Brief Report Back 8/26 Wednesday’s Zoom Gathering "What Will White Womyn Do To End Racism?"

We began by discussing our shared fury against our families of origin and the society at large for carefully teaching us racism. We talked about the white womyn with southern roots finding out she not only has an ancestor who fought in the Civil War (on the side of the South) but also ancestors who were enslavers.

And lies were also spread among Northern whites and passed on to those of us with northern roots, denying culpability in benefitting off slavery and never teaching the truth but teaching lies.

We spent a long time discussing white womyn’s reactions to especially Black youth and the white supremacy desire to shape Black youth, including and especially their reaction to white people. We went into great depth dissecting the “white savior” complex and the crucial need for white womyn, especially those in positions of power, to be aware of this racist tendency and to direct our focus onto white behavior and stereotyping and to challenge ourselves instead of youth.

Which led to a discussion of white people not being able to see Black youth as youth but see Black youth through the lens of racism as someone to be feared and controlled and not someone who is human.

The resources we came away with this week were: “So You Want To Talk About Race?” by Ijeoma Oluo and books by Nnedi Okorafor like “Akata Witch”; plus “Sula” and “The Bluest Eye” and everything by Toni Morrison as well as “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander.