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The idea that you can appreciate rather than appropriate from a culture that you see as less than you is highly doubtful. Often times, what you describe as cultural appreciation is a form of tokenizing and exoticizing while continuing to discard and dehumanize the actual people of that culture. Often times, the cultural elements that are appropriated are stripped of their original cultural context, meaning, and significance and used in such a way as to serve or pleasure whiteness.
What is seen as inferior, uncivilized, less advanced, savage, or ugly when owned by the nondominant culture is suddenly seen as superior, advanced, cultured, and beautiful when used by the dominant culture.
Cultural appropriation is collecting the parts of Blackness and Brownness that appeal to whiteness while discarding actual Black and Brown people.
for example, though yoga has its roots in India as a spiritual practice, it is now seen as a predominantly white-centered practice that is focused largely on physical health. When we think of a yoga teacher, we think of a white person. While Native Americans were historically prohibited from practicing their religious practices by laws and government policies, now white New Age spirituality co-opts and financially profits off these practices, sacred tools, ritual plants, and ceremonial items. Black styles of hair have been vilified as being less beautiful (when worn by Black people), but now
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They define allyship as “an active, consistent, and challenging practice of unlearning and reevaluating, in which a person of privilege seeks to work in solidarity with a marginalized group. Allyship is not an identity—it is a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency, and accountability with marginalized individuals and/or groups. Allyship is not self-defined—our work and our efforts must be recognized by the people we seek to ally ourselves with.”
because what they might deem to be allyship could actually be white centering, tokenism, white saviorism, or optical allyship instead.
White apathy arises as a self-preservation response to protect yourself from having to face your complicity in the oppression that is white supremacy.
the intentional nonaction of white apathy is just as dangerous as these intentional actions of racism.
dismantling white supremacy is not a charitable cause.
White Silence White silence and white apathy go hand in hand, feeding into each other. You are silent because you are apathetic to racism, and your apathy feeds even more silence.
Exceptionalism gives you a false sense of pride that is really white apathy in disguise.
Using perfectionism to avoid doing the work and fearing using your voice or showing up for antiracism work until you know everything perfectly and can avoid being called out for making mistakes.
Morrison goes on to explain that white writers like Leo Tolstoy also wrote about race but that because “white is not seen as a race, nobody ever questions when white writers will write outside of whiteness.”34
This is an example of white centering—the idea that when a creation features mainly white people, it is for everyone, but if it features mainly BIPOC, it is only relevant to BIPOC.
Morrison was consciously choosing to subvert when she said, “I’ve spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.”35 This is not something that people with white privilege have to consciously think about or intentionally choose. Under white supremacy, nonwhite narratives are usually seen as less relevant, except for when being co-opted through cultural appropriation or being reimagined through a white lens.
White apathy is a form of white centering, as it is more focused on how tiring and overwhelming antiracism is for people with white privilege over how harmful and abusive racism is to BIPOC.
Like a fish cannot see the water it is swimming in and like we human beings cannot see the air we breathe, white centering is like an invisible net holding up white supremacy. While it is easy to see and point out the active racist who uses racial slurs, it is almost impossible to see the everyday racism that marginalizes and erases BIPOC through white centering.
During your antiracism work, do you focus more on how you feel over what racism feels like for BIPOC?
Decentering whiteness means learning to stop upholding whiteness as the norm and instead learning to live and operate in a more inclusive way.
Missionary and voluntourism trips to BIPOC countries with the intention to do good but little preparation on how to serve instead of lead.
White saviorism seems benign on the surface: Trying to help the marginalized. Trying to “give a voice to the voiceless.” Trying
“Racism should never have happened and so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it.” —CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE, AMERICANAH
“allyship that only serves at the surface level to platform the ‘ally,’ it makes a statement but doesn’t go beneath the surface and is not aimed at breaking away from the systems of power that oppress.”
Positioning yourself as an ally or activist leader while continuing to step over, talk over, speak for, and take over the spaces of BIPOC.
Distancing yourself from your own white supremacy by continuously complaining about how awful other white people are.
Reading this book today because you secretly hope it will make you look more “woke.”
Going out of your way to be extra nice to BIPOC with the hopes you will be seen as a “good white person.”
Tokenism, white saviorism, and optical allyship all seem on the surface like really great ways to combat racism. However, underneath the surface, they continue to perpetuate the ideologies that white supremacy rests on—that in the end, any actions taken must somehow benefit those with white privilege at the expense of, to the detriment of, and on the backs of BIPOC.
While optical allyship centers people with privilege, actual allyship centers those who are marginalized.
While call outs and calls in never feel good, they are an invitation to become aware of behaviors and beliefs that are hidden to you,
do better so that you can stop doing harm and make amends for the pain caused.
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...
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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 explanati...
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However, I find it useful as an easy way of understanding how, when we have caused harm, our impact ma...
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focus on their intention rather than their impact on BIPOC. This is a form of white centering, which prioritizes how a person of privilege feels about being called out/in versus the actual pain that BIPOC experience as a result of that person’s actions, whether intentional or unintentional.
Talking more than listening to the people calling you out/in.
And when the call out/call in comes from BIPOC, toward whom you unconsciously hold feelings of anti-Blackness and racial inferiority, it is easy to dismiss, hold suspicion against, or simply not believe them.
Being called out/in is not a deterrent to the work. It is part of the work. And there is no safety in this work. There has been no safety for BIPOC under white supremacy. And the sense of perceived emotional danger that people with white privilege feel when being called out/in is so small compared to what BIPOC experience through racism.
When (not if) you are called out/in, are you well-equipped enough to respond to it in a way that will help you learn and do better, or will you simply give in to white fragility and fall apart? Are you willing to do the work to set aside your unconscious beliefs around your racial superiority and exceptionalism and really listen to BIPOC with empathy and a desire to do better? Will you put in the work to educate yourself so that as you continue to grow and learn, you will do more good than harm?
white saviorism, and optical allyship show us, on the other hand, that it is possible to intend to do the right thing while continuing to perpetuate white centering and white superiority. In exploring these topics, you have a greater understanding of how to show up in ways that do more good than harm.
Maya Angelou famously said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
To ask BIPOC to set aside their race is to ask BIPOC to act as if they are white.
To ask BIPOC to focus on gender before race is to ask them to put their different identities in a hierarchical order. But as a Black woman, I am not Black then woman.
And though white women received the right to vote in 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, because of racial discrimination, Women of Color in some parts of the United States were subject to many restrictions that made it almost impossible for them to vote until the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. The feminist movement has, from its very beginnings, been an extension of white supremacy.
‘Well, we can’t figure out if this was just race or just sex discrimination. And unless they can show us which one it was, we can’t help them.’”
Owning white privilege and being conditioned by the system of white supremacy mean that you have some subconscious values that are white supremacist in nature. These values can actually clash with other consciously chosen values that you have. For example, being conditioned
privilege. 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.
am not talking about “using your privilege for good” in some sort of white saviorist super ally kind of way. This is not about rescuing or saving BIPOC by becoming a “voice for the voiceless.”
Continuing to show up, even when you are called out, you feel discomfort or fatigue, or you are not rewarded for it (socially or financially).
Taking up less space and allowing BIPOC to take up more space so that they can be heard and their leadership can be followed.
