Reflections from the Decolonial Transformation Workshop at the University of Sussex

It's one week since the Decolonial Transformation Workshop finished at the University of Sussex. It was a beautiful, inspiring, intense, thought provoking, emotional space. First and foremost it was an unapologetically black space. A space for people of colour to share their experiences. As white participants we were welcome but it was clear that in that space we were visitors / observers. And it was absolutely fine. I was grateful to be allowed in, to be given the opportunity to listen and learn.

There were two main questions that came up for me from the workshop. The first one is : How do you unlearn something you don't know you have? And the second one is about complicity and culpability. Why is it that the closer racism comes to home the more difficult it is to address?

To make it more clear, I need to tell some stories. On one of the workshop days I was introduced to a woman of colour. She had beautiful grey dreadlocks, I thought she looked just like Toni Morrison. But when she spoke to me, her English revealed a strong German accent. I experienced such a strong response to this, in mind it just didn't fit. And I kept talking about this woman after we left the conference, mentioning her German accent to my friend, who looked at me and responded, but you have a strong German accent as well when you speak English. And what did I say? But I am not Black... I am not Black.... My friend just looked at me in complete shock and said: You know how racist that is?

The conversation moved on from there, but stayed with me. I kept coming back to this moment, wondering what on earth made me say that. Recognising that this is exactly what Afro-Germans keep fighting with, the belief that only White people can ever be fully German. I had just read a number of books of narratives of Afro-German women unpacking exactly these kind of experiences. How could I - after all these years of dialogue work, after reading all these books - still come up with such a statement? Where did that suddenly come from? Had you asked me whether I believe that people of colour could be German, I would have said, sure they can....  and still deep down, after digging through layers of layers of my whiteness, my white privilege, white supremacy, I can still say something like that. How do you unlearn something that is sitting so deep in you, you don't even know you have it ? (I dread starting to dig into the roots of this belief - assuming it must come from  Nazi Germany and its ideas around a 'pure race'). In that moment it finally sunk in what one of the facilitators at the workshop had said, that the structure is in the person, in ourselves. And to fight the structure we have to change ourselves first. And I also started understanding why my friends of colour say that whites can never be trusted, no matter how 'woke' or how much they see themselves as allies.

And this brings me to the second insight I got last week. This is something I have been thinking of for a while. One of the most consistent feedback I get from my partner, is that my anti-racist work does not translate into our relationship. He has been complaining for a while that he feels I do not support him, do not stand up for him when it comes to racist incidents. Many of these relate to the school our children go to. I had listened to his complaints but again it hadn't really sunk in. Until very recently when we revisited two incidents that have happened a while ago. First - the incident at the 12 Apostels, which my friend describes in her blog. In short a black friend of ours booked a table, turned up with her black family and was told there was no reservation. She then asked a white friend of ours to call and try and book a table and that friend was given a table immediately. When our black friend consequently approached management to complain, she was told off by the manager, given some lame excuses around busy times and mix-ups. However, when the white friend called to complain in her place, she was given an apology. When this incident happened I was furious, outraged and saw that this was completely wrong. Fast forward a year or two and we are at our children's school, in a meeting with management and teachers, about an incident my son was involved in at a class camp. Without going into too much detail, one of the teacher showed such extreme aggressive reactions towards my husband at the meeting, it had to be stopped. The consensus among teachers and parents involved was that these strong emotional reactions were racially triggered. My husband was furious and warned me that we would never set food at the school again. I went to the principal to ask for an apology - which I got: an e-mail sent to me, with a request to forward to my husband. Sounds familiar? Yes, the apology was again given to the white person, a bystander, not the offended person of colour. But this time did I see it that way? No, I found 102 excuses why that was ok. I did not see the disrespect when it affected my partner. One could argue that there might have been no intention to offend - but it was read that way. And that should have been the element that should have counted for me. How the action was received. And this is not the only example I reacted this way.

Paolo Freire says: Trust is contingent on the evidence which one party provides the others of his true, concrete intentions; it cannot exist if that party's words do not coincide with their actions. To say one thing and do another - to take one's word lightly - cannot inspire trust.

It clearly is easier to see racism when it is not that close to home - when it does not affect me intimately. Does not affect my life. Does not force me to take decisions  I do not want to take (like moving your brown children to a different, more woke school). If this is the case, can I ever be trusted as an ally in anti-racism work? Would I stand up for my colleagues if it affected me personally as well? I guess this goes back to a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago, about having to decide whether it is still ok to move between different worlds, or whether I need to pick sides. Commit to this work fully. With my whole being. Not when and where it suits me. And how do I even start apologising to my partner?