Ancestor Combat Quotes

Antiracism work that does not break the heart open cannot move people toward meaningful change.

Your desire to be seen as good can actually prevent you from doing good, because if you do not see yourself as part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution.

Here is a radical idea that I would like you to understand: white silence is violence. It actively protects the system. It says I am okay with the way things are because they do not negatively affect me and because I enjoy the benefits I receive with white privilege.

You cannot dismantle what you cannot see. You cannot challenge what you do not understand.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.14

White supremacy is a system you have been born into. Whether or not you have known it, it is a system that has granted you unearned privileges, protection, and power.

Here’s to doing what is right and not what is easy.

In essence, white fragility looks like a white person taking the position of victim when it is in fact that white person who has committed or participated in acts of racial harm.

This work is not about those white people “out there.” It is about you. Just you.

People often think that white supremacy is a term that is only used to describe far-right extremists and neo-Nazis. However, this idea that white supremacy only applies to the so-called “bad ones” is both incorrect and dangerous, because it reinforces the idea that white supremacy is an ideology that is only upheld by a fringe group of white people.

But if you are a person who believes in love, justice, integrity, and equity for all people, then you know that this work is nonnegotiable

You can be an introvert and have powerful conversations. You can be an introvert and use writing to disrupt white supremacy. You can be an introvert and show up to protest marches. You do not have to be the loudest voice. But you do need to use your voice.

There is no feel-good reward at the end other than the knowledge that you are doing this because it’s the right thing to do. You will not be congratulated for it. You won’t get any ally cookies for it. You won’t be celebrated for it. You will have to learn to wean yourself off the addiction to instant gratification and instead develop a consciousness for doing what is right even if nobody ever thanks you for it.

Science has proven that the concept of race is not a biological fact but rather a social concept.

A white person’s expression of anger is often seen as righteous, whereas a Black person’s anger is often seen as aggressive and dangerous. Nowhere

You do not have to be the loudest voice. But you do need to use your voice.

Color blindness causes harm at multiple levels. In the first instance, it is an act of minimization and erasure.

Today, notice how color blindness shifts the burden of addressing the consequences of racism onto BIPOC by asking them to stop talking about racism and just work harder and be more like white people.

If you are willing to dare to look white supremacy right in the eye and see yourself reflected back, you are going to become better equipped to dismantle it within yourself and within your communities.

White exceptionalism is the belief that because you have read antiracism books and articles, listened to social justice–based podcasts, watched documentaries on the effects of racism, and follow some BIPOC activists and teachers, you know it all and do not need to dig deeper.

All people, regardless of race, can hold some level of prejudice toward people who are not the same race as them. A person of any race can prejudge a person of any other race based on negative racial stereotypes and other factors. Prejudice is wrong, but it is not the same as racism.

Pain and shame are neither desirable nor sustainable as long-term strategies for transformational change. It is my hope that love is what initially brought you to this work. It is my conviction that love is what will keep you going.

Building the racial stamina required to challenge the racist status quo is thus a critical part of our work as white people. Rushing ahead to solutions—especially when we have barely begun to think critically about the problem—bypasses the necessary personal work and reflection and distances us from understanding our own complicity.

white silence is violence.

All our ancestors were murdered, murderers, complicit to murder, or combating murder.

When you refuse to look at color, you refuse to look at yourself as a person with white privilege.

It is also a system that has been designed to keep you asleep and unaware of what having that privilege, protection, and power has meant for people who do not look like you.

White silence is also a defending of the status quo of white supremacy—a manifestation of holding on to one’s white privilege through inaction.

Sadly, most white people are more worried about being called racist than about whether or not their actions are in fact racist or harmful.

The aim of this work is truth—seeing it, owning it, and figuring out what to do with it. This is lifelong work. Avoid the shortcuts, and be wary of the easy answers.

there is no greater reward than being in integrity with your values and living your life in such a way that it makes the world a better place now and for the future.

You will have to learn to wean yourself off the addiction to instant gratification and instead develop a consciousness for doing what is right even if nobody ever thanks you for it.

Often times, what you describe as cultural appreciation is a form of tokenizing and exoticizing while continuing to discard and dehumanize the actual people of that culture. Often times, the cultural elements that are appropriated are stripped of their original cultural context, meaning, and significance and used in such a way as to serve or pleasure whiteness.

Remember, white supremacy is not just about individual acts of racism, but rather it is a system of oppression that seeps into and often forms the foundation of many of the regular spaces where you spend your time—school, work, spiritual spaces, health and wellness spaces, and so on.

White exceptionalism has shown up every time you saw one of the reflective journaling questions and thought, I don’t do that or That doesn’t apply to me. I have never or would never think that.

you who came to this book with questions about dismantling white supremacy and who leaves this book knowing that you are a part of the problem and that you are simultaneously also a part of the answer.

The response of #AllLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter to #BlackLivesMatter, not understanding that the social justice movement would not have to exist if all lives were treated as if they mattered equally.

This desire, though seemingly well-meaning, completely disregards the fact that there are already Black women and people leading this work and that as a person with white privilege, a better way for her to support the healing of this crisis would be to do her own antiracism work and approach these organizations to ask them how she can best support them. The desire to become the hero of the story is a common one.

primary force that drives my work is a passionate desire to become a good ancestor. My purpose is to help create change, facilitate healing, and seed new possibilities for those who will come after I am gone.

The promise of the Church of Color Blindness is that if we stop seeing race, then racism goes away. That racism will go away not through awakening consciousness of privilege and racial harm, not through systemic and institutional change, not through addressing imbalances in power, not through making amends for historical and current-day harm, but instead by simply acting as if the social construct of race has no actual consequences—both for those with white privilege and those without it. The belief is that if you act as if you do not see color, you will not do anything racist or benefit from racism. And if you teach your children to not see race too, you can create a new generation of people who will not do anything racist or benefit from racism.

but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.

Lastly, cultural appropriation rewrites history with whiteness at the center. So for example, though yoga has its roots in India as a spiritual practice, it is now seen as a predominantly white-centered practice that is focused largely on physical health.

White Exceptionalism: The idea that "I'm one of the good one" puts you in a mindset that you are not racist and therefore you do not have to do anything more to practice antiracism. Exceptionalism gives you a false sense of pride that is really white apathy in disguise.

white privilege adopts something from a Black or Brown culture, they are somehow enhanced because they have adopted something “exotic.” Cultural appropriation is collecting the parts of Blackness and Brownness that appeal to whiteness while discarding actual Black and Brown people.

I mean persons who are visually identifiable as white or who pass for white. Therefore, this includes persons who are biracial, multiracial, or white-passing People of Color who benefit under systems of white supremacy from having lighter skin color than visibly Brown, Black, or Indigenous people.

The reality is that you have been conditioned since you were a child to believe in white superiority through the way your history was taught, through the way race was talked about, and through the way students of color were treated differently from you. You have been educated by institutions that have taught white superiority through curricula that favor a white-biased narrative, through the lack of representation of BIPOC, and through the way these institutions handled acts of racism.

white person, they cannot be racist toward a white person. They do not have the power (which comes with white privilege) and the backing of a system of oppression (called white supremacy) to be able to turn that prejudice into domination and punishment in a way that a white person would be able to if the tables were reversed.

It may seem like we are at a time in history when racism and white supremacy are resurfacing, but the truth is, they never went away. So while it is true that events in recent history, such as the 2016 U.S. presidential election, have brought these issues to the forefront, the reality is that these issues have always been there.

Now understand that no matter who you are, no matter what level of power, influence, or authority you hold, your voice is needed. Not as a white savior (which we will cover in Week 3), but as someone who recognizes that their privilege can be a weapon used against white supremacy. Your silence is a loud message that you side with white supremacy

knowledge without action is meaningless.

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

White apathy is the choice to stay in the warm and safe comfort of white supremacy and the privileges it affords.

White supremacy is not just an attitude or a way of thinking. It also extends to how systems and institutions are structured to uphold this white dominance.

White supremacy is an ideology, a paradigm, an institutional system, and a worldview that you have been born into by virtue of your white privilege.

For Serena, the daily diminishment is a low flame, a constant drip. Every look, every comment, every bad call blossoms out of history, through her, onto you.”9

So for example, though Arab is not synonymous with Muslim, non-Muslim Arabs can experience Islamophobic-type stereotypes because of the media-driven idea that all Muslims are Arab.

Cultural appropriation can include the appropriation of another culture’s objects, motifs, symbols, rituals, artifacts, and other cultural elements.

Racist stereotypes continue to abound in the media and in people’s minds, causing marginalization, loss of opportunities, erasure, suspicion, and ridicule.

Tone Policing: A tactic used by those who have white privilege to silence those who do not by focusing on the tone of what is being said rather than the actual content.

I do this work because I have a voice, and it is my responsibility to use my voice to dismantle a system that has hurt me and that hurts BIPOC every day.

White supremacy is far from fringe. In white-centered societies and communities, it is the dominant paradigm that forms the foundation from which norms, rules, and laws are created.

White supremacy is a racist ideology that is based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore, white people should be dominant over other races.1 White supremacy is not just an attitude or a way of thinking. It also extends to how systems and institutions are structured to uphold this white dominance.

In her book So You Want to Talk about Race, author Ijeoma Oluo broadly defines cultural appropriation as "the adoption or exploitation of another culture by a more dominant culture".

You are not an exceptional white person, meaning you are not exempt from the conditioning of white supremacy, from the benefits of white privilege, and from the responsibility to keep doing this work for the rest of your life. The moment you begin to think you are exceptional is the moment you begin to relax back into the warm and familiar comfort of white supremacy.

I am talking about the historic and modern legislating, societal conditioning, and systemic institutionalizing of the construction of whiteness as inherently superior to people of other races.

Young children understand that the idea of “we don’t see color” does not make sense. They will not necessarily use the socially constructed terms of race that we as adults use, such as Black or white, but when asked to describe what color they are and what color their friends are, they use words such as brown and peach that match up with the colors in their Crayola crayon boxes. When

White supremacy is a racist ideology that is based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore, white people should be dominant over other races.

You will also need love for this journey because when the truth telling gets really hard, you will need something more powerful than pain and shame to encourage you to keep going. Pain and shame are neither desirable nor sustainable as long-term strategies for transformational change. It is my hope that love is what initially brought you to this work. It is my conviction that love is what will keep you going.

When you insist that you will not believe or give credibility or attention to BIPOC until they speak in a tone that suits you, then you uphold the idea that your standards as a white person are more superior.

However, this idea that white supremacy only applies to the so-called “bad ones” is both incorrect and dangerous, because it reinforces the idea that white supremacy is an ideology that is only upheld by a fringe group of white people. White supremacy is far from fringe. In white-centered societies and communities, it is the dominant paradigm that forms the foundation from which norms, rules, and laws are created.

Race-based color blindness is the idea that you do not “see” color. That you do not notice differences in race. Or if you do, that you do not treat people differently or oppress people based on those differences.

It acts as a mirror being held up to you so that you can deeply examine how you have been complicit in a system that has been purposely designed to benefit you through unearned privileges at the expense of BIPOC.

Feeling the feelings—which are an appropriate human response to racism and oppression—is an important part of the process. When you allow yourself to feel those feelings, you wake up. You rehumanize yourself. You start to realize that you weren’t feeling these feelings before because you had shut down a part of your humanity in order to participate in white supremacy. White supremacy purposely numbs you to the pain that your racism causes.

White exceptionalism is the belief that you, as a person holding white privilege, are exempt from the effects, benefits, and conditioning of white supremacy and therefore that the work of antiracism does not really apply to you.

They mistook me for a sheep when, in truth, I was a lion. They underestimated me, just as they had underestimated my female ancestors for centuries. In the end, the only way to combat a predator is to transform into a greater one.

the subtle and overt discrimination, marginalization, abuse, and killing of BIPOC in white-dominated communities continues even today because white supremacy continues to be the dominant paradigm under which white societies operate.

All people, regardless of race, can hold some level of prejudice toward people who are not the same race as them. A person of any race can prejudge a person of any other race based on negative racial stereotypes and other factors. Prejudice is wrong, but it is not the same as racism. Racism is the coupling of prejudice with power, where the dominant racial group (which in a white supremacist society is people with white privilege) is able to dominate over all other racial groups and negatively affect those racial groups at all levels—personally, systematically, and institutionally. Therefore, though a BIPOC can hold prejudice against a white person, they cannot be racist toward a white person. They do not have the power (which comes with white privilege) and the backing of a system of oppression (called white supremacy) to be able to turn that prejudice into domination and punishment in a way that a white person would be able to if the tables were reversed.

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks.2 White privilege describes the unearned advantages that are granted because of one’s whiteness or ability to “pass” as white.

There is much work to be done. And it begins with getting honest with yourself, getting educated, becoming more conscious about what is really going on (and how you are complicit in it), and getting uncomfortable as you question your core paradigms about race.

This implicit and explicit bias that Fleming draws our attention to exists not just within professional tennis but also in homes, at schools and educational institutions, in businesses, in spiritual spaces, on the internet, and in every space where white supremacy exists.

Tokenism of BIPOC is a white supremacist act because it still places BIPOC as objects that can be used to further a white person’s or organization’s agenda, and it protects people with white privilege from having to do the work of disrupting white dominance. Tokenism looks flattering on the outside, but the truth of it is that it uses BIPOC as if they are things, not people. Tokenism says that BIPOC are only valuable to people with white privilege to the degree that they can be used for their own agenda (whether consciously or unconsciously).

he instilled in my brothers and me a philosophy of being citizens of the world. This idea that there is nowhere in the world where we do not belong and that we do not have to be confined to anyone’s attempts to label or define us has been one that has stayed with me to this day.

In the second instance, color blindness is an act of gaslighting. It is a cruel way of making BIPOC believe that they are just imagining they are being treated the way they are being treated because of their skin color, thus keeping them in a position of destabilization and inferiority.

If your understanding of racism and white supremacy does not include a historical and modern-day contextual understanding of colonization, oppression, discrimination, neglect, and marginalization at the systemic level and not just the individual level, then you are going to struggle when it comes to conversations about race.

When drawing a picture of themselves and their friend who is a different color, they would choose the colors that best match the skin colors they see. So why do we teach children not to see color? More specifically, why is it most often white children and children with white privilege who are taught this idea of color blindness?

This book is a one-of-a-kind personal antiracism tool structured to help people with white privilege understand and take ownership of their participation in the oppressive system of white supremacy. It is designed to help them take responsibility for dismantling the way that this system manifests, both within themselves and within their communities.

The enforcement of racist stereotypes in the media and in the collective subconscious is the way in which white supremacy continues to maintain nonwhite people as the “other,” the ones who should be feared, ridiculed, marginalized, criminalized, and dehumanized. Racist stereotypes within white supremacy emphasize again and again that those who are not “like us” are different and therefore a threat.

Racist stereotypes are used by politicians, policy makers, and the media to justify why certain groups of people should be treated the way that they are. It is easy to blame those in positions of leadership who drive racist stereotype narratives. But what about the narratives you are holding that continue to make it acceptable to allow people from other races to be talked about and treated the way they are?

As you move through the book answering each prompt to the best of your ability, dig deeper by asking yourself when, how, and why questions. For example: When do I react this way? When do these thoughts or feelings come up for me? How does this specific aspect of white supremacy show up for me? How does thinking or feeling this way benefit me? Why do I feel this way? Why do I believe this? Why do I think this is true? Why do I hold on to these beliefs?

Imagine if you will, experiencing an act of violence and then being asked to talk about what you experienced without expressing any strong emotions. This is clearly inhumane. To be human is to feel. To talk about pain without expressing pain is to expect a human to recall information like a robot. When you insist that BiPOC talk about their painful experiences with racism without expressing any pain, rage or grief, you are asking them to dehumanize themselves.

Please prioritize your self-care as you move through this work. Do not use it as an excuse to not do the work in a substantial way, but at the same time, honor yourself and the different feelings that show up around your identities. Do not use this work as a stick to beat yourself with, but rather use it to interrogate your complicity within a system of privilege that is only designed to benefit you to the extent that you can conform to the rules of whiteness.

The first thing to understand is that allyship is not an identity but a practice. A person with white privilege does not get to proclaim themselves an ally to BIPOC but rather seeks to practice allyship consistently. And a person with white privilege does not get to be the judge of whether what they are practicing actually is allyship, because what they might deem to be allyship could actually be white centering, tokenism, white saviorism, or optical allyship instead.

Lastly, color blindness is a way to avoid not only looking at other people’s races but looking at your own. So often, white people see themselves as “raceless” or “normal,” with everyone else being a race or being other, that they fail to investigate how the idea of color blindness protects them from having to reflect on what it means to be white in a white supremacist society. When you refuse to look at color, you refuse to look at yourself as a person with white privilege.

Again, it is important to stress that this belief is not necessarily a consciously chosen one. It is a deeply hidden, unconscious aspect of white supremacy that is hardly ever spoken about but practiced in daily life without even thinking about it. The reality is that you have been conditioned since you were a child to believe in white superiority through the way your history was taught, through the way race was talked about, and through the way students of color were treated differently from you. You have been educated by institutions that have taught white superiority through curricula that favor a white-biased narrative, through the lack of representation of BIPOC, and through the way these institutions handled acts of racism. You have been conditioned by media that continues to reinforce white superiority through an overrepresentation of celebrities and leaders who look like you, through the cultural appropriation of BIPOC fashion, language, and customs, and through the narrative of the white savior.

A definition of allyship that really resonates for me is this one by PeerNetBC. They define allyship as “an active, consistent, and challenging practice of unlearning and reevaluating, in which a person of privilege seeks to work in solidarity with a marginalized group. Allyship is not an identity—it is a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency, and accountability with marginalized individuals and/or groups. Allyship is not self-defined—our work and our efforts must be recognized by the people we seek to ally ourselves with.

Following advances in science such as the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, scientists were able to examine human ancestry through genetics. Science has proven that the concept of race is not a biological fact but rather a social concept. According to Dr. Harold P. Freeman, who has studied biology and race, “If you ask what percentage of your genes is reflected in your external appearance, the basis by which we talk about race, the answer seems to be in the range of .01 percent. This is a very, very minimal reflection of your genetic makeup.”3

Well,I appreciate the offer, Senator, but I'll drive myself.See you over the canapes." "Then, I'll ride with you," he said amiably. "We don't want to put any more carbon monoxide in the air than necessary. Shall I put that in the car for you?" Shelby took a firmer grip on the box as her hold in other areas started to slip. It was the damn serious smile and those thoughtful eyes,she decided. They made a woman feel as though she were the only one he'd ever looked at in quite that way. "Alan," she began,a bit amused by his persistance. "What is this?" "This..." He leaned over and captured her mouth with his, lingering until her fingers threatened to dig holes in the stif cardboard she held. "Is what our ancestors would have called a siege," he finished softly. "And MacGregors are notoriously successful at laying siege." Her breath shuddered out to merge with his. "You don't do badly at hand-to-hand combat either." He chuckled and would have kissed her again if she hadn't managed to step back. "All right." Shelby thrust the box into his arms, considering it a strategic move. "We'll carpool.I don't want to be condemned as an air-polluter.

[I] want to remind you that we are not looking for the happy ending, the teachable moment, or the pretty bow at the end of all the learning. We are also not looking for dramatic admissions of guilt or becoming so frozen with shame that you cannot move forward. The aim of this work is not self-loathing. The aim of this work is truth-seeing it, owning it, and figuring out what to do with it. This is lifelong work. Avoid the shortcuts, and be wary of the easy answers. Avoid the breaking down into white fragility. Question yourself when you think you have finally figured it out-there are always deeper layers, and you will continue to reflect even more as you continue on with this work.

Margaret Beale Spencer was hired as a consultant by CNN to re-create the doll tests for the modern age. This time, however, white children were tested as well as Black children. The tests showed that white children tended to identify the color of their own skin with more positive attributes and those with darker skins with more negative attributes. The researchers called this phenomenon “white bias.” The tests showed that the Black children were far less likely to respond with white bias. Dr. Spencer concluded, “All kids on the one hand are exposed to the stereotypes. What’s really significant here is that white children are learning or maintaining those stereotypes much more strongly than the African American children.

If I sequenced my own genome and showed it to a geneticist, she would be able to say approximately where on the planet I or my ancestors came from by matching variants in my genome with the geographic patterns of variants across the globe. She would not, however, be  able to tell whether I was smart or dumb, tall or short, or almost anything else that matters with respect to how I function as a human being. Indeed, despite the fact that most efforts to understand the genome have sprung from efforts to combat disease, for the vast majority of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, or heart disease, our current understanding allows us only to assign vague probabilities to the likelihood that an individual will develop them.

We are told of the time when, with the same beliefs, with the same institutions, all the world seemed happy: why complain of these beliefs; why banish these institutions? We are slow to admit that that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the principle of evil which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and gods, the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm themselves, and slay and exterminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by the vast depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of the combatants. So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its ancestors, and to change the laws framed by the founders of communities, and confirmed by the faithful observance of the ages.

Although they are ridiculous when said out loud, racist stereotypes fester internally as subtle, dangerous, and logical-seeming reasons that explain why racism is justified. Though you would never say or consciously believe these stereotypes out loud, they do live inside you. And when coupled with power you hold as someone with white privilege, these prejudices give you the ability to enforce white supremacy. If subconsciously, you believe that Indigenous people are primitive, or Arabs are terrorists, or Latinx people are drug dealers, then at some level, it makes sense to you when you see it reflected back to you though media messages. And therefore, at some level, it makes sense to you that they face the kind of treatment they face by the educational system, the employment sector, and so on. Uncovering your racist stereotypes will help you to see how you actively contribute to white supremacy by believing white supremacy's lies about the inferiority of those who do not look like you.

Hel's kingdom seems to have been reserved for the common dead, especially those who were not slain by handheld weapons. Valhöll, however, welcomed the valiant. Originally located beneath the earth, the Hall of Warriors fallen in battle" was transported close to Asgard, the abode of the gods, and according to the Sayings of Grimnir, it occupied the fifth heavenly dwelling place, the World of Joy (Gladsheimr) There, every day, Odin chose the warriors who died in combat and shared them with Frigg (Freyja). It was believed that Valhöll had the Unique Warriors (Einherjar), the elite. It is easy to understand why the Germans dreaded to die bedridden; if they were at risk of this, they asked those close to them to mark their bodies with spears. In the Saga of Ynglingar (chapter 9) Snorri Sturluson says that the god Odin, seen here from a euhemeristic perspective, proceeded in this way, but it is surprising to see Njörd, a god of the third function, demanding to be marked with this martial sign.

THREE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER JESUS DIED ON A ROMAN cross, the emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christians, who had once been persecuted by the empire, became the empire, and those who had once denied the sword took up the sword against their neighbors. Pagan temples were destroyed, their patrons forced to convert to Christianity or die. Christians whose ancestors had been martyred in gladiatorial combat now attended the games, cheering on the bloodshed. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. On July 15, 1099, Christian crusaders lay siege to Jerusalem, then occupied by Fatimite Arabs. They found a breach in the wall and took the city. Declaring “God wills it!” they killed every defender in their path and dashed the bodies of helpless babies against rocks. When they came upon a synagogue where many of the city’s Jews had taken refuge, they set fire to the building and burned the people inside alive. An eyewitness reported that at the Porch of Solomon, horses waded through blood. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Through a series of centuries-long inquisitions that swept across Europe, hundreds of thousands of people, many of them women accused of witchcraft, were tortured by religious leaders charged with protecting the church from heresy. Their instruments of torture, designed to slowly inflict pain by dismembering and dislocating the body, earned nicknames like the Breast Ripper, the Head Crusher, and the Judas Chair. Many were inscribed with the phrase Soli Deo Gloria, “Glory be only to God.” Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. In a book entitled On Jews and Their Lies, reformer Martin Luther encouraged civic leaders to burn down Jewish synagogues, expel the Jewish people from their lands, and murder those who continued to practice their faith within Christian territory. “The rulers must act like a good physician who when gangrene has set in proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow,” he wrote. Luther’s writings were later used by German officials as religious justification of the Holocaust. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

In other ways my story didn’t follow the tradition. Its subversive elements attracted little attention, no doubt because I was deliberately sneaky about them. A great many white readers in 1967 were not ready to accept a brown-skinned hero. But they weren’t expecting one. I didn’t make an issue of it, and you have to be well into the book before you realize that Ged, like most of the characters, isn’t white. His people, the Archipelagans, are various shades of copper and brown, shading into black in the South and East Reaches. The light-skinned people among them have far-northern or Kargish ancestors. The Kargish raiders in the first chapter are white. Serret, who both as girl and woman betrays Ged, is white. Ged is copper-brown and his friend Vetch is black. I was bucking the racist tradition, “making a statement”—but I made it quietly, and it went almost unnoticed. Alas, I had no power, at that time, to combat the flat refusal of many cover departments to put people of color on a book jacket. So, through many later, lily-white Geds, Ruth Robbins’s painting for the first edition—the fine, strong profile of a young man with copper-brown skin—was, to me, the book’s one true cover.

In the Afro-Asian world from which the Spaniards came, the obsession for gold was indeed an epidemic. Even the bitterest of enemies lusted after the same useless yellow metal. Three centuries before the conquest of Mexico, the ancestors of Cortés and his army waged a bloody war of religion against the Muslim kingdoms in Iberia and North Africa. The followers of Christ and the followers of Allah killed each other by the thousands, devastated fields and orchards, and turned prosperous cities into smouldering ruins – all for the greater glory of Christ or Allah. As the Christians gradually gained the upper hand, they marked their victories not only by destroying mosques and building churches,but also by issuing new gold and silver coins bearing the sign of the cross and thanking God for His help in combating the infidels. Yet alongside the new currency, the victors minted another type of coin, called the millares, which carried a somewhat different message. These square coins made by the Christian conquerors were emblazoned with flowing Arabic script that declared: ‘There is no god except Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger.’ Even the Catholic bishops of Melgueil and Agde issued these faithful copies of popular Muslim coins, and God-fearing Christians happily used them.2

My oral tradition has gradually been overlaid and is in danger of vanishing: at the age of eleven or twelve I was abruptly ejected from this theatre of feminine confidences - was I thereby spared from having to silence my humbled pride? In writing of my childhood memories I am taken back to those bodies bereft of voices. To attempt an autobiography using French words alone is to lend oneself to the vivisector's scalpel, revealing what lies beneath the skin. The flesh flakes off and with it, seemingly, the last shreds of the unwritten language of my childhood. Wounds arc reopened, veins weep, one's own blood flows and that of others, which has never dried. As the words pour out, inexhaustible, maybe distorting, our ancestral night lengthens. Conceal the body and its ephemeral grace. Prohibit gestures - they arc too specific. Only let sounds remain. Speaking of oneself in a language other than that of the elders is indeed to unveil oneself, not only to emerge from childhood but to leave it, never to return. Such incidental unveiling is tantamount to stripping oneself naked, as the demotic Arabic dialect emphasizes. But this stripping naked, when expressed in the language of the former conquerer (who for more than a century could lay his hands on everything save women's bodies), this stripping naked takes us back oddly enough to the plundering of the preceding century. When the body is not embalmed by ritual lamentations, it is like a scarecrow decked in rags and tatters. The battle-cries of our ancestors, unhorsed in long-forgotten combats, re-echo across the years; accompanied by the dirges of the mourning-women who watched them die.

When we are young, we yearn for battle. In the firelit halls we listen to the songs of heroes; how they broke the foemen, splintered the shield wall, and soaked their swords in the blood of enemies. As youngsters we listen to the boast of warriors, hear their laughter as they recall battle, and their bellows of pride when their lord reminds them of some hard-won victory. And those youngsters who have not fought, who have yet to hold their shield against a neighbour's shield in the wall, are despised and disparaged. So we practise. Day after day we practise, with spear, sword, and shield. We begin as children, learning blade-craft with wooden weapons, and hour after hour we hit and are hit. We fight against men who hurt us in order to teach us, we learn not to cry when the blood from a split skull sheets across the eyes, and slowly the skill of the sword-craft builds. Then the day comes when we are ordered to march with the men, not as children to hold the horses and to scavenge weapons after the battle, but as men. If we are lucky we have a battered old helmet and a leather jerkin, maybe even a coat of mail that hangs like a sack. We have a sword with a dented edge and a shield that is scored by enemy blades. We are almost men, not quite warriors, and on some fateful day we meet an enemy for the first time and we hear the chants of battle, the threatening clash of blades on shields, and we begin to learn that the poets are wrong and that the proud songs lie. Even before the shield walls meet, some men shit themselves. They shiver with fear. They drink mead and ale. Some boast, but most are quiet unless they join a chant of hate. Some men tell jokes, and the laughter is nervous. Others vomit. Our battle leaders harangue us, tell us of the deeds of our ancestors, of the filth that is the enemy, of the fate our women and children face unless we win, and between the shield walls the heroes strut, challenging us to single combat, and you look at the enemy's champions and they seem invincible. They are big men; grim-faced, gold hung, shining in mail, confident, scornful, savage. The shield wall reeks of shit, and all a man wants is to be home, to be anywhere but on this field that prepares for battle, but none of us will turn and run or else we will be despised for ever. We pretend we want to be there, and then the wall at last advances, step by step, and the heart is thumping fast as a bird's wing beating, the world seems unreal. Thought flies, fear rules, and then the order to quicken the charge is shouted, and you run, or stumble, but stay in your rank because this is the moment you have spent a lifetime preparing for, and then, for the first time, you hear the thunder of shield walls meeting, the clangour of battle swords, and the screaming begins. It will never end. Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight.

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from afar—for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red—he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick—"Fire! for God's sake fire!"—and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.

While optical allyship centers people with privilege, actual allyship centers those who are marginalized.

White apathy, like white silence, is a passive way of continuing to be complicit in white supremacy through nonaction. White apathy says BIPOC are not important enough for you to show up, use your voice, and do the work. This collective lack of energy toward antiracism and social change is what keeps white supremacy locked in place.

When you are so focused on making sure that other people know that you are not racist, you simply continue to practice racism through behaviors like white exceptionalism, tokenism, optical allyship, and white saviorism.

I invite you not to run away from the pain but to allow it to break your heart open. Superficial attempts to heal racism, like color blindness, tokenism, and white saviorism, protect you from having to feel this pain. Doing the inner work and going into the truth blasts away all the lies and games, giving you a real opportunity to create change. There is no safety in this work. There is no clean, comfortable, or convenient way to dismantle a violent system of oppression. You must roll up your sleeves and get down into the ugly, fertile dirt.

How have you managed not to know?

I have socioeconomic, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, neuro-typical, and educational privileges.

In white-centered societies and communities, it is the dominant paradigm that forms the foundation from which norms, rules, and laws are created.

you will need to adjust the questions to better fit your experiences as a person who holds white privilege but is not white.

It means that you do this work because you believe in something greater than your own self-gain.

In fact, racial discomfort is inherent to an authentic examination of white supremacy. By avoiding this discomfort, the racist status quo is protected.

white writers like Leo Tolstoy also wrote about race but that because “white is not seen as a race, nobody ever questions when white writers will write outside of whiteness.

being conditioned within white supremacy means that one of the values that you likely have is about white superiority—the idea that as a person with white privilege, you are more worthy and deserve to take up more space and resources than BIPOC. At the same time, however, you may have a chosen value that says that you believe that all people are equal and deserve to be treated equally. These two sets of values are at odds with each other and cause you to act in ways that contradict who you think you are and what you believe you value.

White privilege is a bubble that protects you, rewards you with unearned advantages, gives you the belief that you are entitled to be in all spaces all the time, shields you from showing up for BIPOC, and grants you a feeling of authority and power.

Only sharing the work and words of BIPOC if you think it won’t offend or upset the other white people in your communities.

Many white people hear the words white supremacy and think That doesn’t apply to me, that they don’t hold that belief but rather that they believe that all of us are equal and that they don’t modify their treatment of people based on the color of their skin. What this book, which is a deep-diving self-reflection tool, will help you to realize, however, is that that isn’t true.

You have been conditioned into a white supremacist ideology, whether you have realized it or not. You are conferred unearned advantages called white privilege, whether you chose it or not. While you experience hardships and oppression in your life from other identities and experiences, you do not experience these things because of your skin color.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.14

More poignantly, most whites insist that minorities (especially blacks) are the ones responsible for whatever “race problem” we have in this country. They publicly denounce blacks for “playing the race card,” for demanding the maintenance of unnecessary and divisive race-based programs, such as affirmative action, and for crying “racism” whenever they are criticized by whites. Most whites believe that if blacks and other minorities would just stop thinking about the past, work hard, and complain less (particularly about racial discrimination), then Americans of all hues could “all get along.

They can’t mean me. I voted for Obama. I have Black friends. I’ve had partners who are BIPOC. My kids play with nonwhite kids. I don’t even see color! When they talk about racism and white supremacy, they must be talking about those other kinds of white people. Not me. I’m one of the good ones.” Sound familiar?

I have come to see white exceptionalism as a double-sided weapon that on one side shields people with white privilege from having to do antiracism work under the belief that “I’m not a racist; I’m one of the good ones” and on the other side shoots out arrows at BIPOC by expecting them to carry the burden of dismantling white supremacy under the belief that racism is something that is a Black or Brown problem but not a white problem.

The belief is that if you act as if you do not see color, you will not do anything racist or benefit from racism.

However, one person from one racial group can think something is culturally appropriative while another person from that same group disagrees and considers it cultural appreciation or cultural exchange. It is

We must ask ourselves whether that relationship includes colonization, land theft, mass kidnapping and enslavement, attempted genocide, forced assimilation, segregation, legalized racial discrimination, and the reinforcement of negative racist stereotypes.

We cannot just pretend away the lived experiences of BIPOC under white supremacy. And we cannot pretend that one culture that has always held a position of dominance and privilege is now magically color-blind and in an egalitarian relationship with BIPOC cultures.

white saviorism—the belief that people with white privilege, who see themselves as superior in capability and intelligence, have an obligation to “save” BIPOC from their supposed inferiority and helplessness.

Much emphasis is placed on such volunteers having the right solutions to the country’s issues without listening to and partnering with the people they intend to help.

Further, a lot of importance is placed on white centering.

center themselves as the benevolent saviors, heroes, or messiahs of a people who are destined to live as inferiors unless they are rescued by white intervention.

Root Chakra Gemstones •       With the utmost care and devotion, BLACK TOURMALINE guards its keeper and her property. It is the mineral-kingdom's most protective stone. Place four pieces at your home or property's four corners to protect your home and land, and keep one piece in your car to prevent theft. •       JET is a wood component which is decayed under high pressure and deoxygenated. Though light in weight, when it comes to defense, jet packs a heavy punch, eliminating curses or hexes, and extracting dark magic that originates from past ages or lifetimes. Our ancestors claimed that holding a piece of jet, including the Plague, would help protect them from illness. •       ONYX helps empathy by absorbing and transmuting low vibrations in people or places as a working tool. Having the bearer physically powerful and formidable, and gaining good luck and a great harvest, is believed. •       RED AVENTURINE purifies and detoxifies energy frequencies to help clear the trauma stored, promoting a deeper connection with energy source. It helps to promote strong body ventilation, remove accumulated toxins, and increase blood flow. •       RED JASPER is a battle-stone of resilience and reminds the carrier of her personal strength and ability to overcome challenges. Native Americans claimed red jasper would reinforce warriors going into combat. The red color, because of the protective properties of the stone, reflected the blood they would not have spilled.

White fragility, because you have not built the resilience needed for doing this work. Tone policing, because you can only handle being called out/in if the message is delivered to you in a certain tone. White silence, because of the fear of saying the wrong thing. White exceptionalism, because you will continue to think you are the exception to the rule, “one of the good ones.” White apathy, because you will think “What is the point if I am going to be called out/in?

You will be called out/in as you do antiracism work. Making mistakes is how you learn and do better going forward. Being called out/in is not a deterrent to the work.

Recall or imagine, if you will, experiencing an act of violence and then being asked to talk about what you experienced without expressing any strong emotions. This is clearly inhumane. To be human is to feel. To talk about pain without expressing pain is to expect a human to recall information like a robot. When you insist that BIPOC talk about their painful experiences with racism without expressing any pain, rage, or grief, you are asking them to dehumanize themselves.

Feminism is broadly defined as “a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the genders.”44 White feminism is broadly defined as “an epithet used to describe feminist theories that focus on the struggles of white women without addressing distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges.” 45 White

ask BIPOC to set aside their race is to ask BIPOC to act as if they are white.

The privilege of whiteness means only seeing yourself as a woman (if that is your gender identity), because due to white centering, you are seen as “raceless.

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?”50 Truth was asking if her Blackness made her less of a woman, because she was not treated in the same way that white women were treated. And because of white supremacy, this still rings true today.

Intersectionality simply came from the idea that if you’re standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you are likely to get hit by both. These women are injured, but when the race ambulance and the gender ambulance arrive at the scene, they see these women of color lying in the intersection and they say, ‘Well, we can’t figure out if this was just race or just sex discrimination. And unless they can show us which one it was, we can’t help them.

Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Women Suffrage Association, argued, “You have put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!”47 In

Call-out culture refers to the tendency among progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to publicly name instances or patterns of oppressive behavior and language use by others…calling in means speaking privately with an individual who has done some wrong, in order to address the behavior without making a spectacle of the address itself.

But because there is such a focus on being perfect and doing antiracism perfectly and on being seen as good person, people with white privilege often cause more harm when being called out/in because their white fragility causes them not to receive the feedback necessary to listen, apologize, and do better going forward.

have all had the experience of stepping on someone’s foot or bumping into someone and immediately apologizing. It was not our intention to hurt them, but it is understood that the impact is still that harm was caused. Instead of refusing to apologize because we did not mean it, we rush to apologize because we understand we have caused pain. This is a very oversimplified explanation of what happens when we cause people harm.

When are you going to put aside your Blackness and write about things that are more relevant to white people?

is an example of white centering—the idea that when a creation features mainly white people, it is for everyone, but if it features mainly BIPOC, it is only relevant to BIPOC.

White saviorism (to be covered later in this book), which reframes BIPOC as less civilized and less advanced than white people and therefore needing to be “saved” by white people who are seen as more civilized and more advanced. Tone policing, as it asks BIPOC to speak in tones that are considered acceptable to those with white privilege.

White apathy is a form of white centering, as it is more focused on how tiring and overwhelming antiracism is for people with white privilege over how harmful and abusive racism is to BIPOC. The response of #AllLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter to #BlackLivesMatter, not understanding that the social justice movement would not have to exist if all lives were treated as if they mattered equally. The reaction of white fragility when BIPOC

overrepresentation of people with white privilege and white-centered narratives in movies, art, books, and other creative arenas. The overrepresentation of people with white privilege in positions of leadership and success. White feminism (to be covered on Day 22), a type of feminism that centers on the struggle of gender only, because race is not a source of oppression or discrimination

However, while the student body is wonderfully diverse, the teaching and leadership body is not.

color. I mean that I believe that all people should be treated the same, no matter what color they are.” They sometimes go on to add, “Talking about different races is so divisive—it creates racism! If we would just stop talking about whites and Blacks and focus on the contents of people’s hearts, we wouldn’t see any more racism.” And herein lie the falsehoods of the promise of racial color blindness. The promise of the Church of Color Blindness is that if we stop seeing race, then racism goes away. That

How do you think about Black children who are citizens in your country differently from those who are recent immigrants?

Accountability and cancellation are not the same thing. ... Cancel culture does not leave space for people to make mistakes, disagree, change, and transform their behavior. It simply asks that they be canceled, as if they never existed. While canceling someone may feel good or may feel like a form of justice, it leaves us with an uncompassionate world where change can never happen. ... Accountability is not about blame, shame, or punishment, toward ourselves or others. It's about taking ownership of and responsibility for our actions and the impact of our actions and asking others to do the same for themselves too. ... Cancel culture cancels the person. Accountability culture asks the person to be accountable for their behaviors.

Cancel culture uses bullying and personal attacks as a way to find justice. Accountability culture uses ownership and compassion as a way to find justice. It's not just that cancel culture is about being "mean" and accountability culture is about being "nice." Rather, it's that cancel culture asks us to treat each other as disposable, whereas accountability culture asks us to treat each other as redeemable. We do not need to practice antiracism by throwing ourselves or each other away. We can practice antiracism by calling out/in the harmful behaviors and then throwing ourselves and each other a life raft to find our way back to doing better.

One reason our human species has dominated the planet instead of the Neanderthals (who were here before us and were doing quite well) is that our culture was better than theirs. The Neanderthals actually had bigger brains and bigger bodies than we did, so in one-to-one combat they would likely have prevailed. But we were better at culture, and so when our ancestors moved into areas where Neanderthals lived, the Neanderthals lost out. We had a better system than they did for survival and reproduction. We took their lands and ate their lunch. Today they are extinct while we own the planet.

She might simply have done what Tekla did, and created versions of herself modified for certain traits associated with athleticism. Instead, having become fascinated by the odd detail in her genetic report, she had embarked on a program to reawaken the Neanderthal DNA that, or so she imagined, had been slumbering in her and her ancestors’ nuclei for tens of thousands of years. It was a somewhat insane idea, and in any case she didn’t have enough Neanderthal in her to make it feasible, but she did produce a race of people with vaguely Neanderthal-like features, and in later centuries the processes of Caricaturization, Isolation, and Enhancement—which had affected all the races to some extent—had wrought especially pronounced changes on this subrace. Gene sequences taken from the toe of an actual Neanderthal skeleton, found on Old Earth and sequenced before Zero, were put to use. Old Earth paleontology journals had been data-mined for stats on bone length and muscle attachment so that those could be hard-coded into the Neoander wetware. The man sitting at the end of the table was the artificial product of breeding and of genetic engineering, but, had he been sent back in time to prehistoric Europe, he would have been indistinguishable, at least in his outward appearance, from genuine Neanderthals. The creation of the new race had happened incrementally, over centuries. By the time Neoanders existed it was too late to bother with the trifling ethical question of whether it was really a good thing to have created them. During their slow differentiation from the other races they had developed a history and a culture of their own, of which they were as proud as any other ethnic group. Not surprisingly, much of that history was about their relationship with Teklans, which was, as foreordained, largely combative. At its most simple-minded and stupidly reductionist bones, the Teklan side of the story was that Neoanders were dangerous ape-men brought into existence by a crazy Eve as a curse upon the other six races. The Neoander side had it that Teklans were what Hitler would have produced if he’d had genetic engineering labs, and that it was a damned good thing that Eve Aïda had had the foresight to produce a countervailing force of earthy, warm, but immensely strong and dangerous protectors. Much of this combative relationship had become irrelevant as the tactical landscape had become dominated by katapults and ambots, and physical strength had become less important to the outcome of fights. But the old primordial animus remained, and explained why Beled’s immediate response, upon entering a room that contained a Neoander, was to make himself ready for hand-to-hand combat. Doc chose to ignore this. If he even notices, Kath Two thought, but she was pretty sure Doc noticed everything. “Beled, Kath, I do not believe you have met Langobard.” It was a fairly common Aïdan name. “Bard for short,” Langobard offered. “Langobard, may I present Beled Tomov and Kath Amalthova Two.

To those who fought World War II, it was plain enough that Allied bombs were killing huge numbers of German civilians, that Churchill was fighting to preserve imperialism as well as democracy, and that the bulk of the dying in Europe was being done by the Red Army at the service of Stalin. It is only in retrospect that we begin to simplify experience into myth — because we need stories to live by, because we want to honor our ancestors and our country instead of doubting them. In this way, a necessary but terrible war is simplified into a “good war,” and we start to feel shy or guilty at any reminder of the moral compromises and outright betrayals that are inseparable from every combat. The best history writing reverses this process, restoring complexity to our sense of the past.

it becomes clear to leaders that their audience, employees, community members, and voters are insisting on change, then they will have no choice but to do the very work you are doing right now. But if everyone stays quiet, nothing changes.

We have all had the experience of stepping on someone’s foot or bumping into someone and immediately apologizing. It was not our intention to hurt them, but it is understood that the impact is still that harm was caused. Instead of refusing to apologize because we did not mean it, we rush to apologize because we understand we have caused pain.

color blindness is an act of gaslighting. It is a cruel way of making BIPOC believe that they are just imagining they are being treated the way they are being treated because of their skin color, thus keeping them in a position of destabilization and inferiority.

How have you mistaken the look of diversity for actual inclusivity and equity?

Staying silent by not sharing social media posts about race and racism in your spaces because of the way it might affect your personal or professional life, or simply reposting the posts of BIPOC but not adding your own voice or perspective. Staying silent about your antiracism work for fear of losing friends and followers.

white silence is violence

White supremacy is telling you not to fight for what is right, not to involve yourself with the dismantling of a system that benefits you,

You will likely feel pulled in two different directions during this week—on the one hand, realizing that your white privilege means that you are on the side of the oppressor, and on the other hand, realizing that your nonwhite racial identity means that you are on the side of the oppressed.

Or was the color of your skin something that was not even discussed because it had nothing to do with what you would be able to accomplish or how you would be treated by the world?

an extraordinary new resource for white people willing to align what they profess to value (racial equality) with their actual practice (antiracist action).

The primary force that drives my work is a passionate desire to become a good ancestor. My purpose is to help create change, facilitate healing, and seed new possibilities for those who will come after I am gone.

Just because a stereotype seems positive does not mean it is not harmful. Stereotypes rob people of their complex individuality and erase the impact that colonization has had on why some of these stereotypes have emerged.

They are awakening to the fact that their white privilege has protected them from having to understand what it means to navigate the world as a BIPOC and to the ways in which they have unintentionally caused harm to BIPOC through racial aggressions.

The acronyms BIPOC or POC can be helpful linguistically in conveying the idea that we are referring to people who do not hold white privilege, but what we gain in terms of ease of communicating we lose in terms of conveying the nuanced experiences that these different racial groups have when it comes to their experiences with white supremacy. When we say BIPOC or POC, we are essentially clumping people from all kinds of different cultures and racial experiences into one clumsily assembled group. This flattens their experiences and gives the impression that they all experience white supremacy in the same way, which they do not.

when we have caused harm, our impact matters more than our intention.

They define allyship as “an active, consistent, and challenging practice of unlearning and reevaluating, in which a person of privilege seeks to work in solidarity with a marginalized group.

If you believe that we are in a postracial time in history, then you feel no urgency to practice antiracism.

The narrative that BIPOC are inferior and helpless without white intervention is present in white supremacist consciousness whether a person with white privilege flies to Africa or stays in their home country. White saviorism at home can show up as teachers with white privilege wanting to rescue their students who are children of color. It can show up as individuals and businesses hosting fund-raisers and nonprofit projects to rescue BIPOC struggling against issues of lack of access and discrimination. And it can even show up as parents with white privilege wanting to adopt children of color (though this is obviously not always the case, it is something to be aware of). In more subtle ways, white saviorism is the person with white privilege speaking over or for BIPOC in the belief that they know better how to say what needs to be said.

For example, upon becoming aware of the Black maternal health crisis in the United States, a white woman told a Black woman I know that she wanted to set up a nonprofit to tackle the crisis. This desire, though seemingly well-meaning, completely disregards the fact that there are already Black women and people leading this work and that as a person with white privilege, a better way for her to support the healing of this crisis would be to do her own antiracism work and approach these organizations to ask them how she can best support them. The

White saviorism puts BIPOC in the patronizing position of helpless children who need people with white privilege to save them.

I wanted to know if they would make efforts to ensure that I was not on the receiving end of racial microaggressions like the ones we have talked about so far in this book.

Maybe you have heard of the terms performative allyship or ally theater before. Optical allyship is another term for this behavior and can be used interchangeably

Thomas was speaking to what she saw as the co-opting of social justice movements in an era when being “woke” is now seen as cool.

behind the act of allyship is to avoid being called racist and/or to receive a reward through social recognition, praise, and acknowledgment. The act of allyship creates the look of diversity and inclusion but does not come with any change at a deeper level through policy change, commitment to antiracism education, transfer of benefits or privilege, etc. The act of allyship is symbolic but not substantive. The act of allyship is one that is led by a person with white privilege who is not listening to, partnering with, or following the leadership of the BIPOC they want to help.

of allyship involves no real risk. It is one that is performed from the safety of one’s comfort zone of privilege. The person engages in white fragility when challenged by BIPOC to not perform optical allyship rather than listening and taking guidance. HOW DOES OPTICAL ALLYSHIP SHOW UP?

Distancing yourself from your own white supremacy by continuously complaining about how awful other white people are.

Going out of your way to be extra nice to BIPOC with the hopes you will be seen as a “good

allyship as: Taking on the struggle as your own Standing up, even when you feel scared Transferring the benefits of your privilege to those who lack it Acknowledging that while you, too, feel pain, the conversation is not about you While optical allyship centers people with privilege, actual allyship centers those who are marginalized.

Doing the inner work and going into the truth blasts away all the lies and games, giving you a real opportunity to create change.

White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks.

People with white privilege often do not want to look directly at their privilege because of what it brings up for them—discomfort, shame, and frustration. But not looking at something does not mean it does not exist. And in fact, it is an expression of white privilege itself to choose not to look at it. BIPOC living within white supremacy, however, often do not have this privilege.

You try to convince them they are imagining it or are reading too much into the situation. That they have misunderstood what was said or done—that it was not about race but about something else. Rather than allowing yourself to really hear what they are going through and ask with empathy and compassion how you can support them, you minimize their experiences and let them know, without saying it, that you are not a safe white person for them to be around.

Valholl contained 540 doors. From each there emerged simultaneously 800 warriors who spent their days fighting one another, but the dead and wounded found their lives and health restored every evening. They then dined together, eating the flesh of the wild boar Saehrimnir, which always grew back, and drinking the mead served them by the Valkyries. This would continue until the Twilight of the Powers (Ragnarok), which Wagner immortalized under the name of Twilight of the Gods. At this time, three cocks would crow in Hel; the wolf Fenris would become free; the earth would convulse; Yggdrasil the World Tree would tremble; the sun and moon would vanish; the stars would go out; the Midgard Serpent would leave the sea; the giants would set sail on Naglfar; Surt, the fire giant, would advance by rain-bow; and, at the sides of the gods, the Unique Warriors would engage in their ultimate battle, a combat that would culminate with the conflagration of the world.

After the industrial revolution in Europe when the masses were plunged into poverty, Europeans set out to ‘discover’ the world seeking greener pastures. They plundered Africa and Asia and exported the valuable resources of these continents. The civilized and gentle folks of Africa and Asia were unlike the Vikings and Cavemen of Europe.. They treated the European invasion as a temporary set back ae we do with thieves, robbers and criminals of today. However, with the power of their ammunition and weapons the Europeans divided the world into artificial areas, and conquered humanity. We are still brain-washed by their values under the guise of ‘Capitalism” – ie: new-colonialism. After 60+ years of independence, two generations of Africans and Asians still believe that they MUST copy and follow the lifestyle of these European settlers around the world. So neo- colonialism and capitalism thrive. There’s no end to the ‘dependence’ of Africa and some Asian countries on their past colonisers.. Brain-washed, they continue to be cow-towed by the economical and political campaigns of the west. SET Yourselves FREE and live FREE as your ancestors did 500 years ago! Work on your land and produce all your needs is the philosophy of Gandhii which encouraged Indians to gain freedom in 1947. Do not let squanderers and greedy wanderers PLUNDER the rich resources of your land including humans; be vigilant and join forces with trustworthy others to combat greed and capitalism. China is the leading country in the world today as she was at one time, because her citizens worked hard -- toiling their land and adopting innovative ways to mass produce and export goods at low cost. China’s people were willing to sacrifice themselves for their long-term future. Kudos to China!! She is vigilant in protecting her interests from her enemies.

There are many who believe that the concept of white privilege is just a liberal idea used to make white people feel bad about themselves.

It is likely that in doing this work consistently, you will find some level of personal healing. However, I want to make it very clear that this is not the purpose of this work. The purpose is the healing and restored dignity of BIPOC.

White supremacy is a system you have been born into. Whether or not you have known it, it is a system that has granted you unearned privileges, protection, and power. It is also a system that has been designed to keep you asleep and unaware of what having that privilege, protection, and power has meant for people who do not look like you.