Liberation from Racism and Classism
From talks by Ellie Brown, International Liberation Reference Person for College and University Faculty, at the RC Colleagues’ Workshop in June 2020 led by Ellie and Barbara Love, International Liberation Reference Person for African Heritage People
We have big opportunities in front of us. We have the opportunity to end anti-Blackness and all racism. We have the opportunity to end classism. Classism as we know it will necessarily crumble if we end the anti-Blackness and other racism that, as Barbara [Love] said, have been used to further the accumulation of wealth by a very few at the expense of the masses.
It makes sense for all of us to put attention on ending racism as the key goal right now. Ending racism has been the key goal of the RC Communities for about twenty years, because of the role anti-Blackness and all racism play in holding back liberation on all fronts.
Our work to end racism must also include ending sexism, men’s oppression, and the oppression of people who identify as LGBTQ. We will also need to end anti-Jewish oppression, Muslim oppression, young people’s oppression, young adults’ oppression, elders’ oppression, disability oppression, language oppression, and all the other oppressions. We will need to end anti-Blackness and other racism while understanding the importance of tackling all the oppressions.
As the system of racism crumbles, so, too, will other systems of oppression. As Barbara reminded us, the climate emergency is not unrelated to racism. Nor is the COVID-19 pandemic. Our efforts to end the climate emergency will necessarily go hand in hand [together] with dismantling racism, genocide, and the oppression of Indigenous people. There may be stopgap [temporary] measures worth putting in place—reforms that will buy us [give us] enough time to finish dismantling these oppressions—but the long-term sustainability of the planet depends on ending anti-Blackness, other racism, genocide, and the oppression of Indigenous people. We have the opportunity to achieve all of this.
THE RIGHT KIND OF COLLEAGUES
Many of you questioned if you should come to this workshop. You weren’t sure if you were the right kind of colleague—in some cases because you are not in a tenure-track faculty position or because you are retired or emeritus. And then there is racism, classism, U.S. centrism, and many other things that could make us feel like we’re not the right kind of colleague for the workshop. But we all belong here. We are all “the right kind of colleague.” Thank you for coming. Thank you for being with me in this.
We have many things in common:
- We all made it through a lot of years of school—in most cases more than twenty years. Part of what has kept us going is that we like learning. In the face of young people’s oppression, classism, racism, the oppression of the education system, and many other oppressions, we have held on to odd and interesting pieces of our flexible intelligence.
- Our minds are not better than anyone else’s. But wow! Our minds are a marvel!
- We tend to be passionate about helping others learn and think well about the world.
- Many of us followed a big promise—that if we “played the game” and succeeded through all those years of education, we would gain a certain freedom and that, in particular, we would have the chance to use our minds fully and freely and help others do the same.
- We have wonderful opportunities to use our minds and promote learning and liberation. We have played important roles in revolutions throughout history. We have played important roles in building the RC Communities. We have been set up to produce ideas and workers that serve the class hierarchy, but we have an important window for liberation and can use it to advance a just and sustainable society.
NOT SETTLING FOR PARTIAL GAINS
In the future, higher education will support all groups of human beings, and all groups will contribute to it. To facilitate the transformation, we must ensure that all groups have access to higher education and that the access is tied to liberation.
This brings me to my second point: We cannot settle for reform. We cannot settle for partial gains. Partial gains and reform are used to pacify us and to support the myths that some oppressions have been eliminated.
I will use the example of sexism in talking about partial gains, but keep in mind that not stopping with reform applies to racism and all other oppressions, too.
Women have made partial gains. We have gained access to higher education but without fully eliminating male domination in the institution and without individuals in the institution being liberated from patterns of sexism and male domination. For example, there is an epidemic of rape and other sexual assaults on college campuses.
One problem for female faculty is that many expectations for faculty were built on what was sustainable for white, middle- and owning-class men, who often had wives and sometimes other women—enslaved, indentured, or underpaid—doing the bulk of the labor of caring for the household and raising the children. The expectations for faculty have not changed to account for the fact that we women rarely have partners or other people caring for us, our households, and our children in those ways.
In the past few months, those of us who are mothers have been expected to work remotely while also working full-time to cover our children’s care and schooling. We have had the option of working, and working remotely, because of our middle-class privilege, but the situation also shows how we are oppressed.
We need institutional change. But we also need individual change. As RC colleagues, we know how to listen and to release the painful emotion that holds in place individual patterns of oppression and internalized oppression. Until people’s minds are clear of the painful emotion, they will be vulnerable to reproducing oppression in new forms. This is true for all types of oppression. What we know is critical for making permanent change.
COLLEAGUES' OPPRESSION AND CLASSISM
As college and university faculty, we are a subset of the middle class. Our role as middle-class workers, and middle agents, became vividly clear this spring. We were asked to transition, in some cases overnight, to teaching remotely. We had to push our students through coursework often in inhumane ways. Then we had to be back on campus in person, even though our protection from COVID-19 could not realistically be assured.
Tackling our oppression includes tackling the classism within academia, for example, the oppression of faculty in non-tenure-track, adjunct, and temporary positions. The percentage of U.S. faculty in non-tenure-track positions has increased threefold in the last several decades, and about seventy-five percent of U.S. faculty are now in temporary positions. These faculty are often paid on a per-class basis and have no benefits. In many cases, they end up working more than full-time and living at or below the federal poverty threshold. Their position has been particularly precarious during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, they are often being used to shield faculty in tenure-track positions from the worst effects of the pandemic. We need to take on [work to end] this oppression.
The classism that our current model of higher education is set up to support is built not only on racism but also on European and U.S. centrism. The system supports a myth that the knowledge generated by people of European heritage and the systems they’ve created for producing and sharing knowledge are superior to other kinds of knowing and learning and sharing. To tackle this, we need to understand what colleagues’ oppression, and classism and racism, looks like in countries outside the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. I challenge those of us who are from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia to do that work.
NOT EASY BUT WORTH IT
We as colleagues are the middle-class workers whose job it is to train the entire middle class, along with the owning class. Just think about that. We have an amazing opportunity to change the class system. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
Promoting the liberation from classism will mean the end of our jobs as we know them. Is that going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
Harvey Jackins, who started RC, challenged us to come home to the working class and claim our role as people’s intellectuals, working for the people. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
Tackling classism and the racism built into our current class system has to mean more than reform. It has to mean promoting liberation from classism. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
It has to involve challenging how we define intelligence, how we acquire and support others to acquire knowledge, and how we decide what and whose knowledge matters. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
Working to end classism and racism in our institutions requires dismantling those institutions as we know them. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
It will go best if we teach large numbers of people to listen to one another and release the painful emotion that holds patterns of oppression in place. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
Where were you hurt by the harsh class system? Where did you give in and buy into it [agree to it]? It would be nearly impossible to be in the positions we’re in without having compromised our integrity. We get to look at that and clean it up. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
Where did you receive the message that some people were more valuable than others? That some people’s minds were better than others? That your worth depended on what facts you knew or how you were able to perform on tests designed to support the existing hierarchies? When did you start believing that your mind was better than someone else’s and that you were worth more because of it? We get to clean that up. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
Effectively challenging classism will necessarily include challenging the young people’s oppression built into higher education. Challenging young people’s oppression is also essential to creating a sustainable planet. The patterns that lead to prioritizing apparent short-term gains over the long-term interests of the planet are similar to those that place a greater value on adults than on young human beings (adults can produce short-term economic gains). Tackling these patterns is critical, and we get to tackle them. As part of that we get to go back and look at how the hurts came in on us as young people. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
We get to do this work together. We get to remember that we are connected, that we are not alone. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
There is much to be done—to end racism, classism, sexism and male domination, young people’s oppression, and all the other oppressions and to recover a sustainable planet. Sharing RC tools and understandings on and beyond our campuses is critical for lasting change.
What role will you play? What are the key issues you need to be able to think about and lead on, and follow others’ lead on, in this moment? What do you need to discharge to be able to do that? How will you share RC understandings and tools?
We get to challenge anything that gets in our way of using RC fully to create this change. Is it going to be easy? NO Is it going to be worth it? YES
(Present Time 203, April 2021)