Stop! Before you go any further, please read this. |
This website is actually a book. What does that mean? This "book" is offered as a website for three reasons.
What else does that mean? Many people come to this website hoping for a "checklist." I've had many requests to make the website easier for readers to get right to the characteristics. I made a deliberate decision to keep the current format because I want and need you to read the material leading up to and placed after the actual characteristics. Many people are using this material wisely and well. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. Many people are misusing this material; the misuse seems to most often take the form of pulling out a characteristic or using all of them as a kind of checklist to target people, to accuse people of colluding with white supremacy culture, to evaluate or assess people, or to avoid accountability and rigor in the workplace. For example, I've heard stories about people claiming that the characteristic of worship of the written word means they shouldn't have to fill out work reports. This is an absurd misreading of the characteristic, which essentially asks us to honor knowledge and wisdom that comes to us in multiple ways. I've heard stories of people objecting to urgency as a characteristic given the urgency of these times; urgency as a white supremacy culture characteristic does not mean we don't face urgent situations; it does mean we should avoid creating a culture of urgency at all times. I've heard stories of people using the article as a checklist to justify a critical work evaluation or a firing. Using this website as a weapon is NOT wise use of this material. If you are using it this way, please stop (and read the caution against weaponizing on the Characteristics Page). You can also read a critique of the article and its use more generally published by The Forge. While I do not agree with much of the critique, I do want people to understand the multiple perspectives and experience people have with this material. Please do use this material as a reflective tool to help us all see how we are getting in our own way. Please do use it to help us vision the culture we want, need, and deserve. Understanding the complexities and nuances of how white supremacy culture works is important. So please take a breath and realize that this is a book. It is dense. We live in a snapshot world and white supremacy culture is not a snapshot idea. You can obviously start reading anywhere you want. And please please read it as a whole - even knowing it takes time to do this. I promise you will get more out of it that way. Thank you. |
“You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order for us to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.” – Audre Lorde |
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I offer this website as an expression of my commitment, of our commitment, to a world where we can be free. I long for a world where we can come home to ourselves in all the ways we are meant and want to be, unchained by the toxic conditioning and constant constructions of divide and conquer that those addicted to power and profit prefer. I am enraged and I am heartbroken by my own conditioning, which has become an old friend by now and continues to astonish me with its ever more creative ways of attempting to disconnect me from you, from myself, from all that really matters. I have developed a regular meditation practice as one way (not the only way) to work with my conditioning and face what needs to be changed. During one of my meditations, my mother came to me (she died at age 95 in 2009) and gave me clear instructions: be love(d), pay attention, don't be afraid, and find the others. This website is my attempt to live into those instructions in the service of our mutual liberation. I claim only the intention, not the result. Thank you for visiting. May you take what is useful and leave the rest. |
Artwork by Tema Okun
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FEAR
White supremacy culture's number one strategy is to make us afraid. When we are afraid, we lose touch with our power and are more easily manipulated by any promise of safety, even and particularly when safety is an illusion. |
ONE RIGHT WAY & PERFECTIONISM*
along with PATERNALISM OBJECTIVITY* QUALIFIED The belief there is one right (white) way to do things and once people are introduced to the right way, they will see the light and adopt it. Connected to the belief that "perfect" is both attainable and desirable. |
EITHER/OR & THE BINARY* Reducing the complexity of life and the nuances of our relationships with each other and all living things into either/or, yes or no, right or wrong, in ways that reinforce toxic power.
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DENIAL & DEFENSIVENESS
The habit of denying and defending against the ways in which white supremacy and racism are (re)produced and our individual or collective participation in that (re)production. |
RIGHT TO COMFORT &
FEAR OF CONFLICT The internalization that I or we have a right to comfort, which means we cannot tolerate conflict, particularly open conflict. A tendency to blame the person or group causing discomfort or conflict rather than addressing the issues being named. |
INDIVIDUALISM*
Individualism is our cultural story that we make it on our own (or should), without help, while pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. A toxic denial of our essential interdependence and the reality that we are all in this, literally, together. |
PROGRESS IS MORE* &
QUANTITY OVER QUALITY* The assumption that the goal is always more and bigger. An emphasis on what we can "objectively" measure as more valuable than the quality of our relationships to all living beings. |
WORSHIP OF THE
WRITTEN WORD Honoring only what is written and only what is written to a narrow standard, even when what is written is full of misinformation and lies. An erasure of the wide range of ways we communicate with each other and all living things. |
URGENCY
Applying the urgency of racial and social justice to our every day lives in ways that perpetuate power imbalance and disregard the need to breathe and pause and reflect. |
We need each other. And before I see another person, Vivette Jeffries-Logan
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To celebrate the launch of this website and the update of the original article, SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) hosted a webinar in May 2021 featuring a slew of special guests offering their take on white supremacy and white supremacy culture 20 years after the article's publication. Guests included Change Lab's Scot Nakagawa, who publishes the incredibly informative Anti-Authoritarian Playbook online newsletter, Danielle Spratley reading the poetry of NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green, anti-racist activist, yoga teacher and author Michelle Johnson, Finding Freedom's Kari Points, Vivette Jeffries-Logan of Biwa Consulting, SURJ's own Misha Viets Van Dyke, and Justin Robinson from Earthseed Land Collective. The evening was a powerful weaving of story telling, framework building, analysis, critique and big, big heart. Guests talked about the state of white supremacy in the current context, grief in the body, the ways in which class and gender inform both white supremacy and our experience of it, the importance of our relationship to ancestors and the land, and so much more. The webinar was stewarded by SURJ's Grace Ahern and ASL interpreted by the fabulous Jennifer Mantle and Pilar Marsh, with tech masterfully managed by Jenn Lishansky. |
And who am I?Great question. Still pondering. Here is an introduction to the site and a partial answer to this question. Artwork by Tema Okun
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White Supremacy Culture | Offered by Tema Okun
first published 2021 | last update 11.2024 |