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June 19, 2020 - February 27, 2024
You continue to perpetuate white supremacy to the extent that you believe in your own and other white people’s superiority over BIPOC.
You have been educated by institutions that have taught white superiority through curricula that favor a white-biased narrative, through the lack of representation of BIPOC, and through the way these institutions handled acts of racism.
And you likely work within industries that uphold white superiority through a lack of representation of BIPOC at leadership levels,
This is why the word racist offends ‘nice white people’ so deeply. It challenges their self-identification as good people.
White exceptionalism is the belief that you, as a person holding white privilege, are exempt from the effects, benefits, and conditioning of white supremacy and therefore that the work of antiracism does not really apply to you.
under the belief that racism is something that is a Black or Brown problem but not a white problem.
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.
You have been conditioned into a white supremacist ideology, whether you have realized it or not. You are conferred unearned advantages called white privilege, whether you chose it or not.
•White exceptionalism has shown up every time you saw one of the reflective journaling questions and thought, I don’t do that or That doesn’t apply to me. I have never or would never think that.
•White exceptionalism is what convinces you that you don’t really need to do the work.
•White exceptionalism is the little voice that convinces you that you can read this book but you do not have to do the work.
•White exceptionalism is the belief that because you have read antiracism books and articles, listened to social justice–based podcasts, watched documentaries on the effects of racism, and follow some BIPOC activists and teachers, you know it all and do not need to dig deeper.
•White exceptionalism is the idea that you are somehow special, exempt, above this, past this, beyond this thing called white supremacy.
hurt “Not all white people!”
White exceptionalism is particularly rampant in progressive, liberal, spiritual white people because there is a belief that being these things makes you exempt or above it all. You are not.
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.
Have you done this? Have you fervently or subconsciously believed that your antiracism actions and/or your other marginalized identities have meant that you are the exception when it comes to white privilege and white supremacy?
Rather, it is multilayered behaviors and beliefs that make up a white supremacist worldview.
The aim of this work is truth—seeing it, owning it, and figuring out what to do with it.
Let these understandings work on you and through you.
In Week 2, we look at color blindness, anti-Blackness, and racist stereotypes.
the real meat of what is traditionally considered racism.
This is going to bring up discomfort, but your discomfort will be small compared to the pain it brings up for BIPOC to hear you “confess” these thoughts, beliefs, and actions.
Race-based color blindness is the idea that you do not “see” color. That you do not notice differences in race.
Young children understand that the idea of “we don’t see color” does not make sense.
The belief is that if you act as if you do not see color, you will not do anything racist or benefit from racism.
Unfortunately, that is not how white supremacy works. The problem does not go away because you refuse to see it.
More poignantly, most whites insist that minorities (especially blacks) are the ones responsible for whatever “race problem” we have in this country. They publicly denounce blacks for “playing the race card,” for demanding the maintenance of unnecessary and divisive race-based programs, such as affirmative action, and for crying “racism” whenever they are criticized by whites.
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.
Color blindness is a particularly insidious way for people with white privilege to pretend that their privilege is fictitious.
Color blindness causes harm at multiple levels. In the first instance, it is an act of minimization and erasure.
In the second instance, color blindness is an act of gaslighting. It is a cruel way of making BIPOC believe that they are just imagining they are being treated the way they are being treated because of their skin color, thus keeping them in a position of destabilization and inferiority.
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,
anti-black as “opposed to or hostile toward black people,”
describe the unique discrimination, violence and harms imposed on and impacting Black people specifically.”
I say all this to say anti-Blackness is ugly. It hurts. And it is necessary to name it for what it is, for without naming it and confronting it face-to-face, all this work remains an exercise in intellectualizing and theorizing. Antiracism work that does not break the heart open cannot move people toward meaningful change.
Malcolm X famously called Black women the most disrespected, unprotected, and neglected people in America.
Black women are either superhumanized and put on pedestals as queens or the strong Black woman, or they are dehumanized and seen as unworthy of the same care and attention as white women.
Black women are often painted with a broad, monolithic brushstroke that categorizes them into particular stereotypes that rob them of their humanity.
They are seen as either the aggressive adversary, the sassy sidekick, or the deferent devotee to white women. This perception becomes more exaggerated the more dark-skinned a Black woman is.
As Black women, we even have our own class of misogyny directed at us: misogynoir. A term coined by African American feminist scholar, writer, and activist Moya Bailey, misogynoir is defined as “the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual and popular culture.”23 It is a term that describes the place where anti-Black racism and sexism meet, resulting in Black women facing oppression and marginalization under two systems of oppression—white supremacy and patriarchy.
•The derogatory and one-dimensional stereotyping of Black women into categories
•The underrepresentation of Black women in positions of leadership across industries and community spaces.
•The underrepresentation of Black women in mainstream media as the protagonist.
replaced by the appropriation of Black women’s style and beauty as desirable—as long as they are placed on bodies that are not Black.
•The expectation for Black women to bear the weight of the emotional labor of dismantling white supremacy.
•The expectation from white women that Black women should choose their gender over their race in the feminist movement,
•Using Black female friends, partners, and family members as tokens to prove you cannot be racist or harbor anti-Blackness.
It is my belief that the rising and empowerment of Black women is one of the biggest threats to white supremacy.
How you are in relationships with and to Black women speaks volumes about where you are in your antiracism journey.
