Recap and Insights
In this podcast episode with Colin Gillens and Brendan Phillips, we discuss antiracism as a practice. Colin exposes some vulnerabilities in sharing how he was forced to navigate racist systems in order to secure professional advancement. Brendan is also called upon to share about his first exposure to an antiracist act and how practicing antiracism might have changed the way that he engaged with past circumstances.
Since the topic is pretty heavy, here is a short primer on how I view antiracism.
Antiracism as a practice involves:
- being able to see systems that negatively impact communities of color,
- being able to articulate what it is in that particular system that is causing the harm,
- working to reform and/or take apart that system so that it no longer causes harm, and
- remediating the harm that has been done.
There’s a lot to unpack there so let’s dive into each of those elements individually and explore them a little bit.
Identifying Systems of Oppression
If you can’t see when something is harming something else, then you won’t be able to change it. That’s one reason why antiracism and education often go hand in hand. Most systems work to identify and celebrate the benefits that they offer to communities. For example, corporations celebrate benefits to investors. Families celebrate their annual achievements through newsletters of social media posts. Those same systems gloss over any harms done to get to those success stories. So – as Colin Gillens discusses in the podcast episode – a nonprofit that works to get favored internships for people of color will celebrate the career success that they’ve been able to bring about but they may not even be looking for the physical harm that they may cause an intern along the way. Most systems are simply not designed to account for themselves in that way.
The practice of antiracism asks you to look at a system in its totality and to ask how it is causing harm to – in particular – communities of color. Those harms may manifest as physical, mental, emotional, financial, or in any number of ways. The most common symptom of harm that I tend to see when I am reviewing a system stems from exclusion. So – to be very practical – if an organization has photos of their staff on their website and they all share a common racial makeup then I become aware that a system might be at work. To be sure, I’ll compare the organization’s census data against what I am perceiving to see if it looks like people are being excluded from the organization’s roster.
Naming
People are familiar with racist practices, they are somewhat familiar with solutions to racist practices, but they don’t often work to analyze whether or not their own practices are racist. Moreover, being able to share that there’s a problem in a system that someone has designed and worked hard on can be tough. People are generally resistant to the idea that the system they’re involved in is causing harm of any kind so it is very helpful to associate the harm that you have identified with a statute, ordinance, known practice, or frequently cited example.
Speaking practically, if you stand before a school board and talk about how schools in the district are dividing students by ethnic background then you will have made your point but the communication will have been ineffective. By contrast, if you simply say that the district is segregating its schools then you are more likely to get a desired response. Naming a practice as segregationist succinctly communicates the host of harms done by the practice and spurs the system to search for previously adopted solutions.
This is another reason why antiracism and education go hand in hand. You likely weren’t taught about how systems that perpetuated harms on communities of color are still allowed to do so. You have to educate yourself on past harms so that you are able to leverage that education when evaluating different systems.
Dismantling
As Alex Palacios shared in the very first episode of Bottomless Coffee, the systems that we identify and name are human-made systems. If humans made the system, then humans can fix the system. If the people in charge of a system are notified of an identified harm but they choose not to do anything about it, then those people should be replaced. If traditionally effective people are not able to reform a system then the system should be taken apart.
The practice of antiracism prioritizes the harm done to communities of color over the benefits celebrated by any particular system. If we know that the system is causing harm, we can name the harm that it is causing, and if we can’t fix the system – then the system itself should go. Ideally, if the system is still needed then it will be rebuilt in a way that does not harm communities of color. Or, even better, in a way that uplifts communities of color.
Remediation
Basic playground rules tell you that if you knock someone down and take their ball, then you should apologize, help them up, and give back the ball. Systems in America routinely knocked down and exploited communities of color for centuries. Now, in the name of equality, many people argue that the best way forward is to dismantle racist systems but to ignore the need for remediation. In playground terms, that would be a knockdown and an apology, but no helping hand or return of the ball. My antiracist practice recognizes that many systems profited from harming communities of color and that ignoring the impact of centuries of exploitation is actually harmful.
Again, speaking practically, communities of color were denied access to generational wealth. Options for remediation might include direct payment, shares in equity, preferred access to programs, or any number of ways to balance the scales. Arguments that remediation is not necessary are – in my view – intellectually lazy or based in greed.
