Individual Change

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4 Ways White People Can Process Their Emotions without Hijacking the Conversation on Racial Justice

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]

I’m Tired of Suppressing Myself to Get Along with White People

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]

A Sociologist Examines the “White Fragility” That Prevents White Americans from Confronting Racism

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]

Believe in Something and Get Uncomfortable: The Truth about Fighting Racism

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]

Black People Can’t Be Racist

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]

Nonviolent Communication is for the Privileged

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]

When Being an Opponent of White Supremacy Means Being Not Nice

by Saira Rao | February 2019
“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than ‘politics.’ They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [History] [Accountability]

Transforming White Fragility Into Courageous Imperfection

by Courtney E. Martin | June 2015
“I’m grateful for a framing that helps me understand my own fragility. Experimenting with how I use the power that comes from my privilege is a messy process. Sometimes I feel like I manage to do something really useful in the world, whether its recommending a brilliant person of color to speak at a conference and working with them to hone their transformative message for a broad audience or saying I won’t speak on a panel that I’ve been invited to because there isn’t a person of color on it. Interestingly, white fragility often shows up as talking a lot, a kind of flood of effortful explaining, or the equivalent of a peacock’s display of anti-racist sentiment — posting on social media with great fanfare or calling out other white people with a sort of zeal.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism] [Collective Action] [Definitions]

An Open Letter From An Admitted Racist

by Gretchen Palmer | July 2016
If you would have told me three years ago, before Michael Brown, before Eric Garner, before the Black Lives Matter movement that I am a racist, I would have fought you tooth and nail. Absolutely not, no way ― how dare you accuse me of such an awful thing? I really DID believe that I wasn’t a racist – but the truth is , I hadn’t really examined the topic very much and I certainly had never been called to the mat on it… ”I was an unconscious liar.” Includes 5 articles for those ready to move forward.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Colorblindness] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Accountability]

7 Invasive Things People Tell Afro-Latinxs (And Why You Must Stop Saying Them)

by Alan Pelaez Lopez | September 2016
Which one of your parents is the Black one? You never told me you were Black – you speak Spanish! I didn’t know [insert country] had Black people! Being both identities does not mean that I only live my life as Black 50% and Latinx 50%. Instead it means that I live my life as Black 100% of the time, and my life as Latinx 100%. The math doesn’t need to make sense! Below is a list of invasive comments, phrases, and questions that I, and many in my community, have received – and they must stop in order for us to work together, and really be a community.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Implicit Bias] [Implicit Racism]