This is an insight written by Stella Hudson on the recent Bahá’í Chair for World Peace Lecture by Dr. Olivia Rutazibwa on “Dignity, Repair & Retreat: reflections on anticolonial and anti-racist solidarity” held on April 5, 2022.
In her talk “Dignity, Repair & Retreat: reflections on anticolonial and anti-racist solidarity” Dr. Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa, touches on the many ways that our history of colonialism has shaped our current ways of thinking and epistemic paradigms. So much of how we create and value information and knowledge is centered around western and white ways of thinking. Further, people from marginalized regions and identities, non-white, non-western voices are often actively censored. Acknowledging this unequal framework that upholds much of our intellectual, imagined, and academic spaces can be difficult, as we are steeped in this ideology at every level of development.
Once this question of why and how we make knowledge is asked, a lot of foundational ideas are shaken. Colonial interaction has a large impact on intellectual and imagination-based spaces and influences ideas, opinions, and systems. Even when colonizers leave, colonialism remains. Its consequences continue to echo. In academia, this is especially evident in our scholarly choices and the ways in which we frame arguments, ideas, and conclusions.
This talk asked the question of whether it is possible for academia to truly be a force for good when it seems like the institution cannot move past the colonial frame it was created within. Scholarship is based on foundational assumptions we are sometimes completely unaware of, and which can sometimes contradict our conscious values. Nevertheless, implicit bias and systemic oppression have far-reaching consequences. The good intent of individuals becomes insignificant when those individuals participate in and perpetuate a system that breeds injustice and inequality by design.
Academic institutions were created to prop up white and western supremacy and to exclude and silence marginalized voices. Trying to include more people in a fundamentally flawed system can only do so much to create change. Creative solutions are required, and this starts with asking questions about what it would actually look like if we committed to leaving colonialism in the past. How would knowledge grow and develop if new methods and frameworks were able to join the conversation? The meeting of minds, civilizations, and ideas, are powerful tools for innovation, creation, and development. In the past, these collisions have been conducted in a competitive, colonialist, and violent manner.
Colonialism turns people into things. It locks us into one way of thinking even if we are not aware of the limitations. There is a phenomenon termed the refugee crisis in Europe. The crisis is that people feel the capabilities and needs of western nation-states are being strained by immigration. What does this situation look like if it is recentered from the perspective of rich white western countries to the lived reality and experiences of people being forced to run for their lives?
Coloniality is so ubiquitous in western thought that it can be difficult to overcome. While it may feel that conflict and competition leading to a winner is inevitable when cultures meet, in reality, it is only one possible outcome. Other methods of contact could lead to ways of thinking and creating knowledge, solutions to problems, and creative innovations that we cannot yet imagine.
About the Author:
Stella Hudson is a Graduate Assistant with the Baha’i Chair for World Peace. She graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2021 with a B.A. in English. She is attending the University of Maryland and pursuing a Master’s of Library and Information Science.