Lately, I keep going back to the notes and experience I had some years ago while taking an Undoing Racism class hosted by People's Institute of Survival and Beyond. The second day of our workshop, we got into groups and had to reflect on two questions together:
What have you known about racism that you've pretended not to know?
How has that impacted your humanity?
Some answers in our group to the first question were:
-we pretend we have equal opportunity
-we deny our own racist thoughts
-we pretend we can separate ourselves from institutions and systems
-we pretend racial profiling and targeting doesn't happen
-we pretend we've made huge strides and that racism is a part of our past
-we pretend that we can solve the problem without coming together
...and some answers to the second question, "how has this impacted our humanity?"
-we live in fear, not love
-it has hindered our creativity, potential, and our pursuit toward wholeness and healing
-we are not true to ourselves or others
-it gives us an 'us-them' mentality
-it inhibits relationships
-it reinforces a judgmental, competitive nature
At the end of our conversation, our instructor said, "When it comes to racism, until we know what we've lost, we won't do anything. We won't be moved to change until we recognize what has been lost of our humanity."
May we all recognize the cost of racism on our humanity, and begin to educate and organize to deconstruct the evil that it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment