Implementing Goal One:
The Elimination of Racism
By Barbara Love, International Liberation Reference Person for African Heritage People
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Goal One
- Why We Need Goal One
- What We Plan To Do
- Area and Regional Action
- Supporting IGM People's Leadership
- Outside of RC
Goal 1, the Elimination of Racism, was first adopted at the Re-evaluation Counseling World Conference of 2001. It has been reaffirmed by each World Conference since that time.
Before the 2022 World Conference, the RC International Liberation Reference Persons (ILRPs) for race-based constituencies met as a working group to review Goal 1 and make a recommendation to the World Conference. Our job was to determine whether the goal should be retained as is, replaced, or deleted.
The original goal reads as follows:
That the elimination of racism, in particular the racism aimed at people of African heritage, be actively made an ongoing, central piece of the work of the Re-evaluation Counseling Community.
We examined the input on Goal 1 from ten Pre-World Conferences, all of which favored retaining the goal. The overwhelming feedback focused on adding implementation strategies for this goal.
Our group recommended that the goal be retained with one change. We recommended adding the word “Black,” so that the goal would read as follows:
That the elimination of racism, in particular the racism aimed at people of Black African heritage, be actively made an ongoing, central piece of the work of the Re-evaluation Counseling Community.
We made this recommendation to retain the goal, with that one change, because we think that Goal 1 is clearly stated and provides good focus for our work on eliminating racism. The conditions we face in the current period make this goal especially relevant at this time. The RC Communities have made progress, and there is still much more to do. And based on feedback from the Pre-World Conferences, we need ideas for implementing the goal.
WHY WE NEED GOAL 1
Human distresses have created and implemented an ideology of white supremacy, which has been used to justify slavery, colonialism, imperialism, genocide, and capitalism. By-products of this oppression include war, the climate emergency, and enormously unjust societies characterized by relationships of domination and subordination.
Resurgent anti-Black racism is making it difficult for people to work together on many social justice agendas. It divides people and disrupts coalition building and movements. It is used in the war on women, young people, and poor people. It is used to defeat the resolution of the climate emergency.
Anti-Black racism creates hostility and division among groups of Indigenous and Native and Global Majority (GM) people, making it difficult for them to work together on their common goals.
It confuses white people about their own best interests. It makes them fear for their safety, security, and future. It makes them support anti-Black legislation, policies, and programs and encourages them to abandon the rule of law.
It blocks agreement on common-sense solutions to the climate crisis and the development of policies and programs to ensure that life on Planet Earth continues.
To stop the above, we need to end racism in all its forms, especially the racism aimed at Black African Heritage People.
We need to demonstrate that humans can heal from the effects of white supremacy, racism, and colonialism; internalized white supremacy; internalized racism; internalized colonialism; genocide and internalized genocide; internalized slavery; horizontal racism; and racial trauma.
The fabric of oppression is all of one piece. To end any form of oppression, we must end all forms. When we focus on the racism aimed at Black African Heritage People, we are not excluding attention to other groups of Indigenous and Native and GM people. We are acknowledging the role that anti-Black racism plays in dividing all groups and distracting them from unifying. Focusing on anti-Black racism follows the liberation and re-emergence principle of identifying a central issue that holds other issues attached to it in place. When the central issue is addressed, the other issues can move toward resolution.
WHAT WE PLAN TO DO
As ILRPs for race-based constituencies, we plan to meet on a regular basis to discharge with each other, support each other, and deepen our relationships. We will share what we’re doing at our workshops, gather-ins, webinars, and so on. We will work with and support all RC leaders to create the conditions that make it possible for Indigenous and Native and GM people to join, stay in, and take leadership in their Communities. We will share our ideas for implementing Goal 1—on RC e-mail discussion lists, in Present Time, and in a pamphlet on implementing Goal 1.
We also plan to do the following:
- Provide more opportunities for Community members to discharge on distresses that interfere with connection, closeness, peerness, and comradeship, particularly across racial lines
- Challenge and contradict white patterns of treating Indigenous and Native and GM people, particularly Black African Heritage People, as subordinates, servers, guests, invisible, and so on
- Support people to discharge internalized racism; horizontal hostility; white supremacy; and superiority, domination, entitlement, greed, colonization, genocide, self-hatred, and so on
- Support RC leaders to participate in workshops, classes, and support groups on discharging racism—to move forward both their personal re-emergence and the re-emergence of their constituencies
- Learn about the history of white supremacy as well as its current impact
- Increase our capacity as an organization to recognize, acknowledge, interrupt, and contradict white supremacy and racism in the RC Community
- Increase our ability as individuals and as an organization to listen, learn, and correct the mistakes and confusions of white supremacy and racism
- . Encourage, support, and assist Indigenous and Native, Black African Heritage, and other Global Majority people to raise and address issues of racism
- Increase our capacity as an organization, and as individuals, to interrupt defensive responses—such as denial or treating the interruption of white supremacy and racism as criticism or an attack on leadership
- Develop guidelines, practices, and procedures for interrupting white supremacy and racism while helping to free our minds from the confusion and hurts that keep us separate
AREA AND REGIONAL ACTION
We call for the following Area and Regional work:
- Developing Area and Regional objectives and action steps for implementing Goal 1
- Tracking progress on this goal by means of workshops, classes, support groups, and Co-Counseling sessions
- Making it clear that ending racism, particularly the racism directed toward Black African Heritage People, is central to all of our re-emergence
- In some parts of the world, our work taking the form of focusing on ethnic and tribal divisions, caste oppression, and nationalism as well as various forms of Indigenous oppression
- Supporting the work of eliminating white racism for all white Community members
- Creating a structure for Indigenous and Native and GM people focused on healing internalized racism and racial trauma
- Creating the conditions in local RC Communities that welcome Indigenous and Native and GM people, make them feel central to the Community, and enable them to remain in the Communities
- Making the Guidelines for the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities available to non-English speakers and to people for whom English is a second, third, fourth, or other language
- Increasing emphasis on the norms, distresses, and life experiences of Black African Heritage and other Indigenous and Native and GM people in addition to white middle-class Western and Eurocentric norms, distresses, and life experiences
- Extending the focus of the Guidelines to reflect and address concerns, needs, and issues of Black African Heritage and other Indigenous and Native and GM people in addition to the focus on white Western middle-class participants
SUPPORTING IGM PEOPLE'S LEADERSHIP
We call for counseling, organizational, and other support to encourage Indigenous and Native and GM people to participate and take leadership in the RC Communities. This includes
- training Regional and Area leaders to support the participation of Indigenous and Native and GM people in their RC Communities;
- supporting Indigenous and Native and GM people to meet, counsel, and participate in workshops across Areas and Regions;
- critically examining the gatekeeping process for managing the participation of Indigenous and Native and GM people in the RC Communities;
- examining the criteria for RC Community membership in some Communities and noting and changing those criteria and guidelines that prohibit, penalize, or hinder Black African Heritage and Indigenous and Native and GM Community participation;
- identifying and supporting leadership among Indigenous and Native and GM people throughout the RC Communities;
- supporting and intensifying the transition of Community leadership from majority white to majority Indigenous and Native and GM people (more work on white racism and internalized racism will support this);
- supporting and assisting Area, Regional, and other leaders to discharge and learn about racism, specifically the racism directed toward Black African Heritage People—to help them understand when their actions and decisions have a negative impact on Black African Heritage and other Indigenous and Native and GM people and to help them create the conditions for Black African Heritage and other Indigenous and Native and GM people to stay in RC and move into leadership;
- supporting the leadership of Black African Heritage and other Indigenous and Native and GM people with counseling, finances, and other kinds of support as needed.
OUTSIDE OF RC
We encourage a variety of initiatives outside of the RC Communities, including
- continuing to use United to End Racism to take what we’ve figured out about racism to non-RC organizations and programs;
- sharing the theory and tools of RC with racial justice activists, climate crisis activists, healing-racial-trauma leaders, and so on;
- building deep, committed relationships across racial lines; interrupting white supremacy and racism; backing [supporting] leadership in the world that crosses racial lines; and being part of groups that are committed to ending racism.
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA • Sue Edwards