AntiRacism Needs You to Give Up
[Music]
have you ever dated someone who’s like
i’m just not ready to give up the things
i need to give up in order to be in a
relationship with you and fall in love
in the past i’ve dated at least several
versions of that person
and i’d always disagreed with the idea
that love requires you to give
up so much when asked what the opposite
of love is
most people say hate but i believe the
opposite of love
is oppression and in order to end
various forms of oppression
all kinds of people with all kinds of
privilege
need to be willing to give up all kinds
of things
giving up stuff is hard personally
attempts to give up netflix drinking
coca-cola
dating the wrong guy have only ever
temporarily been successful for me
but one of the first things i was
successful at giving up
was trying to fit in probably because
i never could on a pristine piece of
coastline
in a country known for its kangaroos
vegemite and unfortunately racism
i made my way out of my mother’s womb
brown
and seven pounds the white australia
policy dismantled just prior to my
arrival on stolen land
had long upheld the ideal of a
completely white nation
the after effects of which still
remained the half of me that was not of
australian heritage
was the half of me that people saw
judged questioned
and that half of me made all of me feel
like the only home i had
was not a place that felt like home
at around eight years old i started i
finished for the first time
a novel cover to cover charlie in the
chocolate factory
i wasn’t aware at the time that there
was anything wrong with the short brown
skinned slaves called umpa loompas
nor did i know that charlie like me had
experienced racism
you see author roald dahl had first
written charlie as a black boy
but his agent said a black charlie
bucket wouldn’t appeal to readers
i was a brown girl in grade three at a
place called white’s
hill state school my most notable memory
from whites hill
was at recess when one of my classmates
told me i was the color
of poo sometimes
our pain informs our purpose and so in
2015 i co-founded an organization
humaneology whose mission is spread
empathy
increase inclusion reduce discrimination
humanology focuses on sharing human
stories and empathy
as ways to bridge the gaps that divide
us
i had a dream professionally i was
fueled by this dream of an inclusive
world free from racism and other forms
of oppression
personally i was struggling with a
different dream
the dream i had of finding love
and becoming a mother i was single
almost 40 and some dreams well
some dreams have a time limit if you
want to find love get hitch get laid and
have a baby step one
is to give up the belief that can’t
happen and to show up on a first date
and so i did if you want to end
a system of oppression like white
supremacy
step one is to give up the belief that
you haven’t perpetuated injustice
and to show up ready to act one of the
ways we perpetuate injustice is by
unknowingly or silently enjoying
privileges that marginalize
others some 20 years ago already in
search of love
i can remember heading out with my
friends on a saturday night
getting dressed up and walking up to the
front of the line at
the bar where as a group of women
dressed to impress the bouncer would
step to the side
and let us in ahead of everyone else
waiting in line
did i feel bad when those doors swung
open
wide taking us from the arctic
temperatures of the canadian outdoors
into the warmth of the bar uh no it was
a feeling of validation
a feeling of endorsement not one of
guilt
what i’m suggesting is that it’s a
typical human response to enjoy the
privileges we’re afforded
without particular recognition as to how
they impact the other folks
stuck outside in the cold still waiting
in line
and just as the privilege my girlfriends
and i enjoyed can be connected back to a
system of oppression that commodifies
female sexuality
so too white privilege is connected to a
system of oppression
called white supremacy which simply put
is a system designed to prioritize and
benefit people who are white
it’s about as easy to spot your own
privilege as it is to spot your soulmate
in a bar
and just like the fish that doesn’t know
what water is
we can be oblivious to the only system
we’ve ever lived within
such as the system of white supremacy
growing up i can’t remember how many
times i heard the words curry in a hurry
followed by laughter i had several
friends whose parents really didn’t seem
to like me because i was different
and in 18 years of education through to
the completion of my law degree in
canada
i had only three educators who weren’t
white and none
were women and yet i’m aware that my
story of growing up with racism
is an incredibly fortunate one
hearing the stories of people who don’t
share our same privileges
is powerful listening to those stories
without
questioning their validity can help
erode
systems of oppression recently
i shared with a friend how disentitled
i’d felt growing up in a country where
i’d been born
continuously being asked where are you
really from
that question implies you don’t look
like us
you’re different you don’t belong here
so did they ask that question in an
aggressive way
my friend probed unknowingly questioning
the validity of my experience
because of their particular white
privilege it was difficult for them to
understand
how this question on its own could
impact a child or really
anyone even if asked over and over
so about a month after that first date
where
i showed up he moved in then he moved
out then we broke up then we got back
together then we broke up again and then
the very next day i found out i was
pregnant i was pregnant i was single
and pregnant this was not what i had
signed up for
i knew i was gonna have to give up the
glossy story i’d written for my life
and was tightly holding onto
step two to end a system of oppression
we have to give up
things we might not want to give up
recently humanology began collaborating
with a clothing retailer to produce
and sell a t-shirt featuring the work of
a racialized artist
and with proceeds going to anti-racism
efforts
we put out a call for artists who
identified as bipac
black indigenous or people of color and
then someone applied
who was white you won’t work with me
because i don’t have pigmented skin
this is disgusting you’re literally
discriminating against white people so
thanks for that i hope you’re proud of
yourself
everyone matters everyone
matters discrimination to end
discrimination
is different from discrimination in the
first instance because the intent is for
it to restore
rather than erode justice and equality
the reality is as we push marginalized
people further forward
someone has to be willing to step back
i replied the disgruntled artist
explaining that our endeavor
was about sharing the voices and art of
people who’d been marginalized because
of their race
she wrote back sharing several extremely
tragic experiences where she’d been
marginalized
none of which were connected to racism
giving up a victim identity isn’t
easy this entrenched identity tells us
i can’t possibly be privileged in any
way because of all the hardship
i’ve endured but our privileges aren’t
erased by our challenges
while facing my pregnancy alone my
socioeconomic privilege
wasn’t erased by the challenge i faced
of being pregnant and single or any
other challenge i had
like any privilege it made my experience
less challenging not easy but less
challenging because of it
there are some situations where no
matter what hardships we’ve faced
we can’t be victims and as a white
person
when it comes to racism specifically
because racism
is a product of the system of white
supremacy
you can’t be a victim
have you ever shared something
challenging you’re going through with a
friend or a loved one
and they started telling you about an
experience they had that was similar but
was also kind of different
and in the process they failed to
validate the very vulnerable thing you
shared
and made the conversation about them
rather than you
well when we’re talking about racism and
the conversation is redirected
away from racism by what about ism
it is a way of powerfully disrupting not
just the conversation
but also the possibility of equality
for people who aren’t white and today on
earth
that’s equality for about 88.5 percent
of the world’s entire
population as the size of my belly
increased
so did the frequency of assumptions
about my theoretical husband
oh your husband must be so excited get
your husband to rub your feet for you
so does your husband want a boy or a
girl
step three to end a system of oppression
we have to give
up assumptions and generalizations
so a few days passed and then a whole
flurry of public posts came in from the
disgruntled artist
alleging discrimination and sharing that
her friends who were people of color
were outraged by our call for bipark
artists
not all people who’ve experienced racism
are going to agree
on how to end it even the terms people
of color bipark racialized non-white
visible
visible minority are all highly
contentious
amongst the people they refer to how
could there not be
incredible diversity when 6.9 billion
people in the world
aren’t white avoiding assumptions and
generalizations about this peop
these people is needed in order to stop
marginalizing them
just because a south asian friend told
you i’ve never experienced racism
doesn’t mean south asians don’t
experience racism and similarly
assumptions and generalizations we make
about people who are white
can also derail anti-racism efforts
just because a white person has a black
friend or a brown spouse or a
multi-racial child
doesn’t mean that they aren’t impacted
by white supremacy
white supremacy in reality can be
compared to a pandemic
of sorts with a contagious
and fatal narrative that even infects
the very people it marginalizes
when we make assumptions or use the
wrong words most of the time it happens
unintentionally but lack of intention
doesn’t reduce
damage this one time i was at yoga
and i unintentionally put my bag down on
top of a tea light
and i still set the place on fire not
in a good way
step four to end a system of oppression
we have to give up comfort and
perfection
as we begin to speak up call out
and act in support it is going to feel
uncomfortable at times
especially when we encounter people who
disrupt our efforts
or when attempts at dialogue and
understanding fail
as they did with a disgruntled artist
inevitably at some point we’re going to
mess up
and that’s perfectly okay if we’re open
to feedback can apologize
and learn from what happened there’s so
much less
than we think wrong with not being
right it’s really not that hard to say
i was wrong and now i see things
differently or i hadn’t thought of it
that way
but now i have a different understanding
because of the diversity of
perspectives experiences and identities
within
a marginalized group of people there
really isn’t
the option of showing up perfectly for
everyone
the only option we have is showing
up imperfectly
so on new year’s eve 2017
i found love and became a mother
when my daughter was born after
temporarily getting back together
my daughter’s dad and i permanently
separated before she was about six
months old
and i had thought at the time that i
might be inclined to try to
kind of continuously revisit the
relationship in order to restore this
ideal i had of what a perfect family
should look like
but surprisingly this never happened and
instead
i began unlearning an old construct one
that no longer served me
and discovering a new framework for the
way
a family could exist and succeed and so
far
every day our little family is
succeeding within this new framework
we’ve created for ourselves
step five to end a system of oppression
we have to give
up old constructs like white supremacy
that don’t serve humanity
and find and learn new frameworks for
the way the world can exist
and succeed having a child
introduced me to a kind of love that was
so immense and so beautiful
and had made me give up
so much perhaps love did require us
to give up things to sacrifice maybe
this
is in fact the cornerstone of what love
is
the willingness to give up something for
someone else
looking at it that way when we give up
things to end
white supremacy and racism these aren’t
just
acts of justice they are also acts of
love
and there is a lot for a few people to
give up
and so much for many to gain
as we begin to act like a parent whose
kid never sleeps
fatigue and burnout are real and can
move us off course
there are five words of empathy that we
can draw upon at any time
to re-orient us back on the path toward
justice
and ultimately love what would it be
like
now anyone can ask this question you
know i don’t hold white privilege
but i do hold cisgender heterosexual
able-bodied
uh and citizenship privilege among
others and i can ask myself the question
what would it be like if my family and
community didn’t accept me
because of my sexual preference what
would it be like
to risk my life fleeing a war-torn
country
what would it be like
now i have a toddler i really don’t get
out very much you definitely won’t find
me pushing to the front of the line at a
bar
but you probably will find me pushing a
swing at the playground
standing there taking a moment to think
about my daughter’s future
400 years 400 years
of white supremacy 400 years
of oppression suffering genocide
this is too long my daughter is a
combination of black brown white and
even a little bit of japanese
and my wish is that her racial identity
doesn’t determine who she is or isn’t
able to become
in this world i have a dream
it is not a lofty dream it is a
pragmatic dream
about a world without racism and some
dreams
well some dreams have a time limit
thank you