We can always move on from here to work on developing spiritual practices for healing whole systems.
Q: Isn’t talking about White racism just divisive?
A: “You’re being divisive” does keep being said whenever anyone is pointing out a failure to include people rather than divide them out. So who or what is being divided? White people? Will our little world come crashing down if too many White people lose interest in defending the kyriarchy and start to want better, happier lives? Cool.
Ijeoma Oluo puts it very well, in So You Want to Talk About Race: “What is harmful and divisive are these acts of aggression against people of color that are allowed to happen constantly, without consequence. What is harmful and divisive is the expectation that people of color would just accept abuse.”
Q: If we got rid of class divisions, the issue of color would go away by itself, wouldn’t it? Isn’t the real problem classism?
A: Focusing on class makes it easy for nice White liberals and progressives to avoid addressing their own White racism—and a surprising number of nice White liberals and progressives are still White supremacists, just not so loud and vulgar about it. There are White people in progressive organizations still fighting hard to uphold the sacred duty of White people to be in charge and in control of everything and everyone. Nice White liberal racism could almost be defined as unfailing politeness to the people whose necks are under the boot—and anger and hurt feelings when those people don’t appreciate just how nice nice White liberal racists are. To be fair, even nice White conservative racists, classist as they may be, may have lines of decorum they won’t cross.
Not dealing with all our issues around White racism makes it impossible to dismantle the class systems—which certainly need to be dismantled—within the interlocking structures of the kyriarchy.
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