How can iNGOs be antiracist and anticolonial?

Real change is uncomfortable for the powerful. If it is not then it is not change.

We stand for real change, for a world without racism, a world where it will no longer be necessary to keep pointing out the obvious truth that Black lives matter.

To stand with Black people in their struggle for recognition and equality is a moral obligation for us, one that easily trumps all other considerations.

But we understand that this commitment needs to be shown in actions, not words, and through a focus on outcomes, not just policies.

This is why we promise to support the transformation process of our organization towards a fully antiracist and anticolonial one by adhering to the following principles:

We will be honest about what real change means

When the Black Lives Matters protests erupted in 2020, there was a flurry of press releases by big organizations. “Something must be done,” read the headlines. These echoed the headlines after the #MeToo movement erupted, in 2017 and beyond. So many good words and ideas, but few will argue that enough has been done in the aftermath in either case.

Change is hard.

Change obliges us to drop habits developed over decades, sometimes centuries. Habits of white dominance in leadership, patronizing treatment of local partners, casually sexist attitudes and the “white savior” mentality have been with us for a very long time and traces of them are still in the DNA of international organizations. Changing this will take committed leadership, more diverse points of view, and ongoing staff education.

Change implies a drastic rethinking of our business model. A decision to work with and through local organizations in equal partnerships, committing to an anticolonial approach, will have an enormous impact on how we do operations and what competencies our teams need. Any such shift will make some leaders reluctant and some employees scared. This is why few organizations had the courage to go through with it in the past, and now our entire sector is reduced to simply reacting to social pressure.

But we are committed to justice because we know that anything else will mean a gradual slide into irrelevance and, eventually, disappearance. Moreover, we believe that we can grow and evolve, just like we did when we put gender concerns at the center of the work we do, just like when we adapted our programs overnight to respond successfully to the COVID-19 crisis.

We will let the key people be the arbiters

Because change is hard, organizations will defend against it any way that they can. They will put up innocuous policies and report on metrics that don’t mean much, so that they seem to be making progress while keeping the status quo. They will set “quotas” for many years in the future and try to kick the can down the road on racism and colonialism in any way possible, so that it becomes someone else’s problem in the future.

We will refuse to do this. Yes, we are proud of our achievements so far, but we realize these are not enough. We won’t rely on consultancies and other intermediaries to tell us how we are doing. The only arbiters of how anticolonial we are with our local partners will be our local partners. The only arbiters on how antiracist our staff environment is will be our staff members of color.

We will change our language

Words like antiracism and anticolonialism are unfortunate; we use them because they are prominent in the ongoing discourse but we are aware of their deficiencies. They are a stand-in for more positive, more accurate, broader concepts: justice, respect, and fairness. Just like all buzzwords, they are in danger of being appropriated and twisted by different social groups; different people mean different things when using them. Crucially, practical experience shows that they are hard to rally staff around, being abstract and inconcrete. 

We will speak of antiracism and anticolonialism if we must, but we will never take our eye off the bigger goal – a society that embodies justice and respect for all.

More broadly, we commit to using language that shows respect, avoiding development-speak. In using complicated language and treating our partners as “beneficiaries” we are revealing our disregard for them. Indeed, for too long, the only relevant audiences for iNGOs have been the staff members and the donors. This must change. If our plans can’t be understood by our partners then they are useless. If we need reports to convince people of color that we are antiracist then we are not.

We will encourage our staff to drive the debate, not just react to it

The Black Lives Matter reaction wave, long undermined and ignored, created overnight antiracism “champions” among the powerful. These voices now pledge uncritical support to the movement. Fear tends to lead to binary thinking, and a reversal to previous habits once the threat subsides. We will not be like that. Our staff, including our Black staff, have their own opinions about where our societies are headed, and those opinions are three-dimensional. It is 2021, and our organization is a place where thinking people work, people committed to nonviolence and justice but with diverging opinions on, for example, whether defunding the police is a good idea. This diversity is our strength; otherwise we would be a mere puppet flailing in the wind of public opinion.

Summary

The true answer to whether we can be a fully antiracist, anticolonial organization is “it remains to be seen.” What we can promise as the leadership is that we will lead the process fearlessly, wherever it may take us.