Individualism is a pillar of White supremacy

This article is #6 in a series. Each day, I'm sharing one of Dr Tema Okun's 15 characteristics of?White supremacy culture.

Today, it's individualism or "I'm the only one." Dr Okun says:

Individualism

"Individualism shows up as:

• for white people: seeing yourselves and/or demanding to be seen as an individual and not as part of the white group;
• failure to?acknowledge?any of the ways dominant identities - gender, class, sexuality, religion, able-bodiedness*, age, education to name a few - are informed by belonging to a dominant group that shapes cultural norms and behaviour
• for BIPOC people: individualism forces the classic double bind when BIPOC people are accused of not being "team players" - in other words, punishment or repercussions for?acting as an individual if and when doing so "threatens" the team
• for white people: a culturally supported focus on determining whether an individual is racist or not while ignoring cultural, institutional, and systemic racism; the strongly felt need by many if not most white people to claim they are "not racist" while their conditioning into racism is relentless and unavoidable
• for white people: a belief that you are responsible for and are qualified to solve problems?on your own
• for BIPOC people: being blamed and shamed for acting to solve problems without checking in and asking for permission from white people
• little experience or comfort working as part of a team, which includes both failure to acknowledge the genius or creativity of others on the team and a willingness to sacrifice democratic and collaborative process in favor of efficiency; see double bind for BIPOC people above
• desire for individual recognition and credit; failure to acknowledge how what we know is informed by so many others
• isolation and loneliness
• valuing competition more highly than cooperation;?where collaboration?is?valued, little time or resources are devoted to developing skills in how to collaborate and?cooperate
• accountability, if any, goes up and down, not sideways to peers or to those the?organization is set up to serve
• a lack of accountability, as the organization values those who can get?things done on their own without needing supervision or guidance, unless and until doing things on "our" own threatens power?
• very connected to "one right way," "perfectionism," "qualified," and "defensiveness and denial."

I'm the only one

"I'm the only one" shows up as:

• an aspect of?individualism, the belief that if something is going to get done "right," ‘I’ have to do it
• connected to the characteristic of "one right way," the belief that "I" can determine the right way, am entitled and/or qualified to do so, in isolation from and without accountability to those most impacted by how I define the right way
• little or no ability to delegate work to others, micro-management
• based in deep fear of loss of control, which requires an illusion of control
• putting charismatic leaders on pedestals (or positioning yourself as a charismatic leader on a pedestal)
• romanticizing a leader (or yourself) as the centre of a movement, idea, issue, campaign
• hiding or covering up the flaws of a leader (or your flaws) in fear that the organization, movement, effort cannot survive
• defining leadership as those most in front and most vocal?(thank you Cristina Rivera-Chapman for these last four bullets)."

So how do we tackle this kind of thinking?

Antidotes to individualism

"Antidotes to individualism and "I'm the only one" include:

• seek to understand all the ways we are informed by our dominant identities and how our membership in dominant identity groups informs us both overtly and covertly (while realizing too that these identities do not have to define us); understand how membership in a dominant group (the white group, the male group, the hetero group, the wealthy group) extends psychic, spiritual, and emotional benefits as well as material benefits?
• seek to understand how these benefits are, in reality, toxic, because our complicity with being positioned?as both "better" and "normal"?requires that we dehumanize all those designated as "less than" and "abnormal"
• acknowledge that all white people have internalized racist conditioning and that an anti-racist commitment is not about being "good" or "bad," it's about figuring out what we are going to do about our conditioning
• do our personal work while also bringing focus to cultural, institutional, and systemic manifestations of white supremacy and racism
• name teamwork and collaboration as an important personal and group value; acknowledge that teamwork and collaboration take?more time, particularly at the front end?and?yield?a better result with higher buy-in and higher ability to take shared risks
• make sure the group or organization is working towards shared goals that have been collaboratively developed and named
• reward people for collaborating?
• evaluate the ability to work in a team as well as the ability to get things done
• honour process as much as product (honour how you do things as much as what you do or produce)
• make sure that credit is given to all who participate in an effort, not just the leaders or most public person; make sure that when you are given credit, you distribute it to all those who helped you with whatever was accomplished
• create collective accountability (rather than individual accountability)?
• create a culture where people feel they can bring problems to the group; use meetings as a place to solve problems, not just a place to report activities?
• hold ourselves accountable to the principle of collective thinking and action
• develop the ability to collaborate and delegate to others
• in workspaces or movement efforts,?evaluate performance based on an ability to work as part of a team to accomplish shared goals?
• hold ourselves and each other accountable to a shared definition of leadership that assumes a collaborative and collective approach
• hold ourselves and leaders accountable for mistakes without assuming that we need to be perfect to lead; develop collaborative and collective strategies for how to respond to mistakes that encourage learning from the mistakes, appropriate boundary setting, and restorative approaches
• realize that leadership is dynamic and does not rest in one individual; we are called upon to lead at different times in different circumstances and called upon to follow or take a back seat when we are learning or making room for new leadership to emerge."

To learn more about individualism, "I'm the only one" thinking - and to explore the stories, poems and artworks that accompany this section, explore Dr Okun's?15 characteristics of White supremacy culture.

Next time, we'll look at the idea of quantity over quality, or "progress is more."

* A note on language - I'd call this abledness or disability/non-disability.