PART 1
Recently, with the riots in response to the gratuitous killings of black civilians Breyonna Taylor and George Floyd, as well as many others, the ideology of antiracism has gained monumental popularity.
Antiracism calls for vigilance in the personal, interpersonal, and interobjective spaces, encouraging individuals to interrupt racism when they see it and combat any racist ‘microagressions’ or behaviours within themselves.
The problem with antiracism is that while it looks noble on paper, in practice it has the potential to become as damaging as it’s nemesis. This is because:
1) It redefines racism as a ‘system of oppression’ as a means of determining who can and cannot be racist and experience racism (which is untrue and ultimately ends up being divisive);
2) It advocates for discriminatory policies that redistribute privileges under the guise of seeking to combat them;
3) It does not account for how the somatic nature of trauma from past racism influences currently experienced racism;
4) It seeks to destroy racism using an outdated and ineffective archetypal framework of morality.
In this article, I will deal with the first problem and address the other three in separate pieces, for the sake of keeping things easy, digestible and concise (because who the fuck reads anymore? Not me).
Problem #1: Antiracism redefines racism as a ‘system of oppression’ as a means of determining who can and cannot experience racism (which is untrue and ultimately ends up being divisive).
Remember when racism was defined as prejudice against another based on superficial differences? Well, according to antiracism, that’s wrong!
The ideology also claims that while all white people are racist, they cannot experience racism. This is because antiracism redefines racism as a system of oppression that only affects non-white groups.
The new definition, based on the old definition, is racist.
The truth is, everyone is a bit racist--at some point this was actually necessary for our survival.
Racism comes from tribalism. It is a survival mechanism gone awry--an attempt to keep ourselves safe in a scary world far beyond our control. It comes from what is called the magenta value system in spiral dynamics, which first emerged around 40,000 years ago.
In magenta, primitive human bonds are created as a means to achieve safety and greater ease of survival--more than can be achieved alone.
Think of a small baby who is just learning to walk and talk--the only safe, trusted individuals are mom and dad, and mom and dad will protect the vulnerable child at all costs if they know what’s good for them, only allowing the child around trusted family and friends.
As a parent, your most important job in these early stages is to keep your child nourished and safe. But, what exactly is safety?
You may believe this question to be inessential, as the definition feels obvious: safety is a state of freedom from harm.
This is only partially true, though—as is demonstrated by the countless cases of individuals who unconsciously choose unsafe partnerships and experiences that mirror earlier experiences from childhood.
Our nervous systems become like magnets to experiences, beliefs, and people that are familiar to us. Safety is, in part, created by experiencing that which is familiar.
This is why magenta folk follow the ways of the tribe without question--to nurture a sense of oneness, of belonging. Other tribes are dangerous, as they are unfamiliar competitors in a world of scarce resources.
A study on the social behavior of rats done at the University of Chicago demonstrated that rats who are raised exclusively around their own strain have less of a tendency to help rats of a different strain when they are in distress. However, when those rats are raised around the different strains, they are just as likely to help them as they are to help their own kind.
This suggests that racism has both a survival and a socialized element, and has as much if not more to do with our tribal consciousness--familiarity is safety, and safety is necessary in such a vast and complex world--than it does our constructed social systems.
Ayn Rand defines racism, in my opinion, more accurately--as a form of toxic collectivism, a reduction of the individual’s unique characteristics and qualities to the superficial elements of his physical appearance that he vaguely shares with a group of other individuals.
Since all humans came from these tribal groups, it means we all have a layer of tribal consciousness. Even in the modern world we are all a part of a ‘tribe,’ even if it’s just unconsciously.
We all belong to a group (or groups) that help us feel safe, and we all have a group (or groups) that are unfamiliar and makes us feel unsafe. Families, friend groups, communities, and yes, races.
Even those who identify as ‘outsiders’ belong to the ‘outsider’ tribe.
This tribalist nature only becomes a problem when we target a group, stereotype, and scapegoat them--which is exactly what antiracism does to white people.
It assumes all white people have certain privileges (they don't), all white people feel the same way towards all non-white groups (they don’t), and that European ethinic groups have never experienced oppression, genocide, and terrorism (they have)--they have only committed it.
This does not mean that racism doesn’t covertly influence the way our institutions are run (it’s possible). It does not mean that in American history, all groups have always had equal opportunity to achieve certain things.
It certainly does not mean that violence or abuse with racist/tribalist roots is in any way justified.
What it means is that racism is not a one-way street that can only be enacted by a particular group. It is a psychological phenomenon that has deep roots in human consciousness and must be reconciled within every individual--not just white ones.
If we are to achieve true healing and transformation, it requires integrity. Moving the goalposts on definitions stunts that transformation and impedes that healing.
Our tribal wounds are real, and they are deep--but with definitions that divide and scapegoat, they become not mended, but exacerbated.
Learn more about Mason’s rats: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_rats
Learn about the magenta stage of consciousness: https://spiraldynamicsintegral.nl/en/purple/
PART 2
In this section, I will deal with the second problem--addressing the other three in separate pieces, for the sake of keeping things easy, digestible and concise (because who the fuck reads anymore? Not me).
Oh, and by the way--I'm not white. I felt the need to state this because a lot of people assume that I am. If you're actually committed to deconstructing prejudice, you'll sit with that realization and hold space for what comes up WITHOUT judging or criticizing yourself.
Alright--let's get into it!
Problem #2: Antiracism advocates for discriminatory policies that redistribute privileges under the guise of seeking to combat them.
Recently, right before the election, Kamala Harris released a video that advocated for equity rather than equality. The difference between equity and equality can be understood as ‘equality of outcome’ versus ‘equality of opportunity.’
Equality of opportunity means that individuals start with a similar set of initial circumstances and advantages. This does not promise equality of outcome, however the potential for meritocracy and extra rewards is present in this type of system.
The problem with this type of system is that you can't ensure everyone begins on equal footing. This is why social justice circles are now proposing that the goal should not be equality, but equity.
Equity, or equality of outcome, means all individuals arrive at the same place, regardless of circumstances, effort or privilege. Equitable treatment in individual practice has the potential to shift things for the better, equitable policy has the potential to be quite damaging.
In policy, equity means that rather than be rewarded for your efforts, you must accept less than to make up for the fact that sometimes, other people get unlucky.
It means that you are held responsible for any atrocious behaviors that happened before you were born and manifested entirely out of your control.
It also means overarching power in the hands of government, granting them the authority to determine who deserves privilege and who doesn't.
The great irony of equality and diversity being a part of the same crusade is that equality actually implies a lack of diversity. Enforced diversity policies such as affirmative action and quotas prioritize certain types of diversity over others without examining the effects that this diversity will have on the larger organization.
By forcing the particular brand of diversity that is currently valued in society, they kill other kinds of diversity--intellectual diversity, spiritual diversity, etc.
Neither equality nor equity can even be fully implemented, as so many factors determine the success of an individual--everything from upbringing and genetics to the social and cultural definitions that define ‘success.’
Equality of anything is absolutely impossible to assure. This is because nature is not static--but the crusade for an egalitarian utopia assumes that a perfect state exists and is achievable. The truth is that we live in a chaotic system with many elements that interact in complex ways.
Controlling a complex system that one doesn’t fully understand can have detrimental consequences, as there are countless factors that aren’t being considered.
That which is difficult to predict is difficult to control.
Integral theory, while imperfect, does a better job of understanding complex systems than dialectical approaches such as critical race theory. This is because, as a dialectical system, critical theories such as antiracism only see reality in dualistic terms.
From this perspective, if inequality exists in the subjective experience, it is either because of the subject itself, or because of something objective. Since accountability to the subject is considered ‘victim blaming’ by many critical theorists, the only element of focus is what integralists call the interobjective.
From an integral perspective, however, there are at least four quadrants from which a problem can be examined. The model divides knowledge into two axes--the axis of individual and collective, and the axis of objective and subjective.
Adding another dimension to epistemology helps us differentiate anecdotal and phenomenological truths from empirical and rational truths. Without this differentiation, feelings run the risk of being confused with empirical truths; alternately they may be dismissed in favour of them.
Both are important for making decisions that will affect society as a whole, because society consists of individuals, and individuals are the building blocks of society. (See: holon/holarchy.)
Because antiracists have a tendency to focus solely on interobjective systems, they fail to examine how a person’s individual somatic experience in the world, the meaning they create from those experiences, and the cultural and social frameworks from which they receive their values will influence how racism is experienced and how interactions with people of other races will be perceived.
They are afraid that this is gaslighting--however it wouldn't be considered this if we had more reverence for qualia in our society.
If phenomenological truths were seen as important in and of themselves, they wouldn't have to be equated with empirical ones in order to be justified.
If you are told that the world is a racist place and you are the victim of an oppressive system, how do you think that will influence your self esteem? How do you think it will affect your emotional state, your relational capacity for the members of society not of your race?
If you are told that the story of your tribe is one filled with pain, victimhood, and lack, what will you assume your life will look like? What is the narrative you will attach to your failures and successes? What narrative will you attach to the failures and successes of others?
For me, it has felt like having something to prove. It has felt like having to be loyal to pain and suffering and avoiding success and pleasure due to survivor’s guilt. It has felt like entitlement to the successes and achievements of people that I bear no connection or resemblance to, save an arbitrary cultural narrative of oppression and a higher amount of melanin.
This burden has been more trouble than it’s worth.
Thoughts and beliefs are not just conceptual; they are, in a sense, ‘programs’ that influence our behaviour and perceptions far more than the knowledge of how actual reality works does.
Most of us do not see reality for what it is, but what we believe it is. Our unconscious processes operate our behaviours more than anything we may understand consciously.
When we make claims that an external system is oppressing us without looking at the ways in which we cling to and actually identify with the narrative of oppression, our judgement is clouded and we are weakened in our attempts to solve the issue.
When we assume that external systems are the only thing keeping a group from achieving an ultimately arbitrary level of success and recognition in society, we not only assume that those measures of success are superior to others (which they may not be for everyone), but that those individuals are helpless victims.
You effectively disempower the whole group, and you make yourself the saviour.
This is why problem #2 might be the most enraging of all the issues I have with antiracism. So many people that adhere to it operate under the assumption that people of color aren’t capable of success without external interference.
That doing the internal and communal work to heal from the generational traumas we have in common won’t save us. That you have to save us.
People of colour aren’t the only ones suffering from generational trauma--everyone suffers from this. That is why somatic work and family systems-based therapies are so powerful. They work with the unconscious programs that influence our behaviour and the meaning we generate from our experiences.
Working on the intersubjective and subjective layers of a problem is just as important as working on the objective--in fact, I would argue that, since we are members of a self-organizing holarchy*, the interobjective systems will transform as a result of the subjective and intersubjective transformations--because they consist of them.
This does not mean an awareness of the interobjective is not necessary. It does not mean people of color wouldn't benefit from the reformation of certain policies. However, human experience simply cannot be reduced to one quadrant.
If we continue to do this, we will miss the plethora of possible solutions available to us in healing experienced racism in our society.
Antiracism is an allopathic solution that reduces all experienced racism to the interobjective quadrant, occasionally focusing on the intersubjective. It is not a holistic solution and thus will never succeed at it’s goals; it will only remain so committed to chasing monsters that it ends up creating them for want of having something to chase.
The worst thing about this is, as it is an ideology that only sees external reasons for complex problems, antiracists will continue to hunt demons that are ‘out there.’
In part three, I will go deeper into the somatic nature of trauma and why it is so important to understand the phenomenology of experienced racism--as well as what I mean by the term 'experienced racism.'
Until next time!
Kamala Harris’ equity video: https://twitter.com/kamalah.../status/1322963321994289154...
Learn more about the four quadrants here: https://integrallife.com/four-quadrants/
In case you don’t know what a holarchy is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holarchy...
PART 3
The meaning-making that we engage in as individuals, as communities, and as a species is informed by our experiences; however, it is never an accurate representation of our experiences. We are constantly weaving a complex web of stories.
I am in the process of learning Neuro-Lingustic Programming, a framework that is the synthesis of three of the most successful and effective forms of therapy ever created--family systems therapy, hypnotherapy, and gestalt therapy.
The creators of NLP discovered that, as symbolically oriented beings, we create meaning around our sensory experiences before we even realize that we have had one. This meaning-making is integral to our quality of life.
Life becomes a story; these are the stories we tell each other and ourselves using the construct of symbolic language.
These stories are woven together into a sort of internal map of reality. This is the map we use to define and relate to self and other.
Incidentally, the first stories we learn are not of our own making--they are inherited from and informed by our family, culture, and life conditions. Thus, while an objective shared reality does exist, and we have the capacity to learn about and connect to it, it behooves us to be aware of the distortions our mind inevitably will create.
The map is not the territory.
The inherited stories are arguably the most important ones to be conscious of, as they set the precedent for all the meaning-making that will come afterwards. Often, these representations of reality are formed before the age of seven and often remain for the rest of our lives--unless we learn to rewrite them.
Growing up, I did not embody the collective racial character that I was told I should by the people of my race. I liked books a lot and I listened to Green Day.
Because these characteristics more suit the mythology of a middle class white teenage boy, I began to identify with this demographic rather than the individuals that looked like me.
Never mind that books are for everyone. Never mind that Green Day played music inspired by a genre that had a large black American influence.
The mythology of the young black girl that black Americans have collectively created did not fit me. Thus, I was othered.
Because of this deep wound of being othered by my own ‘tribe,’ I have spent a great deal of my life viewing racial conflict from an incredibly detached perspective.
My anger, fear and frustration towards the racial history of America has been confusing to experience--namely because I could never truly see myself as a black person.
However, I do carry the same generational trauma as other people of color. And, my detachment has caused me to become more aware of the somatic nature of this trauma and how it informs the way I have lived my life--because I felt so alienated from this identity.
After all, If I didn’t belong to the ‘tribe of blackness,’ why did I still experience blackness as such a heavy burden? Especially since--compared to my parents and grandparents--I had it so easy?
Trauma is deeply misunderstood these days, as most individuals assume that a ‘traumatic’ experience must be catastrophic in nature--such as the experience of war or assault.
However, trauma is defined in bodywork, somatic movement therapy, and the somatic experiencing method as the inability to complete the stress response after a stressful event.
When your body feels threatened, it goes into a stress response--fight, flight, fawn, or freeze. Chemicals are released such as adrenaline and cortisol, and the sympathetic nervous system takes over while the parasympathetic-related systems temporarily shut down.
If the individual is not able to release the hormones and tension created during the heightened state, the parasympathetic nervous system (known as ‘rest and digest’) doesn’t kick in and the individual gets stuck in the heightened state.
These sorts of problems are linked to anxiety, chronically aggressive behaviour, and even immune problems.
We also know from more recent research that trauma affects the way genes are expressed, and that these new expressions can be inherited by progeny. This is the basis for the concept of generational trauma.
Imagine the epigenetic impact that hundreds of years of enslavement can have on a person.
Now, think of all the races that have ever been enslaved.
Run out of fingers yet?
There is also research to indicate that individuals who have experienced a specific type of trauma are more at risk for experiencing similar traumas throughout their life.
What, then, of groups of traumatised individuals?
My point is that there is both a physical and a conceptual framework that gets inherited; as we affirm these stories, our bodies continue to live them, and as we live them, they continually manifest in our reality.
Whether the stories came from our lives or not, we live them.
In these sorts of situations, it is very difficult to discern reality from narrative--and it honestly doesn’t matter. All we really have as individuals is our experienced reality.
This is why I refer to racism not as ‘systemic’ or ‘not systemic,’ but as ‘experienced racism.’
We can debate about whether or not systemic racism exists; that has not gotten us far. We cannot, however, tell another individual that they are not experiencing what they are experiencing.
And the best part about this is, we can simultaneously validate the experience while empowering the individual and the groups to create a new narrative.
This is how we change reality.
Trauma is effectively the state of being stuck within a story. You cannot create a new reality from a traumatised space because you will still be attached to the narrative. Your body must learn to create safety for itself, and we can do this by rewriting our stories.
It is not an easy process. I’ve been working on this for myself and I still have a very long way to go. But the more somatic and neuro-linguistic healing I do, the more my perspective is enriched and the more accurate my understanding of problems--both individual and collective--becomes (because, you know, holons).
If we are serious about addressing the phenomenon of experienced racism as a society, this work must be done in conjunction with whatever policy changes may take effect.
We may even find that they actually decrease the amount of policy changes that are needed, or cause us to disregard the types of policies we thought we needed in favour of better and more effective ones.
My belief is that working individually and locally in communities will result in systemic changes naturally. This is why I tend to embrace anarchy; but I know many people aren't able to see how this shift can take effect without authoritarianism...
Alas, an article for another time.
Do what thou wilt, America; I'll be watching from my homestead. ;)
Thanks for reading!
“What the fuck is NLP?” Glad you asked: https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/neuro-linguistic-programming
Learn more about Somatic Experiencing, trauma, and the stress response: https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/somatic-experiencing
PART 4
You didn’t ask for it, and here it is: my final article in the four part series where I explain the fourth and last issue I have with antiracism.
In this final essay, I’ll explain exactly what I mean when I say ‘blue-stage’ morality, as well as why the use of this morality system makes antiracism and other critical-theory based ideological systems ineffective at solving social problems.
Now, what exactly is blue stage morality?
Glad you asked. In the language of spiral dynamics, a system that categorises the values and thought-structures that have influenced the many different zeitgeists in human history, the stage (or ‘meme’) that emerged with the rise of agriculture is referred to as the ‘blue’ stage.
This meme emerged as a response to the chaotic individualism of the red stage before it--which was marked by warring clans, the ‘divine right’ of kings, and rampant slavery. Out of a deep thirst for order and a sense of right and wrong, organized religions and nations founded on principles and absolute truths were formed.
This is the beginning of morality as most of us know it. It was the beginning of monotheism. This is also what feminists refer to as the ‘patriarchy—‘ a social order that values masculine traits over feminine ones—particularly the traits of order, structure, linear direction, and a transcendent good that lies outside of the physical body.
This morality is governed then not by what is objectively good or bad, but what is the best way to get others to follow the rules that are imposed by those who best embody the valued traits of the group. And since this morality is guided by religious thought, it is symbolic and metaphorical in nature.
George Lakoff’s ‘Metaphor, Morality and Politics’ details the ways in which our conception of what is good and bad is governed not by reason, but by symbolism. Because we unconsciously view our well-being in a similar way to how we view property, we feel that being wronged is equal to being taken from, and implement a number of strategies to ensure that if we are morally wronged, our ‘stolen property,’ so to speak, is returned.
Two of the strategies of ‘moral arithmetic’ outlined by Lakoff are revenge and restitution. Revenge balances the moral books by giving something of negative value (an immoral action) in exchange for something of negative value, whereas restitution gives something of positive value to make up for what was taken when an individual is morally wronged.
Because the United States was founded upon Christian principles, Christian morality heavily influences the collective American psyche; it is evident in even the most modern of ideologies, from cancel culture to my not-so-personal-favourite, antiracism.
The core beliefs of ideologies like antiracism as well as other forms of wokeism, cancel culture, and third wave feminism have the shadow of religious thought as a subtle influence. This is not because the intentions of these groups are ill; the intentions are quite noble and respectable.
However, the social problems we face require a different structure of thinking in order to be solved--as this particular one has a habit of creating negative feedback loops; they create their own opposition due to the dualistic self-understanding that they encourage, and they rely on the psychological tactics of shaming and exiling which ultimately ends up radicalising the opposition, rather than facilitating any real healing or transformation.
The core belief of such a morality is that individuals are purified by suffering; this is why there is a subtle tendency among groups with a heavy blue influence towards saviorism and demonisation.
“Blessed are the meek,” or whatever.
This is why so many neoliberals will go back to complacency now that Trump is out of office. Trump was a scapegoat, a receptacle of the collective shadow that Wokists must avoid at all costs lest they be punished by the angry mob to which they have pledged allegiance.
The dynamics of Critical Race Theory are heavily influenced by Marxist philosophy as well--specifically dialectical materialism. Most critical theory influenced thinkers don’t like to acknowledge this, as it is often grounds for more conservative/ right-leaning thinkers to dismiss them; there is an apparent allergy to Marxism amongst the political right, and they are wont to reduce all leftist thought to this as a means of devaluing leftist arguments.
Nevertheless, the influence remains. Dialectical materialism is the hypothesis that humans are divided into two classes--the masters and the slaves, doomed to engage in a struggle for resources where the ruling master class will always prevail over the slave class, unless the slave class were to somehow overthrow them. Overthrowing the ruling class, according to this hypothesis, is the only way to gain power in society.
This is a very red-meme influenced conception of power, however. The red thought structure sees the world in terms of haves and have-nots, and an individual lead by a red structure of thought must assert their dominance or be dominated. These are the only options if one approaches the concept of dialectical materialism not as a simple phenomenological observation, but as an unavoidable law of existence.
I find it strange that an ideology such as critical race theory can masquerade behind postmodern language (which has a heavy influence on woke culture, re the deconstruction of language, gender, and other social constructs)--yet when it comes to the concept of power, they tend to have an oversimplified view.
This is like if a modern day astronomer used Ptolemy’s model of the solar system.
The postmodern social theorist Michel Foucault, whose works have had a huge influence on the world of postmodern thought, believed that power in society had an emergent quality, and that the idea that power lay static and hoarded in the hands of a few at the top of the hierarchy was wildly inaccurate.
Why, then, do the deconstructionists of postmodern woke culture use such an outdated conception of power?
This is classic blue structure influenced black-and-white thinking. Because the American psyche is unconsciously imprinted with religious archetypes, our ideas of what it takes to change society largely stem from religious solutions.
This is the motivation for public shaming in cancel culture. For the ‘truth and reconciliation’ committees that are being advocated for in the wake of Trumpism. For the lists of those who voted Orange Man into the oval office being kept for the purposes of ‘accountability.’
One thing mainstream conservatives and the wannabe-leftist neoliberal woke gang have in common is their fixation on embodying this punishing-yet-loving Stern Father archetype.
Conservatives, QAnon theorists, and even some libertarians projected this archetype onto Trump.
Neoliberals and SJWs use this archetype more subtly, embodying it in their crusades against injustice.
It is truly a frustrating sight to behold, to watch the fake left fight against the fake right using its own primitive tactics against them.
It literally has never worked--and it aint gonna start now, folks.
I don’t have a real answer for you in terms of what is a better solution. If I wanted to, I might need to write a part 5--but I want to take a break from this conversation for a while.
Because one thing I do know is that this battle lies within us all. It is the battle of dark and light, good and evil, the inescapable aspect of the human condition that won’t go away no matter how hard we project it ‘out there.’
And I still have some deep ancestral healing to do for myself before I can offer any solutions—that was kind of the whole point of this series. Trauma distorts our already distorted perception of reality even further. And while I may have some unique insights, and can notice certain patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed, I cannot jump into creating solutions until my inner wounds are tended to.
And neither can you.
If we resolve our inner split first, we integrate higher stages of consciousness, and we show up in the world ready to tackle complex challenges like racism and societal transformation with a level of equally complex problem-solving capabilities.
If one wishes to tinker with a majestic machine like reality--one must become a master tinkerer.
Aldous Huxley said it better than I can, shit:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”
Thanks for jamming with me! See you next time, friends
Learn more about the blue meme (which isn’t *all* bad, I swear!!!): https://spiraldynamicsintegral.nl/en/blue/
Read ‘Metaphor, Morality and Politics’ by George Lakoff: http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html...