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Whiteness is a socio-politically constructed, racial identity designed to keep certain people in power and others out. Generally speaking, people with a lighter skin hue and European physical features have had access to social rights and privileges that have been denied to those with darker skin and non-European features. All light-skinned people are touched by racism in this way, at least to some degree, and receive social privileges as they are perceived to be members of the White group. Light-skinned people can choose to maintain and perpetuate this system or, conversely, to discount it, challenge it, and expose it. Dismantling Whiteness is critical to dismantling racism. In order to effectively do this, first I must understand and accept that I am White, and no matter my socioeconomic background, gender, sexual orientation, or religion, etc., I must recognize that I have received privileges denied to people of color. Then I must give up that identity, realizing that it is an artificial grouping designed with an unjust intention and which also limits my ability to be my fully human self--unique, creative, connected, and living in peaceful community with my fellow humans of all colors and cultures. Whiteness keeps us acting in rigid patterns, glued to the expectations that others have of us to behave in certain life-denying ways, excluding our inherent equals and partners in society. This learned exclusionary behavior and privilege is based upon faked, fabricated, erroneous information, having nothing to do with our own individual merit, nor with any truth that light-skinned people are somehow more alike than we are to individuals of color. We are not in any way more worthy than people of color, yet we learn this, and it is very, very dehumanizing and demeaning, for everyone. Freeing ourselves of this White identity, frees our souls to allow us to fly and be who we want to be, connected to all humanity.

This writing by St. Anger © 2003, is available on her greeting card in addition to the above design.
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