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

by Layla F. Saad

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks.

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.

So often, white people see themselves as “raceless” or “normal,” with everyone else being a race or being other, that they fail to investigate how the idea of color blindness protects them from having to reflect on what it means to be white in a white supremacist society.

We have all had the experience of stepping on someone’s foot or bumping into someone and immediately apologizing. It was not our intention to hurt them, but it is understood that the impact is still that harm was caused. Instead of refusing to apologize because we did not mean it, we rush to apologize because we understand we have caused pain. This is a very oversimplified explanation of what happens when we cause people harm. However, I find it useful as an easy way of understanding how, when we have caused harm, our impact matters more than our intention.

“If feminism can understand the patriarchy, it’s important to question why so many feminists struggle to understand whiteness as a political structure in the very same way.” —RENI EDDO-LODGE, WHY I’M NO LONGER TALKING TO WHITE PEOPLE ABOUT RACE

Women of Color experience discrimination because of both our race and our gender. The privilege of whiteness means only seeing yourself as a woman (if that is your gender identity), because due to white centering, you are seen as “raceless.”

When you are so focused on making sure that other people know that you are not racist, you simply continue to practice racism through behaviors like white exceptionalism, tokenism, optical allyship, and white saviorism.