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September 1 - September 19, 2020
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.
You will feel unrewarded because there will be nobody rushing to thank you for doing this work. But if you are a person who believes in love, justice, integrity, and equity for all people, then you know that this work is nonnegotiable.
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.
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.
the subtle and overt discrimination, marginalization, abuse, and killing of BIPOC in white-dominated communities continues even today because white supremacy continues to be the dominant paradigm under which white societies operate.
White supremacy is a system you have been born into. Whether or not you have known it, it is a system that has granted you unearned privileges, protection, and power. It is also a system that has been designed to keep you asleep and unaware of what having that privilege, protection, and power has meant for people who do not look like you.
White supremacy purposely numbs you to the pain that your racism causes.
You cannot dismantle what you cannot see. You cannot challenge what you do not understand.
People with white privilege often do not want to look directly at their privilege because of what it brings up for them—discomfort, shame, and frustration.
DiAngelo defines white fragility as “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.”
If your understanding of racism and white supremacy does not include a historical and modern-day contextual understanding of colonization, oppression, discrimination, neglect, and marginalization at the systemic level and not just the individual level, then you are going to struggle when it comes to conversations about race. You will assume what is being criticized is your skin color and your individual goodness as a person rather than your complicity in a system of oppression that is designed to benefit you at the expense of BIPOC in ways that you are not even aware of.
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.
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.
White fragility thus makes you an unreliable ally to BIPOC, because you do not have the resiliency needed to talk about racism.
“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
Tone policing is a tactic used by those who have privilege to silence those who do not by focusing on the tone of what is being said rather than the actual content.
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.
Tone policing, or the possibility of it implicitly or explicitly being used, is a constant drain on the psyches of BIPOC.
It is often a big shock when BIPOC decide they will no longer tone police themselves and instead fully express their range of feelings about racism. People with white privilege wonder with confusion and frustration, Where is all this anger coming from?, not realizing it was always there and that the expression of it is the beginnings of self-reclamation as a BIPOC.
I wish you would say what you’re saying in a nicer way. •I can’t take in what you’re telling me about your lived experiences because you sound too angry.
You should address white people in a more civil way if you want us to join your cause.
The way you are talking about this issue is not productive.
Tone policing reinforces white supremacist norms of how BIPOC are “supposed” to show up. It is a way of keeping BIPOC in line and disempowered.
When you control the tone of how BIPOC are supposed to talk about their lived experiences with racism and existing in the world, you are reinforcing the white supremacist ideology that white knows best.
When you insist that BIPOC talk about their painful experiences with racism without expressing any pain, rage, or grief, you are asking them to dehumanize themselves. Tone policing is both a request that BIPOC share our experiences about racism without sharing any of our (real) emotions about it and for us to exist in ways that do not make white people feel uncomfortable.
Staying silent by choosing not to engage in any conversations about race because of your white fragility.
Staying silent when you witness other white people use their white privilege, white fragility, or tone policing against BIPOC.
Staying silent by not holding those around you accountable for their racist behavior.
On the surface of it, white silence seems benign. And if not benign, then it could at least be believed to be a stance of neutrality, like the old adage, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.” But white silence is anything but neutral.
Here is a radical idea that I would like you to understand: 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.
At work, in entrepreneurship, and in corporate spaces, employees and leaders can perpetuate behaviors such as white fragility, cultural appropriation, white centering, and optical allyship.
The BIPOC around you need to know where you stand and whether they can be safe with you with their experiences.
You can be an introvert and have powerful conversations. You can be an introvert and use writing to disrupt white supremacy. You can be an introvert and show up to protest marches. You do not have to be the loudest voice. But you do need to use your voice.
“When I got honest with myself, I had to own up to the fact that I’d bought into the myth of white superiority, silently and privately, explaining to myself the pattern of white dominance I observed as a natural outgrowth of biologically wired superior white intelligence and ability.” —DEBBY IRVING
Believing African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is “ghetto” and thinking the correct way to talk is the way you and other white people talk.
Primarily staying on the “white” side of town.
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.
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
I have come to see white exceptionalism as a double-sided weapon that on one side shields people with white privilege from having to do antiracism work under the belief that “I’m not a racist; I’m one of the good ones” and on the other side shoots out arrows at BIPOC by expecting them to carry the burden of dismantling white supremacy under the belief that racism is something that is a Black or Brown problem but not a white problem.
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.
White exceptionalism is the little voice that convinces you that you can read this book but you do not have to do the work. 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.
White exceptionalism is the hurt “Not all white people!” response when BIPOC talk about white people’s behavior.
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, 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”; who
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Here is the lesson at the heart of today’s topic: If you believe you are exceptional, you will not do the work. If you do not do the work, you will continue to do harm, even if that is not your intention.
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.
I don’t know. I don’t think that happened because you’re Black. I’ve experienced something like that before, and I’m white (in response to a Black person sharing their lived experience of racism).
When you say “I don’t see color” to a BIPOC, you are saying “Who you are does not matter, and I do not see you for who you are.
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.
“Because blacks so profoundly symbolize race in the white consciousness, any white person who wants to challenge racism and engage in antiracist practice must work to specifically address the messages they have internalized about black people.” —ROBIN DIANGELO
