Decolonize Your Mind, Decolonize Our Systems
Why it’s White people’s obligation to undo the damage we have caused
People are biased. Every single one of us. These biases guide our perceptions, our views, our reactions and our general behaviour. We think in categories, because the world is too complex to look at everything from every angle. So, we store information, based on experience, what we’ve been told, what we have observed and what our environment exposes us to. We have stored this information for our everyday functioning and we use it to guide us through life.
We make unconscious judgments every day
How often have you made a judgment without a conscious thought process? How often have you come to conclusions without really knowing why? How often have you approached/ avoided a specific situation or a person without giving it a second thought? Spoiler alert — we do it every day. While this is human, and — simply put — the only way of making sense of this overstimulating world, it becomes problematic once it collectively influences the life experiences of other people.
Social biases do not only help us come to quick decisions in everyday life and enable us to act fast, they also influence how we think about and treat the people around us, however subtly. We tend to think of ourselves as someone who is not racist. I am not calling anyone slurs; I am not screaming at people on the streets, telling them to go back to their home countries; I am not being openly violent, so I am not racist, right? Another spoiler — you probably are & so am I.
I am now asking you to really think about it for a second, and try to be honest with yourself. Have you ever asked for a doctor and immediately expected a White man, before even encountering someone? Have you ever called your local bank institution and had a White person in front of your inner eye while talking to them? It’s subtle ways of thinking like this that seem unimportant but create a great deal of damage on the whole. Because once a whole population — that makes and breaks the system —holds the same biases about the same group of people, they of course are going to be heavily affected by it. And I’m not talking about affected in a way that your racist jokes might offend someone; I’m talking about affected in a way that fundamentally makes people’s lives harder in a way that we, as White privileged people, cannot even start to fathom. (see, even here I’m doing it. I am talking to a White reader. Only, this time I consciously chose to do so.)
Nowadays, this is especially reflected in the form of structural racism, which is defined as the normalisation and justification of various dynamics that put White people at an advantage, while simultaneously causing opposing outcomes for Black people. Unlike individual racism, which refers to single individuals holding personal beliefs, attitudes and biases that perpetuate racist ideas and actions, structural racism is a more inconspicuous form of racism, that is grounded in society as a whole. It is rooted in educational systems, housing, health care, and the list goes on. Research even suggests that structural racism is related to adverse physical health outcomes and higher mortality rates in Black people.
Health disparities arise when social, political, and economic structures systematically expose certain groups of people to greater risk or limit their access to timely evaluation and high-quality medical care. These so-called fundamental causes of disease, including structural racism, are social in origin and biological only in outcome. — Risk, Race, and Structural Racism
So, not only does structural racism hold immense power over the life chances of those who are affected by it, it apparently also kills them (and we haven’t even started to talk about police brutality against Black people).
The false narrative of racism being a construct of the past
I have just finished my psychology degree with a thesis about a structural racism intervention. When I first told people I want to write about this topic, the reactions were pretty unanimous ‘what even is structural racism?’ I have not encountered this so much in my own generation, but especially older generations seem to believe racism is a construct of the past. This is the first problem.
People still seem to be violently undereducated about their biases, the racist system we live in, as well as our racist history. This is fatal because:
- Being unaware of your own biases makes it impossible to challenge them.
- Being unaware of systematic racism and inequalities in your environment means direct contribution to it, however innocently.
- Having false or only selective information about the history of Black people in your own country denies you a context of the racist culture we live in today.
While of course, not all countries can be talked about interchangeably and even though every White country is White in its own way, we all have a history of racism in one way or the other. Over centuries, western countries have enslaved Black people, brutally forcing them to work in their colonies. Black people have been exploited, systematically dehumanised and intellectually belittled. It is naive of us to think that centuries of White supremacy and suppression have left no mark on the psyche of both White and Black people to this day. Our racist history has indoctrinated our minds and systems.
Where do we go from here?
When I first started informing myself about these topics (sadly, way too late), I often felt inadequate to talk about them. As a White person you often feel like you are not authorised to talk about racism. You think you cannot capture the scope of it. You are afraid to say something wrong — and let’s be honest, you will. However, I realised that White people are more willing to listen to me — or any other White person — ramble about injustice, than they are to listen to those who experience it every day.
So, speak. Because:
- Vocalising your own biases will make you permanently more aware of them.
- Speaking about your misconceptions will help form new, hopefully more adaptive, connections in your brain.
- Explaining the connection between our racist past and structural racism today will make at least someone want to inform themselves further and do the same.
If you are a student, explicitly ask your teachers for lessons about colonialism. If you work in the public eye, inform people about injustices in the system and demand actions to work against them. If you have children, teach them about hidden biases and how to think more critically. Ask yourself about specific ways of thinking that have guided you through life and confront your own cognitive defaults. Find a way to promote a more anti-racist future.
It’s not Black people’s job to convince White people that they deserve equal rights. We have belittled them for centuries and still do. It is our obligation to undo the damage we have caused.
They still can’t breathe and we have to finally let them.
Book recommendations:
- Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji & Anthony G. Greenwald
- Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
- White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race by Gloria Wekker — she also has a Ted Talk
References:
Lawrence, K., & Keleher, T. (2004). Structural racism. In Race and Public Policy Conference.
Wekker, G. (2016). White innocence: Paradoxes of colonialism and race. Duke University Press.
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