Canadas White Supremacy Problem
my name is elizabeth
and i am a former racist extremist
25 years ago i left the heritage front
which was canada’s largest white
supremacist organization at the time
i’ve spent most of the last quarter of a
century educating people about the
dangers of hate groups
and sharing my story about how i regain
my humanity
i often get feedback that people are
moved or inspired by what i have to say
and if i shared my narrative with you
today perhaps you’d be touched too
perhaps you’d even feel a little bit
better about this messed up world we’re
in for a minute
unfortunately i can’t give you that
feel-good change agent narrative today
you see there are lots of people out
there journalists activists
writers and academics who wish that
formers like me
would just go away they criticize us and
say we’re given unfair status and perks
while people who have fought racism
their whole lives are ignored
they say we should just get out of the
way so that people who need anti-racism
the people whose lives depend on it can
get on with the work they need to do
without distraction
you know what they’re right
in the past couple of years i’ve
witnessed farmers rush around and break
a whole lot of things
now i need to take a step back here and
say that there are formers who are
engaged in tremendously good work
in both academia and the nonprofit
sector so i
certainly don’t mean to disparage all of
us but the damage
that some formers are causing needs to
be addressed
when it comes to activism farmers can
end up walking a
very tight line on the one hand many of
us
end up connecting with organizations
that are created by and for people who
are affected by hate
and on the other hand particularly if
we’re engaged in de-radicalization work
we’re exposed to people and
organizations that promote that
intolerance
that’s a very very delicate push pull
and on top of that if we’re doing it
right we’re engaged in a lifelong
process of unlearning our own prejudices
and fixing our broken world views
not to mention healing the trauma that
led us to be vulnerable to hate group
recruitment in the first place
it’s a lot i mean it is
really a lot and it can be really hard
to keep going
some formers navigate all of this by
focusing on
peace building now if peace building
which can
encompass you know community building
forming relationships building bridges
it’s very important and valuable work
and i’m sure this is unfathomable to
most of you
but when you leave a hate group
understanding that we possess
a shared humanity and a fundamental
equality
it’s a revelation and finally reaching
out and connecting with other people
and learning and growing it feels so
good
in fact it’s almost a relief and really
it’s no surprise that formers would want
to stay in this part of their activism
because
the potential for doing good
is so i’m sure you’re saying but there’s
a butt in there somewhere
and yes there is and the butt is that
peace building and staying in that place
can unfortunately lead to a lot of
sidestepping
that sidestepping can include our
personal work that we need to do
as well as i guess what i would call a
political moral compass
this phenomenon can express itself in
many ways including
lack of empathy for others new formers
being brought out
into public conversations they’re
ill-equipped to handle
people not doing the work they need to
do to confront all their prejudices like
transphobia for example
and also when this is really quite
troubling
not confronting the misguided notion
that
anti-fascists are part of the problem
all of this can cause real and lasting
harm to the communities that were
supposed to be there to
help and all of this is happening
in the name of anti-hate it should come
as no surprise really
hate groups recruit broken people break
them further and then
leave them without any social structure
healthy belief system
or connection to who they are as a
person or their world
i’m so glad that there are
de-radicalization programs out there
today to help people navigate
this process but even so it doesn’t
matter you could have the best
mentor the best therapist
but there are still demons that you have
to fight on your own
and it is up to all of us as formers to
win those fights and
make sure that we deserve that former
label that we’ve been given
wish that leaving a hate group
was all that needed to happen to prove
that you’re a good person
but really figuring out that hate is
wrong is kind of the lowest
bar of entry into being a decent human
being
there’s no guarantee that anybody is
going to do the work they need to do
and even the passage of time doesn’t
necessarily mean that someone has
progressed in their journey
i can say that after 25 years
of being away from hate after learning
about love and experiencing hate as a
victim instead of a perpetrator
i’m still as broken as the rest and i
have no more right to be here on this
virtual version of the iconic ted talk
stage than anybody else
and yet i’m here and the irony of this
is more than a little uncomfortable
i nearly pulled out of this event it
felt irresponsible to me to come here
and share some story of personal
redemption while the world burns
now i can’t see your faces obviously but
i can imagine that
if these issues around de-radicalization
and former’s activism is new to you
you probably think this has nothing to
do with you in your life
you might even think that this is just
some strange outcropping of
broken and damaged people who are making
poor choices
i wish i wish i could make you feel
better
i wish i could tell you that was the
case but if you
enjoy white privilege this is where you
get to sit in the
difficulty of some really hard truths
with me
when we watch the news and we see hate
groups
marching around or talking about
population replacement or whatever
conspiracy is on their mind at the time
it’s easy to decide that these people
are just some part of a lunatic fringe
they don’t represent me they certainly
don’t represent my country this is an
american problem
this isn’t who and what we are
but here’s the thing hate
doesn’t form in a vacuum and hate groups
don’t
form in isolation from the world around
them
in fact i would say that they are the
thin edge of the wedge
the most virulent and blatant forms of
expression
of a system built on white supremacy
patriarchy
genocide they absolutely
are a hundred percent
who and what we are as a country
to add to this idea of being the thin
edge of the wedge i would say that
farmer’s activism and the problems that
we’re seeing there
are the thin edge of a wedge of a
problematic white ally ship in general
now if you care about human rights at
all
at some point you are going to end up
supporting
people and narratives and issues
that are outside of your experience that
don’t directly apply to you
and that means that you’re in danger of
promoting
notions of healing that don’t apply it
means
that just like former extremists you’re
in danger of breaking a whole lot of
things if you’re not careful
allies whether they’re formers or
otherwise
can fall into several traps and
i wish i could go through all of them
but the three i want to deal with today
include selective empathy
in this case people can be really
passionate about one cause but not
understand how that cause could be
impacting other people
it can also manifest in smaller ways
where
people do things like share images and
videos of someone being
victimized by the police without
understanding how
that how sharing these images can cause
additional trauma to the community in
question
and then of course there’s armchair
activism
this to me is really lazy but we all do
it we all
want the high reward low effort
that comes with sharing hashtags or
putting a special frame around our
profile picture on facebook
it feels good we feel like we’re raising
awareness but the problem is
we’re not in fact building any kind
of sustained education into the issues
at hand and we’re certainly not
promoting the marginalized
or silenced voices that are affected by
these causes
and most importantly there’s a failure
to listen and learn
this is a really big one what i see
happening and i
admit i’ve done this myself is i find we
find ourselves in a position where we
think we’ve done the work that we need
to do
that you know we’re we’re here we’re
good and it’s other people who need to
educate themselves if we find ourselves
in this kind of position
we need to take that step back
reevaluate
look for blind spots and listen to the
people who are directly
impacted by the cause we’re working on
and follow their lead
it can be dangerous to get caught up
in the rewards of the work we’re doing
without
remembering why we’re doing it in the
first place
and on top of that especially for
formers
if we fail to remember that we always
have blind spots that there’s always
something that we can be working on
we’re in danger of letting those grow
and fester
and they can end up becoming a real
problem
on top of all this i see people becoming
trapped in what i’d call compassion
fatigue
now in this world we’re in right now
with so much uncertainty
it’s really hard to care about
everything
it’s exhausting in fact and it’s so
tempting to tell our friends and family
you know what just
stop looking at the news just stop
reading the newspaper
just stop for your mental health just
stop
but the thing is doing this is actually
an expression of privilege because there
are so many people
who don’t have the option of
stepping back and tuning out
and this in a roundabout way brings me
back to why i’m here
why as a former extremist i’m here on
the stage when perhaps i shouldn’t be
tuning out turning off turning my back
it just isn’t an option i know what
hate feels like i know what it looks
like and i know what
so many people are embracing in the
world today
and i just can’t step away from that
bernie farber my mentor and friend who
helped me leave the heritage front 25
years ago
introduced me to the concept of tikkun
alam
now there are many interpretations of
this within jewish literature but i’ve
always understood it to mean
that we have a responsibility to make
the world a better place than when we
came into it
it isn’t our responsibility to finish
this work but it’s also not our
privilege to set it aside either
personally i think this should be a
universal concept
and while it can feel overwhelming and
who knows where to start
fortunately it only takes baby steps to
make enough
to make a real impact and get somewhere
so look within yourselves find
those blind spots and lingering
prejudices
take time to listen and learn and then
act find a community that you can
help that you can lift up that you can
make the world a little bit better
and if you should find yourself being
given a platform that you feel you don’t
deserve
try to do something good with it thank
you