SUGGESTED READING

our writing on this theme

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Vent Diagrams for White Racial Justice Practitioners

Anti-racism Practice, Reflection, Therapy, Healing, and Whiteness

Vent Diagrams for White Racial Justice Practitioners

We are big fans of vent diagrams: move from the overlaps – a phenomenal participatory art project, which was started by educator E.M./Elana Eisen-Markowitz and artist Rachel Schragis. In their words: “We define a “vent diagram” as a diagram of the overlap of two statements that appear to be true and appear to be contradictory. We purposefully don’t label the overlapping middle.   Making vent diagrams as a practice helps us recognize and reckon with contradictions and keep imagining and acting from the intersections and overlaps. Venting is an emotional release, an outlet for our anger, frustration, […]
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Ritual technology for a liberated future

Gender Identity, Reflection, Therapy, Healing, and Whiteness

Ritual technology for a liberated future

Written by White Noise Collective core member Jay Tzvia Helfand, for the recently published anthology There is Nothing So Whole As A Broken Heart: Mending the World As Jewish Anarchists, edited by Cindy Milstein. Through stories at once poetic and poignant, There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart offers a powerful elixir for all who rebel against systemic violence and injustice. The contemporary renewal of Jewish anarchism draws on a history of suffering, ranging from enslavement and displacement to white nationalism and genocide. Yet it also pulls from ancestral resistance, strength, imagination, and humor—all qualities, […]
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The Wolf I Feed.

Cultural Appropriation, Problematic Holidays, Reflection, Therapy, Healing, and Whiteness

The Wolf I Feed.

The replacement of real indigenous stories with Christian-influenced, western moral tales is colonialism, no matter how you dress it up in feathers and moccasins.  It silences the real voices of native peoples by presenting listeners and readers with something safe and familiar.  And because of the wider access non-natives have to sources of media, these kinds of fake stories are literally drowning us out. – âpihtawikosisân There is a story that we keep getting told. A lot. It is about two wolves. In different spaces- as a student I was recounted this by a teacher, […]
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Emotional Labor vs. Labor That Evokes Emotions; or the hard work of being human

Disability Justice, Hate Groups, Labor and Work, Reflection, Therapy, Healing, and Whiteness

Emotional Labor vs. Labor That Evokes Emotions; or the hard work of being human

This blog post is written in response to comments and discussion generated at the February 2018 White Noise Collective dialogue, which examined the themes of “Emotional Labor and Difficult Conversations about Race and Gender”.  I am grateful to the participants for their frank, vulnerable, and honest conversation. See our website for the guiding questions and suggested readings for the dialogue. I recently had a friend (a late 20s straight cis-man) divulge to me a dating encounter that he was frustrated about.  To his credit, he asked my permission first before telling me the story (which […]

dialogue notes on this topic

Though many of the themes from the monthly dialogues are represented in our blog posts, those posts rarely include all of what was discussed.  Find the notes here from each dialogue raw and uncut. We share them (with names omitted) in an effort to be  accountable and transparent to our larger community, accessible for those who are not able to attend, and saved as archive to return to and draw from.

Nov 2019: Therapy for Whiteness

Dialogue description: Whiteness is characterized by unconsciousness, silence, extreme escapism, polarization, navel-gazing, projection, superiority/inferiority binary worldview, and protective attachments to “goodness”. The construction of whiteness is profoundly pathological and has caused immeasurable suffering, yet it is not in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). This dialogue is an invitation to spend some time together diving into the waters of whiteness, its implications in therapy, and ways that the lenses, skills, sensitivities, and capacities from therapy and anti-racist practice can mutually inform each other. Food for thought prompts: If whiteness was a client/patient, […]
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