Since the Black Lives Matter movement erupted I’ve been flooded by white friends asking me what I think about whiteness and my lived experience of structural racism. It’s been exhausting. For years, I’ve been screaming into the void about the impact of racism on the lives of Black and non-Black people of colour, only to be met with incredulity that I’m ‘still banging on about race,’ or the outright refusal to acknowledge that there’s any such thing as white privilege.
Now, at last, it feels as though the ‘performance’ of anti-racism might just morph into something transformative. The problem is that for many people I’ve spoken to, the magnitude of racism is overwhelming, and paralysing. How can we, as individuals and organisations, really make a difference?
Based on my experience, I think there are three lenses which can illuminate and structure a real and coherent anti-racism: structures, cultures and ourselves. I call this the ‘triple lens of racial equity,’ choosing ‘equity’ over ‘equality’ because we can’t treat everyone in the conversation the same when they start from different positions in society. We have to work harder to reach those who are disproportionately excluded.
