Internalized Racism & Me

Repost from Thirty, Flirting and Figuring it Out. Originally posted on March 22, 2021.

I’m not a professional writer; I’m just a girl, standing in front of the internet, asking it to read my story.

Last week I had the privilege of speaking in front of 1300 Ontario Public Service employees at the Ontario Anti-Racism Directorates’ event to acknowledge International Elimination of Racial Discrimination Day. I made many speaker notes, some of which I didn’t get a chance to share. Here is some of what my notes had to say.

First, my experience with race isn’t the same as yours; drafting my speakers’ notes was emotional and is an emotional process for most BIPOC individuals. To quote Thando Hopa, there is so much complexity that comes with it.

My entire existence is coloured (ha) by my race. There is no escaping that (trust me, I’ve tried, years of internalized racism, and I’ve got zilch to show for it). Yes, I’m a South Asian woman of Tamil Eelam descent. No, that isn’t the only thing about me worth knowing.

Yet, I often feel like I have to fill one of two roles in a room. The first makes me a spokesperson for people who look like me; the second requires me to minimize my race to participate in conversations and be in the room where decisions are being made.

Both of these roles are so freakin exhausting.

This isn’t just in rooms with white folk or predominantly white folk. Many people of colour have such internalized racism that we think interacting with each other needs to follow a culture that perpetuates colonial structures rooted in white supremacy. We often think that to be Canadian, we have to play by ‘Canadian’ rules.

This all eventually changed for me, and it largely stems from two events. Both involving Black individuals - which is reflective of the fact that is centring blackness and dismantling anti-black racism benefits all people of colour, not just Black folk.

Event 1: Face to Face with my Internalized Racism

About five years ago, I had the unique privilege of working for a man named Malvin Wright while I interned at the SW-LHIN (RIP LHINs), and he was unapologetically Black. At that point in my life, I had never had a boss or adult mentor that spoke so honestly and vulnerably about the complexity of race and his experience with it. I was invigorated by Malvin’s energy and honesty. I mean, he was his full self in spaces and didn’t adjust himself to fit into what our ‘Canadian culture’ dictated - I remember feeling inspired by the radical notion of just being allowed to be who I am.

That is when it dawned on me that in both roles - either as a spokesperson or as a person minimizing her race to be in the room - I was adjusting myself to help make white-centered spaces more comfortable for the white people who were in the room.

They never explicitly asked me to; it’s just how things are. And of course, it’s like this. We live on stolen land that was colonized. When colonizers came to this land (and also my ancestral land of the island now known as Sri Lanka), we know that they saw the Indigenous people as less than. We know that when they kidnapped Black folk from the continent of Africa, that they saw them as less than. There was no meaningful reconciliation or reparations. There was no public education strategy to help people unlearn and be better. They just built our country on the foundation of seeing people who are not white as being less than those who are white.

Everything we have now is rooted in white supremacy, and there has been no meaningful, coordinated effort to dismantle this.

In the months I spent as an intern, yes, I learnt things about public policy and the health sector, but the more significant takeaway was the unintentional mentoring Malvin provided me with that started my journey of unpacking my own internalized racism.

I feel lucky to have met him and have started down that journey because it is not something all people of colour unpack. You don’t realize you have internalized racism until suddenly it clicks, and then that is all you can see when looking at your life. It made sense why I was so embarrassed about the food my mom would send at lunch or how it wasn’t until white people appropriated yoga that I allowed myself to.

Event 2: The Line has been Drawn

While event one was very personal to my experience, event two is one you know—the Black Lives Matter Movement dominating the international stage during the Summer of 2020.

So much has been said about this event already, so I’m not going to delve into it. It is essential, I think, to mention that the BLM movement benefits all oppressed people. By lifting, empowering, valuing, respecting, believing, trusting and protecting Black folk, we build a society that does better for all of us.

The part of that summer worth noting for the purposes of my story is the realization that the line was officially drawn. It is not socially acceptable anymore to be in the middle - playing a bystander’s role in racism. The sides are now Actively Anti-Racist & Dismantling White Supremacy or Peptuating Racism/Being Racist. There is no way for anyone to say that they didn’t know how bad it is anymore. The excuse of being unaware is no longer allowed because there was no way to avoid last summer’s events. Corporations, Governments, Communities, Schools, banks, etc., - are all responsible for being actively anti-racist now, and if they aren’t, they are choosing the other side.

This moment was LIBERATING to me. Why? Because there is freedom now to not have to minimize myself anymore. There is freedom now to question the status quo openly. There is freedom now to hold myself and others accountable for not actively being anti-racist.

Bringing it all Together

I wrote earlier about how there were two roles I always found myself filling. A spokesperson for my culture or trying to minimize my full self to be part of what I had always been calling “Canadian” culture.

I’ve decided it isn’t actually accurate to call it ‘Canadian’ culture because I’m Canadian. Therefore, calling it Canadian culture isn’t accurate because true Canadian culture would allow me, a Canadian, to show up fully.

The thing minimizing me or making me a spokesperson is our colonial culture. This culture is the prevalent culture in Canada, and I’m done with it. Colonial culture, by design, will never let me, or any Black, Indigenous and other people of colour, to show up as their true, authentic and full self. Colonial culture will not protect BIPOC folk; it will not set us up for success; it will not value and uplift us.

If this is something you understand to be fundamentally unfair, join me in redefining Canadian culture and actively rejecting colonial culture. You don’t have to know how to do this perfectly; you don’t have to have answers for how we tackle this systemically - just join me in challenging the status quo. Join me in showing up as your full self.

I’m going to be putting this into action on a project I started. The project started to tackle communication gaps in COVID-19 messaging but has broadened its scope recently. Check us out on Instagram @OnCanadaProject.

Thanks again to Ontario’s Anti-Racism Directorate for letting me gather my thoughts on this for the panel you put together last week. It’s scary sharing my truth like this but also quite freeing.