Decolonizing the Mind for Liberation & Systems Change

Asmara Kazmi1h 17min

Asmara Kazmi

00:11

Hello, everybody, thank you so much for joining us today for this conversation on decolonizing the mind for liberation and systems change. We are just going to go ahead and jump right into this because it's going to be such a rich conversation and we are so blessed to have so many of y'all tuning in with us. And of course anybody who's going to catch this on our replay, so I am joined here today by my some of my favourite people in all of LinkedIn land, Dr. Lisa Rose Blanchette. AJ Singh and Sharon Hurley Hall are all in the house. And to just set the stage here a bit. So we got here, basically, because I have a recurring LinkedIn audio show on here called the FAFF FREE CAST. When I did the first ever episode, Sharon very kindly agreed to be my guest. And we were talking about cognitive dissonance, and how it shows up in ourselves in our systems in our society and kind of what are the impacts of those things. And during that event, LisaRose here asked an incredible question about what does cognitive dissonance have to do with the colonised mind how does it show up in that and that's the spark basically that lit the flame that got us here. So just to start us off and kind of set the stage we are going to first start out by introducing ourselves talking about what was that experience that initial experience for us where we realised that there was a there was like some intrinsically colonial mindsets that we were carrying around with ourselves without knowing and then we have a couple of things that we will be discussing and it will be a very rich conversation. But of course, the benefit of LinkedIn audio events Is it is it is not a podcast so y'all can join in and offer your thoughts and offer your reflections. So as we're speaking if anything comes up, please feel free to raise your hand and I will invite you up on stage to offer your piece. A little bit of housekeeping I try not to cut off any speaker midway you know if they're finishing a train of thought. So if you have to have your hand up just a tad longer than expected, please just bear with us. We see you and we appreciate you. All righty. So kick to kick us off with the introductions. LisaRose, are you there? Lovely to have you here.

Speaker 1

02:55

Well, thank you and thank you for that delightful introduction and thank you, everyone for joining us. I'm just overwhelmed by this response. I have to say. I'm Lisa Rose Blanchette and I have been an education professional for over 35 years. And the reason that I asked the question that you were discussing in the introduction, Asmara, is because I was raised in a biracial household. My father was black, my mother was white. And my father believed he was white. And to the to the point where we were raised as children my brother and I to believe that we were also white and to the detriment of the black side of our personalities. So there was a lot of cognitive dissonance in my upbringing, because I would look in the mirror and I would not see a white person, but we were also embedded in our upbringing. We're all the negative stereotypes of black people and I don't have to go into those, I'm sure. But I carried those around with myself. So I didn't realise that until I became a teacher and I had to start confronting some of my internal racism and do a lot of work with that because one of the things as a teacher that you want to do, is you want to really want to treat every student with respect and dignity, kindness and equity. And I realised that I wasn't doing that. And I had to confront that painful reality within myself and start doing a lot of work with that. So I had to work on myself in order to be the best teacher for my students. And it was very painful to deal with this, even though I had been dealing with certain aspects of it. But because I was not only dealing with aspects of it that affected myself but affected my students. I really had to make that jump and start decolonizing my mind.

Asmara Kazmi

05:07

Yeah, that's incredible. And thank you so much for sharing that. And I think that that, that motivation behind wanting to explore that for yourself, for the benefit of your students is both beautiful and commendable. So thank you so much for that and for asking the question. Sharon, how are ya? Storm holding up okay.

Sharon Hurley Hall

05:31

Yeah, just about windy and rainy but I'm still here. Such a delight to be here with all of you and thank you everyone for joining. I'm Sharon Hurley Hall, co-founder of Mission Equality, author of I'm Tired of Racism, author of Exploring Shadeism , longtime writer, teacher, educator. And it's hard to think... I resonated a lot with what LisaRose said, because I grew up in the Caribbean. And there was still those attitudes, sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, which said that whiteness was the standard by which against which everything else was measured, which is a strange thing to think in a black majority country. And that does cause a certain amount of cognitive dissonance as discussed. But I suppose it's hard for me to pinpoint a time when I realised I had to decolonize my mind, but if I had to pick one, it was probably when I was working on the master's thesis that eventually turned into exploring shadeism, which was all about colorism and we touched it I touched a lot on funnel and this idea of, of double consciousness of perceiving how you're seeing out in the world with what you know yourself to be, and realising that the ideas that were often raised within formerly colonised countries continue to reinforce that colonised mindset. And so for me, that was probably the starting point, the genesis of a journey because I don't think that my mind is totally decolonized. Now, I think I keep on peeling layers and finding more things, more ideas about the world that I want to think differently about.

Asmara Kazmi

07:40

Yeah, and I think that speaks so powerfully, powerfully to this idea that like this is a journey were perpetually on. But just because that is true, doesn't mean that it's not incredibly vital that we get started and we remain undeterred by some of the roadblocks that we encounter on the way so thank you so much for sharing that as well. Sharon, AJ, how you doing?

AJ Singh

08:06

Hi, I'm so happy to be here. I'm really excited. And it's it's impacting my ability to speak. So just just putting that out there. Because that happens. Sometimes she's difficult on an audio event, but so yeah. So I'm AJ My pronouns are They/Them. I'm decolonizing mind body health lead at Mission equality. I'm founder of Autistic Wayfinder. And I work at the intersection of Anti-racism and Neurodiversity or Mind-Body advocacy. Prior to that, have a number of years in people and culture and dei and so yeah..So growing up I mean, I'm South Asian. I've mixed heritage so my dad's Indian, my mom's English and white. So I grew up experiencing racism and also with a lot of internalised racism. And always felt out of place out of step so it kind of never really felt like I belonged. It felt it felt quite sometimes I felt like maybe I was an alien or something. Sometimes, I think I knew other children who kind of felt that as well that like it just sort of felt like I don't belong. And as as I got older, I sort of I mean, I was performing. I think a lot of us perform when we don't fit for whatever reason, and we perform to what fits or what we think is wanted. And I ended up in very much in the corporate capitalist world, in jobs that really, really sold us actually for a long time. And I kind of gravitated towards trying to change the system from within with with DEI and people and culture. But then, as I started to get to know kind of more aspects of myself, I realised that I was non binary, I realised that I was autistic. And I just seemed to be growing further and further away from the reality around me. And really, it wasn't, it was unravelling. And this kind of construct of whiteness and extractive capitalism that I've been performing for so long. You know, it kind of started to crumble. And there was a specific moment. A few years ago, there's a wooden in my house and every spring it's filled with bluebells and I had been really depressed really low. And I was walking there with my partner. And I said out loud, if I don't decolonize my life, I'm not going to make it. And it wasn't, it didn't feel dramatic, and it didn't, it just felt really factual. It felt it just felt like the truest thing I'd ever said. And I knew that I had to make changes. And that, you know, the decolonization of my mind had clearly already begun by that point, because it's what led me there. But, but that was, as I said, it was an unravelling. It was a chaotic thing. So, so I guess this realisation was the point that it became a practice. And then what I'm trying to do is cultivate it into you know, a way of a way of living in a way of a way of being

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