One of the most important aspects of addressing Racism is understanding Racism & being able to communicate what racism is, which isn't easy when it has become so conflated with other oppressive power structures and because it intersects with other oppressive power structures.

This is one of the best descriptions that I've seen because it discusses the various ways that racism is manifested and how ALL of us have been programmed with racial biases, prejudices and uphold racism and how we have a responsibility to keep scooping it out of our lives.

Racism has been so normalized within society that most people are unable to recognize it while engaging in racist behaviors & even after they've been called out because they have never been taught different, it's the behavior they see being modeled in the society around them

For them, it's the way it's always been. It's harmless, or a joke because they've never seen the impact because they don't have enough interaction with our communities and they've never had to live with the impact of the harm they cause. It's hard for them to grasp the wrong.

This is why we have so many people engaging in racist behavior, who aren't necessarily racist and why there are so many racists engaging in racist behavior who feign ignorance and hide behind the weaponization of intent over impact.

It's an insidious cycle because racism has becoming more and more covert and conflated with other oppressive power structures because it INTERSECTS with other oppressive power structures that are all designed to do the same thing...uphold Patriarchal & Theocratic White Supremacy.

It's important to call out racism. It's important to constantly be educating ourselves & examining our own behaviors, to constantly be working to untangle ourselves from the ingrained prejudices that we have been exposed to, that have been purposely designed to keep us divided.

It is not easy. It is a lifetime commitment that is often times painful, devastating and humbling. It wrecks your worldviews, it challenges everything you thought you knew and it is exhausting because it never ends, you never get a break.

But it is necessary. It is necessary because as Angela Davis said, “In a racist society, it’s not enough to be non-racist— you have to be anti-racist.”

That means it's not enough to just call out racism, it's not enough to be an advocate or an ally, it's not enough to be non-racist....you have to be actively working toward dismantling these systems of oppression, you have to be actively working toward liberation for all.

And that's not something that we can do separately as individuals or as communities. It is not something that we can envision alone, we have to work together and on this land, in this country...it begins with Indigenous and Black communities.