The CWACM Pledge

CWACM was founded as a multi-issue Movement focused on understanding and engaging systems of oppression and our role in them.

CWACM stands on the founding principles outlined in our Statement of Anti-Racist Intent and sees the intersections of oppression rooted in Race and Gender.

CWACM operates with this definition of racism: RACISM = Race Prejudice + the misuse of power by systems and institutions.* In other words, racism = racial prejudice and the power to enforce it.

• I Believe... Racism is an artificial system rooted in a false belief of the superiority of whiteness and bestows benefits, unearned rights, rewards, opportunities, advantages, access, and privilege on people perceived as ‘white’ distorting their self-image and impairing their reasoning;
• I Believe... Reactions of people of color to racism imposed on them are internalized through destructive patterns of feelings and behaviors impacting physical, emotional, and mental health and their spiritual and familial relationships;
• I Believe... Because of institutionalized racism, laws, customs, traditions, and practices have been put into place in every institution in this country, systematically fostering inequalities and enforcing white privilege; and
• I Believe... Racism ultimately imprisons everyone in its path, including both white people and people of color, clouding everyone’s perceptions and making the journey to anti-racist multiculturalism especially difficult to navigate.

The Pledge

I believe – If you’re white in the United States you are racist. If you are a person of color in the United States, you have internalized the effects and lived experience of white supremacy.

Therefore – I need a recovery group.

*Paraphrased from Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America by Joseph Barndt, (Minneapolis Press, 2007), 59.

~ Updated June 21, 2016

~ Reaffirmed June 2021