This is for you, if you’re:

• A white person committed to racial justice, and
• Scared of acknowledging your unconscious racist biases
• Willing to put in real work to undo your internalized white supremacy

Since Trump got elected, there’s been a huge jump in the number of white people who want to put in actual work to end racism.

But just because you want to be anti-racist doesn’t mean you can easily notice and acknowledge the presence of racism - around you or within you.

Since privilege means you don’t know what you don’t know, anti-racist white folks have a steep learning curve to understanding the nature of white supremacy.

Too often this results in white folks acting in ways that have unintentionally racist impacts - even in the process of addressing racism.

That can be terrifying.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Based on my own healing journey and work in social justice, I believe that this often bewildering and infuriating reaction happens so often because there’s actually an unnamed trauma present...

The trauma of people of European descent being turned into white people by white supremacy - and then being taught that whiteness is good but doesn’t exist.

This has led white people to be unconsciously conditioned to both:

• Believe that to be racist is to be a monster
• Think and behave in racist ways
• See those racist actions as racially neutral or even anti-racist, like being colorblind.

So you can either be a good (non-racist white) person OR a monster (bad racist white person).

There’s no room to be a human being raised in a society steeped in white supremacy and racism and therefore internalized many of its lies - which is inevitable.

But the unnamed - and therefore uncared for - trauma of internalized whiteness keeps you from even acknowledging your unconscious biases.

However, if instead, you took a trauma-informed approach…

You could mindfully connect to the pain of your internalized white supremacy with compassionate accountability - so you can consciously choose to not act in racist ways.

Much better.

So I’ve written a series of letters from the heart for you.

It’s to help you better understand why it feels so scary right now and how you can begin healing the trauma of being made white.

• Why it’s important to me, as a person of color, that white people heal from internalized whiteness
• How people of European descent got made into white people
• What you lost in the process of being made white that you don’t even realize
• How to notice and begin caring for the pain from internalized whiteness so it can heal
• What we all need in our individual healing journeys for collective liberation
• How to figure out your next step in your healing journey

Because it’s not your fault you were made into a white person.

But you do have the responsibility to decide what you want to do about your internalized whiteness.

And you don’t have to do this work alone.

I’m here for you.

Sandra Kim
Founder of Everyday Feminism & Re-Becoming Human