I teach white women not to be racist Karens

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The summer after my second year of law school, I worked at a law firm in London, England. It was my first time there and I was giddy with excitement when the luxury car that picked me up from Heathrow Airport dropped me off outside the luxury building I was in. was going to live next month.

After dragging my suitcase up the stairs to the front door, I was greeted by an attractive, elderly white woman; my owner. I went to shake his hand. Looking sick, she pulled her right arm behind her back and dropped the keys on the floor so she wouldn’t have to touch me.

She mumbled something about the apartment number and left. I was drained. I knew that look, I had seen it many times in my life.

Saira Rao (pictured) co-founded Race2Dinner in early 2019 with Regina Jackson. Saira Rao

But never before had a white person been so pushed away that they didn’t want to touch me.

A few days later, my washing machine broke down. I called the owner several times. She didn’t return my call. I called HR at the New York office headquarters to tell them what was going on, that the owner was racist and that my machine needed to be fixed.

The white woman in charge of human resources was furious that I had “accused” the owner of being racist; not at all furious with current racism, and absolutely indifferent to the washing machine.

“We’ve been using it for a decade and never had a problem.”

“Have you ever sent a colored lawyer to this apartment?” I asked.

“Hmmmm,” she thought. “No, I guess we didn’t.”

“So how can you say she’s not a racist if the first colored lawyer you sent says she is.”

I tell this story because, to begin with, it takes place in London, the place that many white Britons say is free from the kind of racism we find in America.

But it is not the only reason. I say this because it hits just about every note we know of in our Race2Dinner work: racism, disbelief of racism, anger at the accusation of racism, absolute lack of concern for racism -self and the harm that racism has caused to the black and brown person.

In short, the complete centering of white feelings and comfort, white innocence over white violence.

Launch Race2Dinner to change

When Regina and I started Race2Dinner in early 2019 in Denver, Colorado, we got a lot of backlash: It’s never going to work; we don’t like your strategy; it’s impossible.

If you don’t try then, by definition, anything is impossible. In this case, what whites considered impossible was us; a black woman and a south asian woman have dinner parties with 8-10 white women to discuss their white supremacy and racism.

As Regina says, “You can’t change what you don’t recognize.” At these dinners, we help white women recognize their white supremacy and racism so they can change it.

But instead, we were called scammers, scammers, scammers, running peddlers, and my favorite, Pearl Harbor. This is how white supremacy is ingrained – that even talking about it over a meal is equated with starting a world war.

Flash forward four years and our impossible dinners are sold out a year in advance; we have a New York Times bestseller, White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better; and our film, Deconstructing Karen, is screened around the world.

In America, our work has not only been made possible, it is, dare I say, popular. Not popular like Taylor Swift, but popular like white women reading our book, watching our movie and internalizing it, understanding how white supremacy is killing them just like it’s killing us, and want to make a change.

White American women are actually working to dismantle their own racism and white supremacy.

But we hear the word “impossible” again. For what? Because in a few weeks, Regina and I are leaving for London for our first screening outside of the United States and Canada.

Here’s what we hear from white people in the UK: “It’s never going to work. The Brits won’t like your strategy. We’re not racist like the Americans. The UK is NOT the USA”

Our answer: First of all, you will remember that white Americans were YOU. As in, many white Americans are descendants of British colonizers. After all, America was first a British colony. Moreover, despite all the cultural differences (American football versus football in Great Britain, for example), one thing is absolutely the same: white supremacy.

After all, white supremacy is about power, and who knows power better than the empire that has colonized countries all over the world. It would be the British Empire.

This means that every white person supports the systems and structures of white supremacy. That each of them is – by design – a white supremacist.

White supremacy persists transparently because of everything white British women have done and everything white American HR woman has and hasn’t done.

Obstacles

You can think of it like this. The culture of white supremacy is a gigantic castle surrounded by oceans, rivers, tsunamis, mountains, jungles, floods – you see the picture – surrounding it from every angle to ensure that nothing can penetrate its hegemonic hold.

These fixed obstacles (after all, who else but white Jesus can move Mount Everest or walk on water?) are meant to make you feel overwhelmed and confused.

Oceans of denial that white supremacy hurts you too; that white supremacy is also killing you, your children and your grandchildren too. This white supremacy is killing humanity.

Mountains of helplessness; White feminism necessarily means ignoring your white power and seeing everything through a gender lens, clearly seeing your gender oppression while ignoring what you have, which is power as a white person.

And tsunamis of imperfection: The foundation of white femininity is perfectionism, your need to be perfect. You won’t even dip your toes into waters where you might be less than perfect, like seeing yourself for what you are, a racist.

These obstacles are meant to make you feel like you’ll drown, burn, choke, or freeze if you even try to get through to the other side. These obstacles make you believe that the work is impossible.

It’s not true.

They were made to prevent people, namely white people, from dismantling white supremacy. They were made by white men and women and can be undone. Undone by you architects.

Reality? These obstacles are a mirage. But these are obstacles. And you have to overcome them and go through them to enter the bowels of labor.

We know this, because as we said, we work with white women every day.

We see, in real life, in real time, white women waking up and internalizing how white supremacy is killing them; how they absolutely possess white power; and how they won’t die by not doing their anti-racism job perfectly.

They realized that perfection doesn’t exist and it’s a trap designed to keep white women in their place, which is firmly inferior to white men.

White supremacy and patriarchy go hand in hand. So if you don’t fight your whiteness, you will never be free from patriarchy. As such, fighting white supremacy is fundamental to being liberated.

Saira Rao and Regina Jackson are the co-founders of Race2Dinner, an organization that empowers women to have honest conversations about race. You can find out more about registering for their upcoming events in July in London and Bath, UK.

All opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

Do you have a unique experience or a personal story to share? Email the My Turn team at [email protected].

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