Race treason is the process of people betraying their racial status in the interest of collective liberation.
We acknowledge that the racial segregation of American society continues to be reflected in our radical movements and spaces. Rather than seeing this as a moral failure of ourselves or each other, we believe that being attentive and thoughtful to these dynamics of race can be the foundation for overcoming this arrangement in the long-term. The Race Treason Discussion Group aims to provide a space to start these conversations in earnest.
The group began meeting in the years following the 2020 George Floyd rebellion, an event that made undeniable the already urgent task of thinking through and developing a practice of race treason. It was necessary to make sense of how white and non-Black people had participated in and taken extreme risks for a mass uprising for Black liberation. The first year focused more specifically on this—that is, on the possibility of race treason in uprisings and social movements.
This year will further explore the broader dynamics of race, how it came to be, what forms it takes in different times and places—always with an eye to how it can come undone, how it could be abolished.
All are welcome, white and BIPOC alike. Reading materials are of varying difficulty, and all are available free on this website and in print.
Click here for information on the Minneapolis discussion group.