You May Not Just Be a Gatekeeper, You May Also Be Complicit in White Supremacy.
Has a fellow sister ever asked you for knowledge on an area she is looking to improve? I’m not talking about a person who wants a weekly “pick your brain” with no form of compensation. I’m talking about someone who knows you are further along on the path and asks for directions on how to get where you are. In response to the inquiry, you feign ignorance or don’t respond at all. I get it, it may have taken a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears to get to the slice of the pie you have secured. But that’s just it. There is no “pie”. We have been conditioned to believe there is a certain amount of success, money, partners, and Furbabies available and it is imperative that not everyone gets a share. Because if everyone gets a slice, your slice will be smaller. Your pockets not as deep. Dinero not as long.
What does this have to do with white supremacy? Looong ago when people discovered they could hoard things, systems were put in place by individuals and governments to keep BIPOC individuals from ever securing a slice of pie. The pie was meant for white people and there already wasn’t enough of it for them, now we are going to add Black and Brown people to the table? No way! So it became nearly impossible for Black people to own land, buy a house, or even secure a living wage. If a Black person did manage to secure either of these things, the hoods would come out and destroy and/or kill. Now, this is a very short version and there are plenty of books available by Black and Brown authors if you are in need of more information. But the gist of all this is…white people did not want to share their pie and would stop at nothing to ensure that they did not have to.
Present-day: Blatant and extreme racism may not be popular in the present day, but we have systems in place to ensure no one has to get out their hood. Researchers have examined the correlation between race and economic scarcity and they found an increase in discriminatory practices during times of economic scarcity (Krosch, Tyler & Amondio, 2017). There are levels to systemic practices, from local governments actively participating in redistricting to individuals participating in what is known as gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is actively controlling and limiting access to something. Anyone can engage in the act of gatekeeping. If you have ever turned away from an intersectional peer when asked for help, you have possibly participated in systemic practices.
What to do next: Turn inward and try to sit with the discomfort of knowing you have been participating in a system that oppresses people of color. The ability to sit with this discomfort is the first step of anti-racism practices.
“Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.” —Audre Lorde
Once you are able to recognize your role in scarcity and white supremacy. It is time to do the work. You move from a passive role to an active role. You can start by dismissing the notion that there is a single pie we all must fight over. This will help as you will often need to be reminded of how we arrived at the imbalance of respect, dignity, and power in the first place.
#leadership #whitesupremacy #antiracism
Source:
Krosch AR, Tyler TR, Amodio DM. Race and recession: Effects of economic scarcity on racial discrimination. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2017 Dec;113(6):892-909. doi: 10.1037/pspi0000112. Epub 2017 Sep 14. PMID: 28910122.