A video from The Washington Post and The Lily encouraged people to join “white accountability groups” to discuss “whiteness” and combat racism.
The episode of the show, titled “The New Normal,” brought in mental health experts and scholars to discuss understanding “whiteness and the ways that white supremacy benefits you” with the host, Nicole Ellis. It includes author and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem, professor and psychologist Rebecca Toporek, crisis interventionist Kelsey Arias and trauma therapist Ilyse Kennedy.
Ellis began by stating that George Floyd’s death was the first time white people had become “aware of their whiteness.” Toporek said that “awakening” to racial injustice is a key part of their development.
WaPo explainer video encourages white people to feel “shame,” create “white accountability groups” https://t.co/vry6oRq4wy pic.twitter.com/Imjus175sS
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 21, 2021
Toporek said that part of being white is looking at “the role whiteness plays” in your family and community.
“The more you kind of dive into that, the more I’m really realizing how deeply rooted racism is into like, my everyday thought process,” Arias said. “No matter how much you work at that, there’s still almost even more work to be done.”
One section of the video encouraged people to “join or create an accountability group” because “white people have got to start getting together specifically around race” in order to form an “antiracist culture.” (RELATED: North Carolina College Hosts ‘White Caucus’ For Students To Talk About ‘Guilt,’ ‘Fragility’)
“White accountability groups are really helpful in terms of having a place to process, having a group of people whose responsibility it is to call me on things or to challenge me,” Toporek added.
Kennedy suggested that it’s important to start “unpacking wrong things that we have been taught in history class.” She said that she needed to go back and “reorganize” everything she had been taught because it was “through a white lens.”
“Most of us doing this work have experienced this where there is a period of deep shame for being white and for acknowledging the harm that our ancestors have caused,” Kennedy said. “And that’s a very legitimate piece of this work and we can’t ask people of color to hold our hands through the shame piece. That needs to happen with other white people.”
Ellis asked what the pitfalls of working only with white people are. Toporek said “white people don’t really understand racism.”
Ellis challenged the group and asked if it was fair to seek out relationships with people just for the sake of diversity. Toporek suggested that it was an ongoing relationship and reciprocal friendship was an important part of it.