What an exhausting week! This year has really overreached its ability to make us feel as if we are living through ‘The Hunger Games’. Confined to our homes, due to COVID-19, we have been captive audiences of the videos and visuals from the protests across the globe against systemic racism and the modern-day lynching of an unarmed black man by a police officer in America.
I found myself thinking of my mixed-race Guyanese heritage a lot this week. I also thought of what it means have privilege in our society, how systems designed and influenced by our colonial history and the structures they are supported by can marginalize peoples and most of all how important it is to share our experiences to ensure we be better understand each other. I found scores of people across my social media feeds using that platform to speak of how they felt systems oppressed right at home and also a select few asking them to focus on problems in their own country, which by extension is a form of gaslighting as it tries to invalidate the person’s experience. There is no wrong time to speak on race, just as there is no wrong time to speak about domestic violence or mental health.
If you have found yourself with friends and family discussing race and privilege and you have found it difficult to wrap your head around it, here are a few guidelines that I personally find helpful:
Different levels
People will experience different aspects of racism. Some might find it rampant in their dealings with the justice system and some might have to stomach veiled and stereotypical remarks like ‘all people from one race are lazy’. It also doesn’t matter if you have a partner or friend of the said race you are demeaning. A racist system or action is just that.
Stop questioning
Just because someone’s experience isn’t identical to your own from the person inflicting the racist behaviour doesn’t invalidate their story. People have different experiences because of their privileges like their socioeconomic standing, or proximity to whiteness. We can have different experiences from the same person we hold in high esteem.
3. Self-alteration
Stop suggesting to people if they want to stop experiencing racism, they should change aspects of themselves or lives for example their hair, their clothing, or the way they speak. By extension, you are telling them they are inadequate and to be adequate they must subtract parts of themselves to have an easier life.
We often like to ignore the fact that we indeed don’t have a united Guyana in many ways. I am so far away and my experiences at home still haunt me, still make me question my worth and validity. But acknowledging this, however uncomfortable it is, is actually the first thing to do as we move forward.
