suggested reading

Helping/Saving (Industrial and Psychological) Complexes

our writing on this theme

Words on the Wall from WPC Workshops

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 […]

Calling In: Questions we have for the One Billion Rising campaign

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? What better place to start this inquiry than with One Billion Rising, founded by white feminist Vagina Monologues writer and founder of V-Day Eve Ensler?  In 2013, One Billion Rising claimed to be the biggest mass rising in human […]

White Women’s Tears and the Men Who Love Them

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.
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Another Year in Reflection

Labor and Work, Reflection, Saviorism

Another Year in Reflection

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.  These spaces brought together our community to engage in critique and […]
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Narratives of White Women Used to Uphold Racism and Patriarchy: A Partial Timeline

"White Womanhood", Gender Identity, Militarism and Imperialism, Patriarchal Violence, Privilege Systems, Reflection, Saviorism, State Violence

Narratives of White Women Used to Uphold Racism and Patriarchy: A Partial Timeline

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? By no means attempting to be some kind of comprehensive history, but rather pulling out some key threads in the unweaving of structures of domination.  Here we go: Captivity narratives, stories […]

Time to unpack. A reflection on perpetuating white supremacy patterns at the White Privilege Conference.

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.” Honestly, I couldn’t even begin to summarize […]
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“Your Women Are Oppressed but Ours Are Awesome”: How Nicolas Kristoff and Half the Sky Use Women Against Each Other

Saviorism, State Violence

“Your Women Are Oppressed but Ours Are Awesome”: How Nicolas Kristoff and Half the Sky Use Women Against Each Other

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. While acknowledging the tremendous work that many people are engaged in (including Kristoff) to bring awareness to vast realities of gender-based violence, DasGupta critically draws out the recurring dynamic of the white savior industrial complex, the Global North feminist imperialist “gaze” on women […]

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.

December 2017: Tis the White Savior Complex Time of Year

Dialogue Description: While people typically think of the White Savior Complex playing out in the arenas of international development, voluntourism and thelatest Hollywood blockbuster, we recognize that it is critical to slow down and ask ourselves – what are the boundaries of whitesaviorhood that surround my life? Whether its our non-profit jobs, our fundraising efforts or even our radical organizing work, how do we or those around us perpetuate a savior dynamic? What are the impacts on individuals and communities of color in the fallout of these actions, both obvious and subtle? What does true solidarity look like? How do people with White or light-skin privilege take bold action and risk for […]

July 2017: “No More Heroes: Grassroots Challenges to the Savior Mentality” — a book group

Dialogue Description: Why do so many people with privilege end up making things worse when they try to help? How can a person with privilege challenge systems of injustice without playing into the savior mentality? In what ways does our culture create and celebrate saviors, and how does this infiltrate our movements? These are questions posed in this book, which we will dive into in this dialogue. We will also try to go further than the content of the book and add some perspective on the ways gendered dynamics play into these questions. Suggested readings: You […]

May 2017: “Ethics of All-White Racial Justice Spaces” with SF SURJ and STAND

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 […]

May & June 2014: Meaningful Work

Dialogue Descriptions: For May, we will we explore the idea of “meaningful work.” What is it? What stories have we been told about it? Is it a necessity, a right, a privilege or a luxury to do work that aligns with our values and also pays the bills? Is the work we are doing (both paid and unpaid) just a pressure release valve, allowing larger social structures to remain unchanged, or are we really pushing our radical edges and building our communities? And how do paradigms about “sacrifice”  and “success” fit into this conversation? Whether […]

February 2014: Love, Rage and V-Day: What’s going on with white feminists?

Dialogue Description: What issues are white feminists largely drawn to, how are those issues expressed, in what ways is white privilege showing up, and what patterns are helpful to explore? Here are links to a number of pieces that relate to this month’s theme, diving into patterns, concerns, critiques, and questions of white feminists and feminism. We offer these not to be overwhelming, but thought that one or two might stir your interest before we meet in person: Beyond Eve Ensler: What Should Organizing Against Gender Violence Look Like? One Billion Rising: Eve Ensler’s White […]

August 2013: Virtuous Victim Narrative

Dialogue Description: We’ll spend this evening looking at ways the narratives about white women, such as the virtuous victim narrative, are used to justify violence against men of color. Specifically, we’d like to discuss the ways Zimmerman used his neighbor to justify his murder of Trayvon Martin, how this ties into deeply entrenched histories and brainstorm ways we can counteract this narrative. 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, […]

March 2013: Helping Professions and the Buffer Zone: Maintaining and Challenging the System

Dialogue Description: In response to the theme of this year’s White Privilege Conference, The Color of Money, we will be re-examining what Paul Kivel terms “ the buffer zone,” a range of jobs and occupations that structurally serve to maintain the wealth and power of the ruling class by acting as a buffer between those at the top of the economic pyramid and those at the bottom. With a focus on how people socialized as white and female have occupied and represented this terrain, we will examine historical patterns, iconic images, and our individual participation and insight. […]

February 2012: White Women in Helping Professions

Dialogue Description: What images come to mind when we think of a teacher? social worker? fundraiser? therapist? midwife? What representations and histories shape the large demographics of white females in what are seen as “helping” and “care-taking” professions? How does white privilege, “the white man’s burden“, and structural racism play into all of this? How do notions of “feminine labor” shape our understandings, expectations and life experiences? Whose work is in the spotlight, whose is made invisible? How are white women socialized to draw them into care-taking and helping professions? How does the disproportionate number […]
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