What Should Be the Role of White People in Antiracist Work?
In our transformation and organizational development work, our stance is that in order for transformation to be possible each of us must be continuously engaged in unpacking the impacts and manifestations of White supremacy (and its intersections with other forms of oppression) on our individual and organizational stories. In taking this stance, particularly in the skin I am in as a White woman, I am frequently asked what I mean when I say Whiteness and what I believe the role of White people should be in antiracist work. What follows is my attempt at answering this question. It should be taken as my working definition and stance. Like each of us, I continue to be on my own learning journey.
Ruth Frankenberg defines Whiteness as: (1) a “location” of historical and structural advantage, (2) a “standpoint” from which we look at ourselves, others, and society, and (3) a “set of cultural practices” that usually go unmarked and unnamed in our day to day lives. Below I have taken each part of this definition separately and expounded on its implications for White people engaged in antiracist work.
Location: The United States of America was founded on genocide, exploitation and White supremacy. This is an uncomfortable, yet historical reality.
The construction of “White” as a socio-political identity was an effort intentionally designed to consolidate wealth, land and power within the hands of those of European descent. Throughout our history, Whiteness has served as a multifaceted tool of conquest and subjugation. In the early days of European presence on the land we now call the United States, it was used to enlist poor European peasants to come serve as foot soldiers in the attempted extermination and dispossession of land from the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It has and continues to be used as a tool to quell multiracial, class-based uprisings against a system designed to ensure the many work for the enrichment of a few. It is a project that is interwoven with and cannot be separated from the larger project of the United States. It is a cornerstone of all of our institutions, public and private.
Everyone who lives in the United States, regardless of their racial identification, is affected economically, socially, psychologically, and spiritually by our White supremacist history and the current manifestations of White supremacy in our culture and institutions.
White people as a collective continue to be grotesquely advantaged by these institutions and cultural practices, even as individual People of Color have achieved wealth and power within them. (https://inequality.org/facts/racial-inequality/#racial-wealth-divide)
Standpoint: Individuals and institutions, regardless of racial identity can speak and act from the standpoint of Whiteness, for a variety of conscious and unconscious reasons.
White people who are leaders in this work must be engaged in continuous reflection and unlearning their own racist patterns while simultaneously acting from a systems analysis to interrupt all manifestations of Whiteness regardless of the identity of the institution or individual perpetuating it.
White people have a stake in rooting out White supremacist beliefs and practices individually and collectively and they must be able to articulate and embody that stance to be effective in antiracist work. White people engaging in antiracist work with the intention of “helping” people of color erase their role in our collective racial story and do nothing to disrupt the power dynamic they claim to be working to interrupt. Asking people of color to “fix” our system of White supremacy is like spilling a jug of milk on the floor of your own home and standing by and cheering on your neighbor while they clean it up. It’s not only confusing, it’s also insulting.
White people engaged in antiracist work must always be working in relationship and solidarity with people across racial difference and with other White folks engaged in this work. We must know when it is our time to follow and when our leadership is needed - all inside the context of deep community. Our self-interest in maintaining an unequal power distribution in our work and relationships means that we often work with a set of blind spots that can often be more easily recognized by others.
Set of Cultural Practices: As is true of all socially constructed groups, those who are called White and call themselves White have a diversity of experiences, beliefs and cultural practices that both include and transcend practices of Whiteness. And all White people have been intentionally conditioned into White supremacist ways of thinking and behaving. As Tobi Miller has written, “All White people learn racism in different ways and from different teachers, but we all learn the lessons well.”
There are no “good” (or bad) White people. White people engaged in antiracist work must see a reflection of themselves in other White people and take responsibility for providing mentorship, giving and receiving criticism and for learning alongside other White people as well as People of Color.
Uprooting White supremacy in ourselves and supporting others to do the same is emotional and requires us to tap into our bodies to reclaim the wisdom they hold. Into the trauma touched parts of ourselves we carry from our bloody and violent history and current reality - and also into the resilient parts. We will not think our way to liberation and should not expect that educating ourselves, while important, will be enough. In my experience, this process can feel and look a lot like grieving - insofar as grieving is an embodied reclamation of that which once brought us joy and then was taken away against our will.
If we seek to transform ourselves and our society, it is not enough to simply mark and recognize the cultural practices of Whiteness. The culture of White supremacy was made, therefore we must unmake it and remake something else in its place. White people engaged in antiracist work must divest from the cultural practices that perpetuate myths of White innocence (i.e. Thanksgiving, color-blindness, calling the police, “race-neutral” policies, “White tears”, pretending we can’t just google it, avoiding conflict and “keeping the peace”, etc.), exceptionalism (i.e. the 4th of July, Western fairy tales and depictions of White saviors and heroes, Whitewashed historical narratives, being the “good” White person, “bad apples” theory, etc.) and meritocracy/ capitalism (i.e. Christmas (if you are good, Santa gives you things), individualism, boot-straps theory, our worth is measured by our production, etc.). These practices are so normalized that, as a collective body, our imagination and creativity has become crippled, faded and pale - a deep cost of White supremacy, as these things central to our humanity. Our emotional attachment to these practices mean we can hardly believe others are possible, let alone a world in which our identities don’t rely on them. It is a scary thing to try to imagine ourselves without Whiteness - when stripped of the parts of our identity rooted in Whiteness, we may worry, will there be anything left?