Brief Report Back Wednesday Zoom "What Will White Womyn Do To End Racism?"

 ThanksTaking time of gratitude!

We checked in this morning with our challenges and successes confronting racism on our journey to becoming more effective anti-racists. With ThanksTaking on the table/screen we attempted to take a hard, truthful look at the things we are "grateful" for that do not come to us through our white privilege. These are few and far in between.

Which lead to our recognition of where safety and security come from - our white privilege on top of the haves and have nots. Even when we have not, we still have white skin.

We talked about the difficulties in talking about racism with both poor white womyn and womyn who deny they're white because of ethnic identities and experiences of discrimination: Italian, Greek, and Jewish womyn specifically. Pointing out to poor white womyn that their poverty is not due to the fact that they are white. To understand discrimination and suffering while acknowledging that discrimination and suffering was not heaped on them because of skin color. 

To also acknowledge that Black people are not asked whether they're poor before targeted by police or judge and juries, or teachers, landlords, doctors, etc.etc.etc. but are targeted because of skin color.

Even when Black people do manage to buy homes, build community, racism is very skilled at finding a multitude of ways to destroy those communities and homes: Seneca Village in NYC the first community built and owned by free Black folks since 1827, razed in 1855 to make Central Park for white folks.

Continuing briefly our u.s.ofa. flag discussion of last week, we talked about hanging the flag upside down - the universal plea for help - and hanging a UN flag out instead.

We strayed into a discussion of capitalism, as being too big and too theoretical to challenge effectively, that actions that chip away at capitalism are more effective than thwarting the entire system. That our goals need to focus on small steps for some, others do not mind taking on the entire system: providing housing for unhoused folks while challenging the practice of profiting off where people have to life; or fighting for a minimum wage now while also fighting for a maximum wage.

The option of separating from the larger society and forming cooperatives as the womyn's land movement is attempting/ed to do. But as white womyn bring the racism of the larger society with us into all we do, including womyn's lands, these lands ended up being primarily for white womyn. The economic advantages plus the lack of both will and understanding how to make the land community "safe" for womyn of color failed Black and brown womyn. Between the rural settings that were full of prejudiced, racist, let alone homophobic and sexist white men and their allies that surrounded these lands, as well as the lack of commitment and effort to make the inside of the land safe through anti-racism, insured the lands would remain predominantly white if not all white.

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