Becoming anti-racist starts with the self. The first step is creating a sense of self-awareness of the issues around you. This awakening is not a one-time event. It will happen once, on a broad level, regarding race and white supremacy. It will continue to occur on issue-specific levels as you dive deeper and create space for more varied lived experiences in your understanding of these systems.
Awareness of racial injustices or understanding that you have privilege will not make you an antiracist. The next step is education. This is where you become an intentional student in this work. From webinars, lectures, and workshops to blog posts, books, and documentaries, study the complexities of racism and the many ways it manifests within our society. The point of educating yourself on race and white supremacy is not to be able to articulate these complex topics in an intellectual debate about inequality, and it’s about being able to develop the eye for identifying white supremacy in its many forms (in others and yourself) without being hand-held to do so.
The final step is self-integration. This is where you disarm yourself of the racist tools of defense that you’ve used to bypass the work of anti-racism. This is where you begin to replace them with accountability tools to stop racist behaviors. Self-interrogation is a skill and a process. Being practical and efficient at this stage takes time and practice. While it will start as part of this work that causes the most discomfort within you, you will eventually get to a place where you’re operating out of growth and embrace the many ways to identify how you can better be living up to the person you want to be in this fight for human equality.
Below are different subjects to help build self-awareness, education, and self-integration.
Privilege is a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. Everyone has some level of privilege depending on their social situation; they might have more privilege in certain social situations than others. Privilege exists across all identities, from gender, race, class, sexual orientation, etc. The more privilege you have, the more power you have within our society.
Power is defined as the ability of an individual, group, or institution to direct, influence or exercise control over the behaviors of other people, groups, or course events to achieve a goal or objective despite possible opposition or resistance.
Start by examining how you might have privilege. Below is a short video explaining how privilege functions and a quick quiz to test your privilege.
How Privileged Are You?
White Privilege is the societal advantage that comes with being seen as the norm. Just by being a white person or passing as a white person, you are considered part of the dominant group, which tends to be respected, assumed the best, and given the benefit of the doubt. White privilege also encompasses the accumulated power white people have gained since the country's founding. For example, wealth accumulation is a privilege created by overt, systemic racism in both the public and private sectors, which has benefited white people over non-white people throughout this country’s history.
Implicit bias is the attitudes or stereotypes that unconsciously impact understanding, actions, and decisions. These biases, which encompass favorable and unfavorable assessments, are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control.
We all have biases - it is how our brain is wired. Try to be aware of your potential for racial bias and challenge them when they arise. The first step is to learn what racial biases you might already have. Next, consider taking Harvard’s Implicit Bias Test, and watch UCLA Implicit Bias Video Series on navigating your own implicit biases and confronting them.
Cultural Appropriation is adopting elements of one culture by another, especially in cases where a dominant culture exploits aspects of a minority culture outside of its original cultural context and/or at the expense of the original culture for personal gain.
Cultural appropriation is a direct product of colonization, which has taken aspects of other people’s cultures for their benefit or gain. One prominent example is minstrel shows, which portrayed caricatures of enslaved Black people by white actors in blackface performing song-and-dance acts drawn from Black culture. Historical threads and actions are still alive today, from blackface and other appropriative Halloween costumes to white people pretending to be BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). Even though it may seem harmless on the surface, these actions erase and perpetuate stereotypes of different groups of people, mocking and effectively silencing entire cultures.
In your anti-racist journey, it's essential to practice Cultural Humility, a lifelong personal commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique whereby the individual not only learns about another's culture but starts with examining their own beliefs and cultural identities. Practicing humility opens you up to understanding other backgrounds and emphasizes you are practicing respect when encountering other people and elements of their culture.
In your journey to practice cultural humility, it’s essential to learn about other people’s cultures as you begin to understand how white supremacy and racism impacted Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities. A great starting point is to read books written by BIPOC writers, view the art created by BIPOC artists, and learn personal histories from BIPOC historians. The Pratt Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, alongside the Pratt Institute Libraries, made LibGuides highlighting historical and contemporary books, art, and media highlighting BIPOC communities. Use these guides as a starting point for this journey:
Inclusive Language Resource Guide
The anti-racist journey begins with looking at ourselves. It starts with examining your power and privilege, prejudices, and biases. Next, being anti-racist requires you to reflect on what practices in your life might be appropriate or offensive. Finally, you must learn about BIPOC communities and how white supremacy has impacted them throughout history.
Using this newfound knowledge, it is time to apply it to your everyday interactions between your loved ones, coworkers, and community. You must be ready for confrontation and difficult conversations because to be anti-racist, you must be prepared to be active in situations where racism arises.