The Board and admin of EAU believes its always a good idea to get ‘neck deep’ in the machinations and rhetoric of organized so-called anti-racists, which is code for anti-white. The following screed is a “political perspective challenging white supremacy” and outlines the “revolutionary” steps that are needed on a local regional and national level to finally crush what is perceived as “white privilege”. It is classic deconstructionism based on Marxist dogma. — Ed.
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Political Perspectives of the Challenging White Supremacy Workshops
Revised for Summer 2000 workshop
by Sharon Martinas, workshop Coordinator
(see below for Definitions and Descriptions)
My Vision
Like yourselves, I am a political activist. We are all working for a world of social justice, self-determination, equality, and peace for all peoples; a world free of class exploitation, patriarchy and heterosexism; a world which respects Mother Earth and all her creatures. I believe that such a world cannot be created unless there is revolutionary social change in the United States. And I believe that the most effective way to create this transformation is through building mass-based, multi-racial social movements, led by social justice activists of color.
Through my experience and study, I have come to the conclusion that the major barrier to creating these mass movements is racism or white supremacy.
White Supremacy
I define white supremacy as an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power, and privilege.
Learning From History
The history that has been hidden from us reveals how white supremacy was created in the United States, how it functions today, and what strategies might be useful in challenging it.
The United States is a capitalist nation-state created by military conquest. European colonialists stole the lands of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, committed genocide against the indigenous peoples, then kidnaped and enslaved African people to work the stolen land. The wealth created from land theft and enslaved labor made some of the colonialists very rich and enabled them to establish the United States. The U.S. was the world’s first white supremacy state — a state in which white supremacy and capitalism are like two peas in a pod.
The United States expanded its land by military conquest. It made war on Mexico and took half that nation’s territory. It wrote laws that robbed the Mexican people of their homes and lands in “Occupied America.” And it blessed this theft with the myth of “Manifest Destiny.”
The U.S. imported Chinese and Mexican labor to build the railroads that would connect the vast land mass “from sea to shining sea.” It used Mexican workers to grow the food and extract the minerals that made Occupied America a pasture of plenty — for the rich. Then it hopped a gun- boat and gobbled up Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, Hawaii and the Philippines. And it has been invading nations of color ever since, until today the U.S. is the most powerful imperialist state in the world.
The slave-owning “Founding Fathers” were very clear that they were building a nation-state for white people only. When they wrote the U.S. Constitution, they legitimized slavery of African people and excluded indigenous peoples from the new republic. The Congress of the United States promised to respect the sovereignty and land rights of native nations. From 1790 to 1870, the U.S. signed 371 treaties with indigenous nations, and broke every treaty it signed.
The first Congress in 1790 declared that only white immigrants could become citizens; and non-citizens could not own land. In the 1890’s, the U.S. welcomed newcomers from Europe, while excluding the Chinese. And in the 1990’s, sojourners from Mexico and Central America are greeted by armed border guards and barbed wire fences, while those from Canada pass through with a wave of a hand.
White Privilege
U.S. institutions and culture (economic, legal, military, political, educational, entertainment, familial and religious) privilege peoples from Europe over those from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Arab world. This web of institutional and cultural privilege is called white privilege. In a white supremacy system, white privilege and racial oppression are two sides of the same coin.
I define white privilege as an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of: (1) Preferential prejudice for and treatment of white people based solely on their skin color and/or ancestral origin from Europe; and (2) Exemption from racial/national oppression (that is, oppression based on skin color and/or ancestral origin from Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Arab world).
Whites are differentially privileged, and these differences are vast. The white male ruling class has state power. It owns and controls all the major institutions in the United States. Non-ruling class whites are both oppressed and privileged. They are oppressed most significantly on the basis of class, gender and sexuality; and also on the basis of religion, culture, ethnicity, age, physical abilities and politics. But, at the same time they are also privileged in relation to peoples of color. Ancestral origin from Europe gives white people preferential treatment and exemption from racial/national oppression, whether or not they personally support this unjust system of privilege.
The Strategy of the Slave Owners
In 17th century Virginia, slave-owning colonial rulers, faced with armed rebellion by African and European servants, created a strategy to prevent the oppressed majority from uniting against the colonial ruling class. They made “white” a legal concept to describe poor Europeans. They gave “white” servants, who demanded better treatment for themselves only, certain privileges (land, freedom, an opportunity for a job on the slave patrol, and a tiny bit of access to those with political power). They severely punished “whites” who made common cause with Africans. They maximized the oppression of Africans by solidifying chattel slavery. And they justified their actions by asserting the “superiority of the white race” and the “inferiority of non-white races.”
The strategy was brilliant. The punishments deterred all but the most courageous Europeans from making common cause with Africans or Native Americans. The privileges wiped out the material basis for unity between the most oppressed Europeans and all Africans, by giving freedom to the poor Europeans while enslaving the Africans.
The strategy set a precedent which still works today. Virtually all the politically progressive movements led by white activists, historically and in the present, (trade unions, women, farmers, political reformers, environmentalists; queers and transgenders, peace and anti-intervention, etc.,) have recreated, consciously or unconsciously, the structures of white privilege.
For example, trade unions, especially in California, were organized effectively on the basis of excluding African American, Chinese and Mexican workers. White women did get the vote, after 100 years of struggles, by supporting white supremacy in the South. Mainstream environmental organizations have preserved the spotted owl, while seldom challenging environmental pollution in communities of color. White activists continue to ask activists of color to join predominantly white movements, offering little or no support for their issues and movements in return.
When oppressed whites protest militantly against their own oppression, while refusing to simultaneously challenge racial oppression and white privilege, they can win short term victories (a union, legislative reform, a constitutional amendment, a temporary shift in foreign policy, an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency). But when they organize in this way, they become oppressors of people of color. Silence is consent to racial oppression and white privilege. They sacrifice possibilities for creating the alliances and coalitions with activists of color which could challenge the power of the descendants of the slave owners –a power which continues to oppress all of us today. And, as moral human beings, they are frustrated and outraged because they lack sufficient power to stop the U.S. government from murdering peoples of color here and throughout the globe — in their name.
Challenging White Supremacy / Anti-racist Training
I think that one of the many ways to challenge white supremacy is to do anti-racist training workshops in my own community, the broad—based activist community of the Bay Area. That community is made up of dedicated people — white and of color — committed to overturning capitalism, racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, and environmental degradation, and to supporting multi-faceted struggles for social justice at home and abroad.
The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop has been designed by a white anti-racist organizer. The issues it addresses are of particular concern to white activists committed to creating anti-racist political practice in white-dominated grassroots groups, agencies, organizations and institutions. These issues may also be pertinent to activists of color working in coalition with white activists. Activists of color are always welcome to participate in all CWS workshops.
Workshop Goals
1. To contribute toward building a multi-racial revolutionary movement, led by activists of color (especially in the Bay Area);
2. To strengthen the capacities of white social justice activists to challenge racial oppression and white privilege within social justice movements; and
3. To train workshop participants to be more effective grassroots anti-racist activists and organizers.
CWS will use the concept of “analyzing with an anti-racist lens” (a term created by the African-American anti-racist trainer Enid Lee) to examine the interrelationships between the white supremacy system and the systems of capitalism/imperialism, patriarchy/heterosexism, and the systemic violence of the state.
The workshop defines an anti-racist activist as a person who is deeply concerned about racism, who takes action to express that concern, and for whom taking action becomes a way of life. An anti-racist organizer is an activist who motivates and educates others to become anti-racist activists, who assists them in their efforts to challenge racial injustice effectively, and who helps them understand their power: their capacity as a group of people to decide what they want and to act in an organized way to get it.
I believe the processes which move a white person of conscience from concern for social justice, through anti-racist consciousness, to anti-racist activism and organizing, are very complex. The path is never linear. Most often, it isn’t even obvious to the traveler. Moreover, the processes express themselves in spiritual and moral, cultural and political ways, often in the same action. And each person’s path is her or his own.
I call the experience of traveling this path Creating an Anti—racist Agenda. The agenda has six principles which anti-racist activists can use to challenge the strategy of the slave owners — the creation of white privilege in progressive movements.
Creating an Anti-racist Agenda: Six Principles
* Act on your principles;
* Create a culture of resistance;
* Stand in solidarity;
* Prioritize the issues of people of color;
* Respect the leadership of people of color;
* Hold on to your visions.
The principles are like moral/spiritual/political rudders than can guide individual and collective transformations of anti-racist activists. The processes of transformation may differ for each person, but I believe that they have reflective action at their core. I describe reflective action as a spiraling cycle: listen, learn, reflect, act, reflect, learn, listen. The workshop’s educational strategy is designed to strengthen participants’ capacities to understand and practice the six principles in their anti-racist work.
The message of the six principles is simple, but to practice it, we have to overcome 500 years of white supremacist socialization.
Becoming an Anti-Racist Activist
As an activist, I am committed to taking respectful action. “Re-spect” means to look back on, to re-vision. I will evaluate my actions by their processes as well as by their effects. My commitment is nourished by a willingness to be critically conscious of what I do in the world, and how I do it with other people. I want to learn from the setbacks, as well as from the successes.
I believe that when I act on my principles, my life is transformed. For me, that is the essence of uniting the personal and the political. When I challenge white supremacy, both my own white privilege and the oppression of people of color, I am healing myself — of my fears, of self — doubt, of the guilt that comes from being who I am: a white person of conscience in a white supremacist society.
As a non-ruling class white woman, I experience the oppression of living in a system that murders women and men of color, white women and queers; that starves the hungry, criminalizes the homeless, exploits the worker, pollutes the planet, and makes heroes out of war criminals. As my understanding of this hydra-headed monster deepens, I realize that challenging white supremacy is crucial to ending all these forms of oppression.
As a political activist, I have learned that it takes pressure to challenge injustice. As Frederick Douglas said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” History teaches me that white supremacist institutions will budge only with massive pressure, the kind of pressure that comes from organized and determined mass movements.
As an anti-racist activist, I have experienced that creating an anti—racist agenda is hard work. While I strive to be an anti-racist, I continue to behave in racist ways. That is what it means to be both privileged and socialized by a white supremacist system. I live in the belly of the beast, and the beast is in my belly.
As a human being, I trust in the power of my visions. Becoming an anti—racist activist brings me great joy. I believe I’m doing what I can to help lay the groundwork for building the mass—based, multi—racial movements, led by activists of color, that can fundamentally transform the United States into a social justice nation. It’s a good way to spend my life.
The Workshop as a Laboratory
The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop is a laboratory for grassroots anti-racist activists and organizers to prepare for, create, reflect on and evaluate the anti-racist grassroots organizing work we will be doing in the real world outside the workshop’s doors. Because the workshop is experimental, it may be challenging and intensive. But it can never be a substitute for the real work, nor can it be an escape from the real world.
The workshop’s guidelines emphasize the centrality of respectful behavior, the same forms of respect that serious activists give (or ought to give) each other in their political work. It also emphasizes developing qualities such as patience, courage, self—discipline and responsibility. It encourages collective activity, while recognizing the importance of experienced leadership. It utilizes modeling and inspiration as important forms of motivation for behavioral transformation.
The workshop is not an “enchanted space” where 500 years of white and male supremacy, class exploitation, heterosexism and violence can miraculously be erased in a three hour time period. For this reason, the workshop recommends that participants learn to “Challenge the behavior, while respecting the person.”
The workshop will not support requests by white participants for a “safe space.” It is my belief that yearning for “safety” on the part of white activists is an expression of white privilege. Anti-racist work is not safe, especially for activists of color. People of color are routinely fired, evicted, beaten, jailed and murdered for their anti-racist activism. White anti-racist activists are often isolated and threatened, sometimes fired and jailed, and occasionally also killed for their solidarity efforts.
Anti-racist work necessitates trusting, cooperative relationships among activists. But trust does not come from uttering earnest words in a workshop. People of color have no reason to trust whites. The legacy of 500 years of white supremacy warns against that trust. If white activists are to be trusted, we will have to demonstrate long term, committed anti-racist practice in the real world.
The workshop can provide participants with an opportunity to meet some people with whom they would like to work in the world outside. And that is vital, because anti-racist work is hard and isolating. We need strong support systems to carry it on for a lifetime.
Anti-racist Grassroots Organizing Strategies
A. Practice and Model Respectful Behavior
The workshop focuses on the practice of respectful behavior as a key way in which we can challenge white privilege and racial oppression in our own lives. The guidelines we will follow for respectful behavior are all based on the principle: Respect the Person; Challenge the Behavior.
Respect Each Other:
* Practice Active Listening and Respectful Dialogues.
* Challenge racist language.
* Create anti-racist language.
* Say it here. Keep it here.
* We are not here to judge each other, put each other down, or compete.
Respect Ourselves:
* Speak from your heart and your experience. Use “I” statements.
* There are no “experts,” and no “correct lines.”
* Courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act in spite of your fear.
Respect the Collective Process:
* Create anti-racist group dynamics. This is key to a collective learning process.
* Listen to the wisdom everyone will bring to this group.
* Give each person the time and space to speak.
* Supportive, honest evaluation and critical thinking are vital to the collective process.
* Our real anti—racist work begins when we leave the workshop.
Respect the Workshop as a Grassroots Anti-Racist Institution:
* Come on time!!
* Plan to participate in every session.
* If you miss a session because of an emergency, please call the workshop as soon as you can.
* Come prepared to share workshop expenses. Donations will be requested.
* Volunteer for workshop tasks: set up, registration, small group organizing roles, clean up.
* The homework is part of the work of the workshop. Please plan for it in your busy week.
* If you decide to drop out of the workshop, please let the organizer know why.
B. Create an Anti-racist Agenda
The Workshop Exercise Manual suggests many ways to learn the six principles. But perhaps the best way is through practicing Each One Teach One: sharing your experiences with a friend.
C. Each One Teach One
Each One Teach One is a grassroots organizing strategy used by African American organizers in the Southern freedom movements of the 1950’s and 1960’s. As the name suggests, each organizer focuses her/his efforts on intensive, one-on-one communication as a method of bringing another person into the struggle.
The workshop advocates the use of the Each One Teach One organizing strategy as an important way to do anti-racist organizing. It is personal, an intensive conversation between two people. It is experiential, allowing the organizer to draw on her/his own processes of anti-racist transformation to communicate her/his commitment to anti-racist work. It is respectful: to be effective, it necessitates active listening, as well as articulate speaking, on the part of the organizer. It is educational: teaching another is the best way to learn yourself. It is political: the content of the message is one of the struggle for justice. And it is spiritual: the organizer is inviting the person addressed to join her/him on a life-transforming path of becoming an anti-racist activist.
D. Organize With Principles, Pragmatism and Pressure
The workshop suggests using the strategy of organizing with Principles, Pragmatism and Pressure as one method of initiating anti-racist transformation within progressive grassroots white-dominated groups, social service agencies and organizations. (The strategy may also be effective in some mainstream non-profit institutions.)
The strategy is based on an analysis developed by Enid Lee, an African-Canadian anti-racist trainer of teachers. She speaks of what motivates white teachers, who participate in her training sessions, to become anti-racists:
“You have the people who change because they feel a moral imperative. They see themselves as upstanding citizens, as good people, and so they want to do the right thing. And those people can be appealed to on principle. Then there are those who are entirely pragmatic, who will change out of enlightened self-interest. Things are not going well within the classes; they can’t control the kids. So they want to do something to change the annoying situation. And then there are those who will change because it’s legislated, because they are told they have to. So we have three motivations: it’s right; it will help me; I must” (Enid Lee, “The Crisis in Education: Forging an Anti—Racist Response,” Rethinking Schools. Autumn, 1992. Vol. 7, #1. Italics added.)
My experience of working with white social justice activists has convinced me that most of us are motivated to do what we do by strong moral principles. We also want to put our principles into practice, for our political work to be effective, so we are also motivated by pragmatism. And, as activists, we know the truth in Frederick Douglas’s wisdom that “Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.” So we understand that challenging unjust power requires pressure, action and organization — the power of the people. How might an anti-racist organizer apply the strategy of “Principles, Pragmatism and Pressure” to initiate an anti-racist process within her grassroots organization or agency? She might begin by utilizing the intensive “Each One Teach One” method to identify, motivate and educate an anti—racist organizing core (AROC) group (ideally, a multi-racial one) who are motivated to anti-racist activism by their principles. The group would develop a strategy for convincing a larger number of organizational members that creating an anti-racist agenda (a conscious anti-racist political practice) is the right thing to do, and in the organization’s best self-interest: it is both principled and pragmatic.
But anti-racist transformation of an organization will be challenged by many (perhaps most) organizational members — because white privilege confers real, though short term, benefits on white progressives just as on the rest of the non-ruling class white population.
Anti-racist organizers then have the task of developing a strategy for bringing pressure to bear on the ‘reluctant reformers.’* The strategy might combine voices from within the organization as well as respected voices in the organization’s constituency and community. The purpose of the pressure, at this point, is not to change hearts and minds, but to change behavior. The process of transforming consciousness will last for the lifetime of the organization.
The strategy of “Principles, Pragmatism and Pressure is experimental. Its effectiveness can only be judged by its results in real, grassroots anti-racist practice.
(* Term adapted from Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United States. By Robert Allen. Howard Univ. Press, 1983.)
E. Create An AROC (Anti-racist Organizers Core) Group Anti-racist work is difficult work. We cannot do it effectively, for long periods of time, by ourselves. We need the mutual spiritual, political, organizational and practical support of other anti-racist organizers. Beginning in the summer of 1995, the workshop experimented with creating an anti-racist organizers core group (AROC GROUP”) of 4 to 6 people as a primary organizing vehicle through which activists can do their anti-racist grassroots organizing.
We will use the workshop as a laboratory to create these groups, apply the workshop’s anti-racist principles and strategies to strengthen the groups, and evaluate their effectiveness for anti—racist organizing in our communities.
Definitions and Descriptions
* WHITE SUPREMACY: White supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent; for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege.
* WHITE (as in •white people”): The term white, referring to people, was created by Virginia slave owners and colonial rulers in the 17th century. It replaced terms like Christian and “Englishman” (sic) to distinguish European colonists from Africans and indigenous peoples. European colonial powers established white as a legal concept after Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 during which indentured servants of European and African descent had united against the colonial elite. The legal distinction of white separated the servant class on the basis of skin color and continental origin. “The creation of ‘white’ meant giving privileges to some, while denying them to others with the justification of biological and social inferiority. (Margo Adair & Sharon Powell, The Subjective Side of Politics. SF: 1988. p.17.)
* WHITE PRIVILEGE: A privilege is a right, favor, advantage, immunity, specially granted to one individual or group, and withheld from another. (Websters. Italics mine.)
White privilege is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of: (1) Preferential prejudice for and treatment of white people based solely on their skin color and/or ancestral origin from Europe; and (2) Exemption from racial and/or national oppression based on skin color and/or ancestral origin from Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Arab world.
U.S. institutions and culture (economic, legal, military, political, educational, entertainment, familial and religious) privilege peoples from Europe over peoples from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Arab world. In a white supremacy system, white privilege and racial oppression are two sides of the same coin. “White peoples were exempt from slavery, land grab and genocide, the first forms of white privilege (in the future US).” (Virginia Harris and Trinity Ordoña, “Developing Unity among Women of Color: Crossing the Barriers of Internalized Racism and Cross Racial Hostility,” in Making Face, Making Soul: Hacienda Caras. Edited by Gloria Anzaldúa. SF: Aunt Lute Press, 1990. p. 310).
* RACE: A specious classification of human beings created by Europeans (whites) which assigns human worth and social status using ‘white’ as the model of humanity and the height of human achievement for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power. (Ronald Chisom and Michael Washington, Undoing Racism: A Philosophy of International Social Change. People’s Institute Press. People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. 1444 North Johnson Street. New Orleans, Louisiana, 70116. 1997. Second Edition. p. 30—31.)
* PREJUDICE: A prejudice is a pre-judgment in favor of or against a person, a group, an event, an idea, or a thing. An action based on prejudgment is discrimination. A negative prejudgment is often called a stereotype. An action based on a stereotype is called bigotry. (What distinguishes this group of terms from all the others on these two pages is that there is no power relationship necessarily implied or expressed by “prejudice,” discrimination,” “stereotype” or “bigotry.”)
* POWER: (“Power” is a relational term. It can only be understood as a relationship between human beings in a specific historical, economic and social setting. It must be exercised to be visible.)
1. Power is control of, or access to, those institutions sanctioned by the state. (Definition by Barbara Major of People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, New Orleans)
2. Power is the ability to define reality and to convince other people that it is their definition. (Definition by Dr. Wade Nobles)
3. Power is ownership and control of the major resources of a state; and the capacity to make and enforce decisions based on this ownership and control; and (Alternative definition to #1)
4. Power is the capacity of a group of people to decide what they want and to act in an organized way to get it.
5. (In terms of an individual), power is the capacity to act.
* RACISM: Racism is race prejudice plus power. (Definition, by People’s Institute. I use “white supremacy” as a synonym for racism.)
* INTERNAUZED RACISM: (1) The poison of racism seeping into the psyches of people of color, until people of color believe about themselves what whites believe about them — that they are inferior to whites; (2) The behavior of one person of color toward another that stems from this psychic poisoning. Often called “inter-racial hostility;” and (3) The acceptance by persons of color of Eurocentric values. (See Harris and Ordoira, op. cit. pp. 304—3 16.)
* REVERSE RACISM: A term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege. Those in denial use the term reverse racism to refer to hostile behavior by people of color toward whites, and to affirmative action policies which allegedly give ‘preferential treatment’ to people of color over whites. In the U.S., there is no such thing as “reverse racism.”
* A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination. (This does not deny the existence of such prejudices, hostilities, acts of rage or discrimination.)
* A NON—RACIST: A non-term. The term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to maintain an aura of innocence in the face of racial oppression, and to shift responsibility for that oppression from whites to people of color (called “blaming the victim”). Responsibility for perpetuating and legitimizing a racist system rests both on those who actively maintain it, and on those who refuse to challenge it. Silence is consent.
* AN ANTI—RACIST: (As applied to white people), an anti-racist is a person who makes a conscious choice to act to challenge some aspect of the white supremacy system: including her/his own white privilege, as well as some form of oppression against people of color. (As applied to people of color), some use the term anti-racist. Others use synonyms such as freedom fighter, activist, warrior, liberation fighter, political prisoner, prisoner of war, sister, brother, etc. In practice, it is difficult for an activist of color not to be an anti-racist activist, since the struggle against racial oppression intersects with every issue affecting people of color.
* OPPRESSOR, OPPRESSED, OPPRESSION: An oppressor is one who uses her/his power to dominate another, or who refuses to use her/his power to challenge that domination. An oppressed is one who is dominated by an oppressor, and by those who consent with their silence. Oppression is the power and the effects of domination. In the U.S., there are many forms of (often) interlocking oppressions: racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, anti-semitism, ablism, ageism, etc.
In a white supremacist, capitalist, male supremacist, and heterosexist system, all non-ruling class whites are in some way oppressed by that system, but we are also privileged by it. When we organize against our own oppression, but not against our privilege — that is, against the oppression of people of color, we become oppressors of people of color. Inaction is complicity. Silence is consent. To cease being oppressors, we must act against oppression. (See “The Strategy of the Slave Owners.”)
Definitions by Sharon Martinas
Fourth Revision Spring 1995
For more information, contact:
CWS Workshop
2440 – 16th. St. PMB #275
San Francisco CA 94103
The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop is a project of the Tides Center