---
title: "Anti-racism work is not rocket science"
episode: 20
date: 2020-12-17
guest: "Merel van Haastert"
canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/20-anti-racism-work-is-not-rocket-science
audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-020/audio.mp3
---

# Anti-racism work is not rocket science

Joanne Lockwood is joined by Merel van Haastert to explore why anti-racism work can feel daunting for white people, and why the work starts with seeing racism as a system rather than an individual moral failing. Together they unpack how “white as default” shows up in everyday life and representation, and how media narratives, nationalism, and colonial histories reinforce structural inequity. They discuss how labels and categorisations can obscure lived experience, and how racism is sustained through systems that reward compliance and discourage people from challenging authority. Merel shares why she created Project Colour White: to create safer spaces for white people to talk honestly about fear, shame, and fragility, and to build community for those wanting to do deliberate, active anti-racism work. The episode closes with a call to speak up, be intolerant of intolerance, and stay engaged in long-term change.

## Chapters

- 00:00 — Passion for wisdom and service fulfilled at 50.
- 06:08 — Uncover knowledge within, it's not complex.
- 12:20 — Transitioning highlights unequal representation and inherent privilege.
- 17:57 — Immigrant perceptions shaped by nationality stereotypes.
- 24:46 — White colonialism perpetuates cultural theft and entitlement.
- 29:49 — Science used to justify racist, sexist beliefs.
- 33:34 — Striving for acceptance through assimilation and privilege.
- 38:13 — Media creates conflict to sell stories and films.
- 45:34 — Questioning white culture, power, and authority's impact.
- 49:38 — Challenging authority and power through speaking out.
- 57:05 — Navigating antiracism conversations is uncomfortable for many.
- 59:29 — Discussion of fear and emotion in mixed groups.
- 01:05:10 — Subscribe for exciting future episodes, get involved!

## Key takeaways

- The societal construct of a privileged "default norm" based on the ideals of white men.
- The impact of media narratives on perpetuating stereotypes and influencing public opinion on non-Western cultures and refugees.
- The imprinting of white culture and the marginalisation of non-white experiences and voices.
- The emotional challenges and fear involved in white people addressing their own privilege and racism.
- The importance of creating safe spaces for uncomfortable conversations about anti-racism and privilege.
- The historical exploitation of other cultures by colonial European countries and its continued legacy in modern practices.
- Strategies for challenging authority and promoting societal change towards genuine inclusion and equity.

## FAQs

### What is the "default norm" in Western society as discussed in the episode?

The “default norm” in Western society typically refers to ideals based on white men, which often dominate societal standards and perspectives. This concept implies that other cultures and identities are measured against this norm, leading to marginalisation.

### How does the media perpetuate negative stereotypes about non-Western cultures?

Media perpetuates negative stereotypes by frequently portraying non-Western cultures and refugees negatively. This biased representation can manipulate public perception, instilling fear and resistance to diversity.

### What is Merel van Haastert's "Colour White" project and its purpose?

Merel van Haastert's "Colour White" project is designed to create a safe space for white people to discuss and understand anti-racism. The project aims to help participants recognise their own privileges and dismantle anti-blackness within themselves.

### Why is it challenging for white people to discuss privilege and anti-racism?

Discussing privilege and anti-racism is challenging for white people due to discomfort and fear of confronting their own roles in systemic racism. These conversations often evoke vulnerable feelings, making it difficult to acknowledge and address deeply ingrained biases.

### How can white people contribute to anti-racism efforts according to the episode?

White people can contribute by actively engaging in conversations about racism, educating themselves about privilege, and deliberately taking an anti-racist stance. This involves challenging norms and confronting personal and societal biases.

### What impact does the fear of losing status and wealth have on anti-racist efforts?

The fear of losing status and wealth can make white individuals resistant to change and perpetuate systemic racism. This fear is often manipulated by media narratives, leading to a reluctance to support anti-racist initiatives.

## Transcript

Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I will be interviewing a number of amazing people and simply having a conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to Joe Lock code at seechangehappen. Co UK. That's seechangehappen. Co UK. You'll be able to catch up with all of the previous shows on itunes, Spotify and the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going. Today is episode 20 with the title Antiracism isn't Rocket science. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to be joined by Mural von Hustard. I met Mirror recently at an online event and discovered we both share a passion for inclusion. Mirror describes herself as a vessel through which knowledge and wisdom manifests. When I asked Meryl to describe her superpower, she said she creates solid ground. Hello, 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 yourself. Well, like you

Merel van Haastert: said, Mirror von Hasttert, I live in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. I'm a wise woman, a crone. I turned 51 just a couple of days ago. I'm a proud woman, I'm a single parent and I have a beautiful son. That's me privately. And I have my own company called Solid Ground, which, again, comes back. We'll talk about that a little bit later. I do energy work and spiritual work, where I guide people through well, any problems they have, something that comes up in their life when they get stuck, that's my business.

Joanne Lockwood: So you said you're a crone? I know of that word, but what do you mean by a wise woman and crone? Well, it's the

Merel van Haastert: one thing I've always been passionate about. As a little girl, I knew I was going to thrive when I was older and I always wanted to be a wise woman, a crone, somebody with knowledge and sharing that knowledge or being of service, not even sharing knowledge that I have myself, but that comes through me. Like you said, I feel like a vessel where knowledge and wisdom comes through. I always wanted to be this, but it took me a very long time. Well, of course, in years, but also to feel confident enough to stand my ground there. Now I'm 50, I'm this young, new chrome yay. I'm happy about that. So I'm actually finally in the place where I wanted to be. You were born

Joanne Lockwood: to be 50. Basically, you were born to be in your have 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 feeling like I've got a lot more years to go, so I'm finally there. This has all been preparation before. It so when I turned 30, I didn't have that, like, oh, God, I'm turning 30, I'm turning old. I'm actually quite going like, Yay. Finally.

Joanne Lockwood: Superb. I know what you mean. Each decade you find something more about yourself, don't you? And I think I've certainly learned a lot more about myself since I turned 50. And I think 50 is the new 40. We used to say this about our 40s, but I think we're much wiser now. In our 50s.

Merel van Haastert: I've got this new sense of energy, this new sense of being that isn't so rocky. I don't want to be in my 20s again. I liked it and I liked being a youth, but it's so uncertain. I'm not that uncertain anymore. I know who I am and what the world. So I can now exchange between the world and me more than I could when I was younger. And I've got something to say, not just stuff that I've learned, but also I listen much better to people because you're not constantly taking it personal. Because I know who I am, I've learned. Very good point.

Joanne Lockwood: Yes. I think we stopped trying to be anybody else other than ourselves, haven't we? Yeah, we don't need to be. We've been other people all our lives. A parent, a child, a sibling. And now we're us, aren't we? I think that's where it comes in. 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 don't know what it's like of a young person. You don't know what that's going to be like. But I want to tell my younger self, or even other young people going like, but this is awesome. Hurry, come 50

Joanne Lockwood: quickly. Don't worry about it. It's good. Yeah. Welcome to the club. Fantastic. So we got chatting the other day at this online event, and antiracism is something that we, as white people, probably don't understand enough. So why isn't it rocket science? Why isn't it rocket science?

Merel van Haastert: If you take off the blinders that you can do yourself, it is nothing that is out there that you don't know you already know. All the information is there. There's nothing you have to do, you just have to see it. That is, of course, difficult because there are a lot of layers put upon us, indoctrination and all sorts of ideas and stuff that are put on top of us. But your soul knows, so there's nothing new about this. There's nothing that you won't understand. It's your defence mechanism that kicks in, but that's it. The rest of it, you just have to listen and then go like, oh, but that's actually quite normal, that people are the same, everybody's the same. That skin colour doesn't do anything. There's nothing there. When we are young and we're going to school for the first time, you are taught to help others, to see people as equals. As young kids, we have no Philtre put in there yet to see people as different. So if you go back to that and feel like, oh, yeah, but I never saw my friend different because she or he had a different skin colour, it was, know, Jack or whoever daisy it was. And if you go back to that, that's that's, then from there, you can understand all, uh, different strategies that are used to put racism and white supremacy in place. 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 the societal and structural racism more as much as it is about the casual racism and the vindictive or discriminatory racism that occurs in day to day life. So as a white person, how do I drill through that? How do I try and really unpack about? Because it's not about the racism I've caused, is it? It's about the racism that exists in society and the inequity that occurs. Yeah, I think that

Merel van Haastert: white people take it very personal because you take it as an individual, as an individual CEO. But I don't have these beliefs. I don't see you any differently. But it's a system. It's a system there that you were born into. It's not something that you did. You didn't think like, okay, let's discriminate against whomever or whatever it could be gender or sexuality. You don't think consciously think, okay, let's discriminate. It's a system that you're brought into. Like, you go to school and you learn about your ABCs and you learn about calculation. And through all these messages you get how society works. And then you start as a child, you start relating to, okay, my parents ask this of me, or Society asks that of me. And that's how you learn how the world works. So what white people forget is that there is white culture. It exists. We don't see it, but it's the set of values and norms and all that stuff that you get imprinted. And that imprint is how you act in the world. And that is not your soul. It has nothing to do with you being a human. That's how I see it. So is that the same as

Joanne Lockwood: kind of the default is white? So if we're looking for a photograph, the Default photograph is of a white person. We're looking at pictures of in your various faith groups, pictures of our faith leaders, of historical faith leaders. They're always shown as white people, aren't they, with beards and golden hair. So we've built this very whitest default sort of way of looking at the world, haven't we? And when we think as a white person, we always think about white people. We don't think in our narrative about non white people as part of our picture, do we? No, we don't.

Merel van Haastert: You don't even realise that it happens because you're so used to all the books being with the same pictures and the movies being about. There are a little bit of in the background or on the edges, there are some people of colour there like it's like you know that there's a little bit of a blanket of the world with different groups, but the narrative is white. But we never call it that way. We never mention it, that you are a specific group. That's where the how do you say that decolonization starts when dismantling starts when you realise that you are of white culture. And then you can start to see the difference between system and the individual and how that works.

Joanne Lockwood: You're aware of my gender transition and my background. And ideally, in the same way we see white as default, we often see men male as default as well. In a lot of narratives in movies and the heroes, and when we're looking at roles and expectations, man is kind of the default. And having moved to the other side for whatever better way of describing it, I now see that default from a different angle. Whereas once I was immersed in that and saw no problem, now I'm now feeling the wind in my face as I travel of seeing all this inequity of representation. I don't want to get off the topic of racism and I'm not trying to talk here about gender, but I think unless you've come out of a place where you are in the default and gone to a place where you're not the default, you cannot understand what it's like to be the default, if that makes sense. So for white people like ourselves, we can never stop being white and therefore our privilege is the same as water and oxygen. It's all around us and we can't tell it's there because we can't see it. Yeah, you can

Merel van Haastert: never get away from it. It is not something that you take off the privilege is there. You can't put it away. You can't say to, when you're going through security at an airport, say to this officer that's standing there, well, treat me like the person you did with a different skin colour. It doesn't work that way. So that's also why you don't see it. I think that you touched upon something that I was thinking about. Just thinking about. There needs to be a bit of a breakdown somewhere. And I'm saying what you just said, you've had that gender change. I've had some breakdown in my life too, like divorce and losing a job. When the crisis went on about ten years ago, it started an economical crisis. There needs to be a bit of a breakdown that gives you an entry towards seeing the world a little bit the larger scope of the world. So, strangely enough, you have an advantage when you are not the standard in the world. In white people. Of course there's a standard. We have a hierarchy within white people too. But nobody fully fits this standard. But the amount that you don't fit into that standard gives you the opportunity to see from a different point of view, see different perspectives. That also means that you can pick up on different perspectives and then you start seeing then you can it's like something that you you turn out of yourself, you, you know, like and that's not the right word. You zoom out of yourself a little bit and that's this break, this breakdown of norms and values that helps you to see other plights, other narratives.

Joanne Lockwood: If you look at some of the terminology and phraseologies that's evolved over the years. So we talk about people of colour, POC, we talk about BAME, we talk about BME, we now talk about BIPOC, we talk about all these sort of various terms for categorising people who are not white, whereas there is no kind of categorization as such for whiteness, is there? We don't talk about a bit white or very white or English white or brown or French white. We just are again, it's default. Some of these terms, I understand, are quite maybe not offensive to some people, but they certainly are stereotyping people, they're grouping people that not every person who is not white is the same. And we kind of marginalise and erase lived experiences by categorising people as black, Asian, minority, ethnics. And that so understates people's lived experience as a community, doesn't it?

Merel van Haastert: Yeah, and it does, because you have white as the default. It all is related to as not white or default. In the centering is still white. That is like you put yourself in the centre of the world and then everything has to relate to you. And that's how we do it. At first it's really weird, actually. Yeah, I started laughing a little bit white, less white, that kind of thing. Actually, there is a little bit of it because I live in the Netherlands and we have some Polish people here. We don't consider them white, we consider them foreigners. So there is a hierarchy within white.

Joanne Lockwood: I had this conversation about a year ago with someone and we're talking about inclusion and there are good immigrants and there are bad immigrants, aren't there? And I was talking to this person who was Dutch themselves. I said, well, as a Dutch person in the UK, you're a good immigrant. We like Dutch people, French people we make our own jokes about, and Germans we make our own jokes about, and Italians we make other jokes around. But if you came from the old Eastern Europe poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, anywhere that is maybe east of Germany, effectively what would be considered maybe part of the Soviet Union or part of that kind of 70s image of communism we see these people as less intelligent. We see them as chancers, often maybe more crooked. And we cast these doubts on people who are not good immigrants. And it's shocking to hear the language in the media, the way that people are described and the way that their accents are kind of demonised in a way. People would say people from Estonia are good immigrants because they're kind of clean and very well spoken, whereas someone from Lithuania sounds a bit darker. There's a whole load of new stereotypes are coming now and again. Racism is more than just white people and black people. There's also racism within communities, within faith groups, within religions. Isn't.

Merel van Haastert: Have probably in England the same. But I'm going to ask you about that because in the Netherlands, within the country, there's also we have these different accents that we consider not so bright, not so and I lived in Thailand for a while and I worked there and it's a huge country, of course, not one of the biggest, but huge country. And then I was thinking about the Netherlands. If you do, you're through it, right? It's like one and a half hours or almost maybe two, and it's done. And then we have this. Then I think about the way we categorise and label people just from the area they're from. It is the Netherlands. We're a post stamp. But even there, there are parts from the Netherlands. Where you're from means that you're a certain kind of way or you think 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 a lot of English nationalism going on about anything non British is kind of not as good. And inevitably that leads people to be racist because what they mean when they talk about being British, they mean white British, they don't mean whatever British. There's still this kind of if you're not white and British, you're not British. And there's a certain section of society that still sees that and that's abhorrent to me. But again, part of this white is default and England is a united kingdom, is a kind of a white default society and it's taking a lot to change people's minds. And there's a lot of rejection of the Black Lives Matter movement. There's a lot of fight back against this movement by a sect of British society. And it's shocking to see, but those kind of attitudes still exist. But they do. We saw it with Brexit, we saw it with this nationalistic protectionism. We want to protect this country for the white British people. And if you're not white British, then you should go. And it's hard fighting back around that. And I don't even necessarily think that's privilege speaking. In fact, a lot of these people, I would say, are not speaking from a point of privilege, they're speaking from a point of nationalism. Almost like this, I dare say. I don't want to stress too far to say fascist views, extreme right wing views, but a lot of it is spelling from that, I think. Yeah,

Merel van Haastert: it's the same in the Netherlands. England and the Netherlands have a bit of have similarities where they colonised parts of this world and they called it the part of their kingdom. You still have the Commonwealth. I think that's one of the words that's used in the Netherlands. We don't use it, but we have of course had Indonesia, Suriname, some islands in Caribbean and strangely enough, when I grew up I knew these areas were there. But I now recall that I never thought of them as being Dutch. While they were included in our laws and everything, I never considered them Dutch. So when you have these problems right now with the demonstrations in the Netherlands trying to get the conversation going about systemic racism and white supremacy, people still keep yelling at these people with a different skin colour than white, like go back to your country. Because they don't consider they never thought that Suriname was part of the Netherlands. Of course it wasn't, but by law it was. But we hear too, Dutch means white, means white person from the Netherlands. There are large groups, I live in Rotterdam and that it means that we have 70% of our inhabitants have a different cultural or background than Dutch. So how is it still possible that just this minority gets to say just us is what matters. That's what we do it for, nothing else. 70%, that means 70% of the city has to go. Then the city will shut down. Just this city and this goes rest of the world as well. Yeah,

Joanne Lockwood: you're touching on colonialism now, which is the Brits, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish and even if you think about the Italians and the Roman Empire, there's been a lot of colonialism going on by white Europeans. If you like trading religion for wealth and we give you our religion and destroy your culture and we steal your wealth and your heritage. I was at a Tutankhamun exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London, I think last year and I didn't look at it with the right lens. I've replayed that visit with a different lens and basically white privileged people went to Egypt, dug holes in their ground, stole all their goods, brought them back to the UK. And it was almost like we were the colonial masters and we felt entitled to do that. And I look at it now and thinking all the stuff we hold at the British Museum, that's from Egypt, from Greece, from ancient civilizations that we hold and quite rightly, the governments of these countries want their artefacts back. And I think it's important that we understand whose artefacts they are and the culturalism about where they came from. And this is again part of the British or the Western white culture is that we feel an incentive entitlement to the world's history. The white people wrote history. And actually what we need to do is understand that white people didn't write history. White people created some bad history and some bad events. But there's plenty of cultures out there that were managing quite happily without white people coming along and giving them religion, stealing all their goods. Yeah,

Merel van Haastert: I'm not so good with names, but there was a woman that recently said or said like, our history does not exist unless white people were there once white people came there, history all of a sudden existed again from their lens through the white lens. And it's in our genes somehow, because probably you've had this experience as well, that you grow up and you know that there's a big world and you want to see it and you travel it. Right. You've got a passport that gives you access to it. I have a passport, Dutch passport, that gives me almost access to almost anywhere in the world, and I don't even think about it. And it means that we are so used to thinking that we can just go and be anywhere without asking it's not even asking. It's just considering the other person. This is what we've grown up with. And that's this system thing. Again, this is not personal. It's this system thing that our ancestors have given us this idea that the world is ours and we can take whatever we want with it. Just to mention because there's going to be criticism here. It happens every time. And that is like but in all those countries and years before racism, like slavery came, all these other cultures also did enslave people and stuff. Yeah, that happened, too. But the Dutch, the English, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French what we did was we made it a worldwide economy. We put it on a global scale. That is, to me, what racism is. We made it our default economy. Yeah.

Joanne Lockwood: And we built the wealth of our country off the back of that. So our power and privilege today has actually been built off the wealth that we plundered and appropriated from these other cultures. We spread

Merel van Haastert: it worldwide. We spread it globally. And of course, there was the Chinese and Mongolians with Genghis Khan and Genghis Khan, or how do you say that? And there are Middle Eastern cultures that had black people from Africa as slaves, all that existed. But around about one, four hundreds, we started to lift it through to a level that is where we are now. That's a continuum. We also started

Joanne Lockwood: using science to justify it. I was reading some shocking journals, some summary journals from the 1819 hundreds, where eminent professors and scientists at the time were measuring people's skulls and determining that white men had to be more intelligent because of their skull shape. Black people, because of the way their skull was developing and the size and proportions, meant their brain could never be as intelligent as a white person's. And even at the same time, we were looking at women's skulls and saying that women couldn't be as intelligent as a man because the shape and size of their skull. So we were using science to justify white supremacy. And that narrative has continued in that feeling that white people are more intelligent. Black people or non white people, non men are less intelligent because there's no way their brain capacity can be as good as a white person, a white man. And we've seen that through this kind of white Victorian Edwardian privilege in the UK being propagated that this is a high privileged society that has this entitled belief that they are better. Yeah, we

Merel van Haastert: think we're thinking that we've evolved past all this violence, past all this stupidity, and we are this ratio, very well behaved, got the best norms and values in the world. That's what we grow up with. And people go like, well, slavery was abolished, I think it was 40 years earlier at your place than ours. We were quite late. But it's not in the past with this, COVID-19 they're testing vaccines in Africa on black people. They are. That is classic racism. That is classic white supremacy still going 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, they value life less, therefore we can get away with it. It is shocking. And I'm not sure how it's justified whether we've identified the fact that disproportionately black people are affected more by COVID and therefore it's justified on that bound, I don't know. But you're right. We even still call it the Third World. In some areas, we're the first world. I really

Merel van Haastert: believe this. I'm not above any of this. I've believed this. I thought indeed that we in west, this Western and we're talking some specific countries, right? England, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, the Scandinavian, France, Spain and Portugal. A little bit of Italy and Switzerland. That's it. And I thought we had it going on. I really thought we had democracy. We have ratio, we have science, we're living in a safe country, there's no war, there was nothing going on. I really believed that there were Third world countries where the only thing they had to do was go up on our level and we needed to help them get up to our 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 order to be as accepted in the world, in the same way we want women to act like men so that they're accepted in the world. So we want to assimilate everyone to the same ideals as being a white man. And isn't that what we're doing with privilege? We assume that this privileged structure we have in society when our Western society is all based around this default norm, isn't it? Which is the white man. And the further you stray away from that, the less valuable you're seen, the less worthy you're seen. And that's the challenge, isn't it? And when we put intersexuality into the mix, where we've got people's age, race, faith, beliefs and gender and sexuality in there, that leads to massive more inequities, doesn't it? Yeah.

Merel van Haastert: And then that also explains why white people think that if you're living in Jamaica and you're not making it yet in the world, that it's your personal fault that you're not making it, or that you're poor, that it's a personal thing. And all this stuff has never been personal. It's just to make this system work, to make this economy work, to make this power work that we have and keep it in place. And once you stray from it, you will immediately feel that the system does not want you to change. Because the

Joanne Lockwood: Western world we've been talking about, the original Eurovision Contest countries, we built our economies on power and wealth and control, haven't we? If we don't have control of the markets, we don't have control of the wealth, then we lose our status amongst our friends, if you like, our other privileged countries. So we're always competing against who we see as our competing economies, rather than seeing other countries like India and China or Russia or someone who is a bad or lesser part of the world. We want to compete, be more equal with better than the French, better than the Germans, better than the Dutch, better than the Americans, and we assume that everybody else has the same attitude. But in reality, people value different things out of life and society, don't they?

Merel van Haastert: Yeah. Well, it is what white people fear. This is the fear that we will lose something. I don't think that if you would ask somebody that they really know what losing means, then but it's like position in this world where you mentioned we think that we're going to fall back to a lesser standard somehow. This is what we think. But that's only because we see other cultures in other parts of the world as less as us. Of course I don't want to go all lives matter, because of course that's true, but the system says to us that it matters. It matters where you come from. And that's why we think that the rest of the world is strange and violent and people have values and norms that are not ours. So then there must be bad. If you step away from that, you will find that people have, of course, other values and other ideas about life and that could actually be enriching. It is enriching to have people think differently than you and it's not a step back. Everything that comes into our country, the Netherlands, I'm assuming it's the same in England. If more people with the Islam faith come in, we immediately think, oh, well, we will start going oppressing women again. Our feministic ideas will take a plunge. It is not true. It is not true. No, but the media

Joanne Lockwood: feeds us. This stuff right back from as soon as television was invented, the movies were invented, the newspapers, the media have been creating stories that sell newspapers. They sell films. And the reason they sell is because they create conflict, they create challenge, they create some narrative that is different to everyday life. I was speaking to an editor of a national Sunday paper in the UK about something recently and they basically said to me that the Anti brigade have something to talk about, whereas the people just getting on with their lives, it's no. A person gets up in the morning, smiles, goes to work, comes home, puts kids to bed, goes to sleep, it's not news. So unless you're creating news and creating some debate or creating some challenge, you're not newsworthy. So the media is picking up on these stories of the Middle East, these stories of China, these stories of Russia, these stories of people who are different to us and almost saying we are the default. These people are different and creating story about it. So no wonder we've been fed these images of poor people in Africa with flies and pot bellies and need of our support for drought and then painting their countries as dictators and backwards. And we somehow talk about them being at risk of nuclear weapons. How can we trust these people with weapons? All we see is them running in the street with firing rifles in the air. The media is almost saying, acting like savages, we can't trust these people. So this is what the media is putting into our living rooms every day. How can we stop and walk a step back and go, Actually, they're not. But now we see people from Syria, from other countries, Afghanistan, as refugees. We see these highly intelligent business people who are now reduced to carrying all their possessions on their back with their families and walking for hundreds of miles to try and find a better life. And we just see them as scrounging peasants. That's what the media is portraying them. We don't see the lived experience behind these people, the story of tragedy, about how these people from fantastic communities have lost everything through war, through no fault of their own, being displaced. And we're 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 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 that's what creates this fear. That's why white people are so scared right now, because the bad man, the bad people are coming for us and they want our world. We've created all this. We've created all this. If you take all their wealth and destroy everything, of course they're going to go like, well, hey, you said this is the first world and all this wealth is here. We're coming and it's not they're gold diggers. These people would love to go home. They really would love to go home, back to their own countries and live there, raise their kids within their families and that stuff. They're not coming for us. There's no storyline there. Like you said, it's created with these images and we bombarded and that we have to save them. That's just this white saviorism. There's a whole structure of beliefs and ideas and feelings and emotions that are constantly being triggered in us. They're tapping into it every single day just to keep this trigger going. It's trauma. It's actually trauma triggering. They're going to keep doing it so that we keep saying, like, no, shut our borders for these refugees. Our country is too full. And I was in the south of France recently, and I was flying over the ocean. There what's called the same ocean that people use channel 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 going there as a child thinking, oh, it's this lovely place. And now I'm flying over it and I'm thinking, but we're letting people die there because of our ideas. That's the only reason that is happening. And it's upon us to change our own minds. And we can. We're intelligent human beings. We can. It's very simple to me. If you create one set of rules, you can also create another set of rules. You can just chuck it and just say, okay, let's do it differently. It's possible. The whole COVID thing actually showed us that by one day, all of it was shut down, everything was done. We now have different rules. Okay, fine. Then just say, okay, this is not working for our world. It has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with spreading of wealth. That is a thing. It isn't a thing. This whole economy is just in our heads. At least that's what I think. It might be very simple to say it like that, but that's how I view it. It's really simple.

Joanne Lockwood: Well, we start off this podcast by calling the title Antiracism Work is Not Rocket Science. And the more we're talking about it, it is a bit of rocket science. There's a lot in it, isn't it, that we need to get our heads around. And it's not something we just pick off a menu and say, this is how I do it. There's a lot of unpacking to do. So why is it so hard for white 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 you are in it. You are white. So that makes it difficult to see it. So that's a challenge. It doesn't mean that you can't come to a point where you start thinking differently or did you change your thinking around certain stuff. But we are not used to being viewed as a group, white people as a group, as a culture. That's the first thing. If you would do that, say okay, like we do with other cultures, like with names you mentioned earlier, the labels that we have. If you just say, okay, if I am a group, if I am from white culture, what does that mean for the rest of the world? Then you have an entrance to start unpacking and why it is difficult. There are a couple of things why it's difficult, I have no full extent, but one of the things is people from other cultures say to us like well, you are in the position of power, you can change things. But strangely enough, within white culture this is what I've discovered is we talk of this freedom of speech that we have this ability and freedom to share our thoughts and all this. Yes, there is, you can share it, but actually if you look at it, it's really frowned upon to go against authority within white culture. It is not okay to challenge authority. We say it is and then you get these nice groups that have these they're contained within an ideology or stuff and then we tolerate it but actually go against our leaders. And that starts young, right? That's not just our government, but that starts young within our families, within school, there's authority, always authority and it's not okay to challenge it. So this is what white people feel is when they say like oh, but maybe this point of view is not really what the world is like and I'm starting to question it. You immediately feel this going like okay, if I do that, then I'll be placed outside of the group and we are trained to stay within the herd. That is what we are trained to do. And this means if you do antiracism work or start even thinking about it, like equality or inclusion, then immediately you feel that you are placed outside of this group and you are taught from a very early age that you're nothing without family, you're nothing. I'm sure you can relate to it. I can relate to it in instances in my life that I've placed myself outside of the group. And then you're alone and that is a scary thing for a human being to be alone with this massive force of structure and system that is going against you and being able to step out of it and say okay, but I'm okay here. That is difficult. That is the big challenge. Yeah.

Joanne Lockwood: I think what I'm feeling myself is that whilst I myself have not directly been racist, directly course racism, obviously as a white person I benefit from being the default. But it's extremely challenging for an individual to influence the social construct as an individual of racism, the social construct of society. So it's not just something we can do within an organisation and within a business. We ourselves can promote antiracism, we can talk about how we can do this, but how do we, as white people who want to do something about this, change society itself? Because that's fundamentally what we're talking about here. This is not a tweak. This is a fundamental realignment.

Merel van Haastert: Yeah, it's scary to raise your voice and to say, well, this is not okay. I don't agree with this. And I think that would be in any structure where you challenge authority and power. It's not like that. I have privilege as a white woman, which means I'm on this, you know, I'm the step down from a white man, which means I've got a lot of power in this world. It is not power that I can actually how do you say that? Into something that, okay, now let's change society. But you need community. And I think that is what I'm trying to do too, is speaking up about this so that it resonates with others and others start coming into this community of feeling like, okay, we need some change. But this change won't happen within the system. Of course there needs to be stuff done there. But the change happens when you, as an individual, step outside of this group and say, I want to live in a different world. I want to live in a world where I won't be scared of foreigners, of people coming into my country or taking my jobs, just actually saying, okay, not going to do that. I believe in a kind of tipping point kind of thing. If more people start saying, okay, this is not okay, then the thing will tip. And it's a long process. It's a very long process. And it's very painful because on the one hand, it is individual. You change your individual points of views. That means, like I said, I do energy work and spiritual work. You change your vibration, your being, and that resonates with others. That's how change actually happens. So it's individual work. And then enough people have to get there. Then we can challenge some ideas around it. It's not a linear world thing. In the Western world sorry, in the Western world, sorry. For people thinking, why am I because. My cat is

Joanne Lockwood: going another Lockdown special. We've got the cat visiting. We've had mothers, we've had the Amazon man and now we 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 of thought. Let

Joanne Lockwood: me ask you a question. One of the challenges when we've talked before, one of the challenges we find is that white people feel shame. They don't know where to start. They're worried about getting it wrong. They don't understand their whiteness. And I understand that you set up a project, project Colour White. Which do you want to talk to me about? Why you created that and how it can help white people be antiracist? Yeah,

Merel van Haastert: I started that because I indeed wanted to reach out to other people was a personal thing, actually. Like, I felt all these things that were wrong and I had no idea how change was going to come about. And I thought, Well, I want to talk to white people. How do they feel? Do they feel this? It's very uncomfortable. It's really uncomfortable being challenged on your beliefs around the world because it feels like candy is being taken away from you. That's actually really how it feels. I couldn't talk to the women because I mostly work with women of colour. I couldn't talk to them about this because they, of course, have an idea about it, but they're not white. They don't feel the way I feel. Waking up in this system where you are part of this oppression is something else than waking up on the outside of it and seeing this system work against you. Waking up with this privilege and you're going like, oh, jeez, I've got this. Privilege is hard. It's really hard. And I wanted to talk to others. That's actually how I created this project. I wasn't thinking about creating a project, it just happened. I wanted to have some white women come together because we already said it's white men. That's on top of it. I still am very weary about talking to white men about antiracism, because I immediately get into this patriarchy thing where I'm not taking so seriously and that kind of thing I'm wary of that starting to get better. But I wanted to talk to white women and it turned out that is not that easy. So then I thought, well, I'll make it a project and I'll throw it out into the world, like what my views are and how I think that we can change this so that we can start having a real constructive conversation about what this actually means to dismantle anti blackness in yourself and what you come up against so that you won't feel so alone. And in the meantime, try to come up with some ideas about the world that you actually want. Because I don't want this world. I never wanted this world to be this way. This is not something that I consciously chose. So this is why I started this project colour White. And it's still very difficult to get white people to talk about it. It is shame in there. We think that we have to take on this guilt thing of our ancestors and it's never been about that. It's not what people want. You can't change the past. Really can't. I have ancestors who had sugar plantations in Indonesia and I can't feel guilty about it, but that doesn't change anything anyway. It's what happen. You just have to be honest about it, that this is a part of it and that's how you need to talk. And this is something that we, as Western culture, we still don't do so well.

Joanne Lockwood: I'm nervous about having a conversation about antiracism. I'm not an expert. Where do I start? What if I say something? So I think many white people are uncomfortable having this conversation because they've got no anchor of their perspective. I think when we were talking about your project, Colour White, it was trying to create a safe space for white people to not know white people, to not be sure about how to have conversations without the fear of upsetting somebody else who maybe is part of that conversation. So it's almost like a safe space to explore whiteness because we have many communities where people who are not white, black people, brown people, they come together and they have a passion to change the world, whereas white people effectively are trying to change themselves, which is a lot harder sometimes than trying to change the world. The enemy is ourselves, effectively. And that's what you're doing, is you're almost battling your own infrastructure, your own family, your own friends. And people don't always have the tools because as humans we like to agree with each other, we like to have easy conversations, we want to be superficial, but to actually start almost being paternal, maternal or even patronising or patronising somebody by talking to them in a way about racism is not comfortable in our nature, is it? No.

Merel van Haastert: And you don't like to admit that you're fearful. Currently I do these I call it let's sit and talk. I go out into a public space outside. Usually I see down two stools with the COVID metre and one and a half metres apart and I invite people to come and sit down and talk to me about it. That's again, creating a safe space. And there was this conversation recently I had with a white man and he said, but I am afraid of losing what I have because I'm actually comfortable with what I have. I said, yeah, that's okay. To feel and to have this kind of conversation in a mixed group is difficult because you admit to this fear that keeps other people outside of your network or stuff, so they get triggered on a different level. Well, you need to own this feeling of fear, these emotions that you have around it. There are a lot of emotions you're going to have. I remember going through different steps of what white fragility means, what white tears means, and how that comes up in me. And I remember sitting there for, I think, a week it was, of feeling no ground beneath me anymore. Like everything I believed in had gone and I didn't know what this new thing was going to look like. I still don't know. So yeah, also in me there's still some fear because I was cheering about being 51. It also means that I've for 51 years been living in a certain way and I need to give it up. And that's not fun. Like you said, we're not changing the rest of the world, we're changing ourselves, which is, yeah, that is the fear. So you need the safe spaces. We need lots more safe spaces and we need to figure out how, for white people, there is an urgency to this. Why to do this, why do we need to change? Because, yeah, you and me, we can withdraw ourselves and say, okay, we don't want to do this fight, we don't want to talk about inclusion. We can withdraw in our lives, we can live happily ever after. In Dutch, we say NA unstasunsflute, which means after us, whatever. I'll just live my life and I can do that. I don't have to do this, I don't have to change the world because it's working for me in a certain way and actually having to realise that this discrimination, this thing that we have learned to do, is actually causing us all these problems that are in this world. So there is an urgency for us to do it. I will say it dramatically. It's our souls that are at

Joanne Lockwood: risk here, for sure. One phrase I use myself is holistic, active and deliberate. That's about inclusion. We have to be deliberate about it and active. And what you're saying is, if we walk on by, if we let it pass, we turn the other cheek, we turn a blind eye, whatever expression you want to use, we're not being deliberate and active. What we're doing there is we're letting something become more normal by the only reaction can and should be to say no, to stand up and be actively and deliberately antiracist, antisexist, anti, whatever. Because the moment we let it pass, we give permission for it to happen again. And at some point it escalates. So I think you're right, it's incumbent on each of us to take an anti stance and the oxymoron, or be intolerant of intolerance, which is a paradox in itself, but where intolerance lays, we can't be tolerant of anyone's intolerance. And antiracism is just a good example where we need to be intolerant of any racism and actively and deliberately so. That's fantastic. And I'd love to find out more about your project. Colour white. I mean, we've talked extensively. If anyone's listening to this, 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, so you can type in Project Colour White.

Joanne Lockwood: Is that the American spelling and colour color? Or is it the 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. 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 access to the project and my contact. And on the Facebook there's a big note, which I call the ground of Project Colour White, which tells you about how I create a safe space for white people to talk about these very difficult things.

Joanne Lockwood: Excellent. Well, we're going to carry on talking about this and we're going to keep in touch. And I'm definitely being active and deliberate about my antiracism, and I'd welcome anyone who's listening to get in touch with yourself and myself. Maybe you'd like to come and talk about what work you're doing in antiracism, maybe from a white perspective on this podcast. Come and have a chat. So, a huge thank you to Mural. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for the listeners for tuning in and sticking with it. Please do subscribe to keep updated on the future episodes of the Inclusion Bites podcast. That's bites. Please tell your friends if you have some, and your colleagues if you happen to have some colleagues as well. I have a number of exciting guests lined up that I'm sure you'd be even more inspired by, if that's possible over the next few weeks and months. And remember, if you'd like to be a guest on the show, please let me know. And as long as you're talking about something around inclusion, making the world a better place for everyone to thrive, then no topic is off limits. So I'd welcome your comments, your feedback and suggestions to Joe Lockwood at ctnchapan co UK. Tell me how we can improve future shows. Tell me what topics you'd like to hear. So, finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood, and it has been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next.