Not: Race vs. Class But rather: Race and Class! We would like to reclaim the conversation about class and infuse an intersectional perspective to discourses around class and economic disadvantage. Any conversation about class is incomplete unless we also include other interwoven dimensions such as race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, nationality and migration status. The aim of this all-day event it to open up a space for exchange in order to approach class and capitalism from an intersectional perspective. In various inputs, workshops and discussion rounds, a number of topics will be broached, topics that deal with the intertwining of race and class as well as further categories of discrimination and oppression. The thematic focal points will be: - The link between colonialism, racism and capitalism - Care work - Reproductive justice - Public space All topics deal in particular with questions of participation, exclusion and inclusion as well as barriers to access in the context of race and class. Our aim is explicitly to take ordinary conversations about classism and include categories like race and migration. Our aim is to illustrate how race and class are interwoven as social categories in a wide variety of areas - on an institutional, structural as well as everyday level. This event is a cooperation between xart splitta, the Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ) and the Bildungswerk of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and will be held together with the Nachbarschaftshaus Urbanstrasse (NHU). It is part of the Shared Spaces project of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
Event Description (facebook page)
Experience and Reflections
On may 15th I had the wonderful opportunity to assist to an event called: What's up with class?! Organized by the Center for Intersectional Justice, in partnership with Bildungwerk Berlin Der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, and Xart Splitta. The event was a day-long seminar on the intersectionality between class and race and it took place in Nachbarschafthaus Urbanstrasse, a community space that holds events like this on the regular basis.
Note: Many of my reflections are related to Peace Education, and sometimes the connections might seem stretchy or screwy (as once a professor at my university described a theory I mentioned in class), my experiences in Europe are oriented towards me understanding how is it that educational programs are addressing issues of peace and violence in their communities and the world, and what elements of those I observe do I consider to be relevant for the work of Peace Education, as a discipline.
The welcoming speech was very warm, and it started by introducing the idea of an overlooked group of people in the conversation about class: the migrant class. Proposing migrant communities as a class is very interesting to me and my study of Peace Education because more often than not, migrants experience high degree of violence. Whether it is direct in the form of racism, hate-speech, insults on the streets; structural, by receiving administrative blocking to life a normal life in the country where they have emigrated; or cultural, by internalizing and normalizing these forms of violence because in the culture where they live they are force to assimilate. Moreover, migrants usually come from environments where they were already experiencing forms of violence (e.g. war refugees). Migrant populations, particularly those that are not-white, are oftentimes the ones who can be benefited most from Peace Education Programs. So, what are the implications of proposing them as a class? How does race intersect with class with regards to migrant populations? Why should we care? And what can we do? Where some of the questions that were going to be addressed on the seminar. The welcoming speech also included one of my favorite quotes of all time: Audrey Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the masters house" (Lorde, 1979). In so doing, they defined to me their philosophy of action. They are not going to use the same oppressive strategies that the german government, or the Berlin municipality have been using to address migrant communities, and rather they are going to search for new inclusive and innovative strategies to improve the lives of these peoples.
After that speech, three panelist were invited to talk about their work in regards to issues of race and class. These were: Emine Aslan, Sandra Selimović, and Tuğba Tanyılmaz & Ed Greve. The conversation touched upon very interesting issues including: social mobility, the connection between class and shame, shame in educational contexts, language and its connection to racism/colonialism, story-telling for empowerment, the case of the roma people in Europe, the creation of migrant identities, and critical pedagogy in context with significant migrant populations as a form of inclusive education. All of these themes I believe are fundamental for the development of Peace Education Curricula, considering the common target group and their context, as I have aforementioned on this post, it is very important to consider the histories, personal narratives, identities, and issues present in the community with which a Peace Education Program (PEP) works. For example, Tuğba Tanyılmaz & Ed Greve touched upon the connection between language development and shame, so a question that I would propose for somebody designing a PEP is how do we empower these young people to let go of the shame that not speaking/poorly speaking/or speaking a language with an accent might bring, and for those who are not part of the migrant community, how can we create spaces for the development of empathy and compassion for those who do not speak the dominant language. In other words, how do we legitimize and normalize the experience of language-learning in racially/ethnically diverse communities.
The third part of the event was a lecture on the history of migration, class and racism, from a post/colonial perspective. This lecture was given by Dr. Snthujan Varatharajah and it was a wonderful opportunity to refresh memory on the processes that have given shape to today's global society. A critical view to world's history from the Christian Missions, to the spread of US centric capitalism. One of the most important points I got from his lecture, was that: what we refer to as "the end of slavery" only ended one form of it, however new forms of exploitation were stablished in the world through neoliberal economic trade, and historical damage done by colonialism has not been repaired. A reality that I saw with my own eyes during my travels with Semester at Sea. Countries like Myanmar, Vietnam, and Ghana were robbed from their resources, destabilized socially/culturally/economically, and then left to pieces to rebuild themselves. Can we really expect them to develop on their own when they have to reconstruct decades or centuries of damage? Can we hold these colonial powers for the internal conflicts these countries are facing today? (E.g. the Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar; socio-political instability in Ghana; environmental degradation in Vietnam). Post-colonial thought and theory, brings in several layers of complexity to the realities of peoples in nations that were former colonies of European powers. These people, who now suffer by the hand of the inescapable neoliberal market economy the United States of America has installed in the world.
After Dr. Varatharajah's lecture we split up for lunch, sponsored by the event, and then came back to work in several workshops. Unfortunately, I could not participate of the workshops because they were conducted in German. However, for those of us who were not German Speakers, we could remain on the main hall of the building and continue the conversation on class centered around the four following themes: Care-Work; Reproductive Justice; Public Space. We watched a few documentaries on the local realities of migrants, that then sparked a facilitated discussion where we explored how each of these themes were connected with migrant identities, social inequality, racism and classism.
The event brought up many very interesting points to the discussion of class, and it presented it with examples from the city of Berlin and the people who live in it. My final point of reflection on this event, is about the rapidly creeping reality of Climate Change. Discourses on intersectionality must include both historical accounts for Climate Change causes, impacts on small island-nations and low-lying nations (which are the ones to produce the largest amount of Climate Refugees), and impacts of marginalized migrant communities, cause they are ones who will suffer most when this realities manifest.
Resources: