White people gain from dismantling white supremacy culture too

Something that has been particularly striking to me recently in our work is how white people often have a hard time understanding what they have to gain from dismantling white supremacy.

There’s a certain approach to DEI that is about white people recognizing their privilege and that they need to give it up in order to “do the right thing.”

Often white folks have no idea what they themselves have given up or how they have been harmed in aligning with whiteness.

By contrast, people of color, especially those whose families are more recent immigrants, can much more easily name what attempting to align with whiteness has cost them - their culture, their language, their connections to family etc.

White supremacy culture is a system of oppression that was designed to pit indentured servants of different backgrounds against one other, disrupting the formation of cross-racial coalitions that would challenge the continued accumulation of land, power and wealth by white land-owning men.

It was never a system designed to benefit all white people, at least not equally.

And yes, white people certainly to gain some benefit from white supremacy culture, but at what cost?

Something we often talk about at CCI is how although we are not equally harmed, we are ALL harmed by white supremacy culture.

And that we believe that we ALL benefit from dismantling white supremacy culture.

Undoing white supremacy doesn’t mean undoing white people.

If you were to ask me, I would venture to say that even those who MOST benefit from white supremacy culture hardly seem to be living lives of joy and liberation.

As I’ve said before, dismantling oppressive hierarchies doesn’t necessarily mean giving up power - it means power sharing rather than power hoarding.

And world where everyone has what they need to do their best work and live their best life is a world that is better for everyone.

Banner photo by Augustine Wong on Unsplash

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