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What is Racism?
What is Racism?
As we know colonialism founded the racist social systems and structures that continue to uphold racism today. It's important that we learn about these structures and find out the ways that we can undo the work that they enforce. Sometimes its as easy as standing up for someone else, and sometimes it is standing down from the social systems that uphold your priviledge. We all have identities that make us have precarious lives; however, some identities can not be hidden from other's hate, discrimination, and continous oppressive social systems. When it comes to Racism, we are discussing a visual and historical hate and discrimination between humans, based on skin color. It's important to remember that there is no quantifiable way of discussing the extent that the atrocities faced by people of color and minority/ethnic communities. It's also important to mention the lack of compassion and hateful persona it has forced on generation after generation of all people who benefit and uphold, racist social systems. On this page we hope to shed some light on the important people who teach us how to learn about these social systems and call them out. Our website is one of our many learning experiences for such intense social change. If we can see that our histories and our communities are important, than maybe we can learn to have love and care for our past, our present, and our future. When we discuss how racism works, it's important also to see how it doesn't work.
Racism is a system that allows certain people to benefit, and some people to lose their lives, or live so in agony. As a country, (USA) we have implored several themes of racism both in the enslavement and torture of Indigenous native Americans and African communities, and the social system that we only amended and not re-written that became the structure of power we see today. It's important to note there is no unjustified emotion to have when you live in a world where your skin color determines the type of service you receive, your family's history, and public image. As we previously stated, there is no way to quantify the way the discrimination in the form of racism effects communities of color; which means that the social system is imposed onto them. Racism can exist where privilege is had, not where privilege is not. If a person who is oppresed by their counterparts, complains about the way that their counterparts use their privilege, thats okay. This is why 'backwards racism' theories don't make a lot of sense. While all of us are human, none of us get to choose our skin color. While skin color SHOULD NOT be the reason you are more likely to die or be hurt in public, it is.
Understanding Danger of Police for Minority Groups:
Understanding Danger of Police for Minority Groups:
The danger of police involvement with People of Color can never be quantified because we have seen some of the most atrocious racial hate crimes committed by police officers. This means that any time a person of color is involved with or speaking to a cop, there is an overwhelming fear for their life and the ability for them to get home safe that night. There has been a steady trend of people of color being targeted and seeked out by our police system. This means that if you are a white person, you should be taking all precautions when contacting the police to be involved in a situation with a Person of Color. If you are required to in an emergency circumstance of course thats fine. However, when white individuals threaten to call police officers, you are directly threatening the life of that person. Often times the police will even shoot before confirming if a Person of Color is armed (which should be illegal); this means that once you have contacted the police, you have no way of protecting that person from harm. Please take into consideration whenever you are calling the police on anyone, the police officers can be rough or harmful to anyone. Recognizing the fear that People of Color face when trying to interaction peacefully or casually with police officers, is recognizing one of the systems and institutions we have created to uphold that social system. If you know the police will be present and looking around, and you invite a Person of Color, please be curtious enough to let them know about the police presence. This has nothing to do with any involvement in illegal activities, but to point out how we can be socially aware of what others may face socially and being poite in recognition.
LGBTQIA+ and the history of violence with the police system have a long history as well. While the threat has seemed less threatening in recent pasts, the increase of anti-LGBTQIA+ legistlation has made it very unsafe for people who are within the queer community, when dealing with law enforcement. Further, its important that we remember the ways in which homophobia from other societal community member has caused atrocities in the LGBTQIA+ communities. We have to make sure that we are always cautious for the ways that police interact with certain identities as a long history of bias has existed agains the Queer community. There may be members of the Queer community who are not as effected by this fear of law enforcement; however, we must remain aware that the LGBTQIA+ community houses lots of other minorities within it. These other identities held by LGBTQIA+ individuals also posed a threat to their wellbeing when being around possibly hostile or biased law enforcement.
Unlearning Racism:
Unlearning Racism:
Unlearning Racism is a continuous journey of self-education and community interaction that you hope can help you unlearn the system we all learned as children and young adults. Many of us were not taught strict racism as children, but our elections, media, social platforms, etc., have completely pushed ideals of white men and women. We have a society that has had very low inclusion standards for most modern industries surrounding art and product formation. There are hundreds of products that are never even tested to see if they are positively affective for hair of black communities. While there is a wide gap in the part of the larger population that we serve, we also have a police system with a repetitive nature of being abusive and unnecessary forceful with People of Color and Black community members. Race for a long time has been defined in a similar way to gender, in the way of it being a construct and a way of sectioning groups of people for power redistribution. Race has become a reason for so many to commit murder and abuse People of Color, while skin color has never shown to have any significant differences between groups when it comes to human qualities. However this does not apply to the treatment people recieve today, many medical students are still taught that black patients and patients of color are less likely to feel pain and therefore don't need standard pain relief treatments. We have disparaging numbers when it comes to People of Color getting medical treatment, and the unnecessary complications that occur. Many of these issues can include failure listening to the patient, inadequate resources to continue treatment on one's own due to social inequities, and the cost of healthcare in the United States of America.
All of these reasons are just a few reasons why really supporting and discussing unlearning your racist tendencies with others around you. If you feel compelled to ask someone if something would be appropriate before doing so, that may also be able to give you a better guide for your actions. Being in a state of constant learning can be confusing and sometimes what you may learn could seem conflicting, but you will learn the in's and out's as we all go. None of us are perfect, but we can all try our best to be better.
dismantlingracism.org
Are ways in which we have structured our society to cater to a specific kind of format for us to run on; even-though, it may be an unspoken and interpretable format per se.
Are ways in which we have structured our society to cater to a specific kind of format for us to run on; even-though, it may be an unspoken and interpretable format per se.
First we must understand what kind of systems we are looking at?
Patriarchy has been founded on the preconceived notion to sex differences at birth and assumed placement in breeding or procreation for future generations, and the assumed placement of a labor source or provider. While this notion has been getting very old by this time, we have let it up hold several households and leave many spending years in emotional aguish over their true wants and the systems' need to stay alive. If men are home bodies who take care of the young, as their female partner have a larger corporate jobs that provide for the family you are actively breaking this norm. However, don't misguide your sense of praise for breaking away from the norm. The praise goes to those who also teach their children not to rely on a specific sex or gender to provide for emotional needs etc. There is a lot in this world that caters to the male ideology, but in many ways it dis-serves the male population the most by inappropriate expectations and emotional strangulation. This does not negate that the tole the Patriarchy has put on AFAB people and/or women is unattainable by most, and has caused death, abuse, and manipulation in the name of gender superiority. Sexual domination has always been apart of this historical fantasy, but the patriarchy uses this assumed domination to abuse and silence women all the time. Rape and abuse culture is an egregious act and it's important that we take the energy to deal with our biggest predators in the community.
However our systems journey does not lead us just to Patriarchal Systems, but also Racist Systems that further upheld the white male agenda for power and profits. We saw this throughout the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Fugitive Slave Laws, Emancipation Proclamation, and Jim Crow Laws that have only evolved in their ability to access black communities and gerrymander their counties. Racism has many different ways of manifesting itself in the psychology of white individuals. Racism is something every white person faces, because our environment inherently works for us. It makes sure that we are safe; instead of fearing us and therefore endangering us. Racism and Slavery gave white men with power the ability to control and manipulate the ways in which voting and many other forms of freedom were withheld. Black Communities have faced the most extreme of attacks in our nation's history. It's our job as people today to combat our learned racism and other social systems, so that people can be in this place of freedom with the feeling of actually feeling safe, protected, and free to do so as they please (with reason).
Hate Crimes (Trigger Warning):
Hate Crimes (Trigger Warning):
Hate crimes are rooted in (Systemic) Systems of Oppression that have been upheld by historical/long-serving societal structures. Hate crimes are criminal acts motivated by bias or prejudice against a person or group based on characteristics such as race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Historically, these crimes have been used as tools of social control, intimidation, and oppression. In the United States, hate crimes were often associated with racial terror during the post-Reconstruction era, particularly through lynchings and violence aimed at Black Americans to reinforce segregation and white supremacy. Similarly, in Nazi Germany, state-sponsored hate crimes targeted Jews, Roma, and other minority groups as part of a genocidal regime.
In the modern era, hate crimes remain a serious issue globally. While civil rights advances have provided legal protections, incidents of hate-fueled violence persist. Modern hate crimes can range from vandalism of religious sites to violent attacks on individuals, such as the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting targeting LGBTQ2S+ individuals or anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The internet has also created new avenues for hate crimes, including cyber harassment and the efficient spread of extremist propaganda on new platforms.
Governments and international bodies have responded by enacting hate crime legislation, aiming to impose stricter penalties when bias is proven to be a motivating factor. However, enforcement and definitions vary widely by country. Tracking and reporting remain challenges, often due to underreporting or lack of legal frameworks.
WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE . INFO
The text below is quoting a written page that goes in depth on white supremacy and has a great source of information and deconstruction tools. The website is linked next to this article and here.
WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE (defined)
As early settlers came to what would become the U.S. from Europe, those in leadership were male and Christian. They did not identify as white. They identified with their ethnic, national, and/or religious roots - they were English, French, Dutch and they were Protestant, Catholic, Puritan. They came with the desire to create a "new world" where they could profit and prosper. But once here, they faced a big problem. These ruling class elite and their families were outnumbered by the Indigenous people whose lives and land they were stealing and the Africans who they forcibly kidnapped for enslavement and forced labor.
Because the ruling elite were outnumbered, they had to persuade newly arriving immigrants from Europe to cast aside their ethnic, national, and/or religious differences into a solidarity that could meet the challenge. And so they created the category of "white" and consolidated the idea of white supremacy as a way to organize these very different immigrants into a singular and unifying racial category. They did this by requiring them to disconnect from their ethnic and national identities in order to gain access to the material, emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual benefits of a whiteness designed specifically and intentionally to pit them against and place them above Indigenous and enslaved peoples.
They wed racism, and I use the word "wed" purposefully, to the construction of race; they created racism as white supremacy's tool.
Their goal was and is to undermine communal solidarity (thank you Paul Kivel). Their goal was and is to create a hegemonic Christian society (see box on the right) based on white supremacy ideology.
Throughout this website, when I use the term white supremacy, I am referring to the ways in which these ruling class elite or the power elite in the colonies of what was to become the United States used the pseudo-scientific concept of race to create whiteness and a hierarchy of racialized value in order to
disconnect and divide white people from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) / the global majority;
disconnect and divide Black, Indigenous, and People of Color / the global majority from each other;
disconnect and divide white people from other white people;
disconnect and divide each and all of us from the earth, the sun, the wind, the water, the stars, the animals that roam(ed) the earth;
disconnect and divide each of us from ourselves and from source (see below).
The power elite constructed white supremacy (and construct it still) to define who is fully human and who is not.
Direct Quote: WHITESUPREMACYCULTURE.INFO
INTERSECTIONALITY
The power elite constructed (and continues to construct) white supremacy to intersect with (thank you Kimberlé Crenshaw), support, reinforce and reproduce capitalism, class oppression, gender oppression, heterosexism, ableism, Christian hegemony, to name a few. These in turn function to support, reinforce, and reproduce white supremacy. So, for example, capitalism teaches us profit is more important than people while systematically advantaging those in the white group (although not all equally). Classism teaches us the wealthy are deserving and the poor are to be blamed while reproducing racism in the disparate reproduction of wealth and deadly exploitation of labor. Sexism and heterosexism teach us white men are superior to women (and all "others"), gender binaries are "normal" while gender fluidity is threatening, with the degree of threat (targeting all who defy gender binaries) tied to race and racism. Christian hegemony* teaches us that Christians (and a certain kind of white Christian at that) are divinely capable of shaping and defining reality for the rest of us. The power elite design these ideologies to teach us who is valuable and human and who is not in the name of power and profit.
In other words, white supremacy operates in collaboration with other oppressions; they reinforce and reproduce each other.
The power elite constructed (and continues to construct) white supremacy to serve capitalism, to commodify and dehumanize all living things in the name of power and profit for a few at the expense of the many. And they did this well (and still do), and they did this cleverly (and still do), constructing white supremacy to be ever more adaptable. So while historically those who benefit most from these constructions were and are white, male, owning class, gender conforming, heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian, English speaking ... (etc.) ... white supremacy has evolved to constantly extend an invitation to many of us, inviting us to join when assimilation (or joining) serves the ability of the power elite to profit at our expense.
This construction of white supremacy is alive and well. For just one example, we are living through a period where the U.S. Republican Party is overtly and boldy claiming a white supremacy, autocratic agenda. For more about this, sign up for Scot Nakagawa's online newsletter. For another example, note how newly re-elected President Trump was flanked by the world’s four wealthiest men at his inauguration. One of these men, Elon Musk, proceeded to give a Nazi salute in celebration of this newfound ability to shape government to target immigrants, diversity and equity initiatives, women’s autonomy, transgender people, the environment, and pretty much anyone and anything that does not serve wealth accumulation for the few. If nothing else, this example makes plain how intersectionality works (see previous page).
Direct Quote: WHITESUPREMACYCULTURE.INFO
Lynchings
Lynchings
{A lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process. These executions were often carried out by lawless mobs, though police officers did participate, under the pretext of justice.
Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive.
A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards.}
Recent Lynchings in America:
Recent Lynchings in America:
James Byrd's Story:
James Byrd's Story:
{On June 7, 1998, in Jasper, Texas, a 49-year-old black man, James Byrd, Jr., was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young white men. The murder was a modern-day lynching.
Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King dragged James Byrd, Jr. for 3 miles behind a pickup truck. Byrd was conscious for much of the ordeal and was killed about halfway through the dragging when his body hit the edge of a culvert, which severed his right arm and head. The trio drove on for another 11⁄2 miles before dumping his torso in front of a black church.
Brewer and King were the first white men to be sentenced to death for killing a black person in the history of modern Texas. Byrd's lynching spearheaded a Texas state hate crimes law, which later led to passage by Congress of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, commonly known as the Matthew Shepard Act, in 2009.}
There is more research being done to finish this page, please be patient with us.
There is more research being done to finish this page, please be patient with us.
If you would like to help us write about commonly silenced areas or personal experiences you may have with these topics, contact us at thisisactivism2023@gmail.com or fill out our Comments page. We want our website to be a continuous growth of knowledge to share with each other in a positive way. There are so many things we don't talk about and we should!
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