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xiexiecaptain · 1 year

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I’m fucking begging people to please read about the Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture

It is a collectively, intersectionally articulated analytical tool to describe and help dismantle cultural aspects that prop up and propagate white supremacy.

Contributed to by many many amazing community activists, scholars, teachers, and regular people but spearheaded in this format by Tema Okun.

WHAT: WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE COMES AFTER ALL OF US

“We are all swimming in the waters of white supremacy culture. We are all navigating this culture, regardless of our racial identity. We are not all affected in the same ways – some of us are encouraged to join and collude without awareness that an invitation has been extended, some are invited to participate at the cost of separating ourselves from our communities and families, some are shamed because we can never fully join no matter how hard we try, some are denied any invitation in order to be targeted or exploited or violated. Because white supremacy culture is the water we swim in, we inevitably internalize the messages about what this culture believes, values, and considers normal. We absorb these messages as individuals and as a collective. As a result, white supremacy culture shapes how we think and act, how we make decisions and behave. As a result, white supremacy culture reminds us over and over again, sometimes out loud, sometimes in a whisper, that white is right and that there is a right kind of white”

https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/what-is-it.html

PLEASE AVOID WEAPONIZING THIS TOOL:

“I want to offer a cautionary plea here about weaponizing this list. This website, the article, the information offered here is a tool, an analytical tool designed to help us better understand white supremacy culture. The intention is to help us understand the water in which we are all swimming so that we can collaboratively work together to build and sustain cultures that help us thrive as communities and individuals. Cultures that are not based on abuse of power and accumulation of profit. Cultures that are based on interdependence, justice, and respect for each other and the earth and wind and sun and stars. Cultures that embody the belief that we all do better when we all do better.

This does not mean we can't hold each other accountable (another word for supporting each other to be our best selves), set boundaries when people have not learned yet to take responsibility for themselves, apologize and take responsibility ourselves when we cause harm, and continue to grow and learn how to be with each other even when we are getting on each other's last nerve. I will say that white supremacy wants us to attack each other as the problem. As we fight with and among each other, we fail to identify the actual problem. An instruction we might hold to is to attack the problem, not the people, not each other (thank you Cal Allen). Of course, sometimes our behavior is a problem, our conditioning is a problem, and then we can, when we are able, help each other through. And if we cannot, we look to others who have the capacity to help or be in relationship as they look to us when they are out of capacity and we are able to show up.

***THE PILLARS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE***

>>FEAR:

White supremacy culture's number one strategy is to make us afraid. When we are afraid, we lose touch with our power and become more easily manipulated by the promise of an illusory safety.

White supremacy culture cultivates our fear of not belonging, of not being enough. Living in fear that we are not enough, white supremacy culture teaches us to fear others (or hate others) in an attempt, sometimes overt, sometimes unspoken, to prove to ourselves that we are ok. An easy way to prove we are ok is to point the finger at all those who are not. An easy way to belong to each other is to hate and fear all the others who do not (thank you Cristina Rivera Chapman).

READ MORE ON “URGENCY” HERE

>>ONE RIGHT WAY:

(Intertwined with Perfectionism, Objectivity, & Paternalism)

The cultural belief there is one right way to do things and once people are introduced to the right way, they will see the light and adopt it. This belief is connected to the belief that the right way is the "perfect" way and therefore perfection is both attainable and desirable.

When a person or group does not adapt or change to "fit" the one right way, then those defining or upholding the one right way assume something is wrong with the other, those not changing, not with.

Similar to a missionary who sees only value in their beliefs about what is good rather than acknowledging value in the culture of the communities they are determined to "convert" to the right way of thinking and/or the right way of living

READ MORE ON “ONE RIGHT WAY,” “PATERNALISM/QUALIFIED,” “PERFECTIONISM,” & “OBJECTIVITY” HERE

>>PATERNALISM/QUALIFIED:

(Intertwined with Perfectionism, Objectivity & One Right Way)

>Those holding power control decision-making and define things (standards, perfection, one right way)

>Those holding power assume they are qualified to (and entitled to) define standards and the one right way as well as make decisions for and in the interests of those without power

>Those holding power often don’t think it is important or necessary to understand the viewpoint or experience of those for whom they are making decisions, often labeling those for whom they are making decisions as unqualified intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, or physically

READ MORE ON “ONE RIGHT WAY,” “PATERNALISM/QUALIFIED,” “PERFECTIONISM,” & “OBJECTIVITY” HERE

>>PERFECTIONISM:

(Intertwined with Paternalism, Objectivity, & One Right Way)

Perfectionism is the conditioned belief and attitude that we can be perfect based on a standard or set of rules that we did not create and that we are led to believe will prove our value. Perfectionism is the conditioned belief and attitude that we can determine whether others are showing up as perfect and demand or expect that they do so. White supremacy culture uses perfectionism to preserve power and the status quo. As long as we are striving to be perfect according to someone else's rules, we have less energy and attention to question those rules and to remember what is truly important. We can be perfectionist in our social justice circles when we assume or believe there is a perfect way to do something and we know what it is. When we look more closely at our own perfectionism, we see that the perfectionist tendency is always in service of our own power or the current power structure. We might be fighting power out in the world but when we are perfectionist about how we do that, we preserve a toxic power structure internally.

>Mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them as opposed to being seen for what they are – mistakes; making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong

>Little time, energy, or money is put into reflection or identifying lessons learned that can improve practice, in other words there is little or no learning from mistakes, and/or little investigation of what is considered a mistake and why.

>A tendency to identify what’s wrong; little ability to identify, name, define, and appreciate what’s right

>Often internally felt, in other words the perfectionist fails to appreciate their own good work, more often pointing out their faults or ‘failures,’ focusing on inadequacies and mistakes rather than learning from them; the person works with a harsh and constant inner critic that has internalized the standards set by someone else

READ MORE ON “ONE RIGHT WAY,” “PATERNALISM/QUALIFIED,” “PERFECTIONISM,” & “OBJECTIVITY” HERE

>>OBJECTIVITY:

(Intertwined with Paternalism, Perfectionism, & One Right Way)

The belief that there is such a thing as being objective or ‘neutral.’ The belief that emotions are inherently destructive, irrational, and should not play a role in decision-making or group process

>Assigning value to the "rational" while invalidating and/or shaming the "emotional" when often if not always the "rational" is emotion wrapped up in fancy logic and language

>Requiring people to think in a linear (logical) fashion and ignoring or invalidating/shaming those who think in other ways

>Impatience with any thinking that does not appear ‘logical’ or 'rational' in ways that reinforce existing power structures; in other words, those in power can be illogical, angry, emotional without being disregarded while those without power must always present from a 'rational' position

>Refusal to acknowledge the ways in which 'logical' thinking and/or decision-making is often a cover for personal emotions and/or agendas often based in fear of losing power, face, or comfort

READ MORE ON “ONE RIGHT WAY,” “PATERNALISM/QUALIFIED,” “PERFECTIONISM,” & “OBJECTIVITY” HERE

>>EITHER/OR & THE BINARY:

(Propped Up By Perfectionism & Urgency)

Cultural assumption that we can and should reduce 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.

>Positioning or presenting options or issues as either/or — good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us.

>Little or no sense of the possibilities of both/and.

>Trying to simplify complex things, for example believing that poverty is simply the result of lack of education.

>A strategy used by those with a clear agenda or goal to push those who are still thinking or reflecting to make a choice between ‘a’ or ‘b’ without acknowledging a need for time and creativity to come up with more options.

>A strategy used to pit oppressions against each other rather than to recognize the ways in which racism and classism intersect, the ways in which both intersect with heterosexism and agism and other categories of oppression.

READ MORE ON “EITHER/OR & THE BINARY” HERE

>>DENIAL:

(Intertwined with Defensiveness, Propped Up By Individualism)

White supremacy culture encourages a habit of silence about things that matter

>Claiming the right to define what is and what is not racism.

>Insisting that white supremacy and racism require intent. Attempting to separate intent from impact in order to claim that if racism is not intended, then it is not happening.

>Refusing to consider or acknowledge the historical legacy of white supremacy and racism and the structural nature of racial disparities. Rewriting, reframing, or omitting histories to erase or downplay racism.

>Insisting that individually or collectively, a person or group is free from racialized conditioning, leading to statements like “I don’t see color,” and “we’re all the same.”

>Erasing intersectionality - generalizing about a whole group without recognizing the ways in which class, gender, sexuality, religion, age, dis/ability, and other identities inform our individual and collective experiences.

>Denying what another person is saying about the ways in which white supremacy and/or racism are showing up in an interaction or space.

>A pattern that often has a white person with different levels of power denying what a Black, Indigenous or Person of Color or a whole community is saying about their experience of racism.

READ MORE ABOUT “DENIAL” & “DEFENSIVENESS” HERE

>>DEFENSIVENESS:

(Intertwined with Denial, Propped Up By Individualism & Either/Or & Binary)

>People respond to new or challenging ideas with objections or criticism, making it very difficult to raise these ideas.

>People in the organization, particularly those with power, spend a lot of energy trying to make sure that their feelings aren’t getting hurt, forcing others to work around their defensiveness rather than addressing them head-on. At its worst, they have convinced others to do this work for them.

>Because of either/or and binary thinking, those in power view and/or experience criticism as threatening and inappropriate (or rude).

>White people targeted by other oppressions express resentment because they experience the naming of racism as erasing their experience; closely linked to either/or/binary thinking.

>White people spend energy defending against charges of racism instead of examining how racism might actually be happening.

>An oppressive culture where people are afraid to speak their truth.

READ MORE ABOUT “DENIAL” & “DEFENSIVENESS” HERE

>>RIGHT TO COMFORT:

(Intertwined with Fear of Conflict)

Our cultural assumption that I or we (or the ones in formal and informal power) have a right to comfort, which means we cannot tolerate conflict, particularly open conflict. This assumption supports the tendency to blame the person or group causing discomfort or conflict rather than addressing the issues being named.

>Scapegoating those who cause discomfort, for example, targeting and isolating those who name racism rather than addressing the actual racism that is being named

>Demanding, requiring, expecting apologies or other forms of "I didn't mean it" when faced with accusations of colluding with racism

>Feeling entitled to name what is and isn't racism

>White people (or those with dominant identities) equating individual acts of unfairness with systemic racism (or other forms of oppression).

READ MORE ABOUT “RIGHT TO COMFORT” & “FEAR OF CONFLICT” HERE

>>FEAR OF (OPEN) CONFLICT:

(Intertwined with Right to Comfort)

>Emphasis or insistence on being polite; setting the rules for how ideas or information or differences of opinion need to be shared in order to be heard (in other words, requiring that people "calm down" if they are angry when anger often contains deep wisdom about where the underlying hurt and harm lies)

>Equating the raising of difficult issues with being impolite, rude, or out of line; punishing people either overtly or subtly for speaking out about their truth and/or experience;

>When someone raises an issue that causes discomfort, the response is to blame the person for raising the issue rather than to look at the issue which is actually causing the problem

>Pretending or insisting that our point of view is grounded in the "rational" or the intellectual when we are in fact masking our emotions with what appear to be rational or intellectual arguments.

>Labeling emotion as "irrational" or anti-intellectual or inferior, which means failing to recognize the importance of emotional intelligence;

READ MORE ABOUT “RIGHT TO COMFORT” & “FEAR OF CONFLICT” HERE

>>INDIVIDUALISM:

(Intertwined with Perfectionism, Qualified, One Right Way, Defensiveness, & Denial)

Our cultural story that we make it on our own, without help, while pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, is a toxic denial of our essential interdependence and the reality that we are all in this, literally, together.

>Failure to acknowledge any of the ways dominant identities - gender, class, sexuality, religion, able-bodiedness, age, education to name a few - are informed by belonging to a dominant group that shapes cultural norms and behavior

>Valuing competition more highly than cooperation; or where collaboration is valued, little time or resources are devoted to developing skills in how to collaborate and cooperate

>For white people: a culturally supported focus on determining whether an individual is racist or not while ignoring cultural, institutional, and systemic racism; the strongly felt need by many if not most white people to claim they are "not racist" while their conditioning into racism is relentless and unavoidable

>Desire for individual recognition and credit with failure to acknowledge how what we know is informed by so many others

>Isolation and loneliness

>For white people: seeing yourselves and/or demanding to be seen as an individual and not as part of the white group;

>For BIPOC people: individualism forces the classic double bind when BIPOC people are accused of not being "team players" - in other words, punishment or repercussions for acting as an individual if and when doing so "threatens" the team

>Little experience or comfort working as part of a team, which includes both failure to acknowledge the genius or creativity of others on the team and a willingness to sacrifice democratic and collaborative process in favor of efficiency; see double bind for BIPOC people above

I'm the Only One (or he/she/they are):

>An aspect of individualism, the belief that if something is going to get done "right," ‘I’ have to do it

>Connected to the characteristic of "one right way," the belief that "I" can determine the right way, am entitled and/or qualified to do so, in isolation from and without accountability to those most impacted by how I define the right way

>Little or no ability to delegate work to others, micro-management

>Based in deep fear of loss of control, which requires an illusion of control

>Putting charismatic leaders on pedestals (or positioning yourself as a charismatic leader on a pedestal); romanticizing a leader (or yourself) as the center of a movement, idea, issue, campaign

>Hiding or covering up the flaws of a leader (or your flaws) in fear that the organization, movement, effort cannot survive

>Defining leadership as those most in front and most vocal (thank you Cristina Rivera-Chapman for these last four bullets)

READ MORE ABOUT “INDIVIDUALISM” HERE

>>PROGRESS IS MORE:

(Intertwined with Quantity over Quality)

The cultural assumption that the goal is always to be/do/get more and be/do/get bigger. This leads to an emphasis on what we can "objectively" measure - how well we are doing at being/doing/getting more - as more valuable than the quality of our relationships to all living beings.

>Assumption that the goal is to grow - add staff, add projects, or serve more people regardless of how well they can serve them; raise more money, or gain more influence and power for its own sake - all without regard to the organization's mission or especially the people and/or living beings that the organization is in relationship with

>Valuing those who have "progressed" over those who "have not" - where progress is measured in degrees, grades, money, power, status, material belongings - in ways that erase lived experience and wisdom/knowledge that is invisibilized - tending, cleaning, feeding, nurturing, caring for, raising up, supporting (thank you Bevelyn Ukah)

>A narrow focus on numbers (financial, people, geography, power) without an ability to value processes (relationships), including cost to the human and natural environment

>Gives no value, not even negative value, to its cost; for example, increased accountability to funders as the budget grows in ways that leave those served exploited, excluded, or underserved as we focus on how many we are serving instead of quality of service or values created by the ways in which we serve

>Little or no ability to consider the cost of growth in social, emotional, psychic, embodied, spiritual, and financial realms

>Focus on getting bigger (in size, transactional power, numbers) leading to little or no ability to consider the cost of getting big in social, emotional, psychic, embodied, spiritual, and financial realms (thank you Bevelyn Ukah)

READ MORE ABOUT” QUANTITY OVER QUALITY” & “PROGRESS IS MORE” HERE

>>QUANTITY OVER QUALITY:

(Intertwined with Progress Is More)

>Most or all resources directed toward producing quantitatively measurable goal

>Things that can be counted are more highly valued than things that cannot, for example numbers of people attending a meeting, newsletter circulation, money raised and spent are valued more than quality of relationships, democratic decision-making, ability to constructively deal with conflict, morale and mutual support

>Little or no value attached to process in the internalized belief that if it can’t be measured, it has no value

>discomfort with emotion and feelings

>little or no understanding that when there is a conflict between content (the agenda of the meeting) and process (people’s need to be heard or engaged), process will prevail (for example, you may get through the agenda, but if you haven’t paid attention to people’s need to be heard, the decisions made at the meeting are undermined and/or disregarded)

READ MORE ABOUT” QUANTITY OVER QUALITY” & “PROGRESS IS MORE” HERE

>>WORSHIP OF THE WRITTEN WORD:

The cultural habit of 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. Worship of the written word includes erasure of the wide range of ways we communicate with each other and all living things.

>Those with strong documentation and writing skills are more highly valued, even in organizations where ability to relate to others is key to the mission

>Those who write things down get recognized for ideas that are collectively and generationally informed in a context where systemic racism privileges the writing and wisdom of people in the white group

>Claiming "ownership" of (written) knowledge to meet ego needs rather than understanding the importance of offering what you write and know to grow and expand the community's knowing

>If it’s not in a memo, it doesn’t exist / if it's not grammatically "correct," it has no value / if it's not properly cited according to academic rules that many people don't know or have access to, it's not legitimate

>Academic standards require "original" work when our knowledge and knowing almost always builds on the knowledge and knowing of others, of each other

READ MORE ABOUT “WORSHIP OF THE WRITTEN WORD” HERE

AGAIN THE WEBSITE CAN BE FOUND HERE AND I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO READ THE WHOLE THING! THIS IS A BRIEF OVERVIEW!

And all of this was copied from the website (aside from some formatting for the post.) I am just trying to spread this info/tool to people who could use it to help them dismantle white supremacist cultural aspects in their own lives/communities/organizations. I’ve found if very very helpful myself in always working toward anti-racism in my own actions. Hopefully others do too.

#dismantle white supremacy #anti-racism #decolonization #racial justice #tema okun #original posts #<- not original content this is just for tagging posts i make to find them later

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