The Characteristics of White Supremacy
READING GROUP text for this Wednesday
One of my chronic memories from childhood is a pervasive sense of loneliness. I was a latchkey kid of the 90s. The streets of my suburb were empty, the park across the street from my house grass that no one played on.
One of the things I worry about most right now is that, as a culture, we don’t know how to be relational. There is no real united left to resist the wrecking ball of fascism because we see ourselves as separate, as adversaries.
If we’re going to move forward with life, as a species and as a planet, we need to do it together.
Many of us feel helpless right now because people and places we care about are under threat, we feel afraid and angry. Will another march help? When we call our congressperson, do they even care?
I first came across the work of Tema Okun during a summer intensive workshop I was doing with SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice). What I learned there was this: to have the life of freedom, intimacy, and beauty that we crave we have to, collectively, change the culture.
We have to change the culture in our families, in our businesses, in our relationships, in our government, everywhere.
Change is possible, but to do it, we need to be able to recognize the insidious disruptors of relationship that permeate our culture, that interfere with our capacity to connect with one other and even with our own hearts.
Qualities like defensiveness, paternalism, either/or thinking that many of us will recognize in our own families of origin and in our workplace, are things we can actually heal and do something about.
We have more power to change the world than we think, but we have to learn how to use it together.
Please join us on Wednesday evening at 6pm PST to discuss this month’s reading: The Characteristics of White Supremacy by Tema Okun.
Looking forward to a lively and empowering discussion. Link to the reading below and Zoom meeting below.
Also, if you want to know more, or only have time to listen while you drive, here’s a video interview with Tema Okun about the materials.
Yours ever,
Amanda