Whiteness Book
To support the dissolution of racism as a system, I work to enroll white people in the project of disinvesting in whiteness. A crucial step in that work is to create a secular framework through which white people can work with one another on issues of race, a framework based on compassion and seeking the human in one another as well as accountability and expectation. To that end, my project is to write a book offering this perspective to white people as well as practical ways to pursue an examination of and disinvestment in our whiteness.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
In the US, white people and our whiteness are primary agents of white supremacy. White resistance is one of the biggest blocks to positive movement toward racial equity. Yet at the same time the role of whiteness, and white people’s investment in our whiteness, is taboo for white people to talk about and negatively consequential for most people of color and indigenous people to name and openly strategize around.
In addition, and understandably given our current social systems, a plurality of strategies to dismantle and move beyond white supremacy are led by people of color and are directed toward organizing people of color.
I believe people of color who tell me that it is necessary that they organize for their own liberation if it is to be achieved. While it is an open question whether white people’s participation is useful or required, I do believe that any racial equity strategies would be well-served by both increasing the number of white people invested in an anti-racist outcome and decreasing the quantity and quality of white resistance to positive change. I also believe this is work white people and should do with one another.
I also believe reaching for the human in one another is the only viable strategy for long-term social change. Together, that means white people must work with each other on the basis of compassion and shared humanity. Currently, there is no secular framework for white people to work together that way. One is needed, and I am working to create one.
Impact
My intended impact was to write and publish articles and a book about whiteness and white people. This is in support of my long-term intention of creating a framework and network that will support enrolling 7.2 million white people in advocating for anti-racist policy change.
AFRE’s investment helped me hire an editor for a book proposal as well as readers for a series of articles I wrote for my own blog on Medium. I did complete a proposal and secure a literary agent as well as write seven essays for white people. Subsequent book proposal revisions included work that had been intended for Medium articles, so I suspended the Medium series both to focus on the revisions themselves and, on the advice of my agent, not give away the milk when I am trying to sell the cow.
Proposal revisions are almost complete and should be in the hands of my agent by December. As a result, it is too soon to tell whether I will have had the intended impact of enrolling white people in the work of racial equity.
The process has been illuminating. I have cultivated relationships with other white people working on racial equity along the way and have a much stronger network of people to collaborate and consult with. Eventually we hope to meet together as a mastermind group. I also learned a lot about the publishing industry and how to navigate it.
