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STEP ONE: COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABILITY
Creating A New Accountability Map
Desegregate who you feel beholden to.
Segregation in the United States is insidious. Most white people only feel accountable to other white people---white neighbors, white colleagues, white friends. One of the reasons that white supremacy has been so easily denied by white people is that there are very few instances where their communities are truly inter-class or inter-racial. The very first step of the Better Elders process is disrupting white peoples' self-segregation of accountability. White people: having mostly white neighborhoods, workplaces and social spaces are no accident. These mono-racial spaces are meant to trick us into believing that our lack of urgency, rage and action around climate catastrophe, homelessness and violent incarceration are natural. They are not. Our blasé behavior is unnatural. The very first step of getting into alignment with reality is to desegregate your accountability map. How?
1. Introduce yourself to your neighbors. Start by acknowledging the Black, brown and Indigenous neighbors in your world and prepare to build relationships with them. You will be defining "neighbor" to yourself as a part of the Better Elders process. This could mean people living in your building, people living on your block, people sharing life in the same municipality, or people sharing the same regional cultural experience.
2. Follow, read and compensate Black, brown and Indigenous anti-racism organizers and educators. Commit to being accountable to Black, brown and Indigenous folk who are already dedicating their life to building a world in which we are all free. These are your Elders on your journey to committing to abolition and liberation. Some examples of these Elders are listed below.
3. Write it down. Being accountable starts with making a commitment. Better Elders will provide you tools to keep track of your new accountability map. We use pod-mapping tools developed by our elders, the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective. We will participate in an Accountability Mapping course around building accountability and recognizing harm, created by Transformative Justice coach and elder Daria Garina.
Indoctrination in 'whiteness' makes it very difficult to absorb lessons around anti-racism.
Before a white person can engage in the teachings of Black brown and Indigenous anti-racism educators and organizers, they need to develop two skills:
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Strategic Questioning: "Questioning is a basic tool for rebellion. It breaks open the stagnant hardened shells of the present, revealing ambiguity and opening up fresh options to be explored." (Commons Library)
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Root Cause Analysis: "Making visible the often invisible sources of big problems." (Building Movement Project)
Time to start expanding your accountability map!
Let's start online.
Collapse the way your social media feed and news algorithms reinforce white supremacy.
Avoid "Whitewashing". Get comfortable with the idea that ‘whiteness’ has never discovered anything---whiteness itself was only created in the last few generations. If you find a liberatory idea talked about by a white person, beware the likelihood that it is a whitewashed version of something a Black, brown or Indigenous leader said first. For example, stop following "feel good" influencers who have demonstrated alt-right pipeline, new age vibes (meaning they take liberatory ideas and co-opt them in a way that reinforce white supremacy). Start following these Black and brown revolutionary elder accounts:
TikTok
Now, let's do our homework.
Make a longer term commitment to anti-racist curricula and books.
Curricula and research developed by Black, brown and Indigenous anti-racist educators engage participants on topics around anti-Blackness, suffering, pleasure, queerness, abolition, policing, disability, capitalism and liberation. Many of these books and curricula connect the racial formation of ‘whiteness’—and its relationship to upholding capitalism, carceral systems, ableism and queerphobia—to the systemic and personal epidemic of unhappiness, loneliness and suffering we see normalized throughout the United States, not only amongst non-white communities who navigate the violence of racism but critically amongst white people who are the foot soldiers of white supremacy culture.
Participate in Coursework
Put your money and your heart where your mouth is. Pay for and participate in these Black, brown and Indigenous-led anti-racism courses.
Recommended Books
Are you white, and have already started learning about liberation, anti-racism and abolition on your own?
We are looking for white people like you to join our Better Elders fellowship, starting January 2024, to help experiment with our "deprogramming whiteness" process and finalize a pilot curriculum for our first cohort. Interested?
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