Home > Work > Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
81 " A white person’s expression of anger is often seen as righteous, whereas a Black person’s anger is often seen as aggressive and dangerous. "
― Layla F. Saad , Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
82 " White apathy is the choice to stay in the warm and safe comfort of white supremacy and the privileges it affords. "
83 " There is much work to be done. And it begins with getting honest with yourself, getting educated, becoming more conscious about what is really going on (and how you are complicit in it), and getting uncomfortable as you question your core paradigms about race. "
84 " I am talking about the historic and modern legislating, societal conditioning, and systemic institutionalizing of the construction of whiteness as inherently superior to people of other races. "
85 " the subtle and overt discrimination, marginalization, abuse, and killing of BIPOC in white-dominated communities continues even today because white supremacy continues to be the dominant paradigm under which white societies operate. "
86 " White feminism is broadly defined as “an epithet used to describe feminist theories that focus on the struggles of white women without addressing distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges.” 47 "
87 " I do this work because I have a voice, and it is my responsibility to use my voice to dismantle a system that has hurt me and that hurts BIPOC every day. "
88 " It means you do this work because you believe that every human being deserves dignity, freedom, and equality. It means you do this work because you desire wholeness for yourself and for the world. It means you do this work because you want to become a good ancestor. It means you do this work because love is not a verb to you but an action. It means you do this work because you no longer want to intentionally or unintentionally harm BIPOC. "
89 " Imagine if you will, experiencing an act of violence and then being asked to talk about what you experienced without expressing any strong emotions. This is clearly inhumane. To be human is to feel. To talk about pain without expressing pain is to expect a human to recall information like a robot. When you insist that BiPOC talk about their painful experiences with racism without expressing any pain, rage or grief, you are asking them to dehumanize themselves. "
90 " White supremacy is a racist ideology that is based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore, white people should be dominant over other races. "
91 " White supremacy is not just an attitude or a way of thinking. It also extends to how systems and institutions are structured to uphold this white dominance. "
92 " White supremacy is far from fringe. In white-centered societies and communities, it is the dominant paradigm that forms the foundation from which norms, rules, and laws are created. "
93 " White supremacy is an ideology, a paradigm, an institutional system, and a worldview that you have been born into by virtue of your white privilege. "
94 " For Serena, the daily diminishment is a low flame, a constant drip. Every look, every comment, every bad call blossoms out of history, through her, onto you.”9 "
95 " Following advances in science such as the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, scientists were able to examine human ancestry through genetics. Science has proven that the concept of race is not a biological fact but rather a social concept. According to Dr. Harold P. Freeman, who has studied biology and race, “If you ask what percentage of your genes is reflected in your external appearance, the basis by which we talk about race, the answer seems to be in the range of .01 percent. This is a very, very minimal reflection of your genetic makeup.”3 "
96 " Margaret Beale Spencer was hired as a consultant by CNN to re-create the doll tests for the modern age. This time, however, white children were tested as well as Black children. The tests showed that white children tended to identify the color of their own skin with more positive attributes and those with darker skins with more negative attributes. The researchers called this phenomenon “white bias.” The tests showed that the Black children were far less likely to respond with white bias. Dr. Spencer concluded, “All kids on the one hand are exposed to the stereotypes. What’s really significant here is that white children are learning or maintaining those stereotypes much more strongly than the African American children. "
97 " 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. "
98 " Cultural appropriation can include the appropriation of another culture’s objects, motifs, symbols, rituals, artifacts, and other cultural elements. "
99 " In her book So You Want to Talk about Race, author Ijeoma Oluo broadly defines cultural appropriation as “the adoption or exploitation of another culture by a more dominant culture. "
100 " When drawing a picture of themselves and their friend who is a different color, they would choose the colors that best match the skin colors they see. So why do we teach children not to see color? More specifically, why is it most often white children and children with white privilege who are taught this idea of color blindness? "