When I enter a space I always notice the whiteness level in the room. This has been true for me ever since college, when I transferred from Columbia in NYC to the University of Victoria (in BC) and was like ‘what is it about this place that feels so weird? Oh, it’s ‘normal’ to be in a public space only populated by white people?’
I am often in ‘personal growth’-related or tech-related spaces with a lot of other white people, including a surprising number of spaces that are 90% or more white. I notice that, no matter how awesome the context is, and often there’s a lot of awesomeness, I feel a little less trusting of the space when it’s so predominantly white.
There’s so much complexity around this topic and even naming it seems to invite all kinds of unconscious reactions to show up.
I am a white-bodied person. When I enter in a space that is more mixed in race, I make it more white. I’ve seen several communities struggle when they began as more non-white and white people came in and began to, if not dominate directly, become the majority.
When I have entered into spaces where I’m the only white person, I have wondered whether I’m just killing the party. Whiteness in the form of me enters and provokes code switching, or just like ‘what is this person going to do?’
Many people I have spoken to who convene predominantly white spaces I’m in have expressed some dissatisfaction with the homogeneity. “How can we get more diversity?” or “we are open and welcoming if non-white people come here.”
But what makes actually ‘diverse’ spaces work? I’ve noticed a few patterns.
First, good collective spaces centre the margins (not just racial margins, but all people who deal with structural marginalisation). They don’t ‘include’ or ‘welcome’ so much as seek to be guided. This mindset can be quite challenging when we’ve been sold the idea that colour-blindness or other assimilation-oriented concepts are the key to getting along with different people. When a collective does the work of centring the margins, that means that everyone in the group looks for ways that all can strive and looks out for ways that default thinking can leave people out or behind. Awareness of inaccessibility, gendered language, or assumptions of common experience can all be gently and lovingly addressed. Governance can include practices of bringing in minority opinion and orient around consent instead of majority rule.
I’ve noticed that collectives with cohesion among many skin tones often have a culture of calling in without policing. Most of us as white people have huge blind spots when it comes to our own assumptions. Realistically, all humans have blind spots, but as a rule, status creates significantly larger zones of blindness, simply because people in lower status roles have to learn to negotiate with the behaviours status engenders. Everyone has their own intersections in terms of status, and each has different areas that become easy to overlook.
In spaces with a lot of white folks I’ve often heard a variation of, ‘how do we ‘fix’ this?” It’s probably worth questioning whether ‘fix’ is the right metaphor but putting that aside, my gut instinct tells me it’s not very easy. Most of them seem to want to change nothing except who is ‘invited.’
I suspect that when a group develops and grows with a supermajority of white people, it’s partly because no one even noticed, so familiar is such an experience for its members. It will be hard in this context to not assume, when people who look different join, that those people should attempt to fit in or conform to group norms, much as other white people have.
The first thing I would be inclined to try, if the community truly is committed to changing its dynamics, is for each member to participate in another community where they are in the racial minority. (Probably all different groups so it wasn’t just colonialization all over again).
Desire for change is also more believable if the community or group is willing to invest resources in facilitated conversations and honest self-assessment.
I feel the dissonance of overwhelming whiteness the most when I am in spaces that are ’embodied’ but never address the effects of racialization on embodiment. White people sometimes seem to have the idea that racialization only impacts embodiment for non-white people, but obviously, people in white bodies have also been racialized. This isn’t a political stance, it’s simply a basic conclusion one can feel immediately by considering our embodied experience as it relates to what we have been taught about race. Each person will have a different experience, but that experience has had effects on our physical health, our trauma response, and our access to different body modalities.
When I am in spaces that are white and unquestioned, my mere presence is not a disruption, but such conditions don’t facilitate easy belonging for anyone with an experience of marginalisation. I am more likely to keep parts of myself protected. I am a neurodivergent, queer, nonbinary person, and also an educated, skilled white professional. The latter identity is more likely to lead in white-dominated spaces.
There are definitely subtleties. What about spaces that are, for example, filled with neurodivergent, queer, nonbinary people and are also exceedingly white? Those are, often, spaces that do question whiteness, but sometimes also do a fair amount of general policing, which purports to be in service of safety but much like other kinds of policing, often just serves domination.
Race is a very toxic invention. There are so many many people who have explained this more effectively than I can, even on TikTok, and if you want to discuss, I will link lots of things at the end of this conversation to ground us.
In some ways, our current American context rests on the power dynamics that occur when stories, totally baseless in many cases, are treated as a kind of fact, or something that demands adherence and faith. Reality is more expansive, more individual, and doesn’t end with the hero’s return.
My purpose is to support communities of practice doing what is necessary to create conditions of belonging. For me, that means collectively asking hard questions, looking inward first to see how what bothers me about other people reflects something about myself, and believing it’s possible to be together. Perhaps this means third spaces, not my house or yours, but somewhere we can co-create and co-hold, starting from scratch, but knowing that those of us with white skin may also tend to design, manage, voluntell, or feel responsible in ways that only we can check.
Resources on the invention of race:
- Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Karen E. Fields, Barbara J. Fields
- Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts
- Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
- The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist
- A guy on TikTok