By Teka Lark (September 18, 2018)
Dismantling racism in your community/your org/your place of religious worship isn’t about you personally taking a journey and discovering everyone really is a human being, this isn’t about you, but yet –it is.
Dismantling racism is also not about the first Black capitalist, the first Black general, or the first Black supermodel.
Dismantling racism is also not about the opportunity for everyone to be an oppressor.
Dismantling racism involves changing laws, changing not who is in charge, but that there has to be a person in charge. Dismantling racism is about investing money in communities that have been divested in owing to race. Dismantling racism is about getting rid of the idea that there has to be poor people. Dismantling racism means relinquishing power you have obtained just by being white. Dismantling racism is understanding that there is no such thing as good power. Dismantling racism means understanding that this system isn’t broken, but working just the way it is supposed to. Dismantling racism means understanding that equity is reparations and reparations is not a check.
A check will never fix any of this.
Dismantling racism is about dismantling the United States.
If you don’t want to do that, fine, but I have no desire to have pretend conversations with you on the topics of capitalism and war, because all those things are glued together in the United States owing to racism.
If you’re not ready to dismantle racism, then you’re not ready to dismantle anything.
