Many of my upcoming posts will explore what it means to be anti-racist. I have a couple of projects I want to do for 2019 that include an Instagram comic dealing with grammar and anti-racism as well as cited work to complement content from the comic. I’m hoping the information will be easy enough for hub’s 8th grade students to read, since for some reason I have a lot of his students following my linguistcoelho Instagram account already.
I know there is a lot of anti-racism information already out there, spread all over the internet. I want to create a compilation of scholarship, books, websites, articles — anything useful that will help people start their journey to become an anti-racist. I’m not sure yet (I still need to research) if there already exists a website that does this. If there is, I will definitely link it here. But I also plan to create my own content.
Part of the major problem with anti-racism is that white people get their feelings hurt too easily. It’s called White Fragility, coined by white sociologist Robin DiAngelo in 2011. Many white people are isolated from the discussion of racism, automatically become defensive and shut down, walk away, or attack the people who discuss racism. My first post will discuss why this happens and what you should do to truly advance your anti-racism values.
The approach I will take to educate about anti-racism is from a Black feminist point of view: to be anti-racist means to fight all forms of oppression (i.e. intersectionality). I also plan to take a linguistic point of view as informed by raciolinguistics. Mixing these two ideologies should bring forth an understanding as to why White Supremacy is embedded in all our institutions and way of thinking and being (especially if you’re white).
Saffron Coelho 