Reflections from the first Me & White Supremacy Repro Caucus

2020 was unquestionably a difficult year in many ways. Racism and white supremacy continued to seethe and froth, bringing fresh pain and doubling down on the challenges we already faced as a nation and as a global community. We white folks in the reproductive rights and health community have long struggled to understand and address racism and white supremacy within our movement and our organizations, and the failure of white leaders — in particular, white women and white feminists — in our movement looms large. But how can we as white people follow the leadership of Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color in our movement if we don’t face our own racism and the ways in which we have bought into and perpetrated white supremacy in our lives and in our organizations? 

Last year, I spoke with ReproJobs about opportunities for white people in repro to caucus together and build our capacity to show up for racial justice in different ways in our movement. ReproJobs has been a big driver of the push to talk about white supremacy in the repro movement, and I am so grateful for their leadership in our space. These conversations led to a 9-week virtual group that together read and discussed the book Me & White Supremacy by Layla Saad. This book  isn’t like others on racial justice — Ms. Saad designed the book to help us take a deep, long look at our hidden biases and to put them out into the open. The virtual space allowed us to caucus with people outside our organizations, and with people in different levels of leadership in the movement, in a way that we may not have been able to normally. This led to a freedom of discussion that helped us draw out what we may keep out of polite coworker conversation, and gave us the comfort and confidence to start talking about it more openly with our coworkers and beyond. One 9-week group will not mean any of us are magically able to recognize white supremacy in ourselves and others at every moment. But it can be a helpful place to start or to grow existing understanding, and to encourage commitments beyond 9 weeks. Below are a few reflections from group members on what this time meant to them. To be clear, this is not about posting self-congratulatory thoughts on how we now understand our complicity in white supremacy, but more about being open in our learning and accountable in our journey and encouraging other white people to do the same.

We’re hoping to have up to two more Me & White Supremacy repro cohorts in 2021. Interested? Sign up here.

"I have been so grateful for the space to continue the practice of caucusing with other white folks, this time with the focus of our work within the reproductive health, rights, and justice movement. In our discussions I was able to reflect and piece together some of the ways I have centered whiteness in my work and perpetuated practices and patterns that are rigid, stifling, and unyielding. I feel better able to identify these patterns, recognize their roots in white supremacy, and disrupt them. Since completing the workbook, the white caucus at my job has decided to work through the workbook together as well. I am eager to continue this practice and identify the ways we can work together each day to undermine the ways white feminism and white supremacy are woven throughout our organization and movement.” —Marah Lange

“Coming into this experience, I had been holding a lot of shame around my own biases, rooted in white exceptionalism and white apathy that paralyzed me from taking action. My biggest takeaway from the group is recognizing that when I feel uncomfortable, that means I’m on the right track and have more work to do. The group gave me the structure and support I needed to realize that shift. It also led me to reflect deeply on the work of my own organization and how to use my privilege to interrupt white supremacy.” — Andrea Irwin

“The specific tools that I learned because of this group is the ability to confront my own white fragility, privilege, and how my silence is complacency. Especially as a professor in gender studies and an organizer, I am constantly looking for ways to incorporate what I learned into my syllabi and how to move in spaces so that I am not usurping the roles of Black activists and people in anti-racist movements. Especially as a person with a mental illness (severe anxiety) it’s important to confront my white fragility in a way that doesn’t put the onus on Black activists in spaces to make me feel welcome. In that way, I learned tools that I need to separate myself from a situation temporarily so that the attention is not pulled away from them. 

I’m also learning how to educate my students in a way that confronts their own white privilege, so that they do not also fall back onto becoming defensive. While I did have some ways that I could teach anti-racism and white privilege, including intersectionality, I wanted to make sure that I had ways for students to easily identify moments where their whiteness has not been a hindrance or deterrent from advancing in society, or being able to take up space. I feel this reading group and book has given me easy tools for such tasks.” - Nichole Smith  

“It is a much different experience to examine your own role in structural racism than simply identifying yourself as an anti-racist. I approached this work with a lot of white exceptionalism, and finished this book club understanding that the work of unlearning my complicity in a system of white supremacy and dismantling it is never finished. The only way white folks can begin to examine these things is by learning the language to discuss it, and that is the most valuable product of doing this work. In fact, through this group I learned that it is an expression of white privilege and white supremacy to opt out of that work, and am now better equipped to challenge that complicity in myself, my organization, and white feminism going forward.” — Caty Gordon

Lauren Paulk is an organizer with SURJ DC and an experienced small group facilitator. Her organizing focuses on cultivating spaces where white people can face, own up to, and work to change our complicity in white supremacy and white supremacist systems. Lauren is the Research Counsel at If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice.