What Does “Anti-Blackness” Mean? Exploring BIPOC Messaging in a (Sort of) Woke World

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The term “BIPOC” became widely used in 2020 after the protests that followed the death of George Floyd, an abbreviation referring to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. While it’s a convenient term to use when expressing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) aspirations or seeking resources, organizations, and media created by non-white people, it can become a default acronym that loses its power when used without intention. Put simply by Teela Foxworth, founder of Foxworth Facilitations LLC, in a virtual diversity training event in February 2022, BIPOC is too general of a term. In this post I will share some of Teela’s message and how I’ve processed it and hope her sense of informative authenticity shines through.

I attended a virtual event held by the Oregon Chapter of the Society for Marketing Professional Services, which is a nonprofit that seeks to elevate Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) businesses through marketing leadership. Marketing leadership in our industries looks different now than it did even a few years ago. Today, marketers are integral in strengthening an organization’s firm culture, messaging, and efforts around DEI and social justice, so educational opportunities for learning about these issues is being offered for marketing and operations professionals like me. Led by Teela Foxworth, “Anti-Blackness as a Form of Racism,” was a shift from many of the educational events I’ve attended because of its focus not simply on inclusion efforts, but on the recognition that as many of us rush to improve our DEI efforts, something else is getting lost along the way.

Before diving further, it’s important to acknowledge that social injustices and racism are difficult topics to discuss, which is why Foxworth begins her trainings simply by pointing that out. If what you read in this post makes you uncomfortable, that’s okay. In fact, it should. Talking about the realities of slavery, anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and how many of our ancestors, including my own, likely partook in such heinous actions against Black people, is uncomfortable. But it is our history, and we cannot let it be erased. Instead, we must directly confront it.

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“White Fragility” is the term used to describe some white people’s feelings of discomfort and defensiveness when they’re confronted with issues of racial injustice. If you find those feelings surfacing as you read this, do not judge yourself. Let your discomfort exist. Sit with it. Remind yourself that racism is systemic, find empathy in remembering people LIVED this history, and remember that no one grows by staying comfortable. African Americans and other Black folks are still facing the ongoing consequences of this racial trauma, which reveals itself in the material world in a myriad of ways: emotionally, psychologically, and physically. The least we can do is face it with them.

The abbreviation “BIPOC” as an umbrella term lumps every non-white person into one group: Black, Latinx, Asian American Pacific Islander, Indigenous, and every other racial identity that is “other”. But this catch-all diminishes the individual experiences of one’s race, culture, or ethnicity. Racial trauma in America ranges from Indigenous peoples murdered and forced to evacuate the land their ancestors lived on for thousands of years, to Vietnamese refugees facing extreme hostility, racism, and brutal living conditions after the Vietnam War, to African people who were stolen, enslaved, and used as manpower to build the infrastructure – and economy – of the United States. When we consider these various stories, it’s clear how different these experiences have been for non-whites in our country, and it becomes obvious that it is impossible to fit them all into a single categorization.

To put it frankly, Foxworth emphasized, “Nothing is slavery except for slavery. Black people were the only group of people owned by white people in our country’s history.”

This specific experience cannot be transferred to Indigenous, AAPI, or any other non-white people in this nation. Therefore, it is important, when talking about a specific group of people or an individual, to identify them accurately. It might require more work to say something like, “I watched a movie written by a member of the Duwamish Tribe,” instead of “I watched a movie written by a BIPOC person,” but it is respectful and gives the individual back their Indigenous identity and thus their power.

Black people’s ancestry in America is directly rooted in slavery, simultaneously emerging as an attitude of anti-Blackness that is still seen in our society today. The population of the West Coast (including Washington, Oregon, and California) is 50 million humans – equal to the number of people the African continent lost to death and slavery at the beginning of modern Western civilization. Our nation has existed without slavery less time than it existed with it. And even when slavery ended, Black people still weren’t free. Harsh exclusions around land ownership and segregation in housing, politics, and education made adjusting to a life of “freedom” nearly unachievable.

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Gentrification is evidence that Black and other communities of color are still disproportionally impacted by the housing programs under The New Deal, which focused on helping lower-and middle-class white families by providing them with mortgage loans and built suburban housing long synonymous with “The American Dream”. Housing segregation began with redlining, separating communities by color, and leaving few – and the least desirable – places for Black families to live. Around the same time, banks refused to supply loans to Black people and prohibited white people from selling existing homes to them. Subsequently, decades later, urban renewal projects cleared “slums” and “ghettos,” inevitably pricing out communities of color, leading them to move into other areas. All around us, we can witness the effects of these programs today.

While strides have been made for Black folks in the last half-century, we are still a divided nation that normalizes Eurocentric values and resists advancements from the Civil Rights era. Among the resistance is Critical Race Theory (CRT), a hot topic in our current political climate that’s fueled by fear of losing power or fear of older generations being seen as a villain to younger generations. Even if, as individuals, we do not support banning CRT in schools and work to create welcoming spaces for people of all backgrounds, there is still so much for us examine in how our day-to-day lives help uphold the racist system our nation was founded on. White Supremacy Culture is alive and well today, camouflaged in microaggressions and implicit biases. It's become evident in the last two years that being “not racist” just isn’t enough anymore. We must do the work to become “anti-racist”, and our communities are too fragile to not do the work.

I realize, despite writing hundreds of words and addressing numerous challenges faced by Black Americans today, there is so much more for each of us to unpack. As Black History Month comes to a close, I want to remind all of us that celebrating the accomplishments and history of Black Americans doesn’t have to only happen once a year. By raising awareness of how anti-Blackness can impact Black people, as well as working to differentiate all BIPOC communities, we can empower communities of color and strengthen our society as a whole. But it will take energy, and it will take time.  

I leave you with a challenge: look within your own social circle, daily interactions, and community environments, and consider how they impact, or have impacted, Black people and what you can do to make it better. We can choose to make a truly inclusive, anti-racist society a vision only possible in a utopian world, or something attainable like a small act that provides equity for others. Wherever you find yourself after reading this today, I hope you are inspired to look deeper, to reflect, and to sit with discomfort, for that is how we grow.

Teela Foxworth

Teela Foxworth founded her diversity training firm in Portland, OR in 2020, which focuses on the history of systemic racism, implicit bias, perspective + identity, equity + inclusion, microaggressions, and facilitating difficult conversations across differences. This is the second time Jasmyn experienced one of Teela’s presentations, the first one on “Systemic Racism,” and it's her expertise in lived experience as a Black woman, backed by research, that makes her a compelling speaker.

Jasmyn Flores joined JA in 2019 and strengthens our growing firm as a Marketing Specialist, working across multiple project types and media to support our team, including proposals, project portfolios, social media, thought leadership and blog posts, public relations, firm culture, and our DEI efforts. Jasmyn identifies as Filipina-American and is a member of SMPS Seattle.