Introduction to Systemic Racism and White Supremacy and Some of What It Means For Yoga

Trigger Warning: White supremacist ideas and policies.

Resources

Me and white supremacy workbook (specifically written for people who do spiritual work like yoga & meditation) Layla Saed

White Fragility Robin Diangelo

So You Want To Talk About Race Ijeoma Oluo

Stamped From The Beginning Ibram Kendi

How To Be An Anti-Racist Ibram Kendi

Honor Don’t Appropriate Yoga Summit 

Yoga is Dead Podcast – listen to all the episodes, especially White Women Killed Yoga (wherever you listen to podcasts)

Vocabulary 

I am using the term BIPOC here which stands for Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Here's a great explanation of that term, and why I tend to use it the most, though sometimes I just say Black or people of color. 

Caveat

I am one person, I am not THE expert and I am not even AN expert. I am writing these blogs as an introduction to provide a way into your own learning. I can't cover all the relevant topics - this is just meant as an orientation that can help you decide how you will further your own understanding. Send me questions or comments and I'll do my best to respond. 

Introduction to Systemic Racism and White Supremacy

There are many kinds of manifestations of racism. There’s the kind of racism where someone joins the KKK. There’s the kind of racism where people have racist thoughts that they might not even be aware are racist, but they are unexamined and need to be brought to light and eradicated. And then there’s racism that happens because we fail to understand the racist systems we live within, and therefore even when we have good intentions and value equality we wittingly or unwittingly reinforce the racist system that we think we are against.

We need to fight against racism at all of these levels. In order to do that, we have to start with the recognition that some kinds of racism – virulent avowed racists like KKK members and neo-nazis – are about clearly articulated racist values.

But many manifestations of racism are not about individual-level moral choices. You can be reinforcing racist systems and still have good intentions. In fact, we all risk reinforcing racist systems if we don’t take the time to understand them and learn how to dismantle them. This is the racist sin almost all of us are guilty of, even if you would never ride with the KKK or march with a tiki torch. And good intentions aren't enough - at some point we have to be willing to go deeper and learn how to understand how we are situated within racist systems and how to dismantle them. 

White supremacy characterizes all of our systems in this country. Our country was founded on genocide and one of the most brutal forms of slavery in the world, and our systems and institutions are built on that foundation. The ideas that were created to justify slavery were incorporated into every part of our reality – our economic system, our health care system, our education system, etc.

As white people, we have a hard time seeing this reality. In fact, for white people, white supremacy feels good. Not necessarily because we believe overtly racist ideas, but because the system of white supremacy tells us at every turn that we are good, right and normal, while BIPOC people are told they are not good, right or normal in the dominant culture. Think about your earliest education – were white people the hero of every story? Were pilgrims presented as noble and good? Were cowboys always better than Indians? Has America’s participation in foreign affairs always been shown to you to be moral, righteous and just? These are white supremacist ideas. And even if you have adopted beliefs as an adult that counter them – anti-war stances or other kind of activist positions – the fundamentals of our white supremacist beliefs are so powerful that we have to be constantly working to examine and discard them. We are never finished.

Racism and white supremacy are systemic. They are baked into our systems. You know this is true because of disparate outcomes for white people and people of color in almost every aspect of life. According to the NAACP,  African-Americans are incarcerated at a rate more than five times the rate of white people. That is because of racism in our criminal justice system.  The wage gap between white and black workers is profound and growing. In 2018, median wages for white men were $60,388, while for black men only $42,076. Pick any area of life that matters to you and google racial disparities. The data is consistent across the country and across all parts of our lives. Ibram Kendi argues that when you see these racial disparities, there are only two possible explanations. Either something about that group of people is wrong, or something about the system is wrong. If you think it’s about that group of people – that’s a racist idea. And if you don’t believe there’s anything intrinsically different in the people, then our only explanation is that the systems cause disparate outcomes.

In many cases, the original policies that shaped our systems were explicitly racist. In housing policy for example, there were many dimensions of explicit and overt racism. Zoning codes were written in many communities to keep people of color out. Banks wouldn’t loan money for BIPOC families to buy houses in white neighborhoods. Real estate agents wouldn’t show homes for sale to BIPOC buyers. All of these practices and policies made it virtually impossible for BIPOC to have access to neighborhoods where white people live. Many of them continue, even despite changes in federal and local laws and  supreme court decisions meant to dismantle them. Ask yourself how diverse is your neighborhood – whatever answer you come to, know that this is not an accident. It is part of deliberate action and explicit policies to make it that way.

Whatever progress has been made in changing these systems, the only real solution is to completely take the systems apart and start over. But as long as white people don’t understand and don’t own the ways these systems are infused with white supremacy, there’s no political will to redo them. So movements for change often make incremental progress that might adapt some aspects of our systems but without transforming their foundation. That’s one of the reasons we continue to have massive neighborhood segregation in most cities, and continue to have wage gaps, and continue to have other racial disparities even though we are all very sure we aren’t racist. Maybe we don’t believe in the fundamentally racist ideas, but we also aren’t clear enough about the need for change to get involved in the fight to make it happen.  

We inherited these systems. We didn’t choose them. I didn’t choose to be born into white supremacy any more than I chose to be born a woman, or with blue eyes, or with short arms.  But we can choose whether we reinforce or dismantle these systems with our actions. For white people, white supremacy is hard to see and hard to dismantle because it is like the air we breathe. If you’ve ever seen the picture of an old lady and a young woman and struggled to see both – that is the problem white people have with understanding racist systems. It looks good to us, so we can’t see the other side. But for people of color, the systems impede access to resources, opportunity, decision-making power, and life itself. It is an enormous project to try to change all of that. 

So why does this matter for yoga?

Yoga in America is a system that is also infused with white supremacy. Our studios are in white neighborhoods. People can only come to class if they feel safe in those neighborhoods. Our classes cost money but BIPOC have much less disposable income to pay for things like yoga. Coming to yoga class assumes you have time and childcare, but BIPOC households have to work more and harder to make ends meet. The culture of yoga studios, in my experience, is generally oblivious to these racial disparities. That means as teachers we aren’t very good at making our classes relevant to what BIPOC communities are facing. Our cultural references, the jokes we make from the front of the room can be alienating and othering. And BIPOC students are often “the only.” The only Black person in the room. The only Latinx immigrant. This can create tremendous discomfort. BIPOC people have told me – if I’m “the only” then I know I have to be on my best behavior because I will be seen as representative of my whole race or my whole community. When BIPOC students come to studios, they face microaggressions and subtle ways they are made to feel that they don’t belong. People ask them if they belong there, making it clear they don’t.

I’m just naming a few of the ways our systems are infused with white supremacy. I’m a white person, so I can only see part of how this works. There are many more, and I invite BIPOC teachers and students to share their experiences.

What do we do? Start by committing yourself to understand this better. Get these books and read them. Be curious about your own ideas and perspectives and start taking them apart. Be in the struggle for racial justice outside of your studio before you think about doing outreach or inviting people in.

There's so much more about how white supremacy matters for yoga, including the fundamental fact that we are practicing an indigenous practice that colonial governments tried to eradicate from the very people who first owned it. It's a marker of our power that we can practice yoga. I'm going to write more about that and cultural appropriation in general tomorrow. For now, I hope you read all the way to the end.

I'm walking this walk with you, with love, gratitude and solidarity forever.