By Dr Sanjiv Lingayah, the co-creator of and racial justice lead of Home Truths 2. Sanjiv is also the founder and director of Reframing Race, which exists to change the public conversation on racism in order to build anti-racist futures.
Finding close connection to racism
As we close the content-production phase of Home Truths 2, we’ve been reflecting as a team on what it takes to move mainstream civil society towards serious action on anti-racism and race equity.
I’m proud of our team for producing important and novel civil-society-focussed content. And thousands of people from mainstream civil society have stepped forward to engage with our work.
Taking an overview, there have been times in the programme when we’ve managed to deeply connect with civil society people; and others when it feels like we’ve not really hit the mark.
One thing that I’ve taken from the programme is that we’ve found power and impact when bringing civil society people into intimate connection with racism. In these powerful moments we’ve created close and feeling connections to racism, its harms and the possibilities of meaningful responses.
In our online Race Equity Series events, participants were most engaged when panellists were talking about racism and anti-racism in human terms – making systemic ideas concrete and every day. And our most well-received output was probably our Companion Journal – which provides a way to reflect on and record feelings along a journey in anti-racism.
In the cohort work led by Martha Awojobi and Pari Dhillon we see the intimacy benefits from a year of small group work undertaken by civil society leaders. We witness the value of engaging with big feelings around racism, such as guilt and anguish, as a means to acceptance and action.
At other times – with content such as institutional culture and intersectionality – we appear to engage an audience intellectually without securing heartfelt commitment to change.
Towards intimacy
One takeaway is strategic content for informed anti-racist action is important but not enough.
It is still relatively easy for leaders and organisations in mainstream civil society to keep racism and anti-racism at distance. Without intimacy there can be little embedding of anti-racism into mindsets, culture and practice and civil society’s racism problem will continue.
Intimacy can be supported, but it is hard to do at scale and it relies on willing participants. But what about the unwilling?
Doing anti-racist work can be exhausting. Trying to motivate others is uncertain and thankless work. Rather than urging and persuading mainstream civil society on anti-racism, it is time to share the labour.
One approach is for civil society leaders and organisations to consider honestly where they stand on racism, xenophobia and anti-racism. They can answer questions such as, “what are you longing for?” Or, more pointedly, “what about anti-racism calls to your heart?”
These questions speak to deep purpose – something that the hard realities of civil society life can erase, despite away days, theories of change and well-constructed strategic documents.
Not being able to answer these questions is okay. It says something about the need for more depth work – which some will do while others walk away.
Another angle to this is something I try to do in my wider work. That is to broaden our collective understanding of anti-racism. Rather than see it as a narrow intervention, adjacent or additional to broader justice work it can be seen as foundational to change. Put another way, rather than organisations having a strategy to which they add anti-racism, it is possible to start with anti-racist principles and to build out from there.
Big anti-racist solutions are not about one group winning while others lose. They are about lifting everyone, including white people. A case in point is the Five X More campaign started because Black maternal deaths were five times that of white counterparts. The answer has never been for more white women to suffer. The solution is high quality, respectful maternal care where every woman is listened to. As the campaign says: ‘Fix it for Black women, fix it for all.’
Life-affirming futures
The (paradoxical) point of this piece is that I am not trying to persuade anyone about intimacy and anti-racism. People in mainstream civil society will need to figure this out for themselves.
Home Truths 2 shows that there are people and organisations prepared to get close to racism and anti-racist action; not just as and when it suits, but even when it doesn’t.
And, crucially, many in racial justice and other circles are anyway building life-affirming futures.
Combined, these efforts will bring us towards justice, peace and wholeness. This will be powered by a refusal to accept the world as it is, and a burning inner desire to remake it so that we can all live well, together.