.” 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.

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?

Yet the way you often act goes beyond white privilege. It’s white privilege extra, white privilege on steroids, white privilege with a side of large fries. It’s white entitlement.

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.

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.

White supremacy means that you—white people—are raised to see yourselves as the default. In your white cocoon, you see your white experience as the default lived experience. The rest of us have racial and ethnic identities: Black people, Indigenous people, Indian people, Mexican people, Chinese people. People of color.

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

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.

There is white supremacy in mundane, everyday expressions. Black cats, black magic, black sheep in the family. All bad. White lies, better than regular lies. Even “white trash.” You don’t say “Black trash” or “brown trash,” ostensibly because it would be redundant in your white mind. When you say “white trash,” what you are saying is trash is by