In November of 2002, Sudbury’s Laurentian University was the site of an important conference of activists, and activist scholars, “Sociology for Changing the World: Political Activist Ethnography.” Organized by a team which included well-known queer and socialist activist, Gary Kinsman, the event honoured the memory of pioneering gay activist and academic George Smith. Smith’s influential essay, “Political Activist as Ethnographer,” provided both the sub-title for the conference and much of its conceptual framing.

One popular conference panel featured Sarita Srivastava and Mary-Jo Nadeau, two activist scholars who knew each other socially, who had worked together politically, but who had not collaborated academically. Deeply shaped by both the theoretical and political contributions of feminist activists of colour, their presentations revealed a common interest in excavating the recent history of feminism from an anti-racist perspective: Sarita had recently completed a Ph.D on anti-racist challenges within feminist organizations while Mary-Jo was working from a piece of her dissertation on the politics of race and nation within the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

While important work has been published on activist histories within Canada, much still remains unwritten and inadequately theorized. The long history of anti-racist struggle is no exception. In this roundtable interview, Sarita and Mary-Jo draw on their academic and activist work in order to look both at the reproduction of racism within organizations, but also at the past and future of anti-racist perspectives and practice within movements. Interview conducted by Cynthia Wright.

What relevant lessons are there about the relationship between struggles for anti-racist change inside a social movement organization and its practice vis a vis the wider society?

Sarita• This is a crucial question: one of the most persuasive reasons to support anti-racist organizational change is precisely because there is a link between the broader goals of a social movement and its organizational practices, histories and internal power relations. But we can only recognize this link if we define anti-racism broadly – as not just a representational strategy to “include” more people of colour in an organization, or to help people get along better, but as a movement to challenge inequitable social relations of race, gender, class, sexuality. Then it becomes easier to see that anti-racist change means that a social movement organization needs to recognize how its members lives are shaped by racism or sexism -- both inside and outside the organization. It needs to recognize how its organizational practices support those inequities, and then needs to organize its work, at every level, to challenge those inequities.

MARY-JO• I agree. It’s important to recognize that anti-racist struggles inside social movement organizations - even mainstream ones - have great potential to transform institutional practices and to broaden priorities. The struggle for anti-racist feminism within NAC is a very good example. Broadly speaking, feminists of colour working inside NAC got organized as a political force in the mid 1980s (most notably through the Visible Minority and Immigrant Women’s Committee and a Left Caucus). They developed a basis of unity with allies to build the kind of integrated anti-racist feminist politic Sarita has described, and also provided the necessary leadership to challenge the power relations defining the organization’s limiting structures, practices and political cultures. Because this anti-racist agenda prioritized building connections to a wider range of social movements and communities (including a significantly active socialist feminist base), NAC became a larger presence. As a left activist and feminist, NAC became relevant to me during this struggle (and helped define my anti-racist politics). In unprecedented ways, these struggles within the organization increased NAC’s public presence and made it relevant to broad social movement activism.

Sarita• And yet, quite often we see a disjuncture between the expressed goals and the internal practices of movements. For example, feminist movements have had roots in anti-racist efforts such as the abolitionist and civil rights movements, and yet, at the level of organizational practice, hiring, decision-making, many feminist organizations have historically failed to fully integrate an anti-racist perspective and practice, as challenges by feminists of colour over the last two decades have highlighted. And this neglect has important implications for how the broader goals of feminism are conceived: feminist scholars have shown that where feminist organizations have neglected to integrate an analysis of race, class and sexuality, they have not adequately conceptualized women’s oppression. For example, this meant that immigration issues or anti-imperialism were often not included as feminist concerns.

MARY-JO• I think NAC’s history illustrates the point Sarita is making about the contradiction between principles and practices, and the effects this has on the priorities of social movements organizations. On the one hand, NAC was founded on explicit claims to universality, articulating its feminist politics in the name of “Canadian women”. On the other hand, it was also formed around limited and exclusionary political practices, and a narrowly defined agenda for “sexual equality”, understood primarily as separate from (and more important than) other struggles and social hierarchies. The overall effect of these disjunctures, combined with narrow definitions of seemingly inclusive categories, was an organization which tended to concentrate its efforts and resources on representing the liberal concerns and ideals of a predominantly white, middle-class feminist base. Racism, heterosexism and normative constructions of the nation (to name a few examples), were not broadly addressed as relevant concerns in NAC’s formative years.

Sarita• In other movements, the problem is not a failure to integrate expressed goals with internal practice, but a reluctance to embrace the complexity of struggles for social justice. For example, when I was a campaigner at Greenpeace Canada in the early 1990s, I, and a minority of my co-workers, made the argument that concerns about labour, aboriginal self-government, poverty and racism should be integrated into environmental ones - we were told by the majority that the environment was not a social justice issue. Not surprisingly, the mainstream environmental movement has been challenged by the environmental justice movement for ignoring the effects of toxic pollution on communities of colour, and for emphasizing the interests of white, professional urbanites.

This is another example of the link between broader goals and organizational practice. This narrow approach to environmentalism was in part supported by internal organizational practices – including hierarchical decision-making structures, informal hiring practices, fund-raising, marketing and media strategies. For example, within organizations such as Greenpeace, strategies to “save” the environment were historically conceived and carried out by white, middle-class, male professional activists, and were often strongly focussed on mainstream media coverage –

and this organizational history often contributed to the exclusion of anti-racist and community politics.

MARY-JO• Similarly in NAC, changing organizational practices was crucial for challenging historically entrenched bases of power. For example, the shift to an integrated anti-racist framework required a radical transformation of NAC’s representational structures. This was accomplished through “collective leadership”, a model of representation which supports and legitimates activist and community-based leadership. As a result, throughout the ‘90s, NAC’s Presidents (and much of the Executive) were activists with strong ties to social movements. Through this collective leadership, organizational structures were changed to ensure that priorities were defined by a grass-roots activist base, and that coalition-building campaigns would be central to the organization’s practice. Some important structural changes included creating an affirmative action policy for the Executive, implementing Campaigns Committees (to prioritize activism), and creating explicit anti-racist mandates and policy. Broadly speaking, these changes supported a shift to left activism within an anti-racist framework. As such, practices previously limited by liberal agendas (e.g., lobbying, policy-making) could be used to advance more radical goals.

Why has it been such a struggle to integrate an anti-racist analysis and practice into social movement organizations?

Sarita• First, I think it’s important to acknowledge that, despite the difficulties, anti-racist struggles have made tremendous changes in the social movement landscape. But, progress has also been slow and frustrating, and many activists have burned out trying to make changes within their own organizations.

MARY-JO• Definitely. Anti-racist activists in NAC have written about the immense amount of work, personal energy and intense commitment required to establish basic “inclusivity”-- i.e., new terms of participation, leadership, belonging, defining priorities, formulating responses to issues etc. While immensely meaningful in that context (and after), most acknowledge that these changes represent only the initial gains of an emergent anti-racist feminist movement. Pushing the agenda further, and addressing new (and old) challenges, requires even more of this level of commitment. And, there are tough political debates that need to be had around key issues including transgendered discrimination in the organization, and how to build an organized feminist challenge to post-September 11 politics of race, nation and imperialism.

Sarita• One of the problems is that because progressive social movements have been founded on notions of egalitarianism, and have worked to challenge oppressive power relations, activists sometimes have difficulty recognizing that racism (or sexism or heterosexism) is as systemic inside social movement organizations as “outside.” One result, as my research on feminist organizations in Toronto shows, is that people often respond to anti-racist challenges with quite emotional and individualized resistance - denial, tears and anger - that can deflect organizational change. When the discussion begins with “But I’m not a racist!” it doesn’t usually go much further towards organizational change.

MARY-JO• This failure or refusal to acknowledge racism (and other systemic power relations) inside NAC has been a problem. Notably, in response to the shift to anti-racism in NAC, some white women and member organizations simply opted-out and left the organization. Others remained but really could not work with feminists of colour as equals, let alone as leaders. These dynamics arise in NAC because of its long (albeit contested) history as a white feminist space, and many are caught up in a sense of ownership (of NAC, and Canadian feminism). NAC has tried to address these deep resistances through “consensus-building” which, while important, often reproduces the kinds of problems Sarita has noted.

Sarita• Another problem is that some anti-racist workshops have used techniques based in consciousness-raising, popular education and feminist therapy, in a way that results in a “let’s talk” approach to discussing racism and personal experiences and emotions. The result is that the spotlight can get turned on people of colour as knowledge resources to help white folks “learn” about racism, or on the emotions and moral deliberations of some white participants. In other words, instead of developing organizational change measures, these approaches get caught up in the hope that more knowledge of the other, more self-knowledge, will lead to anti-racism.

MARY-JO• I think it’s also important to recognize that advancing organizational change in social movements organizations today is really made difficult by the destabilizing effects of globalized neo-liberal agendas and forms of right-wing backlash. By the late 1990s, NAC began to lose contact with its social movements base, its public presence diminished, and its entire base of public funding was lost in this period. However, our analysis of the current context needs to broaden to comprehend how these external agendas influence internal power relations. For example, many social movements organizations, including NAC, are currently struggling with the politics of survival. As traditional organizational resources become increasingly scarce, many are retreating (and retrenching) from a grass-roots/social movements politics and returning to narrow and hierarchical organizationally-focussed politics. There is already some evidence of this in NAC as it focusses most of its attention on fundraising, too often at the expense of building new grass-roots connections and maintaining old ones. These trends present real concerns for all sites of anti-racist struggle in social movement organizations as there is great potential for a return to universalist, liberal, elite political formations (even in the name of anti-racism or “diversity”).

Based on your research on social movement organizations that have struggled to address issues of race and racism, what general lessons might we draw about how organizations can develop an effective anti-racist practice?

Sarita• If social movements are interested in producing broadly liberatory projects, they also need to acknowledge and integrate the diversity of social justice struggles, and to find ways to express that complexity at the level of organizational practice. Activists need to recognize that there is an important link between the broader goals of a social movement, and the practices inside our organizations, instead of fearing that anti-racist battles will be airing our “dirty laundry” or will sabotage the “good fight”, the “true” goals of the movement. In my research, I have critiqued the anti-racist workshop approach that has focussed on teaching whites more about racism through the experiences of people of colour, and that has allowed discussions of individual experiences and emotions to supersede discussions of organizational change. There are no easy alternatives, but I have argued that a coalition-based approach, one that begins with practical goals for changing organizational structure and practice, rather than with personal experiences and feelings, would be a more effective framework for anti-racist education and change.