Personal Introduction To These Resources...
Welcome to this page of resources that has been and continues to be deeply impactful in my own process, as a white person, of learning about white supremacy culture, racism and settler colonialism (the truths I – and maybe most of us – did not get in school) and how to interrupt and dismantle these systems of oppression both internally and externally. I am so grateful for all of the teachers and guides on this path.
Feminist scholar and cultural critic, bell hooks, names the culture in which we live as not only a patriarchal (male dominated) culture, but more specifically, a patriarchy with interlocking systems of domination – an imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist hetero-patriarchy.
In the United States (and in many places around the globe), this is the water we are swimming in…
Being born into a white body, I am working to understand the conditioning that comes with whiteness and how white-bodied people have been socialized to uphold white-supremacy/white dominance (often without even being conscious that we are doing so, which can make it even harder to see and comprehend – like fish in water).
For some white people, the term white supremacy might feel kind of extreme (like it could only apply to the KKK). I really find it helpful the way that somatic therapist, Resmaa Menakem, adds to the term – he suggests approaching it as white-body supremacy. How simply being born into a white body gives the white body superiority and advantage.
“The white body is the supreme standard by which all bodies’ humanity shall be measured.” –Resmaa Menakem
(Deep breath)
It certainly has been and still is many times a very uncomfortable, intense, painful, messy, horrifying process to honestly examine, deeply feel and reckon with how I (and other white bodies) have been socialized to embody and live out white-body supremacy…and the impact this has had and continues to have upon BIPOC…and the impact it has upon white people (loss of our humanity, our empathy).
When I first began to become truly aware of white supremacy and my complicity in it, I felt frozen, like a deer in headlights, and my mind went blank (for quite a while).
It was and continues to be through rigorous education – listening deeply to BIPOC perspectives, unlearning and relearning history, having countless conversations with others – and through ongoing embodied work with a somatic therapist (both individually and in groups with other white bodies) – that the frozen shame, guilt, fear, horror, grief, rage and unconscious attachment to comfort that had kept me immobilized and dissociated began and continues to metabolize.
My astrological work with clients embraces this process of understanding ourselves as part of the society/culture we are born into and the conditioning that accompanies that reality. Evolutionary Astrology is rooted in the belief that human beings have the capacity to evolve beyond our social conditioning.
In order for this to happen, the ways in which we have been socialized must be recognized, understood and reckoned with.
I will keep adding to the resources below, so please feel free to check back for updates.
“Where we are born into privilege, we are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy. Where we are born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, joy, and liberation.”
“The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism – the founding state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery and a policy of genocide and land theft.”
VIDEOS
Hesapa – A Landback Film (5 mins)
A 5-minute interview on Democracy Now with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (Historian/Author of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”)
The History of White People in America (A series of animated, musical short films – you can watch the first 3 shorts via the link – 18 mins total)
What Racism Is – Toni Morrison
The Traumatic Roots of White Body Supremacy and Racism in America – Resmaa Menakem
Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome – Dr. Joy Degruy
Angela Davis – “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” Keynote 2/23/2021
Loretta Ross – “Don’t Call People Out, Call Them In” (TED Talk)
Birth of a White Nation – Dr. Jacqueline Battalora
James Baldwin on the Black Experience in America
Resmaa Menakem’s response to the police murder of George Floyd (Facebook Live May 26, 2020)
Spotlight on Black Trauma and Policing – MPR Interview with Dr. Brittany Lewis, Resmaa Menakem and Justin Terrell
The Importance of Critical Thinking – bell hooks (1997)
Talking to Your Kids About Race with Dr. Ibram X, Kendi (3 min)
“Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.”
PODCASTS / AUDIO SERIES
The Red Nation Podcast – “The Red Nation Podcast features discussions on Indigenous history, politics, and culture from a left perspective.”
All My Relations – “All My Relations is a team of folks who care about representations, and how Native peoples are represented in mainstream media. Each episode invites guests to delve into a different topic facing Native peoples today as we keep it real, play games, laugh a lot, and even cry sometimes.”
Media Indigena – “Since its launch back in 2010, my goal with MEDIA INDIGENA has been to share the stories I wanted to see and hear as an Indigenous person, in the way I wanted to see and hear them.” –Rick Harp, host of this current affairs roundtable podcast
Finding Our Way – with Somatics Practitioner, writer and teacher, Prentis Hemphill, featuring guests such as adrienne maree brown, Sonya Renee Taylor, Mia Birdsong, Patrisse Cullors, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Tarana Burke and more
In Season 2, Episode 12 of Finding Our Way, organizer and abolitionist, Miriame Kabe is interviewed by Prentis. She speaks at the end of the interview on the discipline of hope. Here’s the transcript.
How to Survive the End of the World – with activist and visionary, adrienne maree brown, and her sister, Autumn Brown. In this episode, the sisters speak with Miriame Kabe on transformative justice, how to address harm and grow beyond it. A phenomenal conversation!
Octavia’s Parables – a podcast diving into Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents books hosted by adrienne maree brown and Toshi Reagon
Green Dreamer – I recommend this episode featuring Mia Birdsong on “Deepening Our Interdependence with Community”
1619 Project – hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones
Intersectionality Matters! with Kimberlé Crenshaw founder of the “Say Her Name” campaign
Scene on Radio (Season 2: Seeing White)
Nice White Parents (5-part audio series)
Still Processing (this link leads to the episode titled “Wake”)
ARTICLES & ESSAYS
“History is not the past, it is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.”
BOOKS
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth – The Red Nation
Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo (poetry)
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies – Resmaa Menakem
Me and White Supremacy – Layla Saad
How to be an Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi
White Tears / Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color – Ruby Hamad
Liberated to the Bone – Susan Raffo
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism – Robin DiAngelo
A Black Women’s History of the United States – Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning – Cathy Park Hong
From Minor Feelings: “Innocence is…not just an “absence of knowledge” but “an active state of repelling knowledge,” embroiled in the statement “Well, I don’t see race” where “I” eclipses the “seeing.” Innocence is both a privilege and a cognitive handicap, a sheltered unknowingness that, once protracted into adulthood, hardens into entitlement.” –Cathy Park Hong
Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today – Jacqueline Battalora
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower – Brittney Cooper
Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates writes this book for his 15 year old son about what it’s like to grow up black in America.
“One of the great virtues of Coates’ book is that it is not addressed to white people. The usual hedging and filtering and softening and overall distortion that seems to happen automatically — even unconsciously — when black people attempt to speak about race to white people in public is absent.” (excerpt from a NYT review)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America – Richard Rothstein
Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
“How then can US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? …That process rightfully starts by honoring the treaties the United States made with Indigenous nations, by restoring all sacred sites, starting with the Black Hills and including most federally held parks and land and all stolen sacred items and body parts, and by payment of sufficient reparations for the reconstruction and expansion of Native nations. In the process, the continent will be radically reconfigured, physically and psychologically. For the future to be realized, it will require extensive educational programs and the full support and active participation of the descendants of settlers, enslaved Africans, and colonized Mexicans, as well as immigrant populations.”
An excerpt from “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies” (p. 4-5) by Resmaa Menakem:
“For the past three decades, we’ve earnestly tried to address white-body supremacy in America with reason, principles and ideas – using dialogue, forums, discussions, education and mental training. But, the widespread destruction of Black bodies continues. And, some of the ugliest destruction originates with our police.
Why is there such a chasm between our well-intentioned attempts to heal and the ever-growing number of dark-skinned bodies who are killed or injured, sometimes by police officers?
It’s not that we’ve been lazy or insincere. But, we’ve focused our efforts in the wrong direction. We’ve tried to teach our brains to think better about race. But, white-body supremacy doesn’t live in our thinking brains. It lives and breathes in our bodies.
Our bodies have a form of knowledge that is different from our cognitive brains. This knowledge is typically experienced as a felt sense of constriction or expansion, pain or ease, energy or numbness. Often this knowledge is stored in our bodies as wordless stories about what is safe and what is dangerous. The body is where we fear, hope and react; where we constrict and release; and where we reflexively fight, flee or freeze. If we are to upend the status quo of white-body supremacy, we must begin with our bodies.”
SOMATIC THERAPISTS
I highly recommend this list of “Healing Practitioners“ that Susan Raffo created. Susan writes, “This list is broken down between BIPOC practitioners and white practitioners. When I have the information, I share if the person is queer/trans or just queer recommended, if they take insurance, if they speak any language other than or in addition to English (at this point, everyone on this list speaks English and sometimes additional languages), and if they have experience with people with disabilities. Trans/nonbinary folks have an asterisk next to their name if this is part of their public identities and/or I have asked for their consent…”
WORKSHOPS / TRAININGS
Finding Freedom: White Women Taking On Our Own White Supremacy with Kari Points and Evangeline Weiss
About Finding Freedom: Finding Freedom is an experiential, somatics-based workshop series that guides white women through an examination of the intersection of white womanhood and white supremacy and trains them to show up constructively for multiracial, people of color-led organizing.
An episode on Francesca Maximé’s podcast “Re-rooted” featuring Kari Points and Evangeline Weiss: “White Women Finding Freedom”
Hollaback! Free Bystander Intervention Trainings (Ex: To Stop Anti-Asian/American Harassment and Xenophobia +/or To Stop Police Sponsored Violence and Anti-Black Racist Harassment)
To white folks:
“I don’t want you to understand me better, I want you to understand yourselves. Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it has required your ignorance.”
SUPPORT BIPOC OWNED BUSINESSES
LINKS TO MORE RESOURCES
Sign up to receive Anti-Racism Daily emails
Layla Saad’s list of resources (listed at end of article)
Robin DiAngelo’s list of anti-racism resources
Anti-racism resources for white people
Susan Raffo’s Recommendations – “Sites I love” + Healing Practitioners Resource List