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

by Layla F. Saad

most white people don’t really want to know what to do about racism if it will require anything of them that is inconvenient or uncomfortable.

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.

when we don’t agree with the answers we have demanded, we all too often feel qualified to dismiss them.

I hope will help you do the internal and external work needed to become a good ancestor too. To leave this world in a better place than you have found it.

This book is for people who are ready to do the work, people who want to create change in the world by activating change within themselves first.

There is much work to be done. And it begins with getting honest with yourself, getting educated, becoming more conscious about what is really going on (and how you are complicit in it), and getting uncomfortable as you question your core paradigms about race.

I have socioeconomic, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, neuro-typical, and educational privileges.

White supremacy is a racist ideology that is based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore, white people should be dominant over other races.

This work is therefore not just about changing how things look but how things actually are—from the inside out, one person, one family, one business, and one community at a time.

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.

We must look directly at the ways in which this racist ideology of white supremacy, this idea that white equals better, superior, more worthy, more credible, more deserving, and more valuable actively harms anyone who does not own white privilege.

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.

who holds white privilege, I mean persons who are visually identifiable as white or who pass for white.

Please prioritize your self-care as you move through this work. Do not use it as an excuse to not do the work in a substantial way, but at the same time, honor yourself and the different feelings that show up around your identities.

You will need three things for this work: your truth your love your commitment

The more you tell the truth, the deeper this work takes you. What you will get out of this work is what you put into it.

When we talk about racism, we are talking about people’s lives.

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 that you do this work because you believe in something greater than your own self-gain. It means you do this work because you believe that every human being deserves dignity, freedom, and equality.

It means you do this work because love is not a verb to you but an action.

This is commitment work. This work is hard.

when you begin to interrogate it, it will fight back to protect itself and maintain its position.

What keeps me going is my commitment to truth, love, and being a good ancestor.

As you root out your internalized white supremacy, your body, mind, and spirit will be affected.

doing what you need to stay grounded in yourself, connected to your body, and emotionally well.

The purpose is to get you to see the truth so that you can do something about it.

So instead of getting stuck or overwhelmed, channel those feelings into action and change.

There is no feel-good reward at the end other than the knowledge that you are doing this because it’s the right thing to do.

Besides, there is no greater reward than being in integrity with your values and living your life in such a way that it makes the world a better place now and for the future.

White privilege describes the unearned advantages that are granted because of one’s whiteness or ability to “pass” as white. It is very important to note that white privilege is not a concept that is part of the natural order of life.

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

However, because race is a deeply held social construct and because of the existence of white supremacy, you and I are not treated the same.

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.

the belief in this social construct plays out at the unconscious level, affecting thoughts and behaviors that have consequences in both the personal and public realms.

white privilege is separate from but can intersect with class privilege, gender privilege, sexuality privilege, age privilege, able-bodied privilege, or any other type of privilege.

having white privilege does not cancel out one’s other marginalized identities,

In order to dismantle white supremacy, you must understand how much white privilege is a key aspect of your life, how you benefit (whether knowingly or unknowingly) from your whiteness, what that means for people who do not receive that same benefit, and how you can dismantle it. You cannot dismantle what you cannot see. You cannot challenge what you do not understand.

white fragility as “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.”

So many of the white people who were interacting with my work had so little experience talking about race that any racial discussion led to them having a total meltdown.

There are two main factors that contribute to the existence of white fragility. Lack of Exposure to Conversations about Racism

The privilege of whiteness means that one’s day-to-day life is not impacted by skin color, so conversations around racism tend to be shallow and filled with platitudes.

This lack of exposure to conversations about race has left you ill-equipped to handle the discomfort of racial conversations as an adult, leading to an inevitable response of white fragility.

Lack of Understanding of What White Supremacy Actually Is

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. This lack of understanding leads to white fragility, either by lashing out to defend your individual sense of goodness or feeling that you as an individual are being shamed for being who you are, thus leaving the conversation.

Here are a few examples of white fragility in action: •Getting angry, defensive, or afraid; arguing, believing you are being shamed, crying, or simply falling silent and choosing to check out of the conversation.

•Calling the authorities

•Deleting what you wrote on a social media platform

In essence, 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.

White fragility prevents you from having a conversation about racism without falling apart.