Wow, another year has passed, and a new year lies ahead. For many of us, and those of you who participated in our offerings this year, it was an exceptionally challenging and painful year. However, as we came together to reflect on 2017 and vision for 2018 and beyond, we couldn’t help but feel proud about all we — as a small, all-volunteer collective — have accomplished this year:
Carrying on our steady tradition of using dialogue as political practice, we convened eleven dialogues this year. … Read more
There has been much critique lately of “white tears.” This term refers to all of the ways, both literally and metaphorically, that white people cry about how hard racism is on us. In my work, I consistently encounter these tears in their various forms, and many writers have provided excellent critiques. Here, I want to address one specific manifestation of white tears: those shed by white women in cross-racial settings.
As Valentine’s Day approaches (a day that often inspires much activism from women), the White Noise Collective took an opportunity in our February dialogue to reflect on white feminism: What issues are white feminists largely drawn to, how are those issues expressed, in what way is white privilege showing up, and what patterns are helpful to explore?… Read more
This past weekend, I, along with most of the members of the White Noise Collective, attended the 14th Annual White Privilege Conference in Seattle, WA.
For us and for me, the learning was deep and came in unexpected ways. I learned so much from every workshop, keynote and conversation I participated in, including gaining knowledge about the anti-asian racism perpetuated by use of the practice and term “meditation,” ways that white supremacy shows up in organizational decision-making processes (even collective ones) and the destructive potentials and neocolonialism and international “aid.”… Read more
We are re-posting this excellent, thought-provoking piece by Sayantani DasGupta, “Your Women Are Oppressed but Ours Are Awesome”: How Nicolas Kristoff and Half the Sky Use Women Against Each Other, originally from the blog Racialicious, as it lucidly articulates a number of themes that are key to the White Noise Collective’s analysis.… Read more
It was a joy and honor to share two White Noise Collective workshops at the 13th Annual White Privilege Conference in Albuquerque. This year’s overall theme was “Intersectionality”. Both times we had a full room of wonderfully engaged participants, intergenerational perspectives, fascinating insights and Theater of the Oppressed explorations. As people entered the room, we asked them to write a word or phrase in response to nine questions that were up on the walls on large sheets of paper, to get us collectively thinking about some of the dynamics, tensions, stereotypes and possibilities of this intersection. … Read more
This is a timeline we use in White Noise workshops to help make visible dominant representations of white women that have historically served to reinforce, normalize and naturalize forms of racist violence and patriarchal oppression. How do these narratives of white female sexuality and identity (re)appear in the present? How do they continue to live in our imaginations, bodies, dreams, media, collective consciousness, politics?… Read more
