A few weeks ago I saw a short post from Themrise Khan, an incredibly inspiring professional whom I had the privilege of interviewing in the first season of my podcast. After an especially challenging year, she was commenting  “2024 was a year of being ghosted. I have never been ghosted more in this one year than multiple years combined. I must be doing something right :)”

I kept thinking about this sentence, and also about something else, really popular among my Italian feminist friends due to a recent translation of the famous book by Sara Ahmed “ The feminist killjoy handbook”.

There is this common process that takes place among us when we start speaking about problems that challenge the status quo. Something that should be addressed, but that makes many feel uncomfortable, because it challenges the way we think, belief, believe. Because addressing it would require a deep change, and a shift in the way power is distributed and used.

So, when someone arrives and challenges us about certain things (and yes, usually it’s us, the feminist and decolonial activists who don’t laugh at machist jokes during Xmas holidays), the magic happens in our brain: we start identifying the person who shows us the problem with the problem. And thanks to this shift, we don’t have a problem anymore, we are not in trouble.
Rather, we have a troublemaker.
And we live in the illusion that by ghosting, marginalizing or bringing this person to leave -the party, or the organization-, the problem will disappear.

Surprise, it doesn’t.

As a gift for the end of this year that saw me being decently ghosted, and labeled as troublemaker several times, I’d like to share a list of the most common cognitive distortions that I have met in my honored career of activist for social justice and troublemaker:

Reducing a systemic issue to a personal issue. This reaction is very common when organizations start addressing issues related to DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and coloniality. We identify the replication of a colonial pattern, and we tend to give the responsibility to the individual that is repeating it, rather than to the organizational culture where the individual works.
It is possible that in our organization we meet people that are racist, or that abuse their power, and that are willingly committing abuse. I personally met some in my life and for this reason I even left jobs in allegedly very decent organizations. Most of the time, however, individuals act with their best intentions, while their actions replicate what they have been taught to do, or what they expect will be considered a good behavior in their society, industry, or workplace.
Blaming the individual makes things easier. We have the illusion that by punishing that individual, or correcting their behaviour, we will fix the issue. We also maintain the illusion that the problem is not widespread and entrenched in our life as it is.

Denying that something is happening and that you are part of it. The denial can happen at different levels and in different forms:
1. I was not aware of it. Of course you were not aware of it, and this is one of the privileges that come with belonging to the dominant culture. You don’t need to be aware of your behaviors, because the world around you consider they are the norm. Being aware of our behaviors, their roots and consequences is our duty if we want to decolonize our way of thinking and acting.
2. I didn’t mean it. Very possible, but the fact that we did not mean to provoke harm does not reduce the harm we created – individuals belonging to the dominant group tend to focus on the intent rather than the outcome, but it is the impact/outcome of the behaviour that is felt. 
3. I have never personally replicated colonial/discriminatory patterns in my working behaviors and actions. Possible. But this does not make you less responsible of the fact that the coloniality and injustice of our system is oppressing human beings. Maybe you never did it. But have you ever denounced or opposed oppressive practices? Could you do more to call out oppressive practices?  Desmond Tutu used to say that if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

Simplification of a narrative without looking at the history and the wider picture. This is very common in the narrative of NGOs at a macro level. We help the poor children because they have no food. None of our internal or public-facing messages say: we provide food to children in this and that country because they are born in a country whose wealth was systematically exploited and depleted by colonialism, whose culture was destroyed, whose ecosystem was massacred, so that the parents of those children no longer have the opportunity to live in a healthy manner – and that our donor/funder country often continues to perpetuate those historical injustices in newer, less known forms. Best intentioned colleagues working in International ogranization might think it does not concern them.
But with this simplification in mind, let’s think about some of our narrative with local partners and even with country offices of INGOs.  Example: Local partners can’t properly comply with donors’ regulations, so they still ‘need us’. It is seldom pointed out that local partners have little to no multi-year core funds to employ as many staff as needed, that their internet connection does not always allow the use of systems that are imposed by donors and often by INGOs, that some of the rules imposed are inadequate or contradictory to their culture, that the HR regime they are obliged to follow in order to keep floating while complying with donors’ rule does not allow payment of extra hours to staff, and above all does not say the compliance is today built in a colonial way, reducing to zero the risks of those who already have power by exploiting and exposing to huge risks those who do not have it.

Donor’s rules don’t allow us. This is a tricky one and we need to unpack it in two steps.
First step: yes, donors’ rules don’t allow, but there are several ways to implement the rules. INGOs often impose rules on their partners (and country offices) without asking them to participate in processes, without explaining the reasons why certain things are what they are. Top-down dynamics are widespread among INGOs and people and systems hide behind the statement that rules can’t be changed. While sometimes we can’t change rules in the immediate-short term, we can change the way we face and comply with rules. Respecting the agency of our partners and implementing co-decision-making processes is key.
Second step: it is not true that rules can’t be changed. INGOs have advocacy offices that should exactly focus on changing the rules (I am not being naïve here, I know how difficult this is, but still). Moreover, all INGOs can and should act as a buffer and simplify rules by creating more flexible procedures. For example, they can create thresholds for risk management. If we all start doing it, we will create a critical mass and perhaps rules will change in the future. Rather than keeping investing on staff in the minority world, INGOs could for example create little pools of funds to manage the risk related to higher flexibility for certain operations .

But we have a decolonial/DEI advisor and policies in place. This is a good start. However, Decolonization and DEI are not all about policy. Policies needs to be implemented, and moreover, this is also about every individual acknowledging their own responsibility. An advisor won’t change your organization if there is no active engagement of every staff and of the leadership.

Personally feeling hurt, offended, sad when someone makes you note that you are replicating a colonial pattern. There are many terms for this, including white fragility and “white tears”. Managing our own emotions and reactions can help us contribute more productively instead of disengaging from this journey.

I am a person coming from a formerly colonized country, or a black person, or a person belonging to a racialized group, I can’t do these things. As a person that has been racialized and discriminated on her supposed racial belonging and ability, I consider this the toughest one. Unfortunately, it is not so easy. I have learnt through experience that coloniality and structural injustice permeate our cultures and systems and they are often naturalized. Unless we undertake a personal journey to become aware of all the behaviors that replicate unjust forms of power distribution, it is very possible that we unwillingly contribute to them. As it is not enough to be assigned female to be a feminist, it is not enough to belong to groups that are discriminated against or marginalized to be immune to coloniality and discrimination.

This list is not exhaustive. I compiled it because in my life as a person that promotes change, DEI and decoloniality, I personally met these forms of protection in individuals and organizations.

Feel free to use it, but please quote me and link my website. I don’t believe in copyright but exploitation of knowledge is a form of coloniality and I actively stand against it.