Individual Change

Click here to read these selected posts first

What Is White Centering and Are You Doing It? Plus, 7 Ways To Stop

by Jessica Sager | June 2020
White centering is putting your feelings as a white person above the Black and POC causes you’re supposed to be helping. Layla F. Saad explains in Me and White Supremacy, “White centering is the centering of white people, white values, white norms and white feelings over everything and everyone else.” White centering can manifest as anything ranging from tone policing and white fragility to white exceptionalism and outright violence.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Silencing POC]

American White People Really Hate Being Called “White People”

by David Roberts | July 2018
It occurred to me that white people rarely if ever experience questions like this, about their very legitimacy. Do they belong? Is having more of them around good for America? One thing white people have never experienced is a poll on whether their presence in their own country is intrinsically detrimental. In fact, I thought, I bet asking the question at all — not answering it either way, just asking it — would make a lot of white people flip out. Imagine if they saw that on a poll! So, as a bit of goofy provocation, I made just such a poll:
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Supremacy] [White Defensiveness] [Politics]

Discover What Indigenous Land You’re on with This App

by Emily Long | August 2020
You may have seen land acknowledgments on social media, where instead of geotagging a photo, posters identify the Indigenous people the land belongs to;or maybe you’ve heard a land acknowledgment presented at the beginning of a live concert or theater performance (remember those?). Land acknowledgments help us better understand, reflect on, and celebrate the history of Indigenous peoples, languages, territories, and treaties. So how do you learn more about specific land and the people it belongs to?
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [White Supremacy] [History] [Accountability] [White Privilege]

The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black

by Ijeoma Oluo | April 2017
And with that, the anger that I had toward her began to melt away. Dolezal is simply a white woman who cannot help but center herself in all that she does—including her fight for racial justice. And if racial justice doesn’t center her, she will redefine race itself in order to make that happen. It is a bit extreme, but it is in no way new for white people to take what they want from other cultures in the name of love and respect, while distorting or discarding the remainder of that culture for their comfort. What else is National Geographic but a long history of this practice. Maybe now that I’ve seen the unoriginality of it all, even with my sister’s name that she has claimed as her own, she will haunt me no more and simply blend into the rest of white supremacy that I battle every day.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Anti-Racism] [Slavery] [Role Model] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Fragility/Tears] [Implicit Racism]

It’s Time To Call Out ‘Nice Racists’ And Their White Fragility

by Christy DeGallerie | September 2017
When you think of a racist what pops in your mind? White supremacists? The KKK? You usually think of white people down south right? You know, the ones who have confederate flag bumper stickers, and hurl the N-word at Black people who cut them off while driving, or school districts that ban Black hairstyles. These folks are more of the poster children of racism. I’m here to let you in on a little secret: You don’t need to write a resume for the new available seat in the Ku Klux Klan to be a racist. We’ve heard many times before that racism is taught, that it starts at home with our parents and caregivers. This is absolutely true, but racism is also in our school systems, the media, it even comes from the mouths of orange men running for president.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Politics] [Implicit Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability]

When White Friends Don’t Believe What Blacks Go through, They’re Not Friends

by Mary C. Curtis | September 2014
*Yet whites are, frequently, disappointingly, incredulous. Very often a “friend’s” reaction that goes something like this: “I don’t think a police officer would stop anyone for no reason at all.” Or: “You must have done something suspicious.” Or my favorite: “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.” I am not some child coming home with some tall tale, and I am certainly not a delusional liar.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]

The Sugarcoated Language of White Fragility

by Anna Kegler | Updated December 2017
*The language we use to talk about racism is obviously distorted, a big clue that something is being hidden. It’s pretty easy to pinpoint the source: most White people can’t handle talking about racism. We flail. We don’t understand the subject, we get really uncomfortable, and we either clam up because we don’t want to say the wrong thing, or we bust out the whitesplaining (FYI, this is a best-case scenario. It can be much worse).
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Implicit Bias] [White Fragility/Tears] [“All Lives Matter”]

11 Things White People Need to Realize about Race

by Emma Gray and Jessica Samakow | July 2015
Article by two white women contains embedded links and short videos further explaining the points made in the article. Points in the article include; “Everyday racism is subtle and insidious.” “Don’t think you know it all — or even most of it. Listen, listen, listen.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Systemic Racism] [Colorblindness] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Implicit Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [“Reverse Racism”] [2010’s]

Hope for the White Supremacist Within

by LVM Shelton | September 2016
The author, a Black woman, writes: “Understanding white supremacy as addiction and as a disease of the spirit brings many of the tools of the well‐proven 12‐step recovery paradigm to hand…. Some individual spiritual practice for self‐examination is needed for progress in becoming whole. However, community—indeed, communion—is an essential feature of practicing a 12‐step program.” The author ends the article by proposing “12 Steps to Overcoming White Supremacy.” The 12 steps she then lists follow the pattern of traditional 12-step programs.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Supremacy] [Quaker] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [2010’s]

Conversations on Racism with White People Getting Stuck or Looping? Thirteen Questions to Get it Moving Again

by Tad Hargrave | August 2017
In this blog post the author, a white man, suggests 13 questions that white people might consider including in their conversations with other white people about racism, as well as possible follow-up strategies depending upon the answers given. A sample question: “If you woke up as a person of colour or indigenous person tomorrow in North America do you think it would change anything in your life? If so, what?”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Definitions] [White Culture] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Privilege] [History] [Systemic Racism] [2010’s]