Anti-racism
Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to create equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination and/or working to change personal racial biases.[1] Major contemporary anti-racism efforts include the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement[2] and workplace anti-racism.[3]
Intervention strategies[edit]
Anti-racism has taken various forms such as consciousness-raising activities aimed at educating people about the ways they may perpetuate racism, enhancing cross-cultural understanding between racial groups, countering "everyday" racism in institutional settings, and combating extremist right-wing neo-Nazi and neo-Fascist groups.[29]
Proponents of anti-racism claim that microaggressions can lead to many negative consequences in a work environment, learning environment, and to their overall sense of self-worth.[33] Antiracism work aims to combat microaggressions and help to break systemic racism by focusing on actions against discrimination and oppression.[34] Standing up against discrimination can be an overwhelming task for people of color who have been previously targeted. Antiracists claim that microinterventions can be a tool used to act against racial discrimination.[35]
Microintervention strategies aim to provide the tools needed to confront and educate racial oppressors. Specific tactics include: revealing the hidden biases or agendas behind acts of discrimination, interrupting and challenging oppressive language, educating offenders, and connecting with other allies and community members to act against discrimination.[35] The theory is that these microinterventions allow the oppressor to see the impact of their words, and provide a space for an educational dialogue about how their actions can oppress people marginalized groups.[36]
Microaggressions can be conscious acts where the perpetrator is aware of the offense they are causing, or hidden and metacommunicated without the perpetrator's awareness. Regardless of whether microaggressions are conscious or unconscious behaviors, the first antiracist intervention is to name the ways it is harmful for a person of color. Calling out an act of discrimination can be empowering because it provides language for people of color to bring awareness to their lived experiences and justifies internal feelings of discrimination.[35]
Antiracist strategies also include confronting the racial microaggression by outwardly challenging and disagreeing against the microaggression that harms a person of color. Microinterventions such as a verbal expression of "I don't want to hear that talk" and physical movements of disapproval are ways to confront microaggressions. Microinterventions are not used to attack others about their biases, but instead they are used to allow the space for an educational dialogue. Educating a perpetrator on their biases can open up a discussion about how the intention of a comment or action can have a damaging impact. For example, phrases such as "I know you meant that joke to be funny, but that stereotype really hurt me" can educate a person on the difference between what was intended and how it is harmful to a person of color. Antiracist microintervention strategies give the tools for people of color, white allies, and bystanders to combat against microaggressions and acts of discrimination.[35]
It is claimed that white racial justice activists can cause activism burnout for activists of color. According to Gorski and Erakat (2019),[37] of the 22 racial justice activists in the sample, 82% of the participants identified behaviors and attitudes of the white racial justice activists as a major source of the burnout that they feel. The same study also found that 72.2% of the participants said that the cause of their burnout was attributed to the white activists having unevolved or racist views.[37] 44.4% of the activists also said that their burnout was due to white activists invalidating their perspectives as activists of color.[37] 50% of the participants said that their burnout was caused by white activists not willing to "step up" to achieve the goals of the movement.[37] 44.4% of participants said that their burnout was due to white fragility.[37] 50% of the participants said that their burnout was caused by white activists taking credit for the work of activists of color or exploiting them in other ways.[37]
Criticism[edit]
Some of these uses have been controversial. Critics in the United Kingdom, such as Peter Hain, stated that in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe had used anti-racist rhetoric to promote land distribution, whereby privately held land was taken from white farmers and distributed to black Africans (see: Land reform in Zimbabwe). Roman Catholic bishops stated that Mugabe framed the land distribution as a way to liberate Zimbabwe from colonialism, but that "the white settlers who once exploited what was Rhodesia have been supplanted by a black elite that is just as abusive."[40][41][42]
The dictionary definition of Anti-racism at Wiktionary
Media related to Anti-racism at Wikimedia Commons