Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor

Week 3 focuses on allyship, specifically as a lifelong practice rather than as an identity white people can choose. In this week, Saad will cover white apathy, white centering, tokenism, white saviorism, optical allyship, and being called out/called in.

Day 15 introduces the idea of white apathy, which Saad calls a “self-preservation response” (127) that white people have when faced with their complicity in white supremacy. While white apathy is not inherently violent, it can still be dangerous. It implies that BIPOC should be the ones to dismantle white supremacy rather than white people, and that the cause of dismantling white supremacy is an awareness campaign or charitable cause in which one can choose to take part, rather than a deadly ideology. White apathy can be caused by white privilege, white fragility, white silence, white exceptionalism, racial color blindness, anti-blackness, and racist stereotypes.