On how POC* are complicit in white supremacy
*Non-Black and Non-Indigneous People of Colour
————————
It's interesting that we've grouped the global majority under this one term because BIPOC communities are vastly different, and are not a monolith (even within the Black communities, Indigenous communities and POC communities). Each ethnicity captured within BIPOC is rich in their own religion, customs, languages, cultures, histories, lived and ancestral experiences and more.
But the reason we are unified under the term BIPOC is because the global majority has faced significant systemic harm via white supremacy (including, but not limited to: violence, exploitation, genocide, enslavement, imperialism, colonialism) at the hands of Western nations.
What is important to clarify is that while the term BIPOC unites us as people who are all impacted by white supremacy, we are not equally affected.
Let's focus on Canada, but this applies to all settler colonies (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and generally applies to European nations as well (this group is referred to as western nations).
The way Black people and Indigenous people are impacted by white supremacy is signifigiantly and systemically worsethan the way non-Black and non-Indingeous people of colour (or POC) are.
This is because we cannot ignore the present day impact of the legacy of enslavement of Black bodies, and the historic and ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples on this land.
European nations justified their colonization of so much of the world because they didn't view BIPOC as human.
This white supremacist belief was legally codified via the Doctrine of Discovery.
Similarly, the violent and inhumane treatment of Black and Indigenous people was and is codified, both overtly and covertly, in our laws to this day.
As a result of these historical and present-day inequities, we see the overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous people in our criminal legal systems and the systemic oppression which continues to disproportionately impact these communities more than other POC and white people.
This is why we intentionally specify B and I in BIPOC rather than just grouping us all as People of Colour.
For these reasons, it's wrong for POC to think they are impacted the same as Black and Indigenous people. To say or believe this is a gross misunderstanding of systemic inequities, an erasure of the systemic harm Black and Indigenous people experience and, honestly, kind of racist.
This isn't to say that POC are not impacted by white supremacy, because we were and are.
Let's remember that most POC weren't alive to remember European colonization on their ancestral land, but rather they saw the “aftermath”* of it.
We know that European colonizers 'granted' independence when it was no longer financially lucrative to keep a colony, and that part of their strategy included the intentional destabilizing of the social, political and economic systems of the colony.
This left nearly, if not all, former colonies strife with corruption, greed, instability, systemic inequities, war, and genocide- and this is the reality of the land the vast majority of our parents and grandparents left for a life in Canada/the West.
POC have had the privilege of being able to view Canada as a land of opportunity because, unlike Indigenous peoples, POC aren't on our ancestral lands as they are being occupied by a colonizer, and, unlike Black people, POC aren't entering a workforce in a high GDP nation that was the direct result of the exploitation and enslavement of your people.
Because POC are not Black or Indigenous, we have the privilege of feeling like Canada is this ideal land, that is so different from the ancestral homes we left.
So POC, despite having experienced ancestral and ongoing trauma as a result of colonization in our ancestral lands, now benefit from these colonial structures in the West.
And because our education systems do an incredible job of ensuring that we don't see/understand the link of colonization to white people or colonization to the 'success' of Western nations, we begin to become conditioned to see whiteness as a key to success.
We view financial security, success, stability, as things that result from whiteness. We accept whiteness as the standard for what is "normal", "acceptable", "polite", and thus celebrated - so we try to mimic it.
And in doing so, we interalize these beliefs that run counter to our very existence, resulting in internalized racism.
Further, with this aspiration of whiteness, POC are unknowingly complicit to and participating in the same whiteness that has deeply entrenched anti-Black and anti-Indigenous beliefs.
One way this happens is POC with these internalized beliefs are seen as more palpable and acceptable to white people (because we share the same 'beliefs'), resulting in POC advancements in white spaces - at the expense of Black and Indigenous people. This is part of the reason why non-Black / non-Indigenous people of colour are considered 'Model Minorities'.
The Model Minority myth is weaponized against Black and Indigenous people, implying that if they tried as hard as "Model Minorities" they could be successful. This myth intentionally diverts attention away from the significant systemic oppression of Black and Indigenous peoples.
We can understand that colonization results in a scarcity mindset for POC, but that scarcity mindset has served its purpose; our ancestors survived, and our parents got out, so we don't need that mindset in the Western countries our families sought refuge and/or economic opportunity in.
In fact, we need to let go of that scarcity mindset of the past because people of colour have privilege* here, and with that privilege comes the responsibility of solidarity in the present.
Because while we can unpack and understand why people of colour subscribe to whiteness, it doesn't justify or excuse that our striving for whiteness has been at the expense of and contributes to the ongoing oppression of Black and Indigenous peoples in Canada.
And this doesn't even begin to address that so much of the privilege POC have in Canada is the result of activism and advocacy done by Black and Indigenous people.
It doesn't speak to how so many people of colour take from Black culture and share so much similar history to Indigenous peoples, and yet POC don’t show up in solidarity when Black and Indigenous people are presently being treated like second-class citizens.
POC, and also the larger BIPOC community, need to unsubscribe from whiteness. We need to speak up and stand with Black, Indigenous and other People of Colour because the liberation we seek doesn’t come from some communities “achieving” whiteness, it comes from the collective liberation of all of us.
Worth noting:
Legal does not necessarily equate to moral.
* European colonization never really ended, given the success of spreading white supremacy beliefs globally
Black and Indigenous people can also have internalized racism.
* See our post on intersectionality for how POC can have privilege and be systemic oppresssed at the same time.
See our post on whataboutism to understanding why responding to this post with “but POC experience _____” is problematic
See our post on unconscious bias to understand how you can know racism is bad and still participate in racism
See our guide on Diaspora healing for more
