Joint dialogue with SF Bay Area SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) and STAND (Standing Together and Nurturing Dissent) White Men for Racial, Gender and Economic Justice

Dialogue Description:

We know that part of overcoming white supremacy is doing away with binaries and the right/wrong dichotomy. And, still, it can feel challenging to do this and to know how to stay accountable to what can sometimes feel like opposing guidelines from the people of color and frontline movement organizers that we try to center as white- or light-skinned activists fighting for racial justice. In this dialogue, we will dive into the messages to highlight where there are and are not contradictions between the call-outs for and the critiques of all-white organizing spaces and what to do with them. How do we hold these dynamic and seemingly contradictory viewpoints? How do we ensure we are doing our own work with each other so that we do not have to rely on people of color to educate us at every turn? How do we stay in the struggle, even when it feels like there is a call out around every corner and we know we are engaging in endless mistakes on the way to liberation? How do we reconcile with the influences of gender, entitlement, fragility and other dynamics that affect these questions?

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

Round of check-ins with everyone in the room:

  • Being the white person who feels close to quitting, one critique away
  • Holding space for white people about whiteness often, want to continue to question and engage and think about accountability around doing that work.
  • Barriers between collaboration – ways we don’t give each other benefit of the doubt or critique other white folks. How to transform this pattern?
  • Space of not knowing how to do this work, trying to figure out how to contribute to an anti-racist movement
  • Desire to honor and engage with what’s happening rather than brush it under the rug
  • Want to contribute to a more just world, once on the path can’t get off without sacrificing integrity, so want to engage to learn how to continue to engage.
  • Desire to have the conversation with broader group than exclusively white men
  • Article asked us to Ponder Ferociously
  • Participate in all white action group that doesn’t lead to deeper relationships with people of color, questioning trajectory
  • Want to discuss with many different groups together
  • How do I trust myself and simultaneously not trust myself/my instincts
  • Head full of abstract ideas, way too in my head about things, want to be more in connection about issues, build community through the process
  • Sitting with question around how to balance being in spaces where I can develop my own leadership, take risks, etc, and also have time in my life to do more mundane and less personally enriching activities that support and build movements (specifically for POC led initiatives) – how to balance these.
  • Desire to listen, curiosity around why whole life is all-white spaces, desire to shift that and then feeling like that is tokenizing…and questioning how much is a white fragility reaction vs okay feelings to express, wanting to keep prioritizing the movement work rather than making it all about own feelings.
  • Noticing how much more easeful it is to engage in all-white organizing spaces, etc – questioning this tendency. Also needing to balancing personal limits/emotional capacity. Seeing ways I could be “better” at as a white person and also just wanting to move toward what feels like genuine pull. Female socialization about needing to do everything/be all things to all people versus long long term movement toward racial justice.
  • Have bought into rationale of all-white spaces, newly re-questioning that approach, concerned about segregation within anti-racism work.
  • Noticing self-consciousness around whiteness, especially in low income POC areas, questioning personal responses. Noticed defensiveness about SURJ critique article and then saw some truth too, wanting to engage more fully with the issues raised.
  • As part of base-building organization who intends to move a LOT of people through their process of coming into awareness of own whiteness, etc. Feels like high stakes at times, wondering who we are going to lose – rather than think about scarcity, how do we use this as a catalyst to bring people in, do better, grow and move forward, to translate anxiety into further hope/action to move through as an opportunity.
  • Personal conflicting feelings and reactions to article and to being in different kinds of spaces. Difference between intentionally all-white spaces and unintentionally majority white spaces.
  • Curiosity around gender dynamics and how that plays out differently in our work for racial justice.
  • Building coalition feels important.
  • How all-white spaces can replicate a logistics, intellectual, planning and meeting culture. We feel we’ve done our work because we’ve gone to the meeting – wondering how to redistribute our time and people resource particularly regarding SURJ base building efforts – can we give away our people and our time? Can we undo some of the language used – especially using “we” to refer to white people and potentially then invisibilizing POC in the room.
  • Gratitude for article destabilizing approach and feeling into own discomfort around holding space for white anti-racism work. Asking questions around accountability and what that looks like. Holding a strong value around accountability and when that tips into being tokenizing or overburdening. Not wanting to ask for labor from POC but also not wanting to proceed with work without having feedback.
  • Desire to learn and be in the beautiful mess with everyone
  • Easy to spin out around questioning what spaces we participate in, trying to show up constantly for other people – how to authentically bring myself and my work/ways of being into the spaces I’m already in. Desire to distance from other white people, how that debilitates movement building, how to do the work with the folks one might not want to do the work with.
  • Petrified to act or speak honestly, wanting to learn and settle.

In Didi Delgado article – what takeaways feel like relevant critiques? What are the actions from that?

  • If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s spaces that feel comfortable for white people to the EXCLUSION or DETRIMENT of communities of color. When does exclusion happen that results in less access or support or connection for POC?
  • Can we hold work with SURJ as a strategy rather than a political home?
  • Need to do the work with base of SURJ to really be able to take critique and discomfort – wake up to remember to get people ready in SURJ to have resilient response to pushback.
  • Remember we can’t have a pure or perfect approach – can we have spaces that work, that function, that aren’t so careful. Wake up call to not shun imperfect white people.
  • Accountability around power and use of power. Keeping POC out of white dominant spaces can feel like white savior complex/protecting people from themselves, problem to hold privileged identity and deny access/voice to people in non-privileged position.
  • I have learned more about power from POC in my life than from other white people
  • Yearning for mentorship in white antiracist spaces that looks like what
  • Blogosphere seems okay telling white people to go organize with working class white people – feels as colonial as other cross-(fill in the lank) organizing
  • We are not acculturated to hold togetherness – we think organizing a community means to tell them how they are wrong

~~~ Other considerations ~~~

  • Concerns around all-white spaces – can it be ethical? One more way to form community that is exclusive of POC / feels like segregation. And also is it ethical to be always pulling from POC to be in that process?
  • Discomfort with the level of comfort available in all-white spaces. As white anti-racist organizing and convening moves more into white liberal mainstream, question if that’s reinforcing white comfort that detracts from momentum of movement.
  • Class critiques – very much represent middle class white people and that level of comfort – SURJ makes itself visible and does base building in very comfortable spaces with other middle class white people. Why don’t we engage with working class communities? And what does it mean for culture of SURJ if not led by middle class white people? Why is it so middle class in the bay area in particular, other chapters have different demographics. We haven’t bridged the gap of scapegoating working class white people.
  • How to tease out patterns of personal/family/trauma/survival and patterns of whiteness.
  • We are human, joy matters, we need to feel connection and positivity to keep going – it’s not terrible to feel comfortable sometimes. My whole identity is constructed around living in opposition. If we’d already won, I’d have no idea what to do with myself.
  • Excited about contradiction. One giant dialectic, everything in contradiction with something else. Can’t tease out any single Truth or steady place.
  • Fear response stopping me from taking direct action – afraid of doing it wrong – afraid of doing harm, hurting feelings – deep fear in multi-racial spaces – safety + familiarity – avoid unfamiliar spaces – grappling with need to have some level of comfort to be open to new experiences – enough to avoid physiological fear response – how to stay in line with core mission
  • Organizing with white men – feel like I sacrifice some of my politics/language – showing up in relationships with folks politicized in different ways leads to having to curb academic language that is comfortable for me
  • Being the good white person – judging self and others for not calling others out for “bad”/racist language – vs fear of pushing people away

Small Group Breakout: Strategy/Tokenism/Respectability Politics/Experiences of organizationally taking risks, how does critique of spaces and issues of accountability look on a larger scale?

Report Out from Small Groups

  • Concerned with fear of tokenizing in wanting POCs to be advisors, turns work into a monologue rather than a transformative dialogue. Desire for collective thinking and feeling with POC blocked by hypervigilance around tokenization. Importance of reciprocity.
  • The groups we most want to be accountable to often have the least capacity, especially in the Bay Area.
  • What is accountability? What does that even really mean?
  • Just because we are accountable to POC doesn’t mean we’re not still in some kind of echo chamber.
  • As the horizon shifts in our visions, how to we remain flexible in our visions?
  • Tension around productivity in white spaces. When white spaces are deemed legitimate when they are effective, and not necessarily when they are just about ‘talking’ or relationships.  
  • STAND: To be in the leadership group, have to also do volunteer work with POC and women led orgs.
  • How do we hold space for process as white people which may not directly result in tangible impacts for marginalized communities.
  • Concern about requiring constant feedback and relying on POC orgs and individuals for their labor in constant validation. How do we do that more for each other?
  • WNC: When we struggle around our philosophy about accountability, we decided to write a living accountability policy. Revisit it regularly. Also evaluate financial policy. All of them are transparent and public on the website. Gets out of the trap of perfectionism.
  • What are our stakes? What is the willingness we put out to confront white supremacy as strong ways?
  • How do we navigate visibility while de-centering whiteness and ourselves?
  • In what ways does SURJ become the poster child for RJ, more visible than other POC led groups? Especially in the Bay where there is so much social capital for being ‘progress’, what does it really look like to show up?
  • Are we threatening systems of power or acting as pressure release values for white peoples’ racial tension/discomfort?