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

by Layla F. Saad

Building the racial stamina required to challenge the racist status quo is thus a critical part of our work as white people. Rushing ahead to solutions—especially when we have barely begun to think critically about the problem—bypasses the necessary personal work and reflection and distances us from understanding our own complicity. In fact, racial discomfort is inherent to an authentic examination of white supremacy. By avoiding this discomfort, the racist status quo is protected.

The system of white supremacy was not created by anyone who is alive today. But it is maintained and upheld by everyone who holds white privilege—whether or not you want it or agree with it. It

White supremacy is not just an attitude or a way of thinking. It also extends to how systems and institutions are structured to uphold this white dominance.

Many white people hear the words white supremacy and think That doesn’t apply to me, that they don’t hold that belief but rather that they believe that all of us are equal and that they don’t modify their treatment of people based on the color of their skin. What this book, which is a deep-diving self-reflection tool, will help you to realize, however, is that that isn’t true. White supremacy is an ideology, a paradigm, an institutional system, and a worldview that you have been born into by virtue of your white privilege.

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.

chattel slavery, apartheid, and racial ...

What you receive for your whiteness comes at a steep cost for those who are not white.

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.

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. This work is designed to help you to be and do better by BIPOC in your communities, and that requires you to tell the truth with integrity and depth. When you don’t tell the truth as deeply as you can, you are cheating yourself of your own growth, cheating BIPOC of your allyship, and illustrating that you are not truly committed to dismantling white supremacy within yourself and therefore within the world.

It means you do this work because you no longer want to intentionally or unintentionally harm BIPOC.

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.

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.

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.

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.

life. In the absence of white supremacy, white privilege is meaningless.

Science has proven that the concept of race is not a biological fact but rather a social concept.

“If you ask what percentage of your genes is reflected in your external appearance, the basis by which we talk about race, the answer seems to be in the range of .01 percent. This is a very, very minimal reflection of your genetic makeup.”

Race is a social concept, but that does not make it imaginary when it comes to the very real consequences it has for BIPOC in their daily lives in the presence of white supremacy.

privilege. 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.

A white person’s expression of anger is often seen as righteous, whereas a Black person’s anger is often seen as aggressive and dangerous.

In an attempt to avoid the tone policing of people with white privilege, many BIPOC will often subconsciously preemptively tone police themselves in order to avoid having to deal with white fragility.

white silence is violence. It actively protects the system. It says I am okay with the way things are because they do not negatively affect me and because I enjoy the benefits I receive with white privilege.

“White people desperately want to believe that only the lonely, isolated ‘whites only’ club members are racist. This is why the word racist offends ‘nice white people’ so deeply. It challenges their self-identification as good people. Sadly, most white people are more worried about being called racist than about whether or not their actions are in fact racist or harmful.” —AUSTIN CHANNING BROWN

Rather, it is often the white liberals who believe that their progressive ideologies separate them from the racism of the extreme right. It is the people with white privilege who believe that they are not an impediment to antiracism who carry white exceptionalism like a badge of honor.

Question yourself when you think you have finally figured it out—there are always deeper layers, and you will continue to reflect even more as you continue on with this work.

Please be as honest as you can with yourself during this week of the work, and keep what you write to yourself or only share with other people with white privilege. Lastly, if you

“White people think it is a compliment when they do not ‘see’ you as a black person.” —MORGAN JERKINS, THIS WILL BE MY UNDOING

More specifically, why is it most often white children and children with white privilege who are taught this idea of color blindness?

“I don’t mean that I don’t literally see color. What I mean is that I treat all people the same, regardless of their color. I mean that I believe that all people should be treated the same, no matter what color they are.” They sometimes go on to add, “Talking about different races is so divisive—it creates racism! If we would just stop talking about whites and Blacks and focus on the contents of people’s hearts, we wouldn’t see any more racism.” And herein lie the falsehoods of the promise of racial color blindness.

The belief is that if you act as if you do not see color, you will not do anything racist or benefit from racism.

Sounds like an admirable outlook to have, doesn’t it? The problem is, the philosophy of color blindness does not sufficiently answer the question of why, if there are no racists, racism continues to exist. If white people do not see color, why do BIPOC continue to experience oppression?

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

When it comes to racial color blindness, what begins as a seemingly noble purpose (eradicating racism by going beyond the idea of race) quickly reveals itself as a magic trick designed to absolve people with white privilege from having to own their complicity in upholding white supremacy.

Today, notice how color blindness shifts the burden of addressing the consequences of racism onto BIPOC by asking them to stop talking about racism and just work harder and be more like white people. Color blindness is a particularly insidious way for peopl...

“Who you are does not matter, and I do not see you for who you are. I am choosing to minimize and erase the impact of your skin color, your hair pattern, your accent or other languages, your cultural practices, and your spiritual traditions as a BIPOC existing within white supremacy.”

Lastly, color blindness is a way to avoid not only looking at other people’s races but looking at your own. 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. When you refuse to look at color, you refuse to look at yourself as a person with white privilege.

We have to be maternal. We have to be the savior. We have to make that white character feel better.

“Therapists are less likely to perceive a black woman as sad; instead they see her as angry or anxious.”

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

Desiring praise, comfort, approval, acknowledgment, and recognition from Black women in order to feel good about yourself on your antiracism journey.

Dig it out today and get to the core of it so you can stop trapping Black men in a white supremacist story of your own making.

How much freedom do you give Black men in your mind to be complex and multilayered human beings?

In 2014, Professor Philip Goff and colleagues published an experimental study called “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children.” The findings of the study were that “Black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a less essential conception of childhood than do their White same-age peers. Further, our findings demonstrate that the Black/ape association predicted actual racial disparities in police violence toward children.”26

In 2017, a groundbreaking U.S. study titled “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood” was published by the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. The study provided—for the first time—data showing that adults view Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers, especially in the age range of five to fourteen.

All people, regardless of race, can hold some level of prejudice toward people who are not the same race as them. A person of any race can prejudge a person of any other race based on negative racial stereotypes and other factors. Prejudice is wrong, but it is not the same as racism. Racism is the coupling of prejudice with power,

Remember that white supremacy’s aim is to collapse all racial “others” into one group to dominate and marginalize.

Just because a stereotype seems positive does not mean it is not harmful. Stereotypes rob people of their complex individuality and erase the impact that colonization has had on why some of these stereotypes have emerged.

Racist stereotypes are used by politicians, policy makers, and the media to justify why certain groups of people should be treated the way that they are. It is easy to blame those in positions of leadership who drive racist stereotype narratives. But what about the narratives you are holding that continue to make it acceptable to allow people from other races to be talked about and treated the way they are?

For one thing, because of advancements in travel, technology, and the widespread use of the internet, we are more culturally connected with one another than we have ever been before. This elicits the questions how do we define what culture is, how is it now formed, and who “owns” what?

Racist stereotypes continue to abound in the media and in people’s minds, causing marginalization, loss of opportunities, erasure, suspicion, and ridicule.