Me and White Supremacy: “This is Truth Work”

Cover of Me and White Supremacy

We’re reading Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy. Today, we’re covering the rest of Part I: Who is this work for?, What you will need to do this work, How to use this book, and Self-care, support, and sustainability.

There’s a lot to unpack before we even get to the work! But we’re almost there.

Layla gives a shout-out to trans and non-binary folks in her “Who is this work for?” section. In addition to white people of all genders, she also points out that the work is for white-passing people. But while people who can “pass” as white do derive some (conditional) benefits from white supremacy, and therefore need to work to dismantle it, things are more complicated.

It is also important to know that this work will bring up some challenging feelings around your internalized oppression against yourself and your marginalized identities and about how you have also been oppressed by a system that only benefits you to the extent that you are able to present or pass as white and be anti-Black.

[snip]

Do not use this work as a stick to beat yourself with, but rather use it to interrogate your complicity within a system of privilege that is only designed to benefit you to the extent that you can conform to the rules of whiteness.

So if you’re a part of that group, definitely get all of your self care plans prepped and ready.

Layla says we’ll need three things for this anti-racism work: our truth, our love, and our commitment. She says something critically important under truth I think that we all need to pause and take fully on board:

I cannot emphasize this enough: This work is not an intellectual exercise or a mental thought experiment. When we talk about racism, we are talking about people’s lives. This is not a personal growth book that is designed to make you feel good about yourself. It is likely that in doing this work consistently, you will find some level of personal healing. However, I want to make it very clear that this is not the purpose of this work. The purpose is the healing and restored dignity of BIPOC.

Let me assure you from personal experience with confronting internalized misogyny and the fact we live in a world that hates women: this isn’t going to feel great. In fact, it’s going to probably suck quite a lot. But it’s necessary. And it gets better, especially when you’re working to change things for the better.

Under love, Layla reminds us that

Pain and shame are neither desirable nor sustainable as long-term strategies for transformational change. It is my hope that love is what initially brought you to this work. It is my conviction that love is what will keep you going.

We’re going to need a lot of love to power through and change the world. Self-flagellation won’t help. We absolutely need to avoid wallowing in shame: not only does render us less effective, it diverts people’s efforts from fixing problems when they feel compelled to comfort us. Tell your shame and pain to pipe down and let love have the driver’s seat.

Add love to a healthy measure of old-fashioned stubborness, and we can do this thing.

How to use this book is a fairly straightforward section, with recommendations like keep a journal and go at your own pace. I just want to highlight what I see as some critical bits.

Don’t Generalize

When answering the prompts, do not generalize about white people broadly. Do not talk about white people as if you are not a white person or as if you do not benefit from white privilege. Remember this book is about your own personal experiences, thoughts, and beliefs, not those of other people.

The temptation will be strong to generalize and push things off onto other people in order to protect our egos. Realizing you’ve engaged in problematic behaviors hurts. We have to do our best to face our own culpability head-on. We can’t change anything much if we refuse to admit we, too, are part of the problem, whether we want to be or not.

And this next bit is equally important:

Keep Asking Questions

As you move through the book answering each prompt to the best of your ability, dig deeper by asking yourself when, how, and why questions. For example: When do I react this way? When do these thoughts or feelings come up for me? How does this specific aspect of white supremacy show up for me? How does thinking or feeling this way benefit me? Why do I feel this way? Why do I believe this? Why do I think this is true? Why do I hold on to these beliefs? Asking when, how, and why will help you to get down into the deeper unconscious layers of your internalized white supremacy, thus taking your work a lot deeper.

Many of us here either work in STEM fields or are science fans. Asking questions, interrogating our assumptions, and not taking superficial answers as final should be easier for us than it is for people who haven’t been trained to investigate.

Just remember, though, that white supremacy is a helluva drug. It’ll make us want to stop at the surface, where things are comfortable. Push past that and keep asking!

Layla finishes Part I with some self care tips. One of the most important tips is to reach out to others doing this work for mutual support. I encourage you to use the comments here if you want to connect with me and others (click here to report any issues). We can also start a Facebook group if you’d like.

Another important reminder:

Feeling the feelings—which are an appropriate human response to racism and oppression—is an important part of the process.

[snip]

No matter how bad it feels to wake up to the pain, shame, and guilt of your racism, those feelings will never come anywhere close to the pain BIPOC experience as a result of your racism. So instead of getting stuck or overwhelmed, channel those feelings into action and change. Talking to a friend, family member, support group, therapist, or coach will be helpful in supporting you to process what is coming up for you so you can keep moving forward. [Emphasis added]

Just, in talking out your feelings, please don’t dump those on your BIPOC friends, okay? They’ve got enough to handle as targets of white supremacy.

To close Part I, let’s reiterate one of the most important points:

You will have to learn to wean yourself off the addiction to instant gratification and instead develop a consciousness for doing what is right even if nobody ever thanks you for it.

None of us should get cookies for doing the right thing. We need to be very, very careful that we aren’t running to BIPOC and demanding praise and treat every time we do something decent. We’re not dogs. Most of us aren’t children. We shouldn’t need gold star stickers to do what we ought.

The groundwork is laid. Next, we’ll begin the work. Get your tools together, and I’ll see you there!

Me and White Supremacy: “This is Truth Work”
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Me and White Supremacy: “We Must Call a Thing a Thing”

We’re reading Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy. Today, we’re covering Part I: What is white supremacy?

 

If we’re going to combat a thing, we need to know what that thing is. Layla defines it clearly and simply:

White supremacy is a racist ideology that is based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore, white people should be dominant over other races.

Okay, so we know that’s bullshit, right? But we’re swimming in a society that reinforces that idea. Our classics, our companies, our entertainment, our government all are overwhelmingly white. Conscious and unconscious bias upholds systems and institutions built – and too often maintained – by that erroneous belief.

Layla hopes that by “exploring and unpacking what white supremacy looks like at the personal and individual level,” we’ll be able to change those systems and institutions. If enough of us commit to doing this work, chances are good we’ll at least be able to better help bend them toward justice and equity.

Next, we have to confront this truth:

White supremacy is far from fringe. In white-centered societies and communities, it is the dominant paradigm that forms the foundation from which norms, rules, and laws are created.

None of us are exempt. None of us are exceptions. It’s just like men living in misogynist societies hold some misogynistic ideas and participate in misogynistic institutions no matter how egalitarian they wish to be. The sooner we accept that, the more effective we’ll be at changing it.

She points out that yes, the most overt expressions of white supremacy, like chattel slavery and apartheid, aren’t legal now, but unequal treatment hasn’t stopped. “[W]hite supremacy continues to be the dominant paradigm under which white societies operate.” We can’t flinch away from that truth anymore.

Feminists should be able to understand this pretty easily. Coverture is dead, women can vote, marital rape is now a crime, and discrimination on the basis of sex is officially illegal. But none of us pretend women still don’t face serious problems. We don’t declare sexism dead just because the most glaring overreaches of the patriarchy have been ended. We know there’s a lot of work still to do. It’s the same deal with white supremacy.

So listen:

White supremacy is a system you have been born into. Whether or not you have known it, it is a system that has granted you unearned privileges, protection, and power. It is also a system that has been designed to keep you asleep and unaware of what having that privilege, protection, and power has meant for people who do not look like you. What you receive for your whiteness comes at a steep cost for those who are not white. This may sicken you and cause you to feel guilt, anger, and frustration. But you cannot change your white skin color to stop receiving these privileges, just like BIPOC cannot change their skin color to stop receiving racism. But what you can do is wake up to what is really going on. I invite you to challenge your complicity in this system and work to dismantle it within yourself and the world.

We can do this. The question is, will we?

Me and White Supremacy: “We Must Call a Thing a Thing”

Me and White Supremacy: “Welcome to the Work”

We’re reading Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy. Today, we’re covering Part I: Welcome to the Work and A Little about Me.

You’ve decided to make a difference, to not just be “not racist” but actively anti-racist. You’ve got this book. The introduction didn’t scare you off. It’s a good start!

So now we’re getting to the gritty stuff. Fighting racism means recognizing the fact that we ourselves perpetuate racist systems, that we benefit from a social structure built by white supremacists, and it’s up to us to dismantle it. Thankfully, Layla Saad is going to give us some much needed guidance.

She gives us a good, concise introduction to the social conditions we face, and reminds us that the issues with racist people and institutions that we white folk are only now waking up to have been there all along for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). And then she says something about the work that bears repeating here:

This work is not about those white people ”out there.”

It is about you. Just you.

I’m putting that in bold, because so many of us resist it. “I’m not part of the problem! I’m part of the solution!” We believe that so strongly that we refuse to see where we’re complicit. We let our hurt feels take over when BIPOC folks try to gently call us out on problem behaviors. We get angry, we deny, we disregard, and we hurt the people we thought we were going to help. Sometimes, we even get so upset we stop doing the work.

We need to do better. We need to own the fact that we, by virtue of being white people born and raised in a civilization designed and built by white supremacists, are part of the problem. We have to work on fixing ourselves right here, not “those white people ‘out there.'”

Still with me? Good. Let’s continue.

This is where those of us who thrive on recognition and like to think the best of ourselves get some really bad news:

This work sounds overwhelming, intimidating, and unrewarding. I won’t lie to you: it is. You will become overwhelmed when you begin to discover the depths of your internalized white supremacy. You will become intimidated when you begin to realize how this work will necessitate seismic change in your life. You will feel unrewarded because there will be nobody rushing to thank you for doing this work. But if you are a person who believes in love, justice, integrity, and equity for all people, then you know that this work is nonnegotiable. If you are a person who wants to become a good ancestor, then you know that this work is some of the most important work that you will be called to do in your lifetime.

Yeah, it really is.

Layla takes a moment to introduce herself. She’s a Black British Muslim woman who has only experienced overt racism a handful of times, but has been subjected to daily microaggressions throughout her life:

And those indirect messages—from being treated slightly differently by schoolteachers, to hardly ever seeing fictional characters or media representations that looked like me, to understanding that I would have to work a lot harder than my white peers to be treated the same, to understanding that my needs were always an afterthought (why could I never find a foundation shade that matched me exactly while my white friends always could?)—painted an indelible picture in my mind. A picture that taught me this: Black girls like me did not matter in a white world. I will spend the rest of my life tearing down this picture and painting a new one that reflects the truth: Black girls matter. Everywhere.

This is the kind of stuff we white folks just don’t notice, because we don’t have to. We aren’t treated as “other” because of our skin. We see people who look like usin media, in STEM, in the halls of power. Makeup, skin and hair products that match our traits are everywhere. Heck, even adhesive bandages are made with us in mind!

Those are things we must train ourselves to notice. They are things we can and must help change.

Layla now lives in the Middle East, and she has a paragraph’s worth of privileges she can claim. But white supremacy still impacts her life. That’s why she does the work to help dismantle those systems, and why she’s showing us how to do our part. She’s our inside guide.

And now, we have a lot of work to do.

Me and White Supremacy: “Welcome to the Work”

Me and White Supremacy: “How Have You Managed Not to Know?”

We’re beginning Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor. If you’re a white person watching news of protests, seeing that yes, there’s a serious problem with racism, and wondering what you can do to help, this is a place to begin. This is a book you should read before charging off to change the world.

cover of Me and White Supremacy

It’s also a book you might want to share with well-meaning white people in your life who want things to improve for people of color, but don’t yet understand that they need to remove the white supremacist plank from their own eye first.

White supremacy is a problem white people caused, perpetuate, and now need to fix. But most of us aren’t sure where to begin. Even if we have some idea of what to do, we risk going about it in a counterproductive way if we rush forward without listening to the POC who are telling us what they need from us. And if we haven’t done the work in ourselves first, we might storm off in an angry huff the moment we realize this work is difficult, dangerous, and humbling, and that we’re not going to be hailed as heroes for doing the shit white people should have been doing all along.

The Foreward is written by Robin DiAngelo, one white person talking to her fellow white people. She sugarcoats nothing. She’s seen a lot of shit from well-meaning white folks who would just love to help end racism – as long as it’s easy, people of color tell them exactly what to do, and their feelings aren’t hurt. She tells us exactly where we need to start if we want to avoid flaming out at the first small hurdle:

[quote Building racial….]

That discomfort was a definite stumbling block to me in the past. One of the hardest things to learn has been how to sit with the discomfort instead of runaway from it. It’s massively not fun. But retreating back into a comfy white shell is unconscienable.

Robin talks about how we get when “our self-image as open-minded progressive individuals, free of all racial conditioning” gets challenged. This is something we need to learn to watch for in ourselves: the urge to deny, dismiss, and retreat.

She says that she’s begun asking a counter question when white folks ask her what to do: “How have you managed not to know?” She points out that the information is out there and easy to find, and people of color “have been telling us what they need for a very long time.” So why haven’t we Googled, researched, made the effort to find out? Why haven’t we listened when we’ve been told?

In my case, it was because I was raised to believe most problems with racism had already been solved. We did that Civil Rights thing in the 60’s and then it was all pretty much good. Any problems left was mostly due to old racists who would eventually die off. I was raised to be “color blind.” I couldn’t be racist, because I didn’t like racism and called my grandparents out for saying blatantly racist stuff. My, wasn’t I shocked when I finally unclogged my ears, took off my color blinders, and realized that yeah, my POC friends were highly upset with white folks- including me – for a damned good reason.

But it was desperately uncomfortable getting to that point. Often, it still is. And I’m reading this book now because I know I still have a long way to go before I can be an effective anti-racist. I’m often dispirited by the scale of social change needed, and unsure how to play an effective part in helping to bring about that change.

[quote about book]

I’m so grateful Layla has done this work. I’m looking forward to listening to her and following her recommendations. At the end, I’m hoping it will make me a better listener, and allow me to find an effective role in the fight to end White Supremacy.

This Foreward is something of a litmus test. It should, along with King’s musings on the White Moderate, be required reading for every white person who tuts about how awful things are and says they wish they could do more. If they aren’t willing to at least read Robin’s Foreward without getting offended and defensive and stomping off in a huff, they probably aren’t ready to do anything useful. That’s fine as long as they stay out of the way.

For the rest of us, it’s time to press on and do the work this woman of color is advising us to do.

What did you get out of this section? Was it hard to stomach? If so, were you able to accept your discomfort and push on? What were your answers to the title question?

Me and White Supremacy: “How Have You Managed Not to Know?”