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  • From: andylang <andylang@gn.apc.org>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Re-Racism 101.
  • Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:45:54 -0600

Thanks to rafter, michael, flick and others for making the effort to introduce some good thinking on the topic of racism to us permies.

Here's my take on it: -

As a white man I am sure that, whether I want them or not and whether I can see them clearly or not, I have been raised with racist beliefs and patterns. Thus one of my current pieces of self-liberation work is to explore how these destructive beliefs show up, how they were laid in and how I can loosen their grip so that they do not interfere with my capacity to create good designs that roll out well in diverse cultures.

I have chosen to take what I see as a pretty logical stance on the subject of myself and my oppressor beliefs and patterns. It goes like this: - because I have been raised as a man I am bound to have hidden, embedded oppressor patterns towards women (sexism); because I have been raised as middle-class I am bound to have hidden, embedded oppressor patterns towards working class people and people raised poor and, further, to have internalized oppressions running around owning class people (classism).

I also know that, as a man, I have been deeply oppressed by the militarism, economic imperatives and emotional impoverishment that our culture dishes out to us men.

It helps me a great deal to acknowledge these issues (and I did not always have the sense to do this) because now I know that these dysfunctional memes are hiding somewhere in my psyche I can go after them in a systematic way and, bit by bit, eliminate their capacity to corrode my integrity. Nowadays, instead of feeling bad about this stuff, or wasting heaps of energy denying I have it, I feel positive about my progress in facing up to it and stopping it running in my life quite so much.

For me there is no way that I can expect to be truly effective in facilitating widespread, integrative and constructive changes in the world until I am ready to work on eliminating this nasty, de- humanizing stuff.

I'm so glad to see this thread entering permaculture consciousness - as Bill Mollison said, early in his permaculture career when asked how he expected to transform the world's agriculture on his own, 'well, now there's at least 3 of us'.

And, as for the hands-on bit, I am happy to share my (effective) methods around understanding oppression and how to go about liberating myself from being either a victim or a perpetrator ...

All the best

Andy Langford



  • [permaculture] Re-Racism 101., andylang, 02/28/2008

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