White Leaders: Have You Done This? (If Not, You’re Missing a Vital Key to the Future)

I invite white leaders to commit to one thing in 2021:

It isn’t self-care.

It isn’t deeper levels of honesty and integrity.

It isn’t empowering your teams.

It isn’t greater diversity, inclusion, and equity in your organization.

It isn’t even making a bigger difference in the lives of others in this country or on the planet.

However, it is something that links to success in all those realms.

It’s dismantling the white supremacy myth.

The white supremacy myth (WSM) weaves throughout U.S. culture, yet remains largely invisible to most. The WSM is the notion that light-skinned people of European descent (AKA white people), or those who get perceived and treated as such, trump others of Latino, African, Asian, Jewish, and Indigenous descent in merit, status, integrity, beauty, intelligence, and general worthiness. Going back in history, white people used the WSM to build a segment of the U.S. economy by kidnapping, torturing, and enslaving African people. The WSM also propelled “Manifest Destiny,” which in turn propelled nearly two centuries of Indigenous genocide, which continues to this day.

As an elementary school student, I learned "Manifest Destiny" as simply a concept that guided light-skinned people of European descent to take over and claim the land now known as the United States. It was taught with no critical analysis, no clear explanation of its religious roots , or even comment. Textbooks of the day referred to mostly to friendly relations between “Indians” and “settlers,” When violence was mentioned, it was normalized. No one mentioned entitlement, cruelty, or genocide, let alone treated it as something to reckon with. So I am not surprised that it took me so long to learn about , and I have compassion for other white people who have at least initial resistance to fully taking in its horrors.

Nowadays, the WSM appears in innumerable practices, systems, attitudes, beliefs, words, and even products. The white supremacy myth is so much a part of our daily life in the United States of America that it may feel difficult, or even absurd to challenge it. Yet, I see the task of dismantling this fatal mythology, and all its practices, as the necessary next step in our evolution. Human decency demands it.

The murder of George Floyd brought the WSM's fatal consequences to the fore of our consciousnesses for a moment. Some white people stepped forward, deeply concerned. Yet few of us knew what to do next. My colleague and longtime friend Cleo Manago observed that he saw the phenomenon of white people rallying for Black Lives Matter as demonstrations of dissociation, not transformation.

He said, “They seem sincere, and also desperate to publicly dissociate themselves from a widely viewed example of an unarmed Black man’s racist slaying. They touted signs that read, ‘White Silence = Violence,’ but nothing making it clear to onlookers that they were reflecting on how they benefitted from the same structure leading to the murder they protested.”?

This is why we need committed leaders — in particular, white leaders — to help lead other white leaders to an unprecedented level of awareness, commitment, and ability to dismantle the white supremacy myth.        

Here's why:

We too have “skin in the game.”

We've all been gaslit by the WSM. We're operating our businesses, finances, and social endeavors on a foundation of misinformation. The white supremacy myth has us believing that as white people, we alone have earned all that we have. And that if we're simply “good people,” and if we treat everyone (in our estimation) the “same,” that we are not part of the problem.

In fact, we're perpetuating it. The systemic white supremacy we were born into isn't our fault, but it is up to us to decide to learn how to reverse the generational cycles of harm. It will take commitment to learn, to practice, and to effect true change.

In the meantime, the WSM has messed with us, too. I predict that in the next five to ten years, the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) that governs psychiatric diagnoses will include not only extreme examples of white supremacist attitudes as symptoms of mental disorder, but also the everyday delusions that create white privilege and internalized white supremacy among people of all backgrounds. Until that happens, we can start the undoing process ourselves, and peel away the misinformation we've been steeping in for so long.

We deserve to learn the truth. For our own mental health and that of our children, and our children's children, We need to learn and live a life based in truth. Our best leadership can only proceed from this full truth. Whether we've begun the process of stepping into allyhood and advocacy, or we still think white supremacy has nothing to do with us, the 22nd century is calling us into a new level of consciousness. What might be your next act of courage in stepping up to that? Even if it's as simple as reading a book, I encourage you to do that.

We too were robbed.

We grew up getting implicit — and explicit — messages that simply being white gives us an all-inclusive pass to myriad privileges . In exchange, to keep that pass, we must keep silent about white supremacy's mythologies. We must not point out, let alone criticize nor attempt to change, the structures of white supremacy that govern our institutions, customs, and beliefs.

We must also whitewash that which makes us culturally unique. Most white people I know can tell me little or nothing about the land, language, food, songs, or customs of their ancestors just two generations back. Those elements shaped vital attributes of who we are in the world, and yet American whiteness would just as soon melt them into its pot.

I often ask white people, What is your ethnic background? Often they laugh, roll their eyes, and wave me off, as if the question were inconsequential. They say, Oh you know — just file me under Euro-mutt. Subtext: White people don't really have ethnicities. We're...you know...white. That's what's most important. Let's keep quiet about the other stuff.

We also get shortchanged on happiness. Hegemonic whiteness allows us to be pleased, even delighted, but not ecstatic. When was the last time you saw a white collar professional dancing or wailing, or even singing with joy? Of course not all white people and not only white people experience cultural constraints on authentic emotion. But the mainstream norms of middle- and upper-middle-class whiteness, particularly within corporate U.S, offer a pretty narrow range of acceptable expression of both ecstasy and grief. Those norms reflect a tight rein on the human spectrum of emotion.

I realized this on a very personal level in the early 90s. Right out of college, I worked for the Jewish Employment and Vocational Services' Soviet Resettlement program. Surrounded by other Jews all day long, I noticed that I recognized many traits that I had unwittingly suppressed within myself to fit in to WASP culture. The women around me were expressive, opinionated, sometimes bawdily humorous, nakedly imperfect, occasionally crass...never stifled.

I saw that I had been unconsciously stifling some of these same elements of my own personality. It dawned on me that those elements came not from personal faults, but rather from Jewish culture. I felt validated in a way as never before, and it was a turning point in leading me to becoming a self-loving, Jew-loving Jew, rather than a WASP wannabe. I also had an eerie sense with the “fresh off the boat” Russian clientele that they could easily have been my relatives — they were my relatives — less than a century prior. Yet these experiences that helped me become more self-loving of my own blood, bones, and ancestry also made me less “white.” And crucially, it was the WSM in the form of pursuit of an "Aryan race" that led to the slaughter of six million Jews, including a number of my relatives.

Class matters too. If we were raised poor or working-class, we might experience less social sanction for expressing authentic emotions. At the same time, we might cling to whiteness for its promises of privilege and wealth, even as we get excluded from the country club. Whiteness works along class lines in complex ways that deserve a more thorough treatment than I have room for here. Which brings me to...

We need to grieve.

The full human experience includes complete expression of grief, not just for our own losses, but for those of others. The world may be far too vast for us to grieve all the thousands of losses and injustices. However, if we live in proximity to horror and injustice every day and never allow ourselves to grieve it, we wind up cut off from a vital part of our humanity.

Grieving for ourselves, for what we have lost, and how we have (consciously or unconsciously) upheld such a damaging system, helps us release our pain, peel away our defensiveness, and step into greater empowerment to make change. Grieving for the harms perpetrated against people of Latino/a/x, African, Asian, Jewish, and Indigenous descent makes us more human, and increases our capacity to connect with people different from us, and to act against injustice.

Being able to feel our own grief frees up inner space previously occupied by our patterns of defense against feeling deeply. That inner space in turn enables us listen to listen more fully to reality of others beyond our projection of them. When we have truly and deeply listened to all the exiled parts of ourselves, it helps us fully hear what life is like for others from their own perspectives. We gain the vital skill of being able to fully hear what others need without making them the object of our own unmetabolized personal, historical, and ancestral grief, guilt, and shame. This is a far cry from the white savior stance ; many steps beyond token diversity and inclusion efforts. I am talking about a full-on commitment to take on what is arguably the most pressing leadership issue of our time.

With these skills and perspectives in hand, I predict you, dear white leader, will find yourself newly equipped to help usher in a truly multicultural era, and to inspire everyone on your team to show up fully. Without them, I fear business as usual, and a devastating loss of potential, both yours and others’. If you feel so inspired, please step up now — the world needs your fully-informed leadership.

Are you in?

If so run, don't walk, to find a place where you can:

• Express your white tears and work with your grief and white fragility in a way not harmful to people of Latino/a/x, African, Jewish, Asian, and Indigenous descent.
• Learn with experienced and skilled mentors and guides from different cultural backgrounds who can teach you how to defog your lens of perception and view the truth that will set you — and everything you lead — free.
• Work in community with others on a similar path, and learn together how to translate the task of dismantling white supremacy into your important work in the world.

What you — and the world — can look forward to

When you do this inner work and learning, you develop a more informed and empowered approach to the confusing and horrific racial situation in which we find ourselves. Having worked with your grief and feelings of powerlessness, you now employ your new constructive skills to face it head-on, and begin formulating strategies for true change.

When you bring these strategies for change to your work, you help guide a steady course into a better future. You discover how to be the change you lead, lead the change you envision, and live the ferocious joy that feeds you, in a deeper way than ever before.

If this resonates with you, please share your current plans, or any questions, in the comments, so we can all learn.

On the other hand, if this inspires negative reactions in you, I invite you to sit with them for a bit before commenting. Thank you.