Unknown Speaker  00:09
Women of Color. Before I get into that, I just wanted to tell you a little bit about my own frustration in terms, and when I talked to women, particularly African American women about the organizing right now, there's a feeling and I know that we've all come together as women and some multiracial group. But there's a feeling with some of the women I work with, that African American women and women of color need to work. I'm trying to find your best words for it, but to sort of step outside of the multiracial groups, because there's a whole direction of energy around the discussions that sometimes have no relevant impact on what's happening in the lives of their our communities. I'm looking at Gloria, because in a couple of weeks, Brooks, I think that's pointed out clearly, I still think in some of the writings of Angela Davis, the contradictions of women of color being in a multiracial setting. And I just want to underscore that I don't know if people got this yet, or read this, just in terms of the state of black America in 1989. That comes out from the Urban League, I just want to give you a few quotes, that sort of underscore with the sense of urgency, as you've heard some of it this morning, that half of African American children live in poverty, that African American unemployment rate is two and a half times that of whites. The thing that I find most interesting is sort of telling, is that two, couple years ago, in 1986 696,000, African Americans became poor or added to the ranks of the poor. And 774,000, white Americans left the race to poverty. So that if you're looking at the conditions in our communities, we're becoming increasingly impoverished. And that has a lot to do with US domestic policy, if you look at what's happening around the world in terms of the increasing impoverishment of women and children and men, and Africa, Asia and Latin America, and that's a relatively new phenomenon, you know, the last couple of decades, there's a lot to do with the foreign policy, the US and the foreign policy of Western countries. So what you're looking at whether or not we all agree that the definitions of genocide are under development, what you're looking at is the increasing impoverishment and destruction of people of color. I think that this conference is focusing on public policy. And there's there'll be a lot of ways in which maybe we can find out what types of public policies will make a change in that, but to look at US foreign policy then, and the role of US policy in human rights violations of women, I kind of see it as three levels, that racism is key in US policy, that war and militarism is key, and that violence against women, we talked about rape this morning, you can look at rape as a political weapon against women. Both in I guess, in different levels, we're talking about the public in the private room. There's other ways that I want to look at that. To start off with, if you look at US culture, not from a military family, my father was career military, it was the only job available, it was be a cook and stuff for him or go back into the military. That's what he chose to do. So my understanding of living on bases in the whole mentality of the military. My whole interest in looking at that part of it stems from my own background. But that view is spent about a billion dollars a year on the Pentagon and on military related things. That has a telling effect. But if you look at the ways in which and I trotted pointed out this morning, the absence of peace since post World War 245 days, but Secretary of State former Secretary of State Schultz has also said that there have been over 200 interventions by the US in the so called Third World, and they've all been in the in the developing worlds and towards developing third, whatever. But they've been in Africa, Asia and Latin America to destroy people's liberation struggles to install governments and regimes that oppress people. If you look at our focus of foreign policy and military spending, you can see the ways in which the future is going to be exactly as the past has been. I say that because there's a bipartisan paper out called discriminate deterrence, which Kissinger, Clark and Huntington and other people authored, and these are Democrats and Republicans, you can get it from the Heritage Foundation for free

Unknown Speaker  05:14
from them, but it basically lays out the foreign policy for Republican or Democratic administrations. It's a foreign policy based on militarism and military intervention, but only in the third world discriminative deterrence states that the idea of an East West confrontation, which is a nuclear war, is not feasible. There's no survivability no matter what, you know, Reagan might have said it before. And so therefore, US foreign policy needs to look at unwinnable wars. And the winnable wars will be the wars that are fought in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean to what discriminate the Terence also talks about is the need to can contain and undermine the independence struggles and movements of those people. Now, when you're talking about independent struggles and movements, obviously, we're not just talking about when we're talking about women as well, that participate in them. I'm speeding through this a bit, because I want to give us some time going from military intervention, return to foreign intervention and looking at economic intervention. What we're looking at is austerity programs, austerity measures being put forth not only in the developing world by the IMF policies, but also domestically, we'll talk about austerity programs at home. But looking at the austerity measures are the under development of the Third World. If you look at UNICEF report that just came out, which is its report on the state of the world's children. It basically states that about 900 million people are in poverty, and that's 1/6 of humanity. Not only are they in poverty, but they're going deeper into poverty. Those are mostly women and children. The increasing impoverishment disease and death occurs in Africa and Latin America, primarily, where the average incomes have declined 10 to 25% in the 1980s, and spending on healthy education will reduce 50 to 25% respectively. Children bear the heaviest burden or brunt of this impoverishment. What news that doesn't talk about though, is the question of who created the debt. And why I don't know if I should give more background fundraising too much, but that the impoverishment is stemming from the fact that the countries have to gear their whole economies towards paying off the debt. So when rather than growing food for your population, you go what they call crash, crash cash crops, which are export commodities like coffee, which you can use. Rather than growing corn or beans or rice, you grow cocoa or coffee or something that can be consumed by wealthier nations. That leads to a number of things, it leads to the destruction of the soil and environment, which is one thing that was pointed out in terms of ecology, and eco feminism. It leads to the lack of food resources for the people themselves. And it also leads to a mentality where the whole economy, domestic economy and the export economies are all geared to servicing other people's needs in other countries, so that what is at stake is no longer the needs of your own people, but luxury consumption of people in other parts of the world, primarily in the West, in the US and in Europe.

Unknown Speaker  09:06
When the people who can strap these bipartisan papers for a US foreign policy, they see the situation of course as we do the groin impoverishment of women and children increasing starvation and destruction of lives. But when they talk about austerity programs, they're telling people to tighten their belts. What they never talked about is the reduction of the military budget that you can't dictate to other countries that they should cut back on military by where they should cut back on developing their arms. And one thing you might want to look at, which I'm not gonna go into now is the whole weapons industry as an international corporation setup and how profitable that is. When people are told to tighten their belts. They Basically, what they're told women and children is to somehow deal with with less, much less than they need for survival much less than what they've had in previous decades. If you were to go from the austerity measures abroad, and look at the ones here at home, from 1979, to 1984. And these, these figures deal mostly with women, people of color, the percentage of families headed by single women in poverty, living below the poverty line, which in ad for the figure was $10,609, for families for increased from 34.9% to 30.4%, which was an additional 5 million women in poverty. A third of those. If I'm just about again, looking at, again, from the International to the domestic, and I've talked about under development internationally, people of color in third world, military spending being directed for those countries to buy military repression against those countries. But there's a whole discussion about not just foreign wars, appointed to mention, but also domestic wars, which ties directly into the increase of racist violence in the US. Historically, people know the history of the US and it'd been founded on the destruction of indigenous people in the slave myth of Africans. What is during that talked about as much as could be, is the rise in racist violence in the US, and how, since the 60s, the state has participated in that on a number of different levels. Has anybody seen Mississippi Burning? Has anybody written a letter about it, or Mississippi Burning is a retelling the definitely revising the history of the civil rights movement, and making the leadership now White, instead of African American, but also, the leadership came from the FBI. And even though there's a lot of information out on the role of the FBI and sabotaging undermining the movement, and also more information coming out in the role of the FBI and dissemination of African Americans, with the COINTELPRO in the 70s, that popular culture still steps in replays and promotes these myths, the Center for Law and Social Justice, which is located here in New York City in Brooklyn, and recently released a report a report called Black women under siege. And it talks about not the FBI this time, but about the police and the rise in racist violence against African American women. Particularly about two women one Eleanor bumpers, like as being from New York in Uber element bumpers, who is a 67 year old African American woman who was shot to death by the police when they were trying to evict her for non payment of rent. celibate, I think the man's name was was not acquit was a quick read on the murder charges. The other woman was Yvonne Smallwood, who I think it was a year or two years ago.

Unknown Speaker  13:35
She was with your companion, an African American man, and he was double parked. The police begin writing him a traffic ticket for that. And she told them rather than doing that, why don't you go out and stop crime and arrest, you know, murderers, drug dealers, whatever. And then they proceeded to beat her to death and director in a patrol car and by the time she reached the station, she's comatose and she died a while later. No one also no one in the police department was ever convicted that what the Center for Law and Social Justice is saying that these are not isolated cases, that if you're going to talk about violence by government agencies and officials, against people of color, you have to talk about it within the state within the US and that the police and the FBI, and other agencies as well have played that role historically, but it's a role that's increasing. What the Senator is concerned about is not just organized violence against women of color through agencies like the police but also mob Finance Center has in its report and I would suggest you call them if you'd like to get a copy of the report talks a little bit about the tuwana Brawley case and the kind of contract versity and confusion that was generated around that case, the most telling thing that they say not to get into the specifics of the case that that people in looking at the sensationalism of that particular incident, fail to look at the what they have in the statistics of the increase of racist violence, which includes sexual violence against women of color. And so that when things make the headlines with the media, that you can get caught up in whatever sensationalism is provided at the time. But then you fail to look at the deeper systemic trends, which is an overall increase of women being victimized on the basis of race, and gender, for women of color. Now, what then, is the response to that, if internationally and nationally, there's a growing impoverishment or under development of people of color, internationally and internationally, there's an increase in violence against people of color. How do we respond? One way, and this is why we, I was really glad that, in fact, one of the reasons I came was that there was going to be a discussion on this morning, people are looking at focusing on human rights treaties, which have been signed by the US in which you're sitting around the Senate because the Senate doesn't want to rapid fire them and release them. But looking at those norms of international law as being our standards, and a sort of a guideline for organizing, because of focus on civil rights, which is, you know, identified a lot of times of civil liberties that was coming out, is not far reaching. It doesn't deal with our economic under development or impoverishment. And it doesn't deal with the systemic reality of violence that we face, particularly people of color faced daily in a racist nation. There are there's a history and the African American community of using human rights treaties for justice and for in the recent struggles of African Americans. In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress was the first group in the world to bring the US up on charges of human rights violations in the document called recharged in his which is out of print, but William Paterson and a number of people back, there's about 3040 people, women and men signed the document put it together, it focused a lot on lynching. But it also focused on the police had focused on homelessness and focused on unemployment, discrimination in the workforce, put together did the document and brought it before the you in the document did not get accepted in terms of being presented in the discussions that took place at the time in the assembly. But it was widely read. It was also an organizing tool within the African American community.

Unknown Speaker  18:10
Not only has the Civil Rights Congress done that, but of course, the 1960s African Americans as well, organizing around the UN is to form in the 1970s, the National NCBO National Conference of Black lawyers was in us. And in the 1980s. In fact, in February, last February, about six weeks ago, African American men and women went to the UN for the hearings in Geneva. And a group called freedom now testified the increase in racist violence against people of color in the US, and also the under development of people of color here. The US delegation walked out. During that testimony I returned but had no response to get it because the facts were there and the stats were there and it was well received. The only delimited is how do you translate those experiences in the international community or form to organizing here in the States and how you make those connections and how you sustain them. One thing I want to end with is the view that in the changing notions of rights in terms of what we're entitled to, and what we're guaranteed, has a direct effect on the ways in which we struggle and what we asked for, and that if there is a focus on human rights, and the focus is comprehensive in that we talked about seed up, you know the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, but you also have to talk about the treaty for the prevention and elimination of genocide and ratio just Discrimination, that if you can talk about the issues of racism as they affect women, sexism, and also classism, and that if you can make the connections between the International and the National in policy, but also the rights, that you're agitating for an advocating that that will be probably a strategy for going forward. This is all very new. So there's nothing in terms of organizing that people put tightly in place together. But there is a feeling that this is probably one of the best strategies for changing policy in the West. Yeah, I was wondering what was going on this radio? Okay, my name is Troy James. And this is published in some of the notes I put together. But you can find I would call the Center for Constitutional Rights, and ask for the paper that freedom now presented to the United Nations in February. Put after this more work on

Unknown Speaker  21:20
organizations that are pursuing this

Unknown Speaker  21:26
international, I've worked. There's an international women's organization called Women's International democratic Federation, which includes women, women and liberation struggles in South Africa. So the ANC Women's swap for women, women in Eastern Europe and the socialist flux women in Western Europe, women throughout the world, they receive testimony and presented testimony. I think this was the first time that they took testimony on us women, and they got their testimony from their US affiliate, which is women for racial economic equality. But they've also given testimony on behalf of Chilean women and SWAPO name. Where we provision economic equality is located in New York City. They're located in eastern Europe, in Berlin, their headquarters?

Unknown Speaker  22:29
Well, I wrote your question. How do you see organizing against racism is central to your work as women. And then how do you see doing that in the multiracial organization, because where I'm coming from now, a lot of us are leaving. Because it's just, it's not viable, because I won't say completely. But a lot of times the energy is focused on our dynamics as we come together. And the issues of organizing around the things I was talking about in National Urban League we're talking about that they become secondary. So I'm just really interested in how people work together in a multiracial group, and how you keep racism as central to your agenda as women.

Unknown Speaker  23:29
A terrible cold

Unknown Speaker  23:34
call suite.

Unknown Speaker  23:36
My name is Lesley Volkmann, Executive Director

Unknown Speaker  23:38
of the Center for Policy Studies in Washington, which was the first feminist Policy Center was founded in 1972. We don't expect that in order for why we would like to work on racism, they have to have one that is indexed. So what we do is define all of our issues and projects and the ways in which we work on them as being focused primarily on the racism sexism, connection. Are the emphasis in the projects that we're doing now on education on women, a reproductive rights project focuses on young women in their 20s is on women color Center. In other words, if you do you have to deal with the connections. Okay, listen to section two and two, two plus two is four, and that whole multiplicity complicated issues, and you have to do it in some of the racial groups, but you can't put the burden on women of color who come in as employees as advisory board members to teach them So it's a, it's a difficult dilemma when you're working on issues that we have in the past that are very energy draining. Whether it aids is right now. policy or not very draining. And to some extent, the work we're doing on educational equity is extremely painful, because we've gone so far forward and so far backwards in the last couple of decades. And the last eight years have been especially painful. So what we try to do is not make the kinds of demands that we have seen made and other organizations that we try to, we try to say to white women who don't understand ethnic groups in other dimensions, sophisticated cultures, related to this country, for example, that you have two year old. And also we, we try to do as much as we can with our colleagues and other organizations. We feel like the way we are approaching the issues is what's important for us because we are Policy Center. And in that when we take an old issue, from unfortunately, new perspective that we're making.

Unknown Speaker  26:37
I guess I would add an element to the lesson. Also responding to your question. It seems to me that in the women's movement in the United States, that we still, we still, I think suffer from a tendency toward the kind of single issue attitude, which I think goes with what you were saying, when I say the sense that we separately thinking there's some single issue or single perspective is the center of everything. And so I think that one reason why it's very hard for people, for women here for feminists to really develop what I would call a multiracial gender, which requires giving up the idea that there's any central experience of women. And instead of replacing that with a struggle to see the diversity of women's experiences at the center, and I think that I think it's very hard for people to really do that, I think they're still in all kinds of different areas that certainly affects what you asked about the question of racism, there's still a tendency to think, well, there's some central experience, which is defined by the dominant culture or some central issues which everybody can be brought in, rather than what is the multiplicity of forms on whatever issue you're working on, that all has to be addressed. And I feel that a, a multiracial agenda or a multiracial perspective. And I think your point is we'll take a multiracial agenda or alteration perspective, is something everybody should struggle for whether they're a multiracial movement or not. And it seems to me that that's really the challenge. So look at why we're visible, the racial in terms of what is its behavior agenda, I'm looking at who could be dragged in to make a sale without necessarily changing the rules? And I think, to me a lot of that, because I'm really starting to question whatever, whatever the work is starting to question right from the beginning of the house has been defined and by whom and what slimmed down definition of that work? And how do we have to broaden that and make it more complex?

Unknown Speaker  29:14
To assets, has to come from where you want to take yourself? Because I don't believe anyone that says masses of white women are so naive, that they don't know the meaning of difference, or what have you found because I think we live out new places in our daily lives. I think the real question that I thought for was leaving that your talk this morning was that you emphasize so much political location and political commitment as well affirms our, our minds learning from war, how much women I think have to vote ourselves correctly. And that doesn't mean I think a lot of women be pro feminist is not to say A SP including to to, to assume, and reckless left politics that affects human all areas of your life, a critique of capitalism and a willingness to see how gender and race oppression are linked to capitalism. And that means we can't talk about gender equality under capitalism, and assume that we are here talking about the elimination of sexist domination and oppression or racism. And I guess what I I'm thinking a lot about, certainly in terms of black women, why is it so few of us on the left? Why are so many of the black women visible in public life? Very conservative? And what what are the forces forces in this culture that seem to militate against women taking rigorous political defining, and you just keep them to talk about violence against women, not as privatized heterosexual relations, but as a systemic structure of domination? That requires a

Unknown Speaker  31:01
bunch of political?

Unknown Speaker  31:05
I just want to say, I'm not sharing so like, jumped into, you know, like, when you say, there's not a lot of it's on the left, are you talking about, there's not a lot of a say, you know, like the socialist scholars conferences happening downtown now, are you? I don't know what you mean, by the left. Because if we think of our politics, you know, as a whole, I find as much more progressive, politically,

Unknown Speaker  31:32
to be anti capitalist. And I think that one of the central senses of being on the left for me is about being anti capitalist, or at least about critique of capitalism and materialism, as it is connected to colonization, imperialism, etc. And I think that's, that's a weakness in the African American political framework.

Unknown Speaker  31:58
Yeah, I think, I think the women, I think that, I don't know, we may not articulate the critique in the ways that it's articulated in maybe the dominant culture. But I think that working, I know, everybody wants to get something, everybody needs some material level, you know, for survival, and things. But I think, okay, look at our relationship to South Africa, right? If South Africa were to go socialist, in order to have a free South Africa, that would not be a problem for African Americans. So I mean, implicit in that is a real release of capitalism. I mean, because I think racism cuts us on such a level, that our ties to capitalism are weakened, that we're not that strongly entrenched in it.

Unknown Speaker  32:50
I think our ideological commitment to capitalism is very strong. When we feel we can, as a contest, black communities, the kind of and one of the things I've been very interested in is how, if black people are psychologize, by popular culture, to identify with the values of the ruling class, even though we may never be able to participate in that kind of capitalist framework,

Unknown Speaker  33:16
but I don't want people to know about as well support last over

Unknown Speaker  33:25
position, articulating position, that that process itself is not so

Unknown Speaker  33:33
I mean, I don't think it's sufficient

Unknown Speaker  33:34
anymore just to assume the graphical basically facility with

Unknown Speaker  33:38
one another, and being an oppositional relationship to the sculpture that it is important

Unknown Speaker  33:43
to take a step of articulating that position, which is why

Unknown Speaker  33:46
as to

Unknown Speaker  33:49
why even begin a paper because it seems to me the way of somebody's thinking so to publish is different. And it's accessible to people. The statement itself, combined with who you are, and it's a different kind of society, it seems to me as important.

Unknown Speaker  34:23
I think it's not a one off project. I don't think it's just a tick. It's a problem for lactose is a crop of whiteness, I am just astounded by the numbers of my students who think of themselves as very progressive the morning change and especially change gender issues and homophobia and racism. Absolutely never thought about the structure of the society that we're living in as and what's striking to me back to your question, joy of that, what does one do when How does When I see around working in frameworks, you know, they're multiracial and multicultural. We're not. I was. I thought what Charlotte said this morning about global, a global perspective, and what you both

Unknown Speaker  35:17
Lauer and

Unknown Speaker  35:18
joy have reinforced in your international perspective, in what your in remarks, is just critical. Coming into contact with people from the Third World, who cannot for one second of their lives, not confront capitalism and career, listen, I mean, it is just, it is what, you know, that's really an education. And I do believe that the experience of feminists, you know, from Nairobi on and who started to think about the conditions of women in an international context that has changed their thinking about economic relations about about gambling. And I think the process I don't think just sort of telling people, you know, teaching them marks or, you know, really does it in the same way as meeting people that you think are the same as you. And or think has something in common because they're women, or because they're black and people of color, and finding out that your country, you know, is really implicated in the devastation in their lives. I mean, this has not been very realistic. But I do think there's a process of change of consciousness that happens when people who have political concerns start to have international thinking.

Unknown Speaker  36:50
May I say something? I feel one of the important things that has been said that someone said, it's not necessary to sit by side by side. But it is essentially necessary that we listen to each other, not only with our attitudes, for good really trying to understand where we come from, and where we're headed. I came to this conference backwards. I spent my life as a trade unionist, and only became a scholar in retirement. I've been a feminist all my life, my mother was a scientist. But the fact remains, that it working in a factory where you have a period of time, the people I worked with change from one ethnic group and one ethnic background, to a multiracial multi ethnic, group and back to, and the effect that it's had on the relationships among people, I learned a great deal. There was a time when I was the one who was on an executive board in a trade union. By the time I retired, more than half that executive board now has women, and most of them are of different racial and ethnic backgrounds than mine, and that they have learned a great deal. We have learned from each other. I think one of the great failures of the feminist official feminist movement is that it has been elitist in its outlook, upper middle class and its aspirations, and ignores the fact that most women in this country and in other countries are working class, many of them are below the poverty level. And we don't understand and think in their terms. I think we're in a way to express that because in Europe, they're beginning to face the problem as a new problem. We have lived with this problem all my life, certainly, all the years of this country, I think, this young woman who's talked about the fact that we don't take a class either, too, politically, if we talk about the Soviet Union, that they only had one political party and out of great joy, they have no pipelines, we only have to distinguish when it comes to race issues. I don't see that much difference only when individuals are concerned. So it's important that we start learning where we come from, and why you have different aspirations, different interests, different needs than somebody else. And when we listen to each other, we may learn how to help each other. I was fascinated this morning about hearing about with Chilean women. I didn't know that. I've been watching what's been happening until I want to ask her now, more information I want to know a little bit more in may help me and all of us to understand what's happening here. So I appeal to you not only look at Israel, the prices are very paramount issue, but also look at it as as she said, they hired they looked for labor and they got people. We are all people as well as women. We are all people as well as whatever our class come. And if we wanted to accomplish anything, we have to really listen to each other

Unknown Speaker  40:03
In answering your question, I want to say something about the statement that preceded it that a lot of African American women are feeling a need to get out of these multiracial stress filled groups. Back to some Zingle issue or focus group for African Americans. One of the things that seems to me to be most exciting about the women's movement now in the last five or 10 years, is that it isn't a monolith control. And that was really lifted, there has been a growth and substantial growth at the local and national levels, organizations and groups that are by foreign about women of color, different ethnic backgrounds, so that those are some of those organizations that we come to continue to grow and strengthen our single ethnic organizations, let's say, but the thing that's very special about this growth of organizations is that they're all connected to one another. So that you can be focused only on working as a an activist with the Mexican American Women's National Association and building your local chapter doing whatever it is that you know, you have a connection to a lot of other organizations that are working in their own communities, and also at the national level, and that are also multi ethnic, so that instead of having everybody had to join the same thing, you get to share with one another without debilitating yourself so much by not being able to focus on the issues that you need.

Unknown Speaker  41:52
on a on a somewhat related level,

Unknown Speaker  41:56
women, at least in this country,

Unknown Speaker  42:01
have located themselves. liberal side of the agenda, we all know about the gender gap in voting. And it's not as wide as I would have expected and hoped but it certainly is women taking a stand for more interventions in a capitalist system. As such, I think in a more liberal agenda at the government level, I don't know to what extent that's true. For other countries, the difference in voting patterns as against roles of government and mediating social problems.

Unknown Speaker  42:41
In some countries, you need to find out what to do to Scandinavian countries, for instance, I don't think that development is intended to say because of the old these interconnections right now, we really know about Greece, which are new kinds of organizations and locations. Initially, for instance, women in the Communist Party, supposedly leftist, have gotten more power, more visibility or getting on their feet, but then it's really not easy to say whether they were like in this discussion, I can't think of any direct involvement or cause, like concern, but I mean, the agenda. So I think that to some extent, I'd like to think about this, when I go back, we have a heavy socialist heritage, you still think that the redefinition of the pattern of development was difficult to to push through the left, women are trying to do that? There's general awareness of ecological problems, what seems to me that frame of mind is very traditional. The other problem would be that the traditional women's issues seem to be very heavy, very central to our agenda. So this kind of much wider and more flexible when you're organizing our own thoughts and projects is something I think is not yet part of our debate. should be changed might be our first is that I very often wonder, why don't we have the European level into anti racist women's organization? If I thought of that, or if I tried to promote it seems to me at this point will be very old fashioned. So it will be women who started all over again discussing this poor immigrants problems. So I don't think we have been. Now what do you have to say this morning about human rights might help. You know, I always thought

Unknown Speaker  45:23
that the

Unknown Speaker  45:25
tradition of socialist and communist parties was useful because we weren't aware. So somehow redefining this cultural political heritage, at the same time, it is a hindrance, something pushes us back and forth between feeling progressive, and then having to come to terms with this already made, sort of survival package. And we have, and it is a it seems to me a very different path we have to follow from other countries, the United States for some reasons, and of course, most of the other countries in the world for different reasons. And let me just say that I think that you have been coming years, probably, I hope we have a sort of European context, rather than, than the single countries complex that we are used to, like might develop a specific pattern, which is different, of course, from other parts of the world for the two regional patterns, being a part of the world, which is privileged and wealthy, and in so many ways, modern, but at the same time, construct all sorts of all the models. And we just say that the changes in this from Europe and instructed us and for us, in a very different way from what this means for you, for instance, are going to make us rethink a number of our past beliefs. So it is a time of change.

Unknown Speaker  47:01
I just wondered one thing, just in terms of about your response, or what I find really interesting is when white women organize in white communities against racism, I also find it very rare. And so for me, I think one of the interesting responses because I write this kind of not that there was an absence, but I definitely want to talk more about the class and organizing stuff. But the racial ideology is so intense here, that, you know, to organize in the workforce, or to organize around a lot of issues, it gets curtailed around the divisions because racism, and people of color, it's not our role to go into white communities and organize, and like Howard Beach and other places shows you, you know, just for different reasons, you know, some of the responses, but how white women organize against white racism with whites, I think that's more difficult than being in a multiracial setting. And I think, in the struggle in choices about how you can respond against racism, sometimes it's easier to take what is generally a less threatening choice, which is to be in a multiracial group, than to go out into white communities and knock on doors or something, and just deal with it straight on. And, you know, in struggle around those issues as white people, and unless that's done, I don't really see. Because that's almost like first grade, you know, before you get on to any other level, unless you can really shape some of that engraved. indoctrination, that, you know, everybody in the society. When I talked to some of my black woman friends, we talked about internalized racism, and working in our own communities for dealing with everything we've absorbed and all the negations that we've, you know, taking this truth in terms of racial mythology. What I find though, is what I'd be very interested in hearing more about is how white women organize with white people around their own indoctrination system, and then how we could come together at different points, and, you know, share notes or do coalition work, but still very much rooted around the struggle against racism in our own communities still mentalities and ideologies.

Unknown Speaker  49:25
And I think we have to emphasize multiple choices, because most black women who work in service positions in this culture have white women bosses. So the idea that we have this little separation is needed of separation. And white women can go into their communities and work with white people. The fact is, a lot of white women have how over black women in the workforce in daily life, and we need to begin to talk about what are the ways we can communicate with one another, so that this domination is in in me psychologically etc, etc. So that I think the time has come to start talking about one choice. I feel like I work within black communities. But I also feel like it's crucial for me to to intervene in predominantly white male lips, etc. And so I think we have to move away from the notion of single choices or single and talk about multiple choices that we have to work on multiple fronts, and we have to educate on multiple fronts. Because first, I mean, I am still asking the question, Where are white women to arrive at this critical consciousness that will enable him to go into these white communities and educate other white people? I mean, some point, we're just the blueprint begins,

Unknown Speaker  50:50
I didn't mean to, like, mono choices, because of the fact that we're all together. I think that's a given. We're gonna, and like you said, the work situation, we work in white institutions. So we always encounter whites, and we always interact with them. But the thing that I was interested in, because I hear it rarely discussed, is white women's organizing against racism in white spaces. I, because I'm not there, obviously, if that's what they're doing, because that's the white space, and then somewhere else. And so I would be interested in hearing more about that kind of organizing, I think, on different levels. And it's always a multi level response. But that is one that I just don't have enough information.

Unknown Speaker  51:34
Frozen. So call to our problem.

Unknown Speaker  51:38
Okay, I'm not being clear on how you indicated.

Unknown Speaker  51:43
Racism is too small to describe the process of global social, economic and political inequality. Would you describe? Yeah. To then somehow address it by sort of a one to one?

Unknown Speaker  51:59
See, I'm not being clear that I might communicate? I'm not. No, I'm not advocating that.

Unknown Speaker  52:06
Just the structure that you propose, outside of a multiracial? I mean,

Unknown Speaker  52:12
I don't understand. I don't

Unknown Speaker  52:13
I don't understand how you talk about anything other than that.

Unknown Speaker  52:18
There's a group called talking about? Yeah, there's a group. Okay. When I'm not taking the liberal one to one. And anything. I'm talking about organizing in a collective. Right, is an important and individual transformation. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  52:37
In terms of the violence against, you know, in terms of the concept,

Unknown Speaker  52:42
but let me I want to just respond, because definitely, I'm talking about structural violence, and they will have to be responsive structural to, but I'm saying that, okay. The multiracial settings are important, but they're given that, you know, that's part of the realities that we're dealing with. I'm not talking about dismantling them, I'm saying that there's a sense of frustration with them, which is reality. And then how we deal with the frustration and go to another level is to, but it's still important that whites organized in white communities around racism, and that at different points. I mean, we're not always here together. So obviously, we're doing work in our own communities. And what I'm interested in hearing is more about that kind of work. Does that make? Is that? Okay, I just don't know about it. And that's what I'm saying?

Unknown Speaker  53:37
Well, I want to make a partial response to that. And also, some of the other there's so much going on. I mean, perhaps we haven't actually talked more formally, as much time.

Unknown Speaker  54:07
Resist the burden that's on the line.

Unknown Speaker  54:13
I mean, I think some of that work is going on, and we could talk about it. But one of the problems of that work and when I've been involved in it, and it comes back to really both what Michelle said and what stories that earlier about the relationship between the personal and political, is what I find happens a lot of times in that work with white people about like racism is the real problem of the difficulty of people seeing these issues. And the tendency to think, and I see this around racism and sexism and homophobia and all three, back to I think what Ross has a tendency people will think it's about being nice. And it's about learning to be tolerant and being good individuals. I'm not saying that that isn't valuable. I mean, there's a lesson And I won't tolerate something I want to people being nicer to. But I think there's a, there's a sense sometimes in the individual work and in some of the groups that are done mostly around the ISM, but not engaged with the isn't in the world, which is what you also said earlier that people can point whether it's multi racial group or a single white group, I think that so to meet the struggle that I feel that this is how to have, we really connect the personal and political in a, in a useful way, I think one of the problems with the left is that it wasn't personal, it denied the personal part. That's what a lot of us reacted to around them. I think that's what in their reaction to that the women's movement goes the other way, which is that it gets caught in the personal stuff only. And we forget that this is institutional political struggles. And if you only try to become a less racist person, which is the focus of a lot of that work, sometimes the connection that becoming less racist person is to be political in the world against racism, and its connection gets lost. So I mean, I think I'd love to have a longer discussion about how we do this work. It's very complex, and not get caught up on every single one of our insights, it seems to me becomes a new trap. If we get stuck there, we get caught on the personal political game, just first of all, we try to make personal stuff, just political. And I feel that the real the real struggle that all it is, in fact, that we do have to create new modes of work, remember that don't ever with any, we work on one thing at a time, but they don't ever become either or single issue mentality so that we get that kind of thing where you can figure out the solution.

Unknown Speaker  56:47
And I know we have to go but I was thinking for example of a chemical dependency on that how, what necessary new area of therapy, and again, alcohol and drugs. But what people have done is they have gone to the workforce, and they are consultants who say, we want to come into this corporation, or this factory or this what have you, and we want to do transformation work with people to be drug addicts. Now, have we had that kind of systematic organizing about we want to come into this corporation, and we want to look at the inter actions between workers of different ethnicities and we want to talk about what kinds of programs people can go through or what can people do to change both attitudes behavior, which again, Winston and I'm looking at a lot as a new programs that have intervene with the current status of the chemical dependency cop itself intervention