Ball State's Antiracism and Intersectionality Community of Practice Commitments (2021-2022)
Recognize that, as Brittney Cooper notes, “What you build is infinitely more important than what you tear down.” Moreover, “when we lack joy, we have a diminished capacity for self-love and self-valuing and for empathy. If political struggle is exercise for the soul, joy is the endorphin rush such struggles bring.”
Recognize that equality (treating everyone the same way) and equity (providing everyone with the resources they need to reach equal outcomes) are not synonymous.
Recognize that, as Brittney Cooper notes, “Empowerment and power are not the same thing. . . . Empowerment looks like cultivating the wisdom to make the best choices we can out of what are customarily a piss-poor set of options. Power looks like the ability to create better options. The powerlessness and capriciousness of being repeatedly jammed up at the personal and political crossroads of one’s intersections while a watching world pretends not to see you there, needing help, is how it feels to be a Black woman on an ordinary day.”
Admit racial inequities and misogynoir (the intertwined anti-Black and misogynistic oppression that Black women face) are institutional, ideological, personal, and interpersonal realities.
Recognize that, as the Combahee River Collective argued in its “A Black Feminist Statement” (1977), “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”
Recognize that, as Kimberlé Crenshaw puts it, “We simply do not have the luxury of building social movements that are not intersectional, nor can we believe we are doing intersectional work just by saying words.”
Commit to uncovering the policies causing racial, intersectional, and misogynoir inequities.
Commit to devising or finding policies that can eliminate inequities, as well as identifying who or what group has the power to institute equitable change.
Disseminate and educate about the uncovered inequitable policies and behaviors and their remedies.
Work with sympathetic antiracist, intersectionally conscious policymakers to institute policies aimed at equity and justice.
Monitor closely to ensure new policies and protocols reduce and eliminate inequities.
Works Consulted and Cited
Antiracism and Intersectionality Faculty Learning Community (2020-2021) Resource Guide at Bracken Library: https://bsu.libguides.com/antiracism
Bailey, Moya. Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance. New York UP, 2021.
Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement.” 1977. https://www.reed.edu/cres/assets/Combahee-River-Collective,-Black-Feminist-Statement,-How-We-Get-Free---Taylor.pdf
Cooper, Brittney. Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. St. Martin’s Press, 2018.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Why Intersectionality Cannot Wait.” Washington Post, 24 Sept. 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-cant-wait/.
Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. One World, 2019.
Kendi’s personal steps toward becoming an antiracist:
· I stop using the “I’m not a racist” or “I can’t be racist” defense of denial.
· I admit the definition of racist (someone who is supporting racist policies or expressing racist ideas).
· I confess the racist policies I support and racist ideas I express.
· I accept their source (my upbringing inside a nation making us racist).
· I acknowledge the definition of antiracist (someone who is supporting antiracist policies or expressing antiracist ideas).
· I struggle for antiracist power and policy in my spaces. (Seizing a policymaking position. Joining an antiracist organization or protest. Publicly donating my time or privately donating my funds to antiracist policymakers, organizations, and protests fixated on changing power and policy.)
· I struggle to remain at the antiracist intersections where racism is mixed with other bigotries. (Eliminating racial distinctions in biology and behavior. Equalizing racial distinctions in ethnicities, bodies, cultures, colors, classes, spaces, genders, and sexualities.)
· I struggle to think with antiracist ideas. (Seeing racist policy in racial inequity. Leveling group differences. Not being fooled into generalizing individual negativity. Not being fooled by misleading statistics or theories that blame people for racial inequity.)
Kendi’s recommended steps to eliminate racial inequity in our communities and other spheres of influence:
· Admit racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, not bad people.
· Identify racial inequity in all its intersections and manifestations.
· Investigate and uncover the racist policies causing racial inequity.
· Invent or find antiracist policy that can eliminate racial inequity.
· Figure out who or what group has the power to institute antiracist policy.
· Disseminate and educate about the uncovered racist policy and antiracist policy correctives.
· Work with sympathetic antiracist policymakers to institute the antiracist policy.
· Deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers in order to institute the antiracist policy.
· Monitor closely to ensure the antiracist policy reduces and eliminates racial inequity.
· When policies fail, do not blame the people. Start over and seek out new and more effective antiracist treatments until they work.
· Monitor closely to prevent new racist policies from being instituted.