ANTI-BLACKNESS, RACIAL STEREOTYPES AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
We are moving on from the benefits and behaviors of whiteness and a more intellectual understanding of white supremacy to what racism against people of color looks like in practice. The discomfort this brings you will be small compared to the pain it brings people to color to hear you "confess" these thoughts, beliefs and actions.
YOU AND COLOR BLINDNESS
I was asked the following questions:
What messages were you taught about color blindness and seeing color growing up?
How do you feel when BIPOC talk about race and racism?
How have you harmed BIPOC in your life by insisting you do not see color?
What is the first instinctual feeling that comes up when you hear the words white people or when you have to say Black people?
What mental gymnastics have you done to avoid seeing your own race (and what those of white privilege have collectively done to BIPOC)?
YOU AND ANTI-BLACKNESS AGAINST BLACK WOMEN
I was asked the following questions:
Think about the country you live in. What are some of the national racial stereotypes—spoken and unspoken, historic and modern—associated with Black women?
What kinds of relationships have you had and do you have with Black women, and how deep are these relationships?
How do you think about Black women who are citizens in your country differently from those who are recent immigrants?
How have you treated darker-skinned Black women differently from lighter-skinned Black women?
What are some of the stereotypes you have thought and negative assumptions you have made about Black women, and how have these affected how you have treated them?
How have you expected Black women to serve or soothe you?
How have you reacted in the presence of Black women who are unapologetic in their confidence, self-expression, boundaries, and refusal to submit to the white gaze?
How have you excluded, discounted, minimized, used, tone policed, or projected your white fragility and white superiority onto Black women?
YOU AND ANTI-BLACKNESS AGAINST BLACK MEN
I was asked the following questions:
Think about the country you live in. What are some of the national racial stereotypes—spoken and unspoken, historic and modern—associated with Black men?
How do you think about Black men who are citizens in your country differently from those who are recent immigrants?
What kinds of relationships have you had and do you have with Black men, and how deep are these relationships?
How have you treated darker-skinned Black men differently from lighter-skinned Black men?
What are some of the stereotypes you have thought and negative assumptions you have made about Black men, and how have they affected how you have treated them?
How have you excluded, discounted, minimized, used, tone policed, or projected your white fragility and white superiority onto Black men?
How have you fetishized Black men?
How much freedom do you give Black men in your mind to be complex and multilayered human beings?
YOU AND ANTI-BLACKNESS AGAINST BLACK CHILDREN
I was asked the following questions:
Think about the country you live in. What are some of the national racial stereotypes—spoken and unspoken, historic and modern—associated with Black children?
How do you think about Black children who are citizens in your country differently from those who are recent immigrants?
How have you viewed or do you view Black children when they are young versus when they get to their teens and young adulthood?
How have you treated Black children differently from white children? And how have you treated darker-skinned Black children differently from lighter-skinned Black children?
How have you tokenized and fetishized “cute Black kids” or “cute mixed kids”?
How have you wanted to “save” Black children?
YOU AND RACIST STEREOTYPES
I was asked the following questions:
What are some of the national racial stereotypes in your country—spoken and unspoken, historic and modern—associated with Indigenous people and non-Black POC?
What are the racist stereotypes, beliefs, and thoughts you hold about the different racial groups of people? In what ways do you paint them all with one brush rather than seeing them as complex individuals?
How do you think about POC who are citizens in your country differently from those who are recent immigrants? How do you think about those who are more assimilated versus those who are less assimilated (e.g., if they practice your country’s social norms, if they have accents that sound like yours, etc.)?
How do you think about and treat Indigenous children and non-Black children of color differently from white children?
How do you think about and treat darker-skinned Indigenous people and POC differently from those who are lighter-skinned?
In what ways have you superhumanized parts of the identities of Indigenous people and POC while dehumanizing other parts?
YOU AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
I was asked the following questions:
How have you or do you appropriate from nonwhite cultures?
What actions have you taken when you have seen other white people culturally appropriating? Have you called it out? Or have you used your white silence?
Have you been called out for cultural appropriation?
How did you respond? How have you profited (socially or financially) from cultural appropriation?
How have you excused cultural appropriation as being “not that bad”? How do you feel about it now having done thirteen days of this work?
WEEK IN REVIEW
CITATIONS
Girl with Mask photo from: https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2020/04/Corona_1_crop-1024x730.jpg