On the most recent installment of The Washington Post’s video series, The New Normal, guests on the show encourage White people to join “White accountability groups” and experience a “period of deep shame” while “acknowledging the harm our ancestors have caused.”
“In this episode,” said host Nicole Ellis, “We’re tackling White racial identity and why understanding your Whiteness is integral to becoming self-aware as a White person.”
One way to achieve this, said Rebecca Toporek, a professor at San Francisco State University, is by joining White accountability groups.
“White accountability groups are really helpful in terms of having a place to process how having a group of people whose responsibility it is to call me on things or to challenge me,” she said.
In the video, trauma therapist Ilyse Kennedy said she felt a sense of deep shame for being White while recognizing harm caused by by her ancestors. She suggested others feel similarly:
We’re unpacking wrong things that we’ve been taught in history class. I realized that I needed to go back and unpack, and reorganized everything that I had learned because it was completely through a White lens. Most of us – in doing this work – have experienced this, where there’s a period of deep shame for being White, and for acknowledging the harm that our ancestors have caused. 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.
Just moments later, however, Torporek said, “White people don’t really understand racism. And so if I’m relying on other White people to teach me about racism, that can only go so far. I only best understand racism by talking to people who are directly impacted by racism from different perspectives.”
The video has drawn backlash in conservative media.
The approach espoused in the video echoes that of Robin DiAngelo, whose book White Fragility became a New York Times best-seller. For DiAngelo, the term “White fragility” refers to any negative reaction White people have when they are challenged over their race. Last year, DiAngelo declined to speak at a public university after it made a counteroffer to her speaking fee of $12,750. The university offered $10,000.
Some wealthier liberals have even taken to paying $2,500 to hold dinners in which they are lectured about race. One typical question at these dinners is, “What was a racist thing you did recently?”
*story by MEDIAite
