So often, in talks or conversations on the subject of “decolonising” or “antiracism”, someone will pose the question asking what they can do. I don’t think it has failed to come up in any talk or panel discussion I’ve taken part in. It’s as though people want a checklist, a series of actions and answers as to how they can help. But there are no definitive answers, only messiness and complexity and uncertainties. These are things we need to sit with. Must learn to sit with. There is no destination or place of arrival. There are no medals on offer to mark when you have finally become ‘decolonised’. There is no finish line to cross. Thinking in this way is, in itself, reflective of the dominant, restrictive mindset loops we find ourselves in - a mindset of binaries, of right and wrong, good and bad, of superior and inferior. The very thing we should be working to break out of.
Enlightenment ideas of reason and rationality sees us wanting (nay, demanding!) neat, tidy, ordered, absolute answers. But that is not how life is. Not how nature is. And, by extension, not how we are.
I’ve always balked at the question because how do you go about answering it meaningfully? How long is a piece of string?
Attempting to answer this question feels reductive and prescriptive. And I have no more a definitive answer to this question than anyone else.
I’ve been reading and listening to Bayo Akomolafe recently. He puts it thus and says it far better:
“…when people ask me “so what do we do with all of this?” I say that’s what you should start investigating with. That is part of the furniture of the ‘upper deck’ [of the metaphorical slave ship that we are all still on]. Investigate that question. It’s not self evident or ahistorical.
Dwell with the question ‘what do we do?’. Because that question in itself is part of the furniture of the ‘upper deck’. Stay with it as you would stay with a living being. …. Live with that question and see where it takes you.”
“Notice that our lives are subsidised by the invisible. And until we learn to live and meet the invisible we will continue to reproduce the same paradigms that we’re trying to escape.”
[…]
“Our work is inter-generational. That means it’s not upon us to ‘get it’ or to be ‘saved’. That is still premised on the idea that we are individuals and that our lives are still isolated from other lives and our death is terminated and then how many brownie points have I gotten before I died? Was I finally decolonised? Did I finally get what all these teachers said? Even our failure matters. … And they will stream down and ripple out into the world... … Our failures, even the things you’re struggling with today, the threadbare edges of the fabric that you’re weaving, it might be the threads of a fabric that another generation uses to compose myths and stories of emancipation. It doesn’t end with you. It doesn’t end with me.”
If you have a moment, you can watch the talk in full (“The times are urgent, let us slow down” - from which these excerpts are taken) here. It’s a bit of a long watch but hugely thought-provoking. Many ideas he discusses I will be thinking over for a while to come:
Also much to think about reading this blog post of his (“Dear White People”), which he wrote a few years ago and in which he says this:
“Decolonizing myself is not about reclaiming a pre-existing given: Decolonization might suggest returning to an original palette, an original practice, an ancient way – but the idea of originary paths and autonomous givens are themselves products of white frames of knowing. Anti-colonial and Pan-African movements often try to enact justice by appealing to an elaborate ideal – a romanticized vision of Afrocentricity. In so doing, they uphold a politics of identity that is blind to changing contexts and the ineradicable markings of our colonial pasts. A different way to think about decolonization is as intimacy with where we are. It is accounting for and opening up to our embeddedness, not grappling for a Plato-nic identity or transcendent quality.”
Recommend reading the post in its entirety. His thoughts on what it means to be indigenous were particularly uplifting and enlightening: