I often see people share work, including my own, with the caveat of “listen up white people” or “white people you need to read this.”

Do you know what that does? It marginalizes my work and centers whiteness as its audience. It tells Black and Brown People that my work isn’t for them.

When the truth is that my work is first and foremost for me. Which means my work is first and foremost for them.

No matter how well intentioned, when you share my work with this language, you are centering whiteness and white supremacy as MY audience, when I’m very intentional about doing no such thing.

Don’t do that.

It’d be one thing if someone writes something addressed to white people - but all too often anything regarding racism is often assumed to be created for the benefit, the education, and the healing of white people. That assumption is a form of white supremacy. What gets centered; what gets prioritized, is the education of white people. This often happens at the expense of potentially harming, traumatizing, and sacrificing the well being of the rest of us. For what? To convince us that racism is real?

Healing racism means healing every wound that’s been born of racism. Healing racism means healing the ways that these wound infiltrate how we’ve been taught to relate to ourselves and each other.

Healing racism means naming, contextualizing, and clarifying what we’re experiencing. It means telling ourselves and each other the truth. It means REFUSING to find our worth in the worthlessness of another. It means REFUSING to allow ourselves to be dehumanized and decentered for any reason including the lie that doing so somehow helps “heal racism”.

That’s not healing.

It’s a continuation of white supremacy under the guise of healing.

If it simultaneously harms? Then it’s not healing.

If we are going to heal; we need to fundamentally reorient ourselves to the work itself, holding space, and insisting on, it’s constant evolution.

Image Reads: Healing racism means naming, contextualizing, and clarifying what we’re experiencing. It means telling ourselves and each other the truth. It means REFUSING to find our “worth” in the “worthlessness” of another. It means REFUSING to allow ourselves to be dehumanized and decentered for any reason including the lie that doing so helps “heal” racism. That’s not healing. It’s a continuation of white supremacy under the guise of healing.