Student Confessions on Anti-Racism: Claire E
Welcome to Student Confessions - an interview series where graduates of Becoming Anti-Racist with Nova Reid share the challenges and triumphs of their anti-racism journey.
Claire was born and grew up in Wales and has lived in England for the last twenty years. She lives with her partner, is a dog-owner, daughter, sister, and likes to think she is a good friend. “I work for a university – I support researchers in applying for funding for their research. It’s a really great job where I talk to people who are very clever, very smart, full of great ideas and I help them try and make those ideas happen – which is a really great thing to do. I’m also a runner and a triathlete. I feel like I have a lot going on.”
Although Claire’s been aware of racism and started her journey quite some time ago, she didn’t become actively anti-racist until 2019-2020 when she read Layla F Saad’s Me and White Supremacy and then – realising she needed to do more – Claire found Nova’s course. Since then she hasn’t looked back.
Angela - Interviewer: Welcome Claire, when did you begin your anti racism journey?
Quite a while ago, though I wouldn’t have actively called it an anti-racism journey until 2019-2020. But certainly I’ve always been an early-adopter of social media. I was on twitter very early on – it’s actually how I met my partner – but it was before Elon Musk and all the ways in which twitter has become not a force for good. It was a place where I – as someone who grew up in a very small town and a very white place – met people who had different life experiences to me and learned about all sorts of things I’d never really thought about before in terms of race, but also about gender and sexuality and all sorts of stuff.
So I was on a journey from maybe 2013 onwards in terms of needing to think a bit more critically in terms of the books I read, and the people I learn from. And then, about 2019, 2020, I’d started following different people on Instagram and heard about Layla F Saad’s Me and White Supremacy challenge. I missed the actual challenge but I heard about the book and I remember pre-ordering it and then, in early 2020, when Layla F Saad’s book came out, I went to see her and Candice Brathwaite in conversation in London.
I sat in a coffee shop in London and worked through the first chapter of Me and White Supremacy – and it completely blew my mind in terms of, yes it’s one thing to recognise that equality is very important to me. But then another level of, take a look at all the ways that you’ve been complicit in a system of racism.
That’s when I started actively to think of myself as someone who was starting an anti-racism journey. So I worked my way through Me and White Supremacy, mostly during the first months of lockdown, which wasn’t the best time. But also I didn’t have anywhere else to go or anything else to do, so in some ways it was good. Once I’d worked my way through the book, I was thinking about what next and I’d followed Nova on Instagram for a while and I thought, ‘she’s got this course. I should maybe think about doing that’. It was around the time George Floyd was murdered and I thought;
You’re just dithering for no sensible reason. You’re putting this off when people are dying. And it gave me the kick up the bum I needed to take that next step.
It’s like a lot of the stuff we were talking about on the Course Open Day (in January 2024): there’s never a good time, you just have to start.
So, in terms of continuing, there’s all this injustice in the world and people continue to be affected by it. And people continue to be affected by my personal ignorance.
If I’m not doing the work, or if I’m saying to myself, I’m really tired and stressed-out today, I haven’t got the brain-space for this, Black and Brown people can’t do that. They can’t have a day off from racism. So, there have been many many moments where I’ve felt, I can’t do this. Or, taken a day or a couple of days, or a week off and thought, I’ve really got to get back into it. Giving myself that kick up the bum and – as Nova says – this work is urgent. Fiddling around doesn’t help anyone.
Interviewer: What was the most difficult aspect of the course for you?
I started the course in 2020 and then Nova switched platforms so I started again. For the first couple of modules I was like, Cool. I know all this. I was working through it at quite a surface level. And some of the history chimed with stuff I’d been reading.
And then it got to the module on microaggressions and I thought, Ah. This is what it’s about. All the rest had been building up to, You are racist. And you need to think about the ways in which you are racist. And deal with that and manage that better so you cause less harm.
It was a real breakthrough moment for me. It was really hard. I’m an eldest daughter. I’ve always been academically high-achieving. So I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist. And I’m always wanting to be the good person. I never want to hurt someone. I never want to cause harm. And I always want to do the right thing. And to realise that actually I’ve been hurting people all the way through and causing harm was really hard. But it was also weirdly motivating because I was in a place where (a) I’d seen it and (b) I had a framework to help me not to do that in the future.
So it was hard but not hopeless.
Interviewer: I resonate with so much of that. I’m also an eldest daughter and – for a while – sometimes consciously sometimes subconsciously – I was always being or striving to be the good person. So it was quite a shock to me to recognise I wasn’t.
Interviewer: Was there any point in the course where you considered giving up and if so, at what point?
I don’t think I ever thought of giving up. I had a couple of points where I didn’t consciously step away from the course, but ended up unconsciously stepping away from it for periods of time. I did have a lot of stuff going on elsewhere in my life. We moved house in late 2021 early 2022, from one end of the country to another. And I had a new job. So there were a couple of periods of time where the course dropped off the agenda for me.
But by then I’d committed to the work. I’d seen the other side of the veil.
So even when I’d taken a break, the course and my anti-racism journey were always at the back of my mind. There were a couple of times that that happened. Each time I made a really conscious effort to move back towards a place where I was honouring the commitment I’d made.
So it was finding ways to get myself back into the rhythm. And what I found really useful when I was doing that was to put half an hour in my diary once a week, or a couple of times a week, as a reminder that if I do half an hour or ten minutes it’s great. Or if I have loads more time, fantastic. Or if I can’t do it for whatever reason, if I can’t work on the course this week, I can read an antiracist book in my spare time. Finding ways to keep my brain engaged with anti-racism and really thinking about the work even though it’s hard and there’s a lot to think about. And there’s a lot of other stuff claiming my attention.
Interviewer: I can’t remember if it’s in Nova’s book The Good Ally, or on the course, but that question, How can you be anti-racist today? Sometimes drops off my radar, but it always comes back.
Interviewer: How did you navigate and how do you navigate shame without turning it into self-loathing?
Badly.
[we both laughed in agreement]
Particularly when I’m tired or stressed and I’m excavating things I’ve done in the past or thought in the past in terms of my racism: it can be that something keeps me awake at night in terms of racism. I can think, Twenty-five years ago ... I can’t believe I did that. And then I sort of spiral and I think, I can’t believe I was such a terrible person.
But the way I tend to deal with it is, honestly, to try and get a good night’s sleep and try and come back to it tomorrow.
If there’s something I’m really stressed or overwhelmed by in terms of shame I just try and stop. Nova talks a lot about taking deep breaths but I’m terribly bad at breathwork and meditation. But quite often I find that if I can be in my body – I do quite a lot of running – if I can step away, do something else and come back to it, that’s the key. Particularly after running, the thing that sent me spiralling in the first place often seems a lot smaller.
Interviewer: how does it feel to know that this work isn’t about you?
In some ways it’s a relief!
I think it can be really overwhelming to think, racism is such a huge societal problem and the instinct you have as a white person when you start this journey is, ‘well, how do I do everything?' I’ve got to fix it.’ And certainly early on in my anti-racism journey - I thought, there’s so much I need to do. How do I do it all and have a job and have a life and do all the things I need to do?
But then to engage with the fact that it’s not about me actually helps me to put myself in context. To see myself as one person who’s part of a bigger world. People have been doing this work for centuries and they’ll continue to do it long after I’m gone. It’s nice that I’m involved. Nice that one person in the Midlands is actively trying to make my bit of the world a bit better.
But ultimately I’m not trying to make things better for me, I’m trying to make things better for other people. I find it quite grounding to think of it in that way.
Interviewer: If you had to pick a single ‘aha’ moment in your anti racism journey, what would you pick?
The microaggressions module was a real aha moment for me. A real, ‘this is what this is about’.
When people talk about doing the work, this is what they mean. It’s not just reading books and ticking things off. There’s no simple route to anti-racism: you can’t just do a, b, and c and be anti-racist. You have to do the work.
Once you start thinking more deeply about it, things become obvious. You start to see things differently, through a different lens.
And then, some of the films and videos that were part of the course. The film 13th, about the Thirteenth Amendment and the prison industrial complex in the US. That was just such an eye-opener for me. You hear about the prison industrial complex and you don’t really realise what it means but it was a real moment where you see how history feeds through to the present. My undergraduate degree is in history so I always find it fascinating and vital to understand how history shapes our present: those moments where you can join the dots. Because people will often say, It’s history. It’s the past. Why is it important?
But when you can see through the fabric of how racism has – not just accidentally but deliberately – been woven into society and into systems, into the ways that Black people and People of Colour are treated. And once you start to see the ways in which racism has been embedded in one system, you can start to see how it might be embedded in other systems. How institutions can continue to embed and encode white supremacy without seeming to do so. That was another big one for me.
And the other film that really got to me was the Dark Girls film and the module about Colourism. That really brought home to me something that I knew about and had heard about but didn’t know in here [Claire touched her heart], didn’t know inside. But there were all these beautiful women talking about how they were made to feel ugly and awful. It broke my heart. And it was another real eye-opener.
Interviewer: How has doing the course helped you and the people around you at work or in your personal ife, or both?
Help is a strong word ... but it has made a difference. I’m really lucky in that me and my partner have a similar worldview and we can talk to each other really openly about things. He’s been a great sounding board for me when I’ve been working through the course and my broader anti-racism journey. I remember very early on, June 2020, we were talking about Black Lives Matter and what we could do. Whether the little we could do had any point. How can you change the system? It’s so big and we’re just individuals. But we had this really deep conversation about how although you’re just one person, you’re one person with a lot of people around you and you can do small things that have an impact on the people in your life. You can make those changes.
And then, at the back end of last year, we were having a conversation where I was feeling really stuck and overwhelmed and feeling my anti-racism work wasn’t really making a difference and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. And he said, Well, it makes a huge difference to me. I’m learning so much from you all the time.
And it has made a difference to the way he works. For example, he works in software and they’ve made changes around the language they use e.g. changing the names of a Blacklist and a Whitelist to a Block and an Allow list. So the conversations we’ve had are changing his thinking. So that’s been an impact I’ve had on the people around me. And because I’m now able to think much more deeply and honestly about race and about the imact I have on other people – it does have a wider impact on my relationships with people more generally. I think I’m much more able to engage with people on a human level and not be the person who’s just waiting for the next chance to speak. It’s really helped me slow down and engage with people on a much deeper level.
Interviewer: It’s that magical thing – I think I used the word magical (or miraculous) on the Course Open Day – of realising that it’s about collective healing. That thing Nova says so often and I didn’t really know what she meant for ages, but it is extraordinary, isn’t it?
Yeah. There’s a real change that can come from being honest with yourself that ripples out into the relationships you have with other people.
I’m not sure if you saw it, but there was a conversation on our WhatsApp chat where we were told about how an anti-racist activist really didn’t rate individual anti-racism work. And I can see the point. Like, white women buying books and writing journals, what difference does that make in this racist world? But I think that you have to start with yourself. Because if you can’t unpack things at the most basic level – at the level of your own brain – then how are you ever going to help anyone else?
Interviewer: I feel that too. And also the thing that Nova talks about, about the stage when you start to embody the work – so it’s with me now. It can’t leave.
I can’t go back to who I was before. That person doesn’t exist anymore.
Interviewer: Exactly. So, if I don’t start with myself who do I start with?
It’s all very well to preach revolution. But where do you start if not with the revolutionists themselves?
Interviewer: I meant to take part in that WhatsApp chat. I looked up the Gandhi quote about Being the change you want to see in the world. I thought that was it, but then I found it wasn’t quite like that. But what I found basically means the same thing. But it underpins that idea that starting with ourselves is the only place to start.
[our zoom call froze for a bit ... and then]:
How has it informed the work you do?
I work with researchers on research projects. The course has informed the work I do in a couple of ways. I’m always looking to see how the application systems we use can be more varied – not quite the right word – but I’ve done a lot of work with colleagues about how we build equity into all the levels of the work we do.
Quite a lot of the work we do with researchers is finding the people who might apply for a particular large opportunity – the sorts of things that can make or break people’s careers. So trying to think about how we bring people into that system. I’ve done quite a bit of work with colleagues on how we collect data and understand who we’re engaging with. But also how we set up our application selection processes to make sure that it is a more open and welcoming process for people.
Higher Education is a weird place to work. It’s in some ways very progressive. If you talk to anyone who works in universities they’ll talk about how much they’re committed to equality, diversity and inclusion. But there’s a lot of talking the talk and not very much walking the walk, particularly in older institutions like the institution I’m in. Many of them were built on the legacies of wealth that was made on the backs of enslaved people.
For example, I shared a petition about someone asking to rename some buildings in one of our group chats at work and got a whole load of white fragility back in response even though it was a very small ask. Someone said, “Oh I didn’t really think that sort of thing applied to us'“. I sent them some more resources so they could read more detail. But it was frustrating to see that. And I don’t yet think the petition has received a response which is also frustrating.
And to get people to engage with the specific ways in which anti-Blackness is encoded into institutions, like Higher Education, is very difficult. But I think I’d put it that anti-racism is forever a work in progress in the work that I do. I’m forever trying to find ways to change the machine somewhat. But it’s really hard.
The current government and the current environment around higher education policies is difficult. There’s been a lot of controversies. A lot of wishywashy statements. Promises of big things in 2020. And there’s been a bit of a backlash recently and the government has been discouraging people from doing equality work of all kinds.
There was a big announcement out on 12 Feb 2024 that said the government was going to look to cut down on red tape in research. Which is fine. But it classes things like collecting data on equality to improve the outcomes that marginalised people have, as red tape.
So I want to talk to other people in similar positions to me and see how they get traction on these things in their universities; see how they manage to effect change.
Interviewer: How has it changed/ informed the way you parent (if relevant) or support young people?
I don’t have children. But lots of my friends have children and various siblings have kids. I’m particularly close to my sister who’s got a little boy who’s four and we’ve talked a lot about anti-racism in general, but also in terms of our own specific journeys. But also she’s really keen on actively trying to parent her child in an antiracist way. To make sure that he – she still lives back in north Wales – that he doesn’t grow up in the way we did, where we weren’t really encouraged to think about race or encouraged to engage with those kinds of questions. She wants to prepare him early on.
The main thing I do at the moment is actively buy him books by various authors, but particularly books written by Black authors with Black characters so he sees a range of people with different skin types. Also my sister’s gay so we buy him a lot of books with queer protagonists as well. I’m trying to make sure that he sees a really diverse range of people in the material he consumes. He’s a big reader. But also – he hasn’t really done it yet because he’s only four – but at the point where he comes to my sister or me or my partner with questions around race, that we’re all in a position that he can have those kinds of conversations with us. And that we can help on his journey.
Interviewer: One of the other interviewees was talking about children in this question and talked about a book called Our Skin. It’s obvious from the title what it’s about, but I have nieces and nephews who are now having their own children and I’m going to buy it for them. Because, as far as I understand it, it’s a geat way to begin a real and truthful conversation about why we have different coloured skin.
I’ll see if my sister’s bought that one. If she hasn’t it’ll be next on the book list.
I think there’s a different level of receptiveness among the various friends and siblings who are the parents of the children in my life. But certainly with my nephew I know it’s something my sister’s really keen to do. And in general if I’m buying presents for the children in my life or talking to them I try and bring my antiracist lens to those conversations where I can.
Interviewer: It’s just occurred to me that if the children in your life know that you know something about anti-racism, you might end up being – as I hope I will be – the person they come to if they’re confused about it or want to know about it or have a difficult experience or any of those things.
That’s certainly what I’d like to be for the young people in my life, someone they can talk to and ask questions. I think it’s really important to have that.
Interviewer: How has it changed the relationship you have with Black people and People of Colour in your life?
It’s been really interesting. I don’t have that many Black friends. I have a lot more Black colleagues and colleagues who are People of Colour. But seeing someone who is not only trying to be antiracist but also who is willing to listen and willing to hear feedback can help. I had some really nice comments from colleagues who said, Thank you for your help, your support, for listening to our feedback. And that’s been really validating – that’s probably the wrong word. I don’t try to be antiracist for cookies, but it’s nice to hear that I’ve had a positive impact on someone.
Colleagues of Colour at work have been able to talk to me in the way they perhaps haven’t been able to talk to other colleagues. We’ve been able to have conversations about the make-up of selection panels or the researchers we’re working with, or our institutions, that are more open and more honest. Because they know I’m not going to say, Oh my god I can’t believe you said that ... when they point out something extremely obvious like the fact that they’re the only Brown person in the room.
Interviewer: How do you remain self-aware? eg, How do you avoid moving into saviourism? (How do you recognise when you are moving into saviourism?)
I think I’ve always tried to be quite deliberate in what I say and what I do and certainly the course and my anti-racism work has accentuated that fact. So before I might have jumped in, particularly if I’d seen something on social media. Now I’m very much, Stop. Take a breath. Is there something you can usefully do here? So, for example, someone I’m friends with who’s also in triathlon who’s a Black woman, posted something on social media last year. She’d been at a triathlon and she’d received some racist comments.
She posted a video about it and I was outraged and thought about contacting the event organiser. And then I was like, Hang on. Stop. Just check in with the person involved first. Ask her what she needs. Let her know I’m here. Let her know I’m willing to use my white-lady powers for good if it’s needed. And she said, It’s fine. I’ve spoken to the event organisers and they were really supportive. You don’t need to go off on them. But this is what I need in this moment from you.
And that tends to be how I try and check my instincts towards saviourism. Stopping. Taking a breath. And asking, what will I usefully add here? And asking, Is there an actual person I can ask what they would like before I dive off and assume I know what they need.
Interviewer: I feel that’s a really wise question to ask. Thank you. I’ll remember that. It’s a good way of stopping myself leaping in.
And it’s really tricky. You see something awful and your instinct is to try and push back about that thing that’s awful. But Nova’s talked quite a few times about how white people being shocked doesn’t actually change anything.
So the most useful question for me is, ‘Is there a thing I can usefully do, or not?’
Interviewer: What’s been the hardest lesson and the most important lesson that you’re carrying forward from doing this work?
That there’s no way to be perfect. There’s no way to always get everything right. You’re not ever going to get to the point where you’re the most perfect anti-racist white person. It just doesn’t exist. But, as I said earlier, I’m always looking for the way to do the good thing or the right thing. I think I’m forever second-guessing myself by asking, ‘am I doing this right?’ And then I have to stop and go, ‘you can’t do this right’. All you can do is what you can do.
Perfectionism creeps in quite a lot and I have to sit down with myself and say, Stop it. Perfectionism is white supremacy culture. I think that’ll be a life lesson.
What’s been the most important lesson you’ve learned that you carry forward?
To always look deeper. To look for another level of what’s going on. So much – particularly history – has been hidden from us around our own race and the way that white supremacy has been constructed and that anti-Blackness has been constructed.
So the most important lesson has been to try and look deeper, to find out more about what’s going on in a particular situation. But I think it’s really difficult in society at the moment. People love a quick answer. But to stop and try and think critically and see what’s at play here. That’s important.
Interviewer: Can you talk more about your experience of how accessible the course was for you?
I found it fine but I don’t have any particular accessibility needs. It was interesting there was an option to watch the video and to listen to the audio. I think I worked through all the sessions watching the video because it felt more like I was getting deeper into it. If I was watching the video I’d have to sit in one place! I couldn’t just have it on my headphones and be doing other things and not really paying attention.
Interviewer: To wrap up, is there anything else you would like to say about the course, the book, Nova or more about your anti racism journey?
The course has been life-changing. For what I’ve learned about the world but also about myself. I don’t mean life-changing in a personal journey kind of way - although I obviously have been on one! It’s more that I know more and I’m better equipped with the tools/skills I need to help to try to change things.
When it comes to either my own racism or racism I see around me, I’m equipped to respond in a way that I just wasn’t before - which means I spend less time spiralling in shame or guilt or saviourism. It also means I’m able to take conscious informed action, which hopefully will lead to greater change or at the very least less harm.
And it’s been really great to have a supportive environment. I did the course pretty much by myself, but since then I’ve met a bunch of other people who’ve done it as well, and I have people around me who’ve also been on that journey and gone through similar changes. And that’s really validating
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The course, as Claire says, has been life-changing for her. It made her very aware of her desire to be a good person and do things perfectly. Now she knows that’s impossible and also that perfectionism is part of white supremacy culture. The course’s microaggressions module was her big aha moment. That was when she began to face the ways she is racist and think about ways of causing less harm. And even though it was hard she says, ‘It was also weirdly motivating because I was in a place where (a) I’d seen it and (b) I had a framework (the course) to help me not to do that in the future. So it was hard but not hopeless.
There are so many racist things Clare sees now that she didn’t see before. And so many places where she’s thinking about taking action. And, she says, ‘One thing I have really absorbed following both Nova and other Black and Brown people is their connection to something higher/to their ancestors. It strikes me how disconnected we white people, generally, are from anything like that. And how much this is to our detriment. Not entirely sure why I mention this other than it feels quite vital – maybe because this disconnect runs deep and enables tropes to become facts.
Another breakthrough moment for Claire was the film 13th and other films and videos on the course that linked racism in the past to racism now. Claire’s first degree is in history so she loves ‘Those moments where you can join the dots. Because people will often say, It’s history. It’s the past. Why is it important? But when you can see through the fabric of how racism has – not just accidentally but deliberately – been woven into society and into systems, into the ways that Black people and People of Colour are treated. Once you start to see the ways in which racism has been embedded in one system, you can start to see how it might be embedded in other systems. How institutions can continue to embed and encode white supremacy without seeming to do so.
All these things, and much more, have set Claire on an anti-racism journey that is, as she says, ‘Forever a work in progress.’
Learn more about Becoming Anti-Racist with Nova Reid
Books Referenced:
Me and White Supremacy - Layla F Saad
Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race - Megan Madison, Jessica Ralli