I’m hoping to have the commitment and resilience to write over the next few weeks about my learning from the online course “Black Lives Matter: Whiteness and Racial Justice Learning For Quakers.” I am not going to write about the sessions, just what I have learnt and am learning about my own white privilege and my commitment to racial justice.
The course willl run for five weeks and we’ll be given reading and watching tasks each week. These, together with some reading I’ve been doing recently, will form the basis of these reflections on my learning journey.
We had a pre session questionnaire to help us position ourselves and find out about our knowledge and ignorance. One of the questions was about the beliefs of the Black Lives Matter movement. I visited the website of the global BLM movement and was profoundly moved by the statement ‘What We Believe’. Here are some highlights which caught my attention.
The movement aims to build local power and to intervene where acts of violence are carried out by the state or vigilantes.
BLM aims to build a world free of anti Blackness where all thrive, and to unite Black people globallly.
The movement is committed to “healing ourselves and each other” and creating allies.
Finally, my favourite:
“We intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting.”
The whole document is invaluable as a resource for a summary of BLMs inspiration and impetus. I did learn a lot about BLM from the website.
Before even knowing about the Quaker course I had started to read recommended books. Two in particular grasped my attention. They are;
“Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race”, Reni Eddo-Lodge, and “Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire”, Akala.
I have both books on audio, both read by the authors. Listening to these young, passionate voices really adds, for me, an urgency to discover inside myself resources to act in the most fruitful way for racial justice. I also have kindle versions of the books so I can easily go back to check references or read again the most challlenging parts. I am aware that i need to do deep rooted checking of my cultural assumptions and my behaviour.
There was a non essential part to the pre session tasks. I watched two films from the list. I chose them at random: “The Hard Stop” and “Generation Revolution”. they are both documentaries.
The first is about the shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham in 2011. The film follows the campaign for justice and for police accountability. However, the film’s main focus is on following the lives of two of Mark’s friends, Marcus and Kurtis in the daily struggle of being young and Black in Britain. Their lives seemed to be caged in by so many barriers. I felt drawn into their stories to the extent that I was calling out words of encouragement to them as their stories unfolded.
The second film is about a group of young Black activists in South London. I was trying to imagine conversations between them and Marcus and Kurtis. The different characters and motivations of the young activists came across strongly and again I felt drawn into their stories.
There is much for me to learn, much to do and much to undo. It’s an important journey which, as we are in it for the long haul, needs to be “restorative and not depleting”
But what is round the next bend…?A
Live Adventurously 