body that you are fully human.
2) You must refuse to submit to any action that imposes control and domination over your body. You, alone, determine what happens to your body.
As with all directions, we can use these directions to find where the discharge is and then adjust as necessary for our own unique experience.
Perhaps this analysis can be applied to the other oppressions we want to eliminate. Each, of course, has its own origins and history.
Berkeley, California, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion list for RC Community members
(Present Time 207, April 2022)