by Jennifer Loubriel | May 2019
If you’re a white person who has been in many activist spaces, then you’ve probably experienced a specific, often unspoken ground rule: There’s no room for white tears in this space. This sort of rule is instilled because oftentimes, in other spaces, your emotions, and the emotions of other white people, are constantly centered, nurtured, and coddled when it comes to conversations about race. Too often, People of Color are pushed aside so that white people feel safe and calmed. This is racism in itself. Rather than focusing on the lived experiences and traumas of People of Color when talking about racism, the focus is placed on the host of emotions that white people go through when confronted with racism.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness]
by Priscilla Ward | January 2015
I pocket my black rage, and swap “hey girl” for hello. But in making others comfortable, I’m making myself sick. How much of my day-to-day experiences as a black woman do I have to filter?
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Silencing POC] [White Culture]
by Katy Waldman | July 2018
In more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, the academic and educator Robin DiAngelo has noticed that white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism. Like waves on sand, their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they “were taught to treat everyone the same,” that they are “color-blind,” that they “don’t care if you are pink, purple, or polka-dotted.” They will point to friends and family members of color, a history of civil-rights activism, or a more “salient” issue, such as class or gender. They will shout and bluster. They will cry. In 2011, DiAngelo coined the term “white fragility” to describe the disbelieving defensiveness that white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged—and particularly when they feel implicated in white supremacy. Why, she wondered, did her feedback prompt such resistance, as if the mention of racism were more offensive than the fact or practice of it? A New Yorker article on Robin DiAngelo’s book “White Fragility”.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Definitions]
by Shay | September 2018
…Change is a process, and rarely is it easy. True change often means sitting with the uncomfortable and facing ourselves. Our realself. The one that we might hide from the world but that we know is there.
As I start to turn my attention back to anti-racism work, I am struck by how the work of white people dismantling racism is a process much life working on yourself. Actually, as a white person, you are working on yourself if you are doing such work. Racism isn’t simply about ignorance and individual hate. Rather, it is a system of power that was crafted by and for white people and undergirds every system we have. Even when society “allows” an individual Black person or other people of color (POC) into a position of power, the system itself is controlled by white people.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Collective Action]
by Sobantu Mzwakali | October 2015
A man cannot hate the whip with which he is being flogged but then be expected to love the person doing the flogging. When such a black man, lying helpless bleeding on the ground expresses hate for the white person wielding the whip, it is only reasonable.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s [White Blindness] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege]
by Raffi Marhaba | November 2018
“Embellishing language with neo-liberal-feel-good words doesn’t actually investigate root issues and changes behaviors.” View the authors seven reasons he feels the NVC (Nonviolent Communications) is only for the privileged.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Privilege]
