Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor

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. I am not talking about the physical color of your skin being inherently bad or something to feel shame about. I am talking about the historic and modern legislating, societal conditioning, and systemic

Despite our differences in skin color, hair texture, and other physical traits, genetically, you and I are largely the same. However, because race is a deeply held social construct and because of the existence of white supremacy, you and I are not treated the same. You hold white privilege. I do not. And that makes a world of difference.

Science has proven that the concept of race is not a biological fact but rather a social concept.

what exists within can do just as much, if not more, harm than what is spoken out loud. What lies within influences what comes out, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Tone policing also occurs when you judge BIPOC for not conforming to white norms of communication (e.g., being too loud, using African American Vernacular English, or speaking in ways that do not conform with Standard English).

For our first seven days of this journey, we are going to be diving into what I consider some of the basic foundational aspects of white supremacy. Some of them you have heard of, such as white privilege and white fragility. Others may be new to you, such as white silence and white exceptionalism.

You will have to learn to wean yourself off the addiction to instant gratification and instead develop a consciousness for doing what is right even if nobody ever thanks you for it.

Tone policing in all these places is the constant judgment—or threat of judgment—on how BIPOC express themselves.

in a racist and patriarchal society, I would be treated differently. I would not be rewarded the same for the same effort. And she wanted me to know that though this was not fair or right, it was (and still is), sadly, the way things were.