Today I learned from sahibzada mayed's post on LinkedIn:
"Merely replacing who or what is at the center refuses to uproot the underlying colonial logics of centralization.
As Frederick van Amstel writes in his brilliant article on decolonizing whatever-centered-design:"
"Those who lived their entire lives at the margin, never being seriously considered by the center, are suddenly invited to participate in a central project, to make decisions, and, in some rare cases, benefit from its results. Nothing substantial changes in the spatial practice. When the project ends, the participant returns to the periphery with fewer advantages than those earned by the center. The periphery does not develop, as it still depends on the center."
The idea, as I understand it, having also read some of the comments on LinkedIn: the people at "the center" have power. Power always wants to reproduce and reinforce itself in the hands of the people who currently hold it; it does not genuinely intend to share itself. Sometimes people at the center say let's "center" these other people for a moment in this discussion, but if the people who are briefly centered (i.e., allowed to raise their hands and speak and give useful information) and then sent back to the margins, all that's happened is that knowledge, resources, and work-product have been extracted from them. The power balance hasn't actually changed, even if you call the process "[X]-centered."
What needs to be challenged, mayed argues, are society's "spatial practices" — the idea that someone always has to be at the center. Why can't interactions be decentralized, as "relationships and ecosystems" already function in reality? Arguing with centralized power systems "is unsettling work, and requires disruption." mayed also recommends to us the work of Aníbal Quijano on the "coloniality of power."
You can also see what Sabrina Meherally at Pause and Effect posted recently on LinkedIn on this topic, saying: "this practice has been informed through an Indigenist philosophy."
And see Farzin Farzad on LinkedIn: What's needed is "better governance and regulatory structures that work for all." We have to "change our systems to reflect what the purpose of society is in the first place" and "work for the collective well-being." Diverse hiring is "a modest compromise to provide incremental gains" and tends to backfire by "giving people access to the positions of power to oppress their own." We're stuck in cycles of "progress and reactionary backlash...unless we develop real methods to divest."
And see Puneet Singh Singhal on LinkedIn, posting about Disability Pride Month: We must not merely include people, but value them too. We must understand lived experiences as a source of knowledge.
On backlash:
"One of the nastiest consequences of the success of the backlash is that politicians have been scared by it. Even when taking steps in our support, their enthusiasm will be tempered by the realization that a lot of people really don’t give a damn about LGBTQ+ rights or welfare. So they will seek compromise, and implement half-measures that will extend the life of the backlash even as it weakens. We can see an example of this sort of reaction in the recent proposal of the Biden Education Department regarding transgender athletes in schools, which, while it presents itself as supportive of transgender participation in athletics, in fact provides validation to the idea that it is really okay to discriminate against transgender people if cisgender people really want to and are willing to take a bit of trouble to say so."
— Alyssa Ferguson, "A Meditation on the LGBTQ+ Backlash, a Glimpse of Better Times Ahead," Prism & Pen, May 10, 2023
If you become a member of Medium, you can read my essays there.
See especially: "Re-Envisioning Environment". It's an 8-minute read on Medium.