We Participate in White Supremacy, But Not as White Supremacist

Red apples hanging on a branch with green leaves, during fall Photo by Kristina Paukshtite on Pexels.com

Note: No blog posts after this until mid-November. I have a busy month of work ahead of me so most likely no time to sit and blog. If I find a few hours of time to crank out a post, I will post something to break up the hiatus. Thanks for understanding.

Recently, I was at a mix-race, multi-faith event to share stories and build connections. It was a lovely afternoon with just enough formality and casualness to be interesting but not soul-searching jump out of your skin uncomfortable. As a bunch of strangers meeting and talking for the first time, it got sufficiently deep.

One of the comments I remember was a story from an older German-American woman who said she remembered learning about the Holocaust and as a child of German descent and she felt guilty and internalized that guilt. She had to mature and understand it is ok to learn about history and empathize, but not to take on the guilt and shame. We need to learn about true history – the history of bad events — to build our empathy muscles.

We All Participate in White Supremacy

Hearing that person’s story and re-reading an old post I wrote about white supremacy made me think about how we all participate in white supremacy but that doesn’t mean we are white supremacist. At times people hear the first part and shut-down, they want to go back into a bubble of believing they are ok, they are good, and white supremacy doesn’t exist or they aren’t complicit in it. When we ignore the fact that we all participate in white supremacy and we don’t speak out about it, racial justice work stalls or we put up so many more barriers to fairness and justice work.

When I say we all participate in white supremacy, here are a few personal examples:

I have a bank account – I am able to have a bank account because I have the documentation (i.e. a state-issued ID card, Social Security Number, paycheck, etc.) and a financial institution deems me worthy of belonging to their institution. Not everyone has this privilege.

I understand and can communicate in the dominant languages, and I can code switch when necessary to make myself appealing to those in power.

I am not white, but I am often acceptable to white people.

White supremacy teaches us how to behave and be acceptable to the dominant white culture. White people and white culture has a narrow view of acceptable.

Understanding white supremacy is important to fighting it and creating empathy and space for others. When we talk about white supremacy, we’re not saying individual everyday people are white supremacist. We are saying we participate and benefit from a system we have to actively work to dismantle.

Dismantling the system we benefit from is good for everyone. Dismantling the privileges some get but others don’t allows for a fair system. We can share and when we do it allows for empathy to build and for people to be kinder and more open to change.

Thinking back to the person I had lunch with. I hope she now knows she doesn’t need to internalize the past. She needs to learn from it and to understand how to work to empathize with people who are different so we don’t repeat the atrocities of the past. Understanding how the systems of white supremacy work AND having empathy to change are both needed to stand up to the systems that don’t want to change.

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