Fall (in love) 2009: Three Pillars of White Supremacy

tell em!

To get us started talking, thinking and strategizing about how we can love each other better as radical women of color across oppressed communities we thought we’d start with this work by a brilliant person who was actually at the Speak/Cyberquilting/INCITE strategy session at the Allied Media Conference where this idea was hatched.   You can download Andrea Smith’s important and insightful essay The Three Pillars of White Supremacy here.

Please read it with your folks and think about these questions:

When is a time you have done/thought/said something that was harmful to other trans/cis-gendered women or genderqueer folks?

How does white supremacy manifest in the collective, organizations and community spaces you work in now?

Does your organization connect with first nation struggles?

Name an instance where different groups of women of color were not acknowledging the different privileges that operated in a space? How might that have been handled differently?

How does ableism impact your organization? How does it interact with your understanding of the organization itself and the people it serves?

How do you personally relate to the term “model minority?”

How does your skin color or gender identity inform your activism? Does your organization address light-skinned, cis- gender, femme, able-bodied privilege and/or the marginalization of folks internally within the group? Within your work?

Before reading this article, had your group or organization implemented any plans or strategies to address how the three pillars might be at play in the organization?

After reading this, what might your organization do to address these issues?

Add more questions and some comments below!!