- Racism, racialization,
White Body Supremacy, is not episodic.
It's structural.
Remember that there were thousands of George Floyds
before the one that you saw.
Your bodily response to this horror, right,
is not the same thing as you dealing
with the structural aspects of it.
- George Floyd's death became a deeply personal
and racial tragedy for many Americans.
For the first time, white people were becoming aware
of their whiteness and the systemic ways
that white supremacy affects all of us.
- White people in particular get aroused, get upset,
and say, "This is unjust.
This isn't right. This shouldn't happen."
There's, like, an awakening that happens.
And so part of their racial identity development
is seeing that awakening.
What they do with it is really the next piece of it.
- In this episode, we're tackling
white racial identity
and why understanding your whiteness is integral
to becoming self-aware as a white person.
I'm Nicole Ellis, and this is "The New Normal."
- I am originally from a smaller town in Oklahoma.
Whiteness was the default and whiteness was the comfort.
- Part of the structure of racism
in the way that it's maintained is to keep us
from recognizing that racism is a part of our daily lives.
And so it's a longer-term process
of looking at your understanding of yourself in the world,
both historically but also contextually.
The family you live in, the community you live in,
and what role whiteness plays in that.
- The more you kind of dive into that,
the more I'm really realizing how deeply rooted racism
is into, like, my everyday thought process.
No matter how much you work at that,
there's still even almost more work to be done.
- A living, embodied anti-racist culture
does not exist among white people.
White people got to start getting together
specifically around race.
- White accountability groups are really helpful
in terms of having a place to process,
having a group of people whose responsibility it is
to call me on things or to challenge me.
- We're unpacking wrong things
that we have been taught in history class.
I realized that I needed to go back
and unpack and reorganize everything that I had learned
because it was completely through a white lens.
Most of us, in doing this work, have experienced this,
where there's a period of deep shame for being white
and for acknowledging the harm that our ancestors have caused.
And that's a very legitimate piece of this work.
And we can't ask people of color
to hold our hands through the shame piece.
That needs to happen with other white people.
- When you do that for one, two, three, four, five years, right,
you end up with actually a community
that is aligned with each other.
- In theory, that sounds like a good idea,
but I guess I'm curious to hear, like,
what are some of the pitfalls or risks
that you run if that's the only step that you take?
- The biggest answer is white people
don't really understand racism.
And so if I'm relying on other white people
to teach me about racism, that can only go so far.
I only best understand racism by talking to people
who are directly impacted by racism
from different perspectives.
So in addition to having white accountability groups
and white accountability buddies,
it's also really important to have sustained
and meaningful relationships with people of color.
- I don't have the ability to, like, inherently name things
as upholding white supremacy or as being racist.
My whiteness is going to show up at different points in my life
and at different points and different relationships.
- But is it fair or healthy to be seeking out relationships
with people just to have a diverse network?
'Cause I feel like, for people of color,
you're kind of constantly trying to gauge whether or not
it's worth it to be vulnerable or share how someone hurt you
when your white colleagues or co-workers or friends mess up.
- There's a different cost for my friends of color
to be in relationship with me.
So I think one of the things that's really important
is ongoing being a friend
on an ongoing basis for lots of different things,
not just, like, thinking about racism
as a part of our friendship
when there's something horrible that happens.
Those relationships are, number one,
for me to be there for them as them for me.
It's a relationship, and so it should be reciprocal.
But also so that I have a broader
understanding of the world.
- Everything I thought about how I existed in my white body
in the world was very wrong.
And I needed this new lens to see the world through,
so I think that's been a big piece of my own work.
- We're gonna continue to cover topics
like this in the coming weeks.
So stay tuned.
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