Whiteness: An Autopsy

As better elders, we acknowledge that:

• as white people, our ancestors inevitably include enslavers, colonizers, Nazis and bigots---as well as healers, educators and freedom fighters---we cannot escape this stark duality. It feels good to acknowledge that your own inheritance is strife with harm.

• despite all of the tremendous efforts of Black and brown leaders, organizers and activists to organize us into a better society, we white-bodied people have purposefully stood in the way of change, by protecting our individual power, wealth and—ultimately—the tenets taught to us within white supremacy culture (Okum).

• white people's cognitive dissonance is deeply racist. By failing to fully commit ones' life to resolving big civic problems like houselessness, opioid addiction, climate change that most violently affects Black, brown and Indigenous communities, white people passively legitimize the eugenic belief that capitalism is a legitimate way to determine who in society should starve, be unhoused, and be brutally policed.

We are interested in breaking white people out of their cultish commitments to white supremacy culture, that ultimately keep them behaving in their own worst interest, and in the worst interest of our planet, our society, our neighbor’s interests and our futures. We believe that this work is centered in white people learning how to believe that they deserve more than what capitalism offers—and therefore to recognize the cruelty and unacceptability of what capitalism offers Black and brown communities—and also how to experience accountability and hold space for their own flaws, guilt, and change. 

We orchestrate healing abolitionist practice for white people–this often means we are teaching white people how to be in community for the first time. To do this, the current generation of white people needs to step into the responsibility of a full ‘whiteness’ accountability practice that is committed to liberation, abolition and abundance—and then take their commitments, wisdom and support around abolition and the deconstruction of white supremacy and offer it to younger generations—thereby making us better elders than what we ourselves experienced.

We believe that white people continue to be invested in our own supremacy because we long to be part of a beloved community and our deepest experience in community is inclusion in white supremacy culture. Since the racial formation of ‘whiteness’ in the past few hundred years, ‘whiteness’ has been the main fixture of belonging for white people—it is time to develop a community practice amongst white people that is as committed to abolition, liberation and abundance as our Black and brown civil rights elders have shown us is necessary. Better Elders is attempting to be that community. We are called Better Elders to acknowledge that in many Indigenous, Black and brown communities, generations of abolitionists have raised up, supported, guided and loved new generations of people in the tradition of fighting for liberation. It is time for white people to stand up unabashedly in solidarity with our neighbors.

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So, how do you diagnose your current relationship with your 'whiteness; accurately?

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We can use Dr. Barnor Hesse's "8 White Identities" to guide us.