Unlearning is Messy, Imperfect and Ongoing Work: On Policing & Community Safety
Unlearning involves dismantling ideas rooted in the systems of oppression that surround us, and developing new skills to bring a more inclusive and critical lens to our world.
It's exciting that so many of us are wanting and trying to unlearn - because it shows that the vast majority of us want to know and do better. We see the division and hate and we recognize that that isn't what we want for ourselves, our communities and our country.
But unlearning is kind of scary: in our *instagram perfect* worlds where we're terrified of being "cancelled," we've forgotten that being told you did something wrong is part of the learning process when you are learning a new skill.
But we shouldn't let the fear of fucking up stop us from trying. Unlearning is messy and imperfect and ongoing work that gets easier the more you commit to it.
After all, none of us took off our training wheels and perfectly rode our bikes, right? It took work and practice before we were able to, and that type of vulnerability is required here too.
The following is a first person account of personal unlearning and reflections on policing by On Canada Project founder, Samanta Krishnapillai.
This week, OCP has been talking a lot about policing, Black liberation and the need for abolition.
I wanted to take time, get uncomfortably vulnerable, and share my reflections on how I went from being "neutral" on the subject of policing, to now being an abolitionist.
I can now name that my ability to be "neutral" (see our stance On Neutrality to understand how cringe this makes me feel now) was a direct result of my privilege and my complicity in white supremacy and anti-Black racism.
My privilege has resulted in positive experiences with the police, which has helped me to ignore (or rationalize) calls to defund & abolish the police.
And this is now kind of embarrassing and awkward to admit because it's not like I'm unfamiliar with racism. I'm Tamil-Canadian, I know what it is like to experience racism, and yet at the time, I couldn't see how I was being complicit in the oppression of Black people.
I’ll also name that - more embarrassing truth - that it took the standstill nature of the pandemic and the public murder of George Floyd for me to question how complicit I was in anti-Black racism and white supremacy as a whole.
Now a couple of years later and having spent a considerable time unlearning - I've come to understand that experiencing racism does not make people experts on the systems of oppression (eg. white supremacy) that allow racist structures to exist.
This can get super confusing and make it really difficult to understand someone else's lived experience when your understanding and expertise are rooted in your own experiences.
Understanding systems of oppression, intersectionality, power and privilege is essential to our ability to understand each other and show up in solidarity for each other
For so long, I used what I knew - which was my own experience with racism - to understand other people's experiences with racism. This limited my understanding of what racism looked like because someone else's experience was being framed around my own.
As I began to understand the system of oppression that is white supremacy, I was able to see beyond my own experiences with racism. It helped me conceptualize and understand intersectionality, power, and privilege.
But even with this new skill, I didn't immediately end up an abolitionist - which I think further demonstrates how necessary an ongoing commitment to unlearning is.
Because even though I was now better equipped to understand how harmful policing is...
I first thought that reform and training alone could address police brutality.
Seeing issues with that, I then thought that defunding police budgets and increasing the capacity for community services would be enough.
Before recognizing that alone still isn’t enough, and finally I arrived at an understanding that is what Black advocates have been saying all along:
A system designed to protect the property of wealthy white people (including all the people who were considered property: women, slaves, criminals) cannot be the system we use for community safety.
So here is the kicker friends:
I'm embarrassed that for so long I tried to relate to other people's experiences with racism through my own.
I'm also embarrassed about how my unlearning and solidarity with the Black community didn't meaningfully start until the summer of June 2020.
But I'm actually ashamed that even after I started engaging and unlearning, it took me so long to come to the same conclusion that Black people were calling for all along.
This has led me to one of my most recent unlearning moments, which is: saying Black Lives Matter means believing and trusting Black people when they tell you what they need.
And to be clear, obviously, just believing Black people when they tell you what they need isn't enough - we also need to commit to the ongoing unlearning work and show up in solidarity with Black people.
But we all need to stop offering solutions that we’re comfortable with and start offering, supporting, and advocating for the solutions that have been asked for.
We must decenter ourselves from our solidarity work, and center the people we're trying to show up alongside.
And this will require ongoing work to understand power, privilege, intersectionality and systems of oppression.
All the unlearning moments I've shared honestly seem super obvious when I read them now, but they've clearly been such a mental barrier to my journey of showing up in solidarity with communities I care about.
And even in naming it here, I know that despite having been able to name what I need to change in how I do something, I've been imperfect in doing so.
But I will say that when comparing 2019 me to 2023 me, I do see an improvement in my ability to catch myself when I unknowingly fall into status quo behaviour that upholds white supremacy.
This work is humbling, terrifying, liberating, imperfect, messy, hard and above all else, our responsibility to do.
And look, you aren't alone. That's what we're trying to do here with On Canada Project; creating a space and community to show up messy and unlearn together.
Lean into the discomfort. Get comfortable naming and navigating your mental barriers to understanding an issue. Get vulnerable with yourself. Embrace imperfection. And above all, keep doing the work.
Start by honouring Black History Month and working to understand why community safety for all of us requires abolishing the police.
