Not only is white woman exceptionalism false, but in it lies the implication that if you are the exception, other white women around you are the rule. You believe that you’re better than them. How can that be healthy? How can that be sisterhood?

The next time you refer to someone as your Asian intern or Black friend, think about how often you refer to colleagues or friends or yourself as white. My white boss. My white neighbor. Likely never. Please start now.

.” Or you might even flat-out not believe what’s written here. White people expressing shock over racism is racism. It is a version of “not me,” “not all white people.” It is distancing yourself from the harm you all cause. It is kicking the can down the road, avoiding accountability. It is freezing, doing nothing besides being shocked.

Your need for perfection, in fact, makes it impossible to engage in antiracism work.

Because you so greatly benefit from your whiteness, you work tirelessly to protect it. In a white supremacy culture like ours, not working tirelessly to dismantle it is the equivalent of working tirelessly to protect it. In other words, not acting is acting.

You’ve amassed wealth through a system of white supremacy. You have literally made money on the backs of BIPOC. Stolen land. Stolen labor. Stolen ideas. So the notion that you want to “give” or “help” as a way of doing something good is all part of this myth

In a white supremacist society, such as the United States, white privilege is the unearned benefit one incurs from having white skin. Therefore, if you are white, you have white privilege and, in wielding and enjoying that privilege, you are inherently upholding white supremacy.

Erasing your white power is a prerequisite to being colorblind, and colorblindness is a form of racism. If you don’t see color, you don’t see your white power, and if you don’t see your white power, you don’t see your racism. And if you don’t see your racism, you cannot dismantle it. If you cannot dismantle it, you are actively supporting it.

So we are asked to explain your violence against us to you, which is traumatizing.