Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor

by Layla F. Saad

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.

I am not talking about the physical color of your skin being inherently bad or something to feel shame about. I am talking about the historic and modern legislating, societal conditioning, and systemic institutionalizing of the construction of whiteness as inherently superior to people of other races.

Audre Lorde said, “Revolution is not a one-time event.”

You cannot dismantle what you cannot see. You cannot challenge what you do not understand.

Imagine if each time one of these subtle, covert white supremacist behaviors were not reacted to with white silence but instead responded to by people with white privilege using their voices to challenge the culture and demand change.

While you experience hardships and oppression in your life from other identities and experiences, you do not experience these things because of your skin color.

The aim of this work is not self-loathing. The aim of this work is truth—seeing it, owning it, and figuring out what to do with it. This is lifelong work.

color blindness is an act of gaslighting.

one person from one racial group can think something is culturally appropriative while another person from that same group disagrees and considers it cultural appreciation or cultural exchange.

There are ways to appreciate other cultures that are respectful and honoring, and that begins with asking deeper questions

What white supremacy once denied to and vilified in entire races of people it has discriminated against, it now appropriates and commodifies. This is racism, and it must be wrestled with.

The first thing to understand is that allyship is not an identity but a practice. A person with white privilege does not get to proclaim themselves an ally to BIPOC but rather seeks to practice allyship consistently.

website Guide to Allyship

None of us are born fully conscious of systems of oppression or our own privileges and unconscious biases. We are also not born aware of the historical contexts within which we hold identities of privilege or marginalization.

“There is no social-change fairy. There is only change made by the hands of individuals.” —WINONA LADUKE

What efforts have you made to invite your friends into doing antiracism work with you?

I invite you to release the desire to be seen as good by other people and instead explore what it looks like for you to own that you are a person who holds privilege and that you are a person who is committed to practicing antiracism.

There is no clean, comfortable, or convenient way to dismantle a violent system of oppression. You must roll up your sleeves and get down into the ugly, fertile dirt.

Systems do not change unless the people who uphold them change, and each person is responsible for upholding the system.

it is your responsibility within yourself, your communities, your educational institutions, your corporations, and your government institutions to do the work that you can do every day to create the change the world needs by creating change within yourself.