Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I will be interviewing a number
Joanne Lockwood: of amazing people and simply having a conversation around the
Joanne Lockwood: subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a
Joanne Lockwood: better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the
Joanne Lockwood: future, then please do drop me a line to Joe Lock code
Joanne Lockwood: at seechangehappen. Co UK. That's
Joanne Lockwood: seechangehappen. Co UK. You'll
Joanne Lockwood: be able to catch up with all of the previous shows on itunes, Spotify and
Joanne Lockwood: the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a
Joanne Lockwood: decaf and let's get going. Today
Joanne Lockwood: is episode 20 with the title
Joanne Lockwood: Antiracism isn't Rocket science. And I have the
Joanne Lockwood: absolute honour and privilege to be joined by Mural von
Joanne Lockwood: Hustard. I met Mirror recently at an online
Joanne Lockwood: event and discovered we both share a passion for
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion. Mirror describes herself as a vessel through which
Joanne Lockwood: knowledge and wisdom manifests. When
Joanne Lockwood: I asked Meryl to describe her superpower, she said she
Joanne Lockwood: creates solid ground. Hello,
Joanne Lockwood: Meryl. Welcome to the show. Hey, Joe.
Merel van Haastert: Hi, Jo. Hey. Good to be
Joanne Lockwood: welcome. So, who is Mural? Tell me a bit about
Joanne Lockwood: yourself. Well, like you
Merel van Haastert: said, Mirror von Hasttert, I live in
Merel van Haastert: Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. I'm a
Merel van Haastert: wise woman, a crone.
Merel van Haastert: I turned 51 just a couple of days ago.
Merel van Haastert: I'm a proud woman, I'm a single parent
Merel van Haastert: and I have a beautiful son. That's
Merel van Haastert: me privately. And I have my own
Merel van Haastert: company called Solid Ground, which, again, comes back. We'll
Merel van Haastert: talk about that a little bit later. I
Merel van Haastert: do energy work and spiritual work,
Merel van Haastert: where I guide people through
Merel van Haastert: well, any problems they have,
Merel van Haastert: something that comes up in their life when they get stuck,
Merel van Haastert: that's my business.
Joanne Lockwood: So you said you're a crone? I
Joanne Lockwood: know of that word, but what do you mean by a wise
Joanne Lockwood: woman and crone? Well, it's the
Merel van Haastert: one thing I've always been passionate about. As
Merel van Haastert: a little girl, I knew I was going to thrive when I was older
Merel van Haastert: and I always wanted to be a wise woman, a crone,
Merel van Haastert: somebody with knowledge and sharing that knowledge
Merel van Haastert: or being of service, not even sharing
Merel van Haastert: knowledge that I have myself, but that comes through me. Like you said, I
Merel van Haastert: feel like a vessel where knowledge and wisdom
Merel van Haastert: comes through. I always wanted to be this, but it took me a very long
Merel van Haastert: time. Well, of course, in years, but also to
Merel van Haastert: feel confident enough to stand my ground
Merel van Haastert: there. Now I'm 50, I'm this
Merel van Haastert: young, new chrome yay. I'm happy about
Merel van Haastert: that. So I'm actually finally in the place
Merel van Haastert: where I wanted to be. You were born
Joanne Lockwood: to be 50. Basically, you were born to be in your have
Joanne Lockwood: this lived experience that you can share and amplify for others.
Merel van Haastert: Yeah, I've always wanted to be this and I'm
Merel van Haastert: feeling like I've got a lot more years to go, so I'm finally
Merel van Haastert: there. This has all been preparation before. It so when I
Merel van Haastert: turned 30, I didn't have that, like, oh, God, I'm turning 30, I'm turning
Merel van Haastert: old. I'm actually quite going like, Yay. Finally.
Joanne Lockwood: Superb. I know what you mean.
Joanne Lockwood: Each decade you find something more about yourself, don't you? And I think
Joanne Lockwood: I've certainly learned a lot more about myself since I turned 50. And
Joanne Lockwood: I think 50 is the new 40. We used to say this about our 40s,
Joanne Lockwood: but I think we're much wiser now. In our 50s.
Merel van Haastert: I've got this new sense of energy, this new
Merel van Haastert: sense of being that isn't so rocky. I don't want to
Merel van Haastert: be in my 20s again. I liked it and I liked being a youth,
Merel van Haastert: but it's so uncertain. I'm not that uncertain anymore.
Merel van Haastert: I know who I am and what the world. So I can now
Merel van Haastert: exchange between the world and me more than I could
Merel van Haastert: when I was younger. And I've got something to say,
Merel van Haastert: not just stuff that I've learned, but also
Merel van Haastert: I listen much better to people because you're
Merel van Haastert: not constantly taking it personal. Because I know who I
Merel van Haastert: am, I've learned. Very good point.
Joanne Lockwood: Yes. I think we stopped trying to be anybody else other than ourselves,
Joanne Lockwood: haven't we? Yeah, we don't need to be. We've been other
Joanne Lockwood: people all our lives. A parent, a child, a
Joanne Lockwood: sibling. And now we're us, aren't we? I think that's where it comes in.
Joanne Lockwood: Fantastic. Very good age. So I actually think
Merel van Haastert: it's better than I thought it was. Of course, as a young girl, you
Merel van Haastert: don't know what it's like of a young person. You don't know what that's going
Merel van Haastert: to be like. But I want to tell my
Merel van Haastert: younger self, or even other young people going like, but this is
Merel van Haastert: awesome. Hurry, come 50
Joanne Lockwood: quickly.
Joanne Lockwood: Don't worry about it. It's good. Yeah. Welcome to the club.
Joanne Lockwood: Fantastic. So we got chatting the other day
Joanne Lockwood: at this online event, and antiracism
Joanne Lockwood: is something that we, as white people,
Joanne Lockwood: probably don't understand enough. So why isn't it rocket
Joanne Lockwood: science? Why isn't it rocket science?
Merel van Haastert: If you take off the blinders
Merel van Haastert: that you can do yourself, it is nothing that is
Merel van Haastert: out there that you don't know you already know.
Merel van Haastert: All the information is there. There's nothing you have to do, you
Merel van Haastert: just have to see it.
Merel van Haastert: That is, of course, difficult because there are a lot of
Merel van Haastert: layers put upon us,
Merel van Haastert: indoctrination and all sorts of ideas and
Merel van Haastert: stuff that are put on top of us.
Merel van Haastert: But your soul knows, so there's nothing new
Merel van Haastert: about this. There's nothing that
Merel van Haastert: you won't understand. It's your
Merel van Haastert: defence mechanism that kicks in, but that's it. The
Merel van Haastert: rest of it, you just have to listen and then go like,
Merel van Haastert: oh, but that's actually quite normal, that people
Merel van Haastert: are the same, everybody's the same. That skin colour doesn't
Merel van Haastert: do anything. There's nothing
Merel van Haastert: there. When we are young
Merel van Haastert: and we're going to school for the first time, you
Merel van Haastert: are taught to help others, to see people as equals.
Merel van Haastert: As young kids, we have no
Merel van Haastert: Philtre put in there yet
Merel van Haastert: to see people as different. So if you go back to
Merel van Haastert: that and feel like, oh, yeah, but I never
Merel van Haastert: saw my friend different because she or he
Merel van Haastert: had a different skin colour, it was, know, Jack
Merel van Haastert: or whoever daisy it was. And if you go
Merel van Haastert: back to that, that's that's, then from there, you can understand
Merel van Haastert: all, uh,
Merel van Haastert: different strategies that are used to put
Merel van Haastert: racism and white supremacy in place.
Merel van Haastert: Does that make sense to you? Yeah, it does. But
Joanne Lockwood: as a white person myself, it's.
Merel van Haastert: Really. Challenging to sort of
Joanne Lockwood: think about racism. And it's not about ourselves. It's about
Joanne Lockwood: the societal and structural racism more
Joanne Lockwood: as much as it is about the casual racism and the
Joanne Lockwood: vindictive or discriminatory racism that occurs in day to day life.
Joanne Lockwood: So as a white person, how do I drill through that? How do I try
Joanne Lockwood: and really unpack about? Because it's not about the
Joanne Lockwood: racism I've caused, is it? It's about the racism that exists in society and
Joanne Lockwood: the inequity that occurs. Yeah, I think that
Merel van Haastert: white people take it very personal
Merel van Haastert: because you take it as an individual, as an individual CEO. But
Merel van Haastert: I don't have these beliefs. I don't see you any differently.
Merel van Haastert: But it's a system. It's a system there
Merel van Haastert: that you were born into.
Merel van Haastert: It's not something that you did. You didn't
Merel van Haastert: think like, okay, let's discriminate against
Merel van Haastert: whomever or whatever it could be
Merel van Haastert: gender or sexuality. You don't think
Merel van Haastert: consciously think, okay, let's discriminate. It's a system
Merel van Haastert: that you're brought into. Like, you go to school and you learn about your ABCs
Merel van Haastert: and you learn about calculation. And through
Merel van Haastert: all these messages you get how society
Merel van Haastert: works. And then you start as a child, you start relating
Merel van Haastert: to, okay, my parents ask this of me, or Society asks
Merel van Haastert: that of me. And that's how you learn
Merel van Haastert: how the world works. So what white
Merel van Haastert: people forget is that there is
Merel van Haastert: white culture. It
Merel van Haastert: exists. We don't see it, but
Merel van Haastert: it's the set of values and norms and all that stuff
Merel van Haastert: that you get imprinted. And that
Merel van Haastert: imprint is how you act in the world.
Merel van Haastert: And that is not your soul. It has nothing to do
Merel van Haastert: with you being a human. That's how I see
Merel van Haastert: it. So is that the same as
Joanne Lockwood: kind of the default is white? So if we're looking for
Joanne Lockwood: a photograph, the Default photograph is of a white person.
Joanne Lockwood: We're looking at pictures of in your various faith groups,
Joanne Lockwood: pictures of our faith leaders, of historical faith leaders. They're
Joanne Lockwood: always shown as white people, aren't they, with beards and golden
Joanne Lockwood: hair. So we've built this very whitest default sort
Joanne Lockwood: of way of looking at the world, haven't we? And when we think as a
Joanne Lockwood: white person, we always think about white people. We don't think in
Joanne Lockwood: our narrative about non white people as part of our
Joanne Lockwood: picture, do we? No, we don't.
Merel van Haastert: You don't even realise that it happens because you're
Merel van Haastert: so used to all the books being with the same
Merel van Haastert: pictures and the movies being about.
Merel van Haastert: There are a little bit of in the background or on the
Merel van Haastert: edges, there are some people of colour there
Merel van Haastert: like it's like you know that there's a little bit of a
Merel van Haastert: blanket of the world with different groups, but
Merel van Haastert: the narrative is white. But we never call
Merel van Haastert: it that way. We never mention it, that
Merel van Haastert: you are a specific group.
Merel van Haastert: That's where the how do you say
Merel van Haastert: that decolonization
Merel van Haastert: starts when dismantling starts when you
Merel van Haastert: realise that you are of white culture. And
Merel van Haastert: then you can start to see the difference between system
Merel van Haastert: and the individual and how that works.
Joanne Lockwood: You're aware of my gender transition and my background.
Joanne Lockwood: And ideally, in the same way we see white as
Joanne Lockwood: default, we often see men male as default as well. In a lot of
Joanne Lockwood: narratives in movies and the heroes, and when
Joanne Lockwood: we're looking at roles and expectations, man is kind of the
Joanne Lockwood: default. And having
Joanne Lockwood: moved to the other side for whatever better way of describing it, I
Joanne Lockwood: now see that default from a different
Joanne Lockwood: angle. Whereas once I was immersed in that and saw no problem,
Joanne Lockwood: now I'm now feeling the wind in
Joanne Lockwood: my face as I travel
Joanne Lockwood: of seeing all this inequity of representation. I don't
Joanne Lockwood: want to get off the topic of racism and I'm not trying to talk here
Joanne Lockwood: about gender, but I think unless you've
Joanne Lockwood: come out of a place where you are in the default and gone to a
Joanne Lockwood: place where you're not the default, you cannot understand what it's like to be the
Joanne Lockwood: default, if that makes sense. So for white people like
Joanne Lockwood: ourselves, we can never stop being white and
Joanne Lockwood: therefore our privilege is the same as water and
Joanne Lockwood: oxygen. It's all around us and we can't tell it's there because we
Joanne Lockwood: can't see it. Yeah, you can
Merel van Haastert: never get away from it. It is not something that you take off
Merel van Haastert: the privilege is there. You can't put it away. You can't say
Merel van Haastert: to, when you're going through security at an airport, say
Merel van Haastert: to this officer that's standing there, well, treat me
Merel van Haastert: like the person you did with a different skin colour.
Merel van Haastert: It doesn't work that way. So that's also why you don't see
Merel van Haastert: it. I think that you touched upon something that I was thinking
Merel van Haastert: about. Just thinking about. There needs to be a bit
Merel van Haastert: of a breakdown somewhere.
Merel van Haastert: And I'm saying what you just said,
Merel van Haastert: you've had that gender change.
Merel van Haastert: I've had some breakdown in my life too,
Merel van Haastert: like divorce and losing
Merel van Haastert: a job. When the crisis went on about ten
Merel van Haastert: years ago, it started an economical crisis.
Merel van Haastert: There needs to be a bit of a breakdown that gives you
Merel van Haastert: an entry towards seeing the world a little
Merel van Haastert: bit the larger scope of
Merel van Haastert: the world. So,
Merel van Haastert: strangely enough, you have an advantage when you are
Merel van Haastert: not the standard in the world.
Merel van Haastert: In white people. Of course there's a standard. We have a hierarchy
Merel van Haastert: within white people too. But nobody fully
Merel van Haastert: fits this standard. But the amount that you don't
Merel van Haastert: fit into that standard gives you the opportunity
Merel van Haastert: to see from a different point of
Merel van Haastert: view, see different perspectives. That also means
Merel van Haastert: that you can pick up on different
Merel van Haastert: perspectives and then you start seeing then you can
Merel van Haastert: it's like something that you you turn
Merel van Haastert: out of yourself, you, you know, like and that's not the right word.
Merel van Haastert: You zoom out of yourself a little bit and
Merel van Haastert: that's this break, this breakdown of norms
Merel van Haastert: and values that helps you to see other
Merel van Haastert: plights, other narratives.
Joanne Lockwood: If you look at some of the terminology and phraseologies that's evolved
Joanne Lockwood: over the years. So we talk about people of
Joanne Lockwood: colour, POC, we talk about BAME,
Joanne Lockwood: we talk about BME, we now talk about BIPOC, we talk about all
Joanne Lockwood: these sort of various terms for categorising people who are not
Joanne Lockwood: white, whereas there is no kind of categorization as
Joanne Lockwood: such for whiteness, is there? We don't talk about a bit
Joanne Lockwood: white or very white or English white or brown or
Joanne Lockwood: French white. We just are again, it's
Joanne Lockwood: default. Some of these terms, I understand, are
Joanne Lockwood: quite maybe not offensive to some people, but they certainly
Joanne Lockwood: are stereotyping people, they're grouping people that
Joanne Lockwood: not every person who is not white is the same. And
Joanne Lockwood: we kind of marginalise and erase lived experiences by categorising
Joanne Lockwood: people as black, Asian, minority,
Joanne Lockwood: ethnics. And that so
Joanne Lockwood: understates people's lived experience as a community, doesn't it?
Merel van Haastert: Yeah, and it does, because
Merel van Haastert: you have white as the default.
Merel van Haastert: It all is related to as not white
Merel van Haastert: or default. In the centering is still
Merel van Haastert: white. That is like you put yourself in the centre
Merel van Haastert: of the world and then everything has to relate to you.
Merel van Haastert: And that's how we do it. At first
Merel van Haastert: it's really weird, actually. Yeah,
Merel van Haastert: I started laughing a little bit white, less
Merel van Haastert: white, that kind of thing.
Merel van Haastert: Actually, there is a little bit of it
Merel van Haastert: because I live in the Netherlands and we have some
Merel van Haastert: Polish people here. We don't consider them white, we
Merel van Haastert: consider them foreigners. So
Merel van Haastert: there is a hierarchy within white.
Joanne Lockwood: I had this conversation about a year ago with someone and we're talking about
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion and there are good immigrants
Joanne Lockwood: and there are bad immigrants, aren't there? And I was talking to this person
Joanne Lockwood: who was Dutch themselves. I said, well, as a Dutch person in the UK, you're
Joanne Lockwood: a good immigrant. We like Dutch people, French people we
Joanne Lockwood: make our own jokes about, and Germans we make our own jokes about, and Italians
Joanne Lockwood: we make other jokes around. But if you came
Joanne Lockwood: from the old Eastern Europe
Joanne Lockwood: poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania,
Joanne Lockwood: anywhere that is maybe east of Germany,
Joanne Lockwood: effectively what would be considered maybe part of the Soviet Union or part of
Joanne Lockwood: that kind of
Joanne Lockwood: 70s image of communism we see these
Joanne Lockwood: people as less intelligent. We see them as
Joanne Lockwood: chancers, often maybe more
Joanne Lockwood: crooked. And we cast these doubts on people who
Joanne Lockwood: are not good immigrants. And
Joanne Lockwood: it's shocking to hear the language in the media, the way that people are
Joanne Lockwood: described and the way that their accents are kind
Joanne Lockwood: of demonised in a way.
Joanne Lockwood: People would say people from Estonia are good immigrants because they're kind of clean
Joanne Lockwood: and very well spoken, whereas someone from Lithuania sounds
Joanne Lockwood: a bit darker. There's a whole load of new
Joanne Lockwood: stereotypes are coming now and again. Racism is more
Joanne Lockwood: than just white people and black people. There's also racism
Joanne Lockwood: within communities, within faith groups, within religions. Isn't.
Merel van Haastert: Have probably in England the same. But I'm going
Merel van Haastert: to ask you about that because in the Netherlands, within the country,
Merel van Haastert: there's also we have these
Merel van Haastert: different accents that we consider not
Merel van Haastert: so bright, not so
Merel van Haastert: and I lived in Thailand for a while
Merel van Haastert: and I worked there and it's a huge country, of
Merel van Haastert: course, not one of the biggest, but huge country. And then
Merel van Haastert: I was thinking about the Netherlands. If you do,
Merel van Haastert: you're through it, right? It's like one and a half hours
Merel van Haastert: or almost maybe two, and it's done.
Merel van Haastert: And then we have this. Then I think
Merel van Haastert: about the way we categorise and
Merel van Haastert: label people just from the area they're from. It is the
Merel van Haastert: Netherlands. We're a post stamp.
Merel van Haastert: But even there, there are parts from the Netherlands. Where
Merel van Haastert: you're from means that you're a certain kind of way or you think
Merel van Haastert: that you're more intelligent or not. Is this going on in England too?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I think we would call it white supremacy. We have
Joanne Lockwood: a lot of English nationalism going on about anything
Joanne Lockwood: non British is kind of not as good.
Joanne Lockwood: And inevitably that leads people to be
Joanne Lockwood: racist because what they mean when they talk about being British, they
Joanne Lockwood: mean white British, they don't mean whatever
Joanne Lockwood: British. There's still this kind of if you're
Joanne Lockwood: not white and British, you're not British. And there's a
Joanne Lockwood: certain section of society that still sees that and that's abhorrent to
Joanne Lockwood: me. But again, part of this white is
Joanne Lockwood: default and England is a united
Joanne Lockwood: kingdom, is a kind of a white default society and it's taking
Joanne Lockwood: a lot to change people's minds. And there's a lot
Joanne Lockwood: of rejection of the Black Lives Matter movement. There's a lot of fight back
Joanne Lockwood: against this movement by a sect of British society.
Joanne Lockwood: And it's shocking to see, but those kind
Joanne Lockwood: of attitudes still exist. But they do. We saw it with Brexit, we saw it
Joanne Lockwood: with this nationalistic protectionism. We want to
Joanne Lockwood: protect this country for the white British people. And if you're not
Joanne Lockwood: white British, then you should go.
Joanne Lockwood: And it's hard fighting back around that. And I don't even necessarily think that's
Joanne Lockwood: privilege speaking. In fact, a lot of these people, I would say, are not speaking
Joanne Lockwood: from a point of privilege, they're speaking from a point of nationalism. Almost
Joanne Lockwood: like this, I dare say. I don't want to
Joanne Lockwood: stress too far to say fascist views, extreme right wing
Joanne Lockwood: views, but a lot
Joanne Lockwood: of it is spelling from that, I think. Yeah,
Merel van Haastert: it's the same in the Netherlands.
Merel van Haastert: England and the Netherlands have a bit of have
Merel van Haastert: similarities where they colonised parts of this
Merel van Haastert: world and they called it the part of their kingdom.
Merel van Haastert: You still have the Commonwealth. I think that's one of the words
Merel van Haastert: that's used in the Netherlands. We don't use it,
Merel van Haastert: but we have of course had Indonesia,
Merel van Haastert: Suriname, some islands in
Merel van Haastert: Caribbean and strangely
Merel van Haastert: enough, when I grew up I knew these areas were
Merel van Haastert: there. But I now recall that I
Merel van Haastert: never thought of them as being Dutch.
Merel van Haastert: While they were included
Merel van Haastert: in our laws and everything, I never
Merel van Haastert: considered them Dutch. So when
Merel van Haastert: you have these problems right now with the
Merel van Haastert: demonstrations in the Netherlands
Merel van Haastert: trying to get the conversation
Merel van Haastert: going about systemic racism and white supremacy,
Merel van Haastert: people still keep yelling at these people with a different
Merel van Haastert: skin colour than white, like go back to your country. Because they
Merel van Haastert: don't consider they never thought that
Merel van Haastert: Suriname was part of the Netherlands. Of course it
Merel van Haastert: wasn't, but by law it was.
Merel van Haastert: But we hear too, Dutch means
Merel van Haastert: white, means white person from the
Merel van Haastert: Netherlands. There are large
Merel van Haastert: groups, I live in Rotterdam and that it means
Merel van Haastert: that we have 70% of our
Merel van Haastert: inhabitants have a different cultural or
Merel van Haastert: background than Dutch. So how is
Merel van Haastert: it still possible that just this minority gets
Merel van Haastert: to say just us is what
Merel van Haastert: matters. That's what we do it for, nothing
Merel van Haastert: else. 70%, that means 70% of the
Merel van Haastert: city has to go. Then the city will shut down. Just this
Merel van Haastert: city and this goes rest of the world
Merel van Haastert: as well. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: you're touching on colonialism now, which is the
Joanne Lockwood: Brits, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish
Joanne Lockwood: and even if you think about the Italians and the Roman
Joanne Lockwood: Empire, there's been a lot of colonialism going on by
Joanne Lockwood: white Europeans. If you like
Joanne Lockwood: trading religion for wealth
Joanne Lockwood: and we give you our religion and destroy your culture and we steal
Joanne Lockwood: your wealth and your
Joanne Lockwood: heritage. I was at a
Joanne Lockwood: Tutankhamun exhibition at the Saatchi
Joanne Lockwood: Gallery in London, I think last year and I
Joanne Lockwood: didn't look at it with the right lens. I've
Joanne Lockwood: replayed that visit with a different lens and basically
Joanne Lockwood: white privileged people went to Egypt, dug
Joanne Lockwood: holes in their ground, stole all their goods, brought them back to the UK.
Joanne Lockwood: And it was almost like
Joanne Lockwood: we were the colonial masters and we felt entitled to do that.
Joanne Lockwood: And I look at it now and thinking all the stuff we hold at the
Joanne Lockwood: British Museum, that's from Egypt, from Greece, from ancient
Joanne Lockwood: civilizations that we hold and
Joanne Lockwood: quite rightly, the governments of these countries want their
Joanne Lockwood: artefacts back. And I think it's important that we
Joanne Lockwood: understand whose artefacts they are and the culturalism about where
Joanne Lockwood: they came from. And this is again part of the British
Joanne Lockwood: or the Western white culture is that we
Joanne Lockwood: feel an incentive entitlement to the world's
Joanne Lockwood: history. The white people wrote history. And actually what we need to do
Joanne Lockwood: is understand that white people didn't write history. White people
Joanne Lockwood: created some bad history and some bad events. But
Joanne Lockwood: there's plenty of cultures out there that were managing quite happily
Joanne Lockwood: without white people coming along and giving them religion,
Joanne Lockwood: stealing all their goods. Yeah,
Merel van Haastert: I'm not so good with names, but there was a woman that recently
Merel van Haastert: said or said like, our history does not
Merel van Haastert: exist unless white people were there once white people
Merel van Haastert: came there, history all of a sudden
Merel van Haastert: existed again from their lens
Merel van Haastert: through the white lens. And it's in our
Merel van Haastert: genes somehow, because probably you've
Merel van Haastert: had this experience as well, that you
Merel van Haastert: grow up and you know that there's a big world and you want to see
Merel van Haastert: it and you travel it. Right. You've got a passport that gives you
Merel van Haastert: access to it. I have a passport, Dutch passport,
Merel van Haastert: that gives me almost access to almost anywhere in the world,
Merel van Haastert: and I don't even think about it. And
Merel van Haastert: it means that we are so used to thinking
Merel van Haastert: that we can just go and be
Merel van Haastert: anywhere without asking it's
Merel van Haastert: not even asking. It's just considering the other
Merel van Haastert: person. This is what we've
Merel van Haastert: grown up with. And that's this system thing. Again,
Merel van Haastert: this is not personal. It's this system thing that
Merel van Haastert: our ancestors have given us
Merel van Haastert: this idea that the world is
Merel van Haastert: ours and we can take whatever we
Merel van Haastert: want with it. Just to mention because there's going to
Merel van Haastert: be criticism here. It happens every time.
Merel van Haastert: And that is like but in all those countries
Merel van Haastert: and years before racism, like slavery came,
Merel van Haastert: all these other cultures also did enslave people and
Merel van Haastert: stuff. Yeah, that happened, too. But
Merel van Haastert: the Dutch, the English, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the
Merel van Haastert: French what we did was
Merel van Haastert: we made it a worldwide economy.
Merel van Haastert: We put it on a global scale. That is,
Merel van Haastert: to me, what racism is. We made it
Merel van Haastert: our default economy. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: And we built the wealth of our country off the back of that.
Joanne Lockwood: So our power and privilege today has actually
Joanne Lockwood: been built off the wealth that we plundered and
Joanne Lockwood: appropriated from these other cultures. We spread
Merel van Haastert: it worldwide. We spread it globally. And of course, there was
Merel van Haastert: the Chinese and Mongolians with Genghis Khan and
Merel van Haastert: Genghis Khan, or how do you say that? And
Merel van Haastert: there are Middle Eastern cultures that had
Merel van Haastert: black people from Africa as slaves, all that
Merel van Haastert: existed. But around about one,
Merel van Haastert: four hundreds, we started to lift it through to a
Merel van Haastert: level that is where we are now.
Merel van Haastert: That's a continuum. We also started
Joanne Lockwood: using science to justify it. I was
Joanne Lockwood: reading some shocking journals, some
Joanne Lockwood: summary journals from the 1819 hundreds, where
Joanne Lockwood: eminent professors and scientists at the time were measuring
Joanne Lockwood: people's skulls and determining that
Joanne Lockwood: white men had to be more intelligent because of their skull
Joanne Lockwood: shape. Black people, because of the way their skull
Joanne Lockwood: was developing and the size and proportions, meant their brain could
Joanne Lockwood: never be as intelligent as a white person's. And even at
Joanne Lockwood: the same time, we were looking at women's skulls and saying that women couldn't be
Joanne Lockwood: as intelligent as a man because the shape and size of their skull.
Joanne Lockwood: So we were using science to justify white
Joanne Lockwood: supremacy. And that narrative has
Joanne Lockwood: continued in that feeling that white people are more intelligent.
Joanne Lockwood: Black people or non white people, non men are less
Joanne Lockwood: intelligent because there's no way their brain capacity can be as good
Joanne Lockwood: as a white person, a white man. And we've seen
Joanne Lockwood: that through this kind of white Victorian
Joanne Lockwood: Edwardian privilege in the UK being propagated that
Joanne Lockwood: this is a high privileged society that has this
Joanne Lockwood: entitled belief that they are better. Yeah, we
Merel van Haastert: think
Merel van Haastert: we're thinking that we've evolved past all this violence, past
Merel van Haastert: all this stupidity, and we are this
Merel van Haastert: ratio, very well behaved, got
Merel van Haastert: the best norms and values in the world. That's what we
Merel van Haastert: grow up with. And people go like, well, slavery
Merel van Haastert: was abolished, I think it was 40 years earlier at your
Merel van Haastert: place than ours. We were quite late.
Merel van Haastert: But it's not in the past with this, COVID-19
Merel van Haastert: they're testing vaccines in Africa
Merel van Haastert: on black people. They are.
Merel van Haastert: That is classic racism. That is
Merel van Haastert: classic white supremacy still going
Merel van Haastert: on. We can't test it in our country because that wouldn't be
Joanne Lockwood: allowed. But we can go somewhere else where their standards are less,
Joanne Lockwood: they value life less, therefore we can get away with it. It is
Joanne Lockwood: shocking. And I'm not sure how it's justified whether
Joanne Lockwood: we've identified the fact that disproportionately black
Joanne Lockwood: people are affected more by COVID and therefore it's justified on that bound, I
Joanne Lockwood: don't know. But you're right.
Joanne Lockwood: We even still call it the Third World. In some areas,
Joanne Lockwood: we're the first world. I really
Merel van Haastert: believe this. I'm not above any of this. I've
Merel van Haastert: believed this. I thought indeed that we in
Merel van Haastert: west, this Western and we're talking some specific
Merel van Haastert: countries, right? England, the Netherlands, Germany,
Merel van Haastert: Denmark, the Scandinavian,
Merel van Haastert: France, Spain and Portugal. A
Merel van Haastert: little bit of Italy and
Merel van Haastert: Switzerland. That's it. And I thought we
Merel van Haastert: had it going on. I really thought we had democracy.
Merel van Haastert: We have ratio, we have science,
Merel van Haastert: we're living in a safe country, there's
Merel van Haastert: no war, there was nothing going on. I
Merel van Haastert: really believed that there were Third world
Merel van Haastert: countries where the only thing they had to do was
Merel van Haastert: go up on our level and we needed to help them get up to our
Merel van Haastert: level and then the world would be fine.
Joanne Lockwood: So what we're saying is we need black people to act like white people in
Joanne Lockwood: order to be as accepted in the world, in the same way we want
Joanne Lockwood: women to act like men so that they're accepted in the world. So we want
Joanne Lockwood: to assimilate everyone to the same ideals as being a white
Joanne Lockwood: man. And isn't that what we're doing with privilege? We
Joanne Lockwood: assume that this privileged structure we
Joanne Lockwood: have in society when our Western society is
Joanne Lockwood: all based around this default norm, isn't it? Which is the white
Joanne Lockwood: man. And the further you stray away from that,
Joanne Lockwood: the less valuable you're seen, the less worthy you're
Joanne Lockwood: seen. And that's the challenge, isn't it? And when we put intersexuality
Joanne Lockwood: into the mix, where we've got people's age, race,
Joanne Lockwood: faith, beliefs and gender and sexuality in there,
Joanne Lockwood: that leads to massive more inequities, doesn't it? Yeah.
Merel van Haastert: And then that also explains why white people
Merel van Haastert: think that if you're living in
Merel van Haastert: Jamaica and you're not making it yet in the world,
Merel van Haastert: that it's your personal fault that you're not making it,
Merel van Haastert: or that you're poor, that it's a personal thing.
Merel van Haastert: And all this stuff has never been personal.
Merel van Haastert: It's just to make this system work, to make this
Merel van Haastert: economy work, to make this power work that we
Merel van Haastert: have and keep it in place. And
Merel van Haastert: once you stray from it, you will
Merel van Haastert: immediately feel that the system does not want you to
Merel van Haastert: change. Because the
Joanne Lockwood: Western world we've been talking about, the original Eurovision Contest
Joanne Lockwood: countries, we
Joanne Lockwood: built our economies on power and wealth and control,
Joanne Lockwood: haven't we? If we don't have control of the markets, we don't have control of
Joanne Lockwood: the wealth, then we lose our status amongst our
Joanne Lockwood: friends, if you like, our other privileged countries. So we're always competing
Joanne Lockwood: against who we see as our competing
Joanne Lockwood: economies, rather than seeing other countries
Joanne Lockwood: like India and China or Russia or someone who is
Joanne Lockwood: a bad or lesser part of the world. We want to compete,
Joanne Lockwood: be more equal with better than the French, better than the Germans, better than
Joanne Lockwood: the Dutch, better than the Americans, and we assume that
Joanne Lockwood: everybody else has the same attitude. But in reality, people
Joanne Lockwood: value different things out of life and society, don't they?
Merel van Haastert: Yeah. Well, it is what
Merel van Haastert: white people fear. This is the fear that we will
Merel van Haastert: lose something. I don't
Merel van Haastert: think that if you would ask somebody that they really
Merel van Haastert: know
Merel van Haastert: what losing means, then but it's like position
Merel van Haastert: in this world where you mentioned
Merel van Haastert: we think that we're going to fall back
Merel van Haastert: to a lesser standard
Merel van Haastert: somehow. This is what we think. But that's only because
Merel van Haastert: we see other cultures in other parts of the world as
Merel van Haastert: less as us.
Merel van Haastert: Of course I don't want to go all lives matter,
Merel van Haastert: because of course that's true, but the system says
Merel van Haastert: to us that
Merel van Haastert: it matters. It matters where you come from. And
Merel van Haastert: that's why we think that the rest of the world is
Merel van Haastert: strange and violent
Merel van Haastert: and people have values and
Merel van Haastert: norms that are not ours. So then there must be bad.
Merel van Haastert: If you step away from that, you will find
Merel van Haastert: that people have, of course, other
Merel van Haastert: values and other ideas about life and
Merel van Haastert: that could actually be enriching. It is enriching to have
Merel van Haastert: people think differently than you and it's not
Merel van Haastert: a step back. Everything that comes into our country, the
Merel van Haastert: Netherlands, I'm assuming it's the same in England.
Merel van Haastert: If more people with the
Merel van Haastert: Islam faith come in, we immediately think,
Merel van Haastert: oh, well, we will start going
Merel van Haastert: oppressing women again. Our
Merel van Haastert: feministic ideas will
Merel van Haastert: take a plunge. It is not true. It
Merel van Haastert: is not true. No, but the media
Joanne Lockwood: feeds us. This stuff right back
Joanne Lockwood: from as soon as television was invented, the movies were
Joanne Lockwood: invented, the newspapers,
Joanne Lockwood: the media have been creating stories that
Joanne Lockwood: sell newspapers. They sell films. And the reason they
Joanne Lockwood: sell is because they create conflict, they create challenge, they
Joanne Lockwood: create some narrative that is different to everyday life.
Joanne Lockwood: I was speaking to an editor of a
Joanne Lockwood: national Sunday paper in the UK about something recently
Joanne Lockwood: and they basically said to me that
Joanne Lockwood: the Anti brigade have
Joanne Lockwood: something to talk about, whereas the people just getting on with their
Joanne Lockwood: lives, it's no. A person gets up in
Joanne Lockwood: the morning, smiles, goes to work, comes home, puts
Joanne Lockwood: kids to bed, goes to sleep, it's not news. So unless
Joanne Lockwood: you're creating news and creating some debate or creating some
Joanne Lockwood: challenge, you're not newsworthy. So the media is picking up on
Joanne Lockwood: these stories of the Middle East, these stories of China, these stories of Russia,
Joanne Lockwood: these stories of people who are different to us and almost
Joanne Lockwood: saying we are the default. These people are different and creating story
Joanne Lockwood: about it. So no wonder we've been fed
Joanne Lockwood: these images of poor people in Africa with
Joanne Lockwood: flies and pot bellies and need of our support
Joanne Lockwood: for drought and then painting their countries as dictators
Joanne Lockwood: and backwards. And we
Joanne Lockwood: somehow talk about them being at risk of nuclear weapons. How can we trust
Joanne Lockwood: these people with weapons? All we see is them running in the street with
Joanne Lockwood: firing rifles in the air.
Joanne Lockwood: The media is almost saying, acting like savages, we can't trust these people. So
Joanne Lockwood: this is what the media is putting into our living rooms every day. How can
Joanne Lockwood: we stop and walk a step back and go, Actually, they're not.
Joanne Lockwood: But now we see people from Syria, from other countries, Afghanistan, as
Joanne Lockwood: refugees. We see these highly intelligent
Joanne Lockwood: business people who are now reduced to carrying all their possessions on their back with
Joanne Lockwood: their families and walking for hundreds of miles to try and find a better life.
Joanne Lockwood: And we just see them as scrounging
Joanne Lockwood: peasants. That's what the media is portraying them. We don't see the lived
Joanne Lockwood: experience behind these people, the story of tragedy, about how
Joanne Lockwood: these people from fantastic communities have lost everything through war,
Joanne Lockwood: through no fault of their own, being displaced. And we're
Joanne Lockwood: devaluing them, aren't we? And that's what the media is telling us. It's like an
Merel van Haastert: intravenous every day. That's what you
Merel van Haastert: call it, right? Like you get this or microaggression
Joanne Lockwood: little pin pricks all the time. It drips into
Merel van Haastert: us every single day. And that's how we see the world. And
Merel van Haastert: that's what creates this fear. That's why white people are so scared
Merel van Haastert: right now, because the bad man, the bad
Merel van Haastert: people are coming for us and they want our world.
Merel van Haastert: We've created all this. We've created all this.
Merel van Haastert: If you take all their wealth and destroy everything, of
Merel van Haastert: course they're going to go like, well, hey, you
Merel van Haastert: said this is the first world and all this wealth
Merel van Haastert: is here. We're coming and it's not they're gold diggers.
Merel van Haastert: These people would love to go home. They really would
Merel van Haastert: love to go home, back to their own countries and live
Merel van Haastert: there, raise their kids within their
Merel van Haastert: families and that stuff. They're not coming for
Merel van Haastert: us. There's no storyline
Merel van Haastert: there. Like you said, it's created with these
Merel van Haastert: images and we bombarded and that we have to save
Merel van Haastert: them. That's just this white saviorism. There's a whole
Merel van Haastert: structure of beliefs and
Merel van Haastert: ideas and feelings and emotions that are
Merel van Haastert: constantly being triggered in us. They're
Merel van Haastert: tapping into it every single day just to keep
Merel van Haastert: this trigger going. It's trauma. It's actually trauma triggering.
Merel van Haastert: They're going to keep doing it so that we keep saying, like,
Merel van Haastert: no, shut our borders for these refugees. Our country
Merel van Haastert: is too full. And I
Merel van Haastert: was in the south of France
Merel van Haastert: recently, and I was flying over
Merel van Haastert: the ocean. There what's called
Merel van Haastert: the same ocean that people use channel
Merel van Haastert: from Turkey to Greece.
Joanne Lockwood: The Adriatic is it? The Adriatic is it? I'm not really sure.
Merel van Haastert: But the same ocean. I remember
Merel van Haastert: going there as a child thinking, oh, it's this lovely place. And
Merel van Haastert: now I'm flying over it and I'm thinking, but we're letting people die
Merel van Haastert: there because of our ideas. That's the
Merel van Haastert: only reason that is happening. And
Merel van Haastert: it's upon us to change our own minds.
Merel van Haastert: And we can. We're intelligent human beings. We can.
Merel van Haastert: It's very simple to me. If you create one set of rules, you can
Merel van Haastert: also create another set of rules. You can just chuck it
Merel van Haastert: and just say, okay, let's do it differently. It's possible.
Merel van Haastert: The whole COVID thing actually showed us that
Merel van Haastert: by one day, all of it was shut down, everything was done. We
Merel van Haastert: now have different rules. Okay, fine. Then
Merel van Haastert: just say, okay, this is not working for our world.
Merel van Haastert: It has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with spreading of
Merel van Haastert: wealth. That
Merel van Haastert: is a thing. It isn't a thing.
Merel van Haastert: This whole economy is just in our heads. At least that's
Merel van Haastert: what I think. It might be very simple to say it like that, but that's
Merel van Haastert: how I view it. It's really simple.
Joanne Lockwood: Well, we start off this podcast by calling the
Joanne Lockwood: title Antiracism Work is Not Rocket Science. And the more we're talking
Joanne Lockwood: about it, it is a bit of rocket science. There's a lot in it, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it, that we need to get our heads around. And it's not something we just
Joanne Lockwood: pick off a menu and say, this is how I do it. There's a lot
Joanne Lockwood: of unpacking to do. So why is it so hard for white
Joanne Lockwood: people to talk about racism? What are the big obstacles that you see?
Merel van Haastert: First of all, what you mentioned earlier is that
Merel van Haastert: you are in it. You are white. So that
Merel van Haastert: makes it difficult to see it.
Merel van Haastert: So that's a challenge. It doesn't
Merel van Haastert: mean that you can't come to a point where you start
Merel van Haastert: thinking differently or did you change your thinking around certain
Merel van Haastert: stuff. But we are not used
Merel van Haastert: to being viewed as a group,
Merel van Haastert: white people as a group, as a culture. That's the first
Merel van Haastert: thing. If you would do that, say okay,
Merel van Haastert: like we do with other cultures, like with names you mentioned
Merel van Haastert: earlier, the labels that we have. If you
Merel van Haastert: just say, okay, if I am a group, if I am
Merel van Haastert: from white culture, what does that mean for the rest of the world?
Merel van Haastert: Then you have an entrance to start
Merel van Haastert: unpacking and why it is difficult. There are
Merel van Haastert: a couple of things why it's difficult,
Merel van Haastert: I have no full extent, but one of the things is
Merel van Haastert: people from other cultures say to us like well, you are in the
Merel van Haastert: position of power, you can change things. But
Merel van Haastert: strangely enough, within white culture this is what I've discovered
Merel van Haastert: is we talk of this freedom of
Merel van Haastert: speech that we have this ability
Merel van Haastert: and freedom to share our thoughts and all this.
Merel van Haastert: Yes, there is, you can share it, but actually
Merel van Haastert: if you look at it, it's really frowned
Merel van Haastert: upon to go against
Merel van Haastert: authority within white culture. It is
Merel van Haastert: not okay to challenge
Merel van Haastert: authority. We say it is and
Merel van Haastert: then you get these nice groups that have these
Merel van Haastert: they're contained within an ideology or stuff and
Merel van Haastert: then we tolerate it but actually go against
Merel van Haastert: our leaders. And that starts young,
Merel van Haastert: right? That's not just our government,
Merel van Haastert: but that starts young within our families, within
Merel van Haastert: school, there's authority, always authority and
Merel van Haastert: it's not okay to challenge it. So this is what
Merel van Haastert: white people feel is when
Merel van Haastert: they say like oh, but maybe this point of view is not
Merel van Haastert: really what the world is like and
Merel van Haastert: I'm starting to question it. You immediately feel
Merel van Haastert: this going like okay, if I do that, then I'll be placed outside of the
Merel van Haastert: group and we are
Merel van Haastert: trained to stay within the herd. That is what
Merel van Haastert: we are trained to do. And this means if you
Merel van Haastert: do antiracism work or start even thinking about it, like
Merel van Haastert: equality or inclusion, then
Merel van Haastert: immediately you feel that you are placed outside of this
Merel van Haastert: group and you are taught from a very early age that you're
Merel van Haastert: nothing without family, you're nothing.
Merel van Haastert: I'm sure you can relate to it. I can relate to it
Merel van Haastert: in instances in my life that I've placed
Merel van Haastert: myself outside of the group. And then you're alone and
Merel van Haastert: that is a scary thing for a human being to be
Merel van Haastert: alone with this massive force of
Merel van Haastert: structure and system that is going against
Merel van Haastert: you and being
Merel van Haastert: able to step out of it and say okay, but I'm okay
Merel van Haastert: here. That is difficult. That is the
Merel van Haastert: big challenge. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: I think what I'm feeling myself is
Joanne Lockwood: that whilst I myself
Joanne Lockwood: have not directly been racist, directly course
Joanne Lockwood: racism, obviously as a white person I benefit from being the
Joanne Lockwood: default. But it's extremely
Joanne Lockwood: challenging for an individual to
Joanne Lockwood: influence the social construct as an individual of racism, the
Joanne Lockwood: social construct of society. So it's
Joanne Lockwood: not just something we can do within an organisation and within a
Joanne Lockwood: business. We ourselves can promote antiracism, we can talk
Joanne Lockwood: about how we can do this, but how do
Joanne Lockwood: we, as white people who want to do something
Joanne Lockwood: about this, change society itself? Because that's
Joanne Lockwood: fundamentally what we're talking about here. This is not a tweak. This
Joanne Lockwood: is a fundamental realignment.
Merel van Haastert: Yeah,
Merel van Haastert: it's scary to raise your voice and
Merel van Haastert: to say, well, this is not okay. I don't agree with this.
Merel van Haastert: And I think that would be in any structure where
Merel van Haastert: you challenge authority and power.
Merel van Haastert: It's not like that. I have privilege as a white
Merel van Haastert: woman, which means I'm on this, you know, I'm the step down from a
Merel van Haastert: white man, which means I've got a lot of power in this world. It is
Merel van Haastert: not power that I can actually how do you say
Merel van Haastert: that?
Merel van Haastert: Into something that, okay, now let's change society.
Merel van Haastert: But you need community.
Merel van Haastert: And I think that is what I'm trying to do
Merel van Haastert: too, is speaking up about this so that it
Merel van Haastert: resonates with others and others start coming into this community of
Merel van Haastert: feeling like, okay, we need some change. But this
Merel van Haastert: change won't happen within the system.
Merel van Haastert: Of course there needs to be stuff done there. But the
Merel van Haastert: change happens when you, as an individual, step outside of this group
Merel van Haastert: and say, I want to live in a different
Merel van Haastert: world. I want to live in a world
Merel van Haastert: where I won't be scared of foreigners,
Merel van Haastert: of people coming into my country or taking my
Merel van Haastert: jobs, just actually saying, okay, not going to do
Merel van Haastert: that. I believe in a kind of
Merel van Haastert: tipping point kind of thing. If more people start saying,
Merel van Haastert: okay, this is not okay, then the thing will
Merel van Haastert: tip. And it's a long process. It's
Merel van Haastert: a very long process. And it's very painful because on the one hand, it is
Merel van Haastert: individual. You change your individual
Merel van Haastert: points of views. That means, like I said, I do energy work
Merel van Haastert: and spiritual work. You change your vibration,
Merel van Haastert: your being, and that resonates with others. That's how
Merel van Haastert: change actually happens. So it's individual work.
Merel van Haastert: And then enough people have to get there. Then we
Merel van Haastert: can challenge some ideas around
Merel van Haastert: it. It's not a linear world thing.
Merel van Haastert: In the Western world sorry, in the Western
Merel van Haastert: world,
Merel van Haastert: sorry. For people thinking, why am I because. My cat is
Joanne Lockwood: going another Lockdown special. We've got the cat
Joanne Lockwood: visiting. We've had mothers, we've had the Amazon man and now we
Joanne Lockwood: have the cat. People can't see this, but you could
Merel van Haastert: see in front of my face, okay, I lost my train
Merel van Haastert: of thought. Let
Joanne Lockwood: me ask you a question. One of the challenges when
Joanne Lockwood: we've talked before, one of the challenges we find is that white people feel
Joanne Lockwood: shame. They don't know where to start. They're worried about
Joanne Lockwood: getting it wrong. They don't understand their
Joanne Lockwood: whiteness. And I understand that
Joanne Lockwood: you set up a project, project Colour White. Which
Joanne Lockwood: do you want to talk to me about? Why you created that and how it
Joanne Lockwood: can help white people be antiracist? Yeah,
Merel van Haastert: I started that because I indeed wanted
Merel van Haastert: to reach out to other people
Merel van Haastert: was a personal thing, actually. Like, I felt all these things
Merel van Haastert: that were wrong and I had no
Merel van Haastert: idea how change
Merel van Haastert: was going to come about. And I thought, Well,
Merel van Haastert: I want to talk to white people. How do they feel? Do they
Merel van Haastert: feel this? It's very uncomfortable. It's
Merel van Haastert: really uncomfortable being challenged on your beliefs around the world
Merel van Haastert: because it feels like candy is being taken away from you. That's
Merel van Haastert: actually really how it feels.
Merel van Haastert: I couldn't talk to
Merel van Haastert: the women because I mostly work with women of colour. I
Merel van Haastert: couldn't talk to them about this because they, of course, have an
Merel van Haastert: idea about it, but they're not white. They don't
Merel van Haastert: feel the way I feel.
Merel van Haastert: Waking up in this system where you are part of
Merel van Haastert: this oppression is something else than waking up
Merel van Haastert: on the outside of it and
Merel van Haastert: seeing this system work against you.
Merel van Haastert: Waking up with this privilege and you're going like, oh,
Merel van Haastert: jeez, I've got this. Privilege is hard. It's really
Merel van Haastert: hard. And I wanted to talk to others.
Merel van Haastert: That's actually how I
Merel van Haastert: created this project. I wasn't
Merel van Haastert: thinking about creating a project, it just happened.
Merel van Haastert: I wanted to have some white women come together because
Merel van Haastert: we already said it's white men. That's on top of
Merel van Haastert: it. I still am very weary about talking to white
Merel van Haastert: men about antiracism, because I immediately get
Merel van Haastert: into this patriarchy thing where I'm not taking so seriously
Merel van Haastert: and that kind of thing I'm wary of that starting to get
Merel van Haastert: better. But I wanted to talk to white women
Merel van Haastert: and it turned out that is not that easy.
Merel van Haastert: So then I thought, well, I'll make it a project and
Merel van Haastert: I'll throw it out into the world, like what my
Merel van Haastert: views are and how I think that we can change
Merel van Haastert: this so that we can start having a
Merel van Haastert: real constructive conversation about
Merel van Haastert: what this actually means to dismantle anti
Merel van Haastert: blackness in yourself and what you come up against
Merel van Haastert: so that you won't feel so alone. And in the meantime,
Merel van Haastert: try to come up with some ideas
Merel van Haastert: about the world that you actually want.
Merel van Haastert: Because I don't want this world. I never wanted this world to be
Merel van Haastert: this way. This is not something that I
Merel van Haastert: consciously chose. So
Merel van Haastert: this is why I started this project colour White. And it's still very
Merel van Haastert: difficult to get white people to talk about it. It
Merel van Haastert: is shame in there. We think that we have to
Merel van Haastert: take on this guilt
Merel van Haastert: thing of our ancestors and it's
Merel van Haastert: never been about that. It's not what people want.
Merel van Haastert: You can't change the past. Really can't. I have
Merel van Haastert: ancestors who
Merel van Haastert: had sugar plantations in Indonesia
Merel van Haastert: and I can't feel guilty about it, but that doesn't change
Merel van Haastert: anything anyway. It's what happen. You just have to be
Merel van Haastert: honest about it, that this is a part of it and that's
Merel van Haastert: how you need to talk. And this is something that we,
Merel van Haastert: as Western culture, we still don't do so well.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm nervous about having a conversation
Joanne Lockwood: about antiracism. I'm not an expert. Where do I
Joanne Lockwood: start? What if I say something? So I think
Joanne Lockwood: many white people are uncomfortable having this conversation because
Joanne Lockwood: they've got no anchor of their
Joanne Lockwood: perspective. I think when we were talking about
Joanne Lockwood: your project, Colour White, it was trying to create a safe space
Joanne Lockwood: for white people to not know white people, to not be
Joanne Lockwood: sure about how to have conversations without
Joanne Lockwood: the fear of upsetting somebody else who
Joanne Lockwood: maybe is part of that conversation. So it's almost like a safe space to
Joanne Lockwood: explore whiteness
Joanne Lockwood: because we have many communities where people who are not
Joanne Lockwood: white, black people, brown people, they come together
Joanne Lockwood: and they have a passion to change the world, whereas white people effectively
Joanne Lockwood: are trying to change themselves, which is a lot harder sometimes than trying
Joanne Lockwood: to change the world. The enemy is ourselves, effectively. And that's
Joanne Lockwood: what you're doing, is you're almost battling your own
Joanne Lockwood: infrastructure, your own family, your own friends. And people
Joanne Lockwood: don't always have the tools because as humans we like to agree with each other,
Joanne Lockwood: we like to have easy conversations, we want to be superficial, but to
Joanne Lockwood: actually start almost being paternal, maternal or
Joanne Lockwood: even patronising or patronising
Joanne Lockwood: somebody by talking to them in a way about racism
Joanne Lockwood: is not comfortable in our nature, is it? No.
Merel van Haastert: And you don't like to admit that you're fearful.
Merel van Haastert: Currently I do these
Merel van Haastert: I call it let's sit and talk. I go out
Merel van Haastert: into a public space outside.
Merel van Haastert: Usually I see down two stools
Merel van Haastert: with the COVID metre and one and a half metres apart
Merel van Haastert: and I invite people to come and sit down
Merel van Haastert: and talk to me about it. That's
Merel van Haastert: again, creating a safe space. And there was this
Merel van Haastert: conversation recently I had with a white man
Merel van Haastert: and he said, but I am afraid of
Merel van Haastert: losing what I have because I'm actually comfortable with what I have.
Merel van Haastert: I said, yeah, that's okay. To feel and to
Merel van Haastert: have this kind of conversation in a mixed group is
Merel van Haastert: difficult because you
Merel van Haastert: admit to
Merel van Haastert: this fear that keeps other people outside
Merel van Haastert: of your network or stuff,
Merel van Haastert: so they get triggered on a different level. Well, you need
Merel van Haastert: to own this feeling of
Merel van Haastert: fear, these emotions that you have around
Merel van Haastert: it. There are a lot of emotions you're going to have.
Merel van Haastert: I remember going through different
Merel van Haastert: steps of what white fragility means, what white tears means,
Merel van Haastert: and how that comes up in me. And I remember
Merel van Haastert: sitting there for, I think, a week it was,
Merel van Haastert: of feeling no ground beneath me anymore. Like everything
Merel van Haastert: I believed in had gone and I didn't know what this
Merel van Haastert: new thing was going to look like. I still don't know. So
Merel van Haastert: yeah, also in me there's still some fear
Merel van Haastert: because I was cheering about
Merel van Haastert: being 51. It also means that I've for
Merel van Haastert: 51 years been living in a certain way and I
Merel van Haastert: need to give it up. And that's not
Merel van Haastert: fun. Like you said, we're
Merel van Haastert: not changing the rest of the world, we're changing ourselves,
Merel van Haastert: which is, yeah, that is the fear. So you
Merel van Haastert: need the safe spaces. We need lots more safe
Merel van Haastert: spaces and we need to figure out how,
Merel van Haastert: for white people, there is an urgency to this. Why
Merel van Haastert: to do this, why do we need to change? Because, yeah,
Merel van Haastert: you and me, we can withdraw ourselves and say, okay, we don't want
Merel van Haastert: to do this fight, we don't want to talk about inclusion. We
Merel van Haastert: can withdraw in our lives, we can live happily ever after.
Merel van Haastert: In Dutch, we say NA unstasunsflute, which means
Merel van Haastert: after us, whatever.
Merel van Haastert: I'll just live my life and I can do that. I don't
Merel van Haastert: have to do this, I don't have to change the world because
Merel van Haastert: it's working for me in a certain way and actually
Merel van Haastert: having to realise that this discrimination,
Merel van Haastert: this thing that we have learned to do, is
Merel van Haastert: actually causing us all these problems that are in this world.
Merel van Haastert: So there is an urgency for us to do it.
Merel van Haastert: I will say it dramatically. It's our souls that are at
Joanne Lockwood: risk here, for sure.
Joanne Lockwood: One phrase I use myself is holistic, active and
Joanne Lockwood: deliberate. That's about inclusion. We have to
Joanne Lockwood: be deliberate about it and active. And what you're saying is, if we
Joanne Lockwood: walk on by, if we let it pass, we turn
Joanne Lockwood: the other cheek, we turn a blind eye, whatever expression you want to use,
Joanne Lockwood: we're not being deliberate and active. What we're doing there is we're letting something
Joanne Lockwood: become more normal by the only
Joanne Lockwood: reaction can and should be to say no, to stand
Joanne Lockwood: up and be actively and deliberately antiracist,
Joanne Lockwood: antisexist, anti, whatever. Because the moment we let
Joanne Lockwood: it pass, we give permission for it to happen
Joanne Lockwood: again. And at some point it escalates. So I think
Joanne Lockwood: you're right, it's incumbent on each of us to
Joanne Lockwood: take an anti stance
Joanne Lockwood: and the oxymoron, or
Joanne Lockwood: be intolerant of intolerance,
Joanne Lockwood: which is a paradox in itself, but where
Joanne Lockwood: intolerance lays, we can't be tolerant of anyone's
Joanne Lockwood: intolerance. And antiracism is just
Joanne Lockwood: a good example where we need to be intolerant of any racism and
Joanne Lockwood: actively and deliberately so. That's fantastic. And
Joanne Lockwood: I'd love to find out more about your project. Colour white. I mean, we've talked
Joanne Lockwood: extensively. If anyone's listening to this,
Joanne Lockwood: how can people get in touch with you to find out more about your projects?
Merel van Haastert: Project Colour White is on Facebook and Instagram,
Merel van Haastert: so you can type in Project Colour White.
Joanne Lockwood: Is that the American spelling and colour color? Or is it the
Joanne Lockwood: C-O-L-O-R? So the American spelling and colour.
Merel van Haastert: Okay, sorry. Yeah, we like to put you
Joanne Lockwood: in our colour. We extra U in our colour.
Joanne Lockwood: So project colour white, spelt the white. Yeah, yeah. So you can find
Merel van Haastert: it on Facebook and on Instagram and that gives you the
Merel van Haastert: access to the project and my contact.
Merel van Haastert: And on the Facebook there's a big note,
Merel van Haastert: which I call the ground of Project Colour White, which
Merel van Haastert: tells you about how I create a safe space for white
Merel van Haastert: people to talk about these very difficult things.
Joanne Lockwood: Excellent. Well, we're going to carry on talking about
Joanne Lockwood: this and we're going to keep in touch. And I'm definitely
Joanne Lockwood: being active and deliberate about my antiracism,
Joanne Lockwood: and I'd welcome anyone who's listening to get in touch with yourself
Joanne Lockwood: and myself. Maybe you'd like to come and talk about what work you're doing in
Joanne Lockwood: antiracism, maybe from a white perspective on this
Joanne Lockwood: podcast. Come and have a chat. So, a huge thank you
Joanne Lockwood: to Mural. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for
Joanne Lockwood: the listeners for tuning in and sticking with it.
Joanne Lockwood: Please do subscribe to keep updated on the future episodes of the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. That's bites. Please tell your
Joanne Lockwood: friends if you have some, and your colleagues if you happen to
Joanne Lockwood: have some colleagues as well. I have a number of exciting guests lined
Joanne Lockwood: up that I'm sure you'd be even more inspired by, if that's possible
Joanne Lockwood: over the next few weeks and months. And remember, if you'd like to be a
Joanne Lockwood: guest on the show, please let me know. And as
Joanne Lockwood: long as you're talking about something around inclusion, making the world a
Joanne Lockwood: better place for everyone to thrive, then no topic is off
Joanne Lockwood: limits. So I'd welcome your comments, your feedback and
Joanne Lockwood: suggestions to Joe Lockwood at ctnchapan co
Joanne Lockwood: UK. Tell me how we can improve future shows. Tell me what
Joanne Lockwood: topics you'd like to hear. So, finally, my name is Joanne
Joanne Lockwood: Lockwood, and it has been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today.
Joanne Lockwood: Catch you next.