My white friends, I am not sure what whiteness has told or might be telling you about life, but I’ve learned there’s something about whiteness that seems bent on destroying it. Whiteness has a history of this. It is this history that I inherited with my pale, non-melanated birth. There’s a part of the socially constructed racial identity of white that has told and continues to tell us it is ok to harm the bodies and souls of black and brown people. To use the bodies of others to build our own wealth; to take from others what is theirs and make it our own. To fundamentally devalue and dehumanize that which is not white and sometimes that which is also white – but a different sort of white.

Whiteness is socially derived, it runs deep, it is ubiquitous and difficult to get the better of it on our own. But I must. I’m hoping you’ll agree that together we must. Whiteness is not only destroying others, it’s also destroying white people too.

We are invited to the redemptive and fervent work of laying bare what brought us here and what holds us in this place. I am finding freedom in examining whiteness. What parts of whiteness do I embody that get in the way of dismantling racism? How does whiteness speak to me so that my narrative remains connected to the narrative of whiteness that led us to the where we are today? How does whiteness influence me to work against my own values and the things I hold dear?

This is not where we need to remain. The whiteness we have known can be deconstructed and reconstructed anew in us and in our world. Lives are depending on it.

For a list of resources that I have found helpful go here.