This piece is the third and final part of the series “White Emptiness.” Click here for parts one and two.
The universally dehumanizing experience of whiteness, white supremacy and white culture must be interrupted through anti-racist action. As I have discussed in the second edition of this series, we must not see racism as over there, as it is within all of us and it even has a founding hold on our precious college. At the Olympia location of The Evergreen State College, a predominantly white institution (PWI), students of color are often burdened with surviving racist policies and classrooms, and educating racist teachers and students. Racism is not just theoretical or interesting; individual and institutional racism are constantly dehumanizing and frequently lethal — anti-racist work is as important as the air in your lungs. But, it is not only a moral necessity to work against the violence of racism, anti-racist work is also a prerequisite to working against the pain of whiteness held within the void of white culture. This pain of white cultural emptiness (i.e. lack of culture and community) must be mobilized against its original source — white supremacy.
To meaningfully move toward anti-racist work, we white people must:
Practice ultimate humility towards understanding the intersectional, nuanced and complex ways racism acts in this world and on racialized bodies; humbly listen to people of color; seriously interrogate your internal racist biases, ignorance, blind spots and subsequent actions; study the following search terms and subject areas: colonization, slavery, Jim Crow laws, redlining, economic segregation, mass incarceration, over-policing, interpersonal racism, institutional racism and internalized dehumanization; participate in economic reparations led by Black people to begin acknowledging slavery; participate in economic and land-based reparations led by Native Americans to begin acknowledging colonization and genocide. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Ph.D. writes on page 236 in An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, “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 secret items and body parts, and by payment of sufficient reparations for the reconstruction expansion of Native nations.” In general white readers, you must use all the privileges of being white against the very existence of white supremacy.
This is an argument for equity over equality, action over gestures, meaning over emptiness, repair over erasure and solidarity over saviorism. In this work, remember always that true anti-racist action must be responsive to and aligned with people of color. If you share these values, join me in the following specific actions:
- At Evergreen or any PWI … During seminar, intervene immediately when people say racist things, talk over a person of color, aren’t listening to a person of color, or the professor is presenting racist information. In addition, do your best to check-in with someone who might have been offended after class and offer your support
- Support Evergreen student organizations that center people of color; go to their events, show up to their meetings: Black Student Union, Farmworker Justice Collective, Justice Involved Student Group
- Look for Evergreen events where equity-related issues are being discussed. One upcoming event is the public presentations for Director of Academic and Career Advising on designing culturally responsive advising services
- In the nation at large … Support “Shut Down the Northwest Detention Center” with La Resistencia by showing up to their resistance events in Tacoma, WA. These detention centers are internment centers and concentration camps for Hispanic people and must be stopped if our shared humanity is to be valued
- Show up for a Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites’ action. This organization runs in solidarity with people of color-led groups including La Resistencia, the Duwamish Tribe, Bayan, and Got Green in Seattle, WA. Working against white supremacy is working towards collective liberation
- Find a local Sunrise hub and attend their introduction meetings. This group is the national youth power behind the Green New Deal — an environmental justice bill sweeping our nation’s capital with the goal of resisting the impending ecological, social and economic crises of our time
- Find a local Sex Workers Outreach Project branch and see what you can do. Sex workers are workers. They are often the most vulnerable workers in our economies (trans people, femmes, women of color, poor people) who face employment discrimination in traditional economies. Regardless of status, they deserve rights!
- Participate in reparations like Real Rent Duwamish and pay the people whose land you are living on now. Settler-colonialism is insidious. The smallest step you can take to realize your occupation of land is support the Duwamish tribe who still haven’t been recognized by the federal government
- Donate to Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network. This money goes directly into the hands of trans people of color while also addressing necessary policy change. This organization works to repair some of the acute economic oppression of queer trans people of color (QTPOC). We must work intersectionally to manage our own emptiness
- Donate to the Red Braid Alliance, the pan-Canadian Indigenous resistance network. They support efforts like the Wet’suwet’en nation’s protests against pipelines being placed on their lands. Anti-imperialism must intersect with the work of anti-racism
Action must be primary and central in the response to the experiences of white emptiness (as noted in my first article) and white supremacy (my second article). In addition to action, we must continue to work to pull together an image of fulfilling culture which our ancestors once knew. For example, we can start finding critical rituals of self-discovery and community; exploring pleasures of food, theatre and fashion (while learning to not appropriate); and build communities where harm invites accountability, accountability invites repair, and repair forms a foundation of life. Additionally, these actions are appropriate places to explore white discomfort. Alternatively, it is inappropriate to expect that your friends and colleagues of color should educate you or dispel your discomfort — grappling with the discomfort of holding a violent identity is one area of white people’s work.
Contemporary white U.S. American culture is broken and hurting in two ways. First, it enacts and invisiblizes the violence of white supremacy. Second, it instills a distinct sense of emptiness in the white oppressor. This sense of white cultural emptiness is a direct descendent of white immigrants choosing white culture and white supremacy instead of holding onto their cultural heritage. To fully acknowledge these issues, we must engage in cultural change that centers direct action and explores fulfilling culture. In other words, white people’s only chance at collective liberation is through showing up to do internal and external work.
Huey P. Newton states on page 47 in To Die for the People, published in 1972 that “Any action which does not mobilize the community toward the goal is not a revolutionary action.” I agree — the process of anti-racist action and collective liberation cannot be accomplished in isolation. I seek to build community with you over these publications and actions. Please join me in straining to answer these questions: In what ways can colonists build fulfilling culture on stolen and privatized land? How could you learn more and practice more of your cultural heritage? How can white people engage in fulfilling culture without appropriating and erasing the violent reality of whiteness? White emptiness, white supremacy and whiteness itself are scourges of this earth. Can you show up radically, critically and creatively to liberate yourself and the world you love from these ills?
I’ll see you there.
——
Here are some texts that have inspired and informed my anti-racist journey. Please purchase and read these books and articles. In addition, please feel free to send me works that you have found influential at dalluc28@evergreen.edu:
o “The Fire Next Time,” (1984) written by James Baldwin
o Inform yourself on recent Evergreen racism and 2017 protests, through student activist perspectives by reading an interview with two core organizers, a general review from the series “POC Talk” and the 2017 list of student demands
o “Borderlands: La Frontera: The New Mestiza,” written in 1987, by Gloria Anzaldúa, is an essential collection of critical essays, poems and short stories which explore overlapping Mexican, Mexican American and indigenous identities where the border moved over the people
o In The Atlantic’s “The Case for Reparations,” written in 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes extensively and powerfully about how reparations would reflect a genuine effort towards accountability and justice in the context of U.S. American slavery and contemporary racial oppression
o “Between the World and Me,” written in 2015, by Ta-Nehisi Coates is essential reading on the pain and resistance of an individual Black man’s experience of growing up in America
o “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” written in 2014, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
o “Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism,” written in 1981, by bell hooks
o “When They Call you a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir,” written in 2018, by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele
o “Understanding Mass Incarceration,” written in 2015, by James Kilgore
o “To Die for the People,” written in 1972, by Huey P. Newton is a collection of one of the founders of the Black Panther Party speeches and writings on social philosophy, revolutionary theory and Black Panther literature. It is edited by Toni Morrison
o The website, Whose Land, offers maps of indigenous territories throughout the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. This is an essential resource for settler-colonialists working to be accountable to their occupation of stolen land
This is the final third of a literature submission titled “White Emptiness.” You can find the full work with additional historical information, acknowledgements, discussion questions and suggested reading at Luca’s blog, linked below. Luca Fiora Dalton is a current Evergreen undergraduate student who has studied political ecology, mass incarceration, education and writing during her time at Evergreen. Visit Luca’s short story and political theory blog at www.lucafioradalton.com. Feel free to reach Luca at dalluc28@evergreen.edu to submit your questions, comments and action steps that you will take.
