Diversity in Knitting

For the past three months, there's been a huge discussion about diversity and racism in the knitting community on instagram.

This article from Vox sums up the incidents that have sparked the initial discussions. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read it now before coming back here.

Most of us would like to think that we are welcoming and inclusive to the BIPOC folxs (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) in our community, but from what I've learned over the past few months, that is not the case at all. We have inherent privileges and tendencies that actively shut out, silence, and hurt BIPOC.

The biggest eye-opener for me was when I became aware of this discussion going on and I realized that almost none of the fiber people I followed were BIPOC. It was pretty much all white women. All the people that instagram recommended me were also white.

I never even gave it a thought before. And what an example of privilege that is, never taking notice of such a glaring lack of representation in my feed.

It made me angry, at myself and at the inherent racism built into the algorithms of my social media.

So I started seeking out the people that instagram doesn't seem to think exist and found an absolute wealth of incredibly talented, smart, amazing people that had been sorely missing from my feed. People who have made me stop, think, open my eyes, and most importantly, listen.

That's what we as white fiber crafters should have been doing this whole time. Listen to the experiences of BIPOC. Listen when they tell us that something or someone is problematic. Listen when they call us out for mistakes we make. Listen when they offer to help us to learn, grow, and change our behavior for the better.

It's not easy or comfortable facing your racism and privilege. It SHOULDN'T be. It should make you uncomfortable and uneasy. But it should also make you want to do better. To learn and grow. To become a better ally and use your privilege and power to raise up and support BIPOC everywhere.

And that doesn't mean just saying that you support them and not putting any actions into those words. It means ACTIVELY using your voice to call out and stop racism where you see it, in both public and private.

It also means seeking out and supporting/buying from BIPOC-run businesses. There are SO MANY wonderful designers, dyers, and other folxs out there with incredible talent that we white people have been missing out on. And it's far past time that they were acknowledged and supported.

The last thing I want to leave you with before linking the resources I've found so far is to say this: white people, it's on US to seek out the resources to confront, learn from, and change our behaviors. It's not up to BIPOC folxs to take the mental, emotional, and physical labor to make us change. Respect them. Respect their spaces. If they have a Kofi or other donation link, consider sending them a donation. And if someone is willing to help educate you, thank them for their time, energy, and knowledge.

RESOURCES

A good starting place is the Me and White Supremacy Workbook by Layla Saad.

https://www.meandwhitesupremacybook.com/

It's completely free and I've heard great things about it. John and I are both planning on diving into it soon.

The Unfinished Object Project was started by some of the forefront people in the instagram discussion.

https://www.unfinishedobject.com/

It's a blog full of challenging and thought-provoking article relating to diversity and enacting change in the fiber community.

Jeanette Sloan has put together a list of BIPOC crafters and designers.

https://jeanettesloan.wordpress.com/poc-designers-crafters/

An article also from Jeanette entitled "Black People Do Knit."

http://www.jeanettesloandesign.com/black-people-do-knit.html