I’ve noticed a pattern when I’m on networking calls about the work I do in anti-racism. When there are white men present, they start to tell me all the ways they aren’t racist. This happens about 95% of the time. Here’s what happens when white people co-opt a conversation about race to talk about how ‘not racist’ they are.
They’re centering whiteness: they’re not listening to learn, but they’re speaking to teach. What that ends up doing is silencing the other people in the room; it makes it very difficult to have honest, real conversations because the reaction is complete denial and taking the conversation away from what really matters, which is the people who are marginalized. It effectively ends conversations, and it also causes harm, and can gaslight people who have had lived experiences of racism, where they’re still treated badly for not being white…
These behaviors are not overt racism, such as telling jokes with racial slurs, but these are symptoms of the culture that uphold the system of power that is very difficult to challenge or dismantle, because there are all these cultural aspects in place to keep it there.
In this intro episode of season 3, Dr. Jill Wener welcomes listeners to the new season and shares some exciting updates to the podcast format for this season. In her first solo episode, Dr. Jill discusses what it means to ‘center whiteness’, 3 subtle ways that racism shows up in networking calls, and the downstream consequences of how that racism shows up. Learn more about the characteristics of ‘Dominant Culture’ and how dominant culture supports the status quo of systemic racism.
Listen now:
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