Dismantling White Supremacy Culture Resource from Adaway Group

By Phillip Lund

All Lives Won't Matter Until Black Lives Matter Photo Credit: Rob Ferrell Photography from https://equityinthecenter.org/so-you-want-to-be-a-white-ally-healing-from-white-supremacy/

Photo Credit: Rob Ferrell Photography from Equity in the Center

As part of the ongoing work of dismantling white supremacy culture in our association and our society, your MidAmerica staff members have—individually and collectively—participated in a variety of trainings and programs, including virtual courses like The Adaway Group‘s “Whiteness at Work,” or White Awake‘s “Roots Deeper than Whiteness.” One of the benefits of taking part in these trainings is getting on the mailing lists of the organizations that offer them. For example, a recent email from Desiree Adaway shared some incredibly helpful resources.

Like Seeing White, season two of Scene on Radio, the two-time Peabody-nominated podcast from the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University. This 14-episode series explores what it means to be white in the United States today. Here’s a description of the series from the podcast’s website:

Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

And “So You Want to Be a White Ally: Healing from white supremacy,” a post by Caitlin Duffy on Equity in the Center’s Woke @ Work blog. In it, Duffy notes some of the ways that “white supremacy has dehumanized...people of European descent”:

  • Disconnection from the reality of white supremacy, and therefore from people of color and white people with different racial consciousness;
  • Disconnection from ourselves, especially from our bodies, hearts, and spirits;
  • Disconnection from our lineages, including blood, ethnic, spiritual, and land ancestors;
  • Disconnection from nature, including the land, water, animals, plants, minerals, and our natural rhythms.

Duffy goes on to offer some questions to guide those wanting to heal from white supremacy:

  • What can healing look and feel like for white people, so that we can show up in multiracial workplaces and social movements in more effective, grounded ways?
  • How can we recognize and treat white “fragility” as a trauma response to generations of isolating individualism and disconnection from our shared humanity?
  • What is our north star for a different way of being – not just doing? And not just as white people, but as humans?

Dismantling white supremacy culture requires both inner and outer work. The virtual courses and resources offered by groups like Adaway and White Awake have been invaluable tools for us, your MidAmerica staff, as we do this work together.

About the Author

Phillip Lund

Phillip Lund has almost twenty years experience serving congregations in the areas of faith formation and spiritual growth, first as a religious educator in Bloomington, Indiana, New York City, and Chicago, Illinois, and most recently as a congregational life consultant working for the MidAmerica...

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