What does a White Antiracist Look Like?

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Above all, their lives show us how much more freedom we have than we usually care to admit, if we dare to take full responsibility for ourselves (Brown, 2002, p. 142).

Clearly, there is no one answer to this question. There will be many people who are exceptions to anything you read below. However, I still believe it is useful to explore the question of “What does a white antiracist look like?” because of the lack of models of positive white identity in our society. Both Cynthia Stokes Brown in Refusing Racism (2002) and Becky Thompson in A Promise and a Way of Life (2001) attempt to answer this question.

Both Brown and Thompson found that white antiracists tend to be in long term intimate relationships with politically like-minded partners who offer unwavering support. For those white antiracists who were not in partnerships, most had extensive networks of friends and support, many times going “far beyond family and traditional friends” to create this network (Brown, 2002, p. 142).

Brown identified four common traits in the white antiracists she interviewed and researched: “a high degree of energy with less-than-usual need for sleep, good health, unusual optimism, and a pronounced capacity for independent thinking”. She also identifies another common trait as “a relative lack of interest in material possessions and wealth” (Brown, 2002, p.142). Many white antiracists live in simplicity because of their principles. Thompson also found many of the white antiracists she interviewed questioned “mainstream values about food, alcohol, and consumerism” (Thompson, 2001, p.348). (Click here for the voices of white antiracists on capitalism.)

Thompson's conclusions of what white antiracist culture looks like can be summed up with “a merging of people's political action and personal lives” (2001, p. 329). She found that many of the white antiracists she interviewed had open homes – to traveling activists and their children as well as to multiracial groups of friends and activists. Their homes were decorated with political posters and filled with books. Many of the people Thompson interviewed have “been profoundly changed through long-term intimate relationships with people of color – as lovers, close friends, parents and political comrades.” While Thompson makes the caveat that these relationships are in no way a credential of antiracist consciousness, they are often the way “white people come to understand race experientially (not just abstractly) and to realize they cannot afford to distance themselves from the realities of racism” (2001, p. 334). Thompson also discusses this phenomenon with white parents raising interracial children. Humor and spirituality also played important roles in sustaining the work of the white antiracists she interviewed.

References

Brown, Cynthia Stokes. (2002). Refusing Racism: White Allies and the Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Teachers College Press.

Thompson, Becky. (2001). A Promise and a Way of Life: White Antiracist Activism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.