The final project for this class was to create a tool people can use for building communities of racial justice online. Here is the outline, and the PDF of the final project.
- How to create structural change in organizations and institutions plagued by systemic racism and anti-blackness. (especially online institutions)
- We live in a culture of pervasive anti-blackness and systemic racism.
- All institutions, communities, and groups must necessarily reflect that system by default to at least some degree.
- The default mode, as Jessie Daniels points out in “Race, Civil Rights, and Hate Speech in the Digital Era,” is often to do this covertly without even realizing this is what they are doing.
- Throughout their careers, both MLK and Malcolm X pointed out that well-meaning white liberals are the worst enemy black people have when they profess to want racial progress but refuse to lift a finger to get there by practicing critical self-examination to see how they are contributing to systemic racism and benefiting from it.
- Your group reflects systemic racism and anti-blackness because all groups do.
- What is the population your group claims to represent?
- Is it America? The world? The SF Bay Area?
- Measure the group’s structural racism and talk about it:
- What kind of people have the power to make decisions for the group?
- How different is the group of decision makers from the demographics of the population they claim to represent?
- How do the rules and guidelines of the group reflect and reinforce systemic racism?
- How are black voices silenced or excluded?
- Before you can change the system, you need to build a powerful coalition…
- First, a line needs to be drawn between two subgroups:
- Some people want to embrace progress. Find them and connect with them!
- Some people want to “leave politics out” or gatekeep who counts as part of the community. These are the racist white liberals who MLK and Malcolm X warned us about. These are the people on the other side of the line we are drawing. Outright white supremacists in the group will be indistinguishable from white liberals. This is the covert racism Jessie Daniels tells us about.
- Your ideas are tools: a meme is any idea which spreads through culture. Memes are the tools for transforming the group. Create and share memes and ideas which speak to the people who are on your side, and show you who is not on your side.
- For online communities this can be literal memes.
- For in-person communities it can be ideas like
- “Let’s switch to equal opportunity hiring.”
- “Let’s work on racism in the organization.”
- “Let’s work on closing the wage gap.”
- Whether online or in-person, some people will roll their eyes while others will smile and engage. People on both sides of the line will do the work of telling you which side they are on. Just show them the line and they will pick a side.
- Pay attention to the responses you get when you talk about racial progress. Make a list of those who agree with you, and organize them into a coalition.
- Start group chats and build connections between people who share your belief that structural change is needed to achieve racial progress in the organization.
- Pay special attention to those in power who are on your side and those who are not.
- Save screenshots of any problematic behavior for later use.
- Demand Specific Change
- In the words of Quellcrist Falconer, power is not a static structure, it’s a flow system. Systemic racism is a system where power and resources flow to white people at the expense of black people. We need to change the flow, the structure that the group is built on.
- The demographics of the people in power making decisions needs to reflect the population. Demand black representation on the board, on the admin team, on the mod team.
- No matter what kind of group it is, resources are flowing from some people to other people. Even if no one is getting paid, money is changing hands. Whose hands is it going to, and does the demographics of that group reflect the population the group claims to represent?
- More Tools
- It Has To Be You
- It is only with the help of people like YOU that these groups and institutions can choose to deliberately cultivate a just alternative to the racist defaults in our society.
- Only through empowering black people to make decisions for the group and have a representative share of the resources can an organization move away from systemic anti-blackness and racism and towards an equitable alternative.
- First, a line needs to be drawn between two subgroups:
- What is the population your group claims to represent?