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

by Layla F. Saad

Getting angry, defensive, or afraid; arguing, believing you are being shamed, crying, or simply falling silent and choosing to check out of the conversation.

(another form of running away and pretending it never happened), or physically leaving a discussion when you cannot handle where a conversation on racism is going.

white fragility looks like a white person taking the position of victim when it is in fact that white person who has committed or participated in acts of racial harm.

racist people = bad people not racist people = good people I want to be a good person, so I cannot be associated with racism.

Your desire to be seen as good can actually prevent you from doing good, because if you do not see yourself as part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution.

Rather than allowing yourself to really hear what they are going through and ask with empathy and compassion how you can support them, you minimize their experiences and let them know, without saying it, that you are not a safe white person for them to be around. As much as you think you have convinced yourself and them with these explanations, all you have really done is make clear your level of white fragility around racial conversations.

“I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic conference, and a white woman says, ‘Tell me how you feel but don’t say it too harshly or I cannot hear you.’ But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a message that her life may change?” —AUDRE LORDE

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” —DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

And her silence hurt more than any stranger’s racial slur thrown at me because it was the betrayal of a person who loved and supported me…as long as I did not talk about racism.

she responded that it seemed I had enough support from the other Black women in my life and she did not think I needed her. It was amazing to me that she had shown up to support me without question over the years of our friendship when it came to other experiences in business and in life, but when it came to racism, she did not feel she had anything to contribute. I came to understand that this was a tragic combination of white fragility and white silence that resulted in the end of our friendship.

Staying silent by not holding those around you accountable for their racist behavior.

And the sentence on the “dark subhuman demons” my ancestors allegedly worshipped is not too different from modern-day Islamophobia faced by many Muslims such as myself or the institutionalized religious persecution of Native Americans, which took away their freedom to worship in accordance with their traditional religious rites, customs, and ceremonies.

The tests showed that the Black children were far less likely to respond with white bias.

“All kids on the one hand are exposed to the stereotypes. What’s really significant here is that white children are learning or maintaining those stereotypes much more strongly than the African American children.”

Primarily reading books by white authors.

Primarily learning from and supporting white leaders, whether political or nonpolitical.

Only sharing the work and words of BIPOC if you think it won’t offend or upset the other white people in your communities.

Believing, in subtle and overt ways, that you are smarter, more valuable, more capable, wiser, more sophisticated, more beautiful, more articulate, more spiritual, and so on, than BIPOC.

The reality is that you have been conditioned since you were a child to believe in white superiority through the way your history was taught, through the way race was talked about, and through the way students of color were treated differently from you.

You have been educated by institutions that have taught white superiority through curricula that favor a white-biased narrative, through the lack of representation of BIPOC, and through the way these institutions handled acts of racism. You have been conditioned by media that continues to reinforce white superiority through an overrepresentation of celebrities and leaders who look like you, through the cultural appropriation of BIPOC fashion, language, and customs, and through the narrative of the white savior.

And you likely work within industries that uphold white superiority through a lack of representation of BIPOC at leadership levels, through inclusion and diversity policies that are about optical allyship, and through HR policies (implicit and explicit) that tone police and marginalize employees who are BIPOC. You need to look at white superiority so th...

I’m one of the good ones.”

White exceptionalism has shown up every time you saw one of the reflective journaling questions and thought, I don’t do that or That doesn’t apply to me. I have never or would never think that.

That you are doing it because it is a commendable thing to do but that you do not have to dig as deep as you are being asked to go.

That because you have an intellectual understanding of the concepts being presented here, you do not have to diligently write out your responses to questions. That you can just think about it in your mind, and that is enough.

but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”;

You are not an exceptional white person, meaning you are not exempt from the conditioning of white supremacy, from the benefits of white privilege, and from the responsibility to keep doing this work for the rest of your life.

Certainly, they didn’t mean me… I too was oppressed by the white male.

So when I heard Women of Color speaking of white privileges, I mentally inserted the word ‘male’: ‘white male privileges.’”15

(For example, when called out for unintentional racist behavior, have you tried to explain or demonstrate that you are “one of the good ones”?)

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Nowadays, except for members of white supremacist organizations, few whites in the United States claim to be “racist.” Most whites assert they “don’t see any color, just people”; that although the ugly face of discrimination is still with us, it is no longer the central factor determining minorities’ life chances; and, finally, that like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they aspire to live in a society where “people are judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.”16

More poignantly, most whites insist that minorities (especially blacks) are the ones responsible for whatever “race problem” we have in this country. They publicly denounce blacks for “playing the race card,” for demanding the maintenance of unnecessary and divisive race-based programs, such as affirmative action, and for crying “racism” whenever they are criticized by whites. Most whites believe that if blacks and other minorities would just stop thinking about the past, work hard, and complain less (particularly about racial discrimination), then Americans of all hues could “all get along.”17

taught

My earthly education

Malcolm X famously called Black women the most disrespected, unprotected, and neglected people in America.

I believe that attitude toward Black women applies outside America too.

misogynoir.

Moya Bailey,

The expectation from white women that Black women should choose their gender over their race in the feminist movement, disregarding the fact that Black women are both Black and women simultaneously and therefore affected by both sexism and racism at all times.

Being overfamiliar with Black women you do not know in an attempt to create an artificial sense of sisterhood.