The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture

 

The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture

From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001

 

Below is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture which show up in our organizations. Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro-actively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking. They are damaging to both people of color and to white people. Organizations that are people of color-led or a majority people of color can also demonstrate many damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture.

 

1. Perfectionism

2.  Sense of Urgency

3. Defensiveness

4. Quantity Over Quality

5. Worship of the Written Word

6. Only One Right Way

7.  Paternalism  

8. Either/Or Thinking

9. Power Hoarding

10. Fear of Open Conflict   

11. Individualism

12. Progress is Bigger, More

13. Objectivity

14. Right to Comfort

 

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When Things Fall Apart

 

Disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away.

 

—Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - February 7, 2021 💌

 

"There is not an experience that goes down in your life that doesn’t have the potential to help liberate you. It is so perfectly designed and there is not irrelevancy in the system. When you finally want to get free, everything, every single thing in your life is grist for the mill."

 - Ram Dass -

Via Tricycle // Listening with Empathy With Cuong Lu

 

Listening with Empathy With Cuong Lu

Do you listen with your ears or with your heart? Learn the art of compassionate listening with Zen teacher, author, and former prison chaplain Cuong Lu.

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Via Daily Dharma: Opportunities to Examine Your Life

 Any time we are abruptly thrown off course, it is an opportunity to reexamine our lives, our values, and where we are headed.

—Judy Lief, “Welcome to the Real World”  

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Via Daily Dharma: Practice Reacting

 Regardless of our circumstances, if we are Buddhist practitioners, we can have control over how we react to our thoughts and feelings.

—Interview with Charles Johnson by E. Ethelbert Miller, “Black Coffee Buddhism”  

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Via Daily Dharma: Allow Joy In

 Joy can be restorative. It can be akin to a good meal: nourishing and necessary. 

—Daisy Hernández, “The Joy of Joy”   

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Moments of Joy and Wisdom with Ram Dass on Maui

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Defy Logic | Logitech | Big Game Commercial

RELAX AND BREATHE: Do Nothing for 10 Minutes

Calm Breathe Bubble | Breathing Exercise

Via Daily Dharma: Finding Strength Among Discomfort

 When life presents us with challenges, we can get stuck in the mud—in our habitual reactions and patterns—or we can be present to the suffering and find compassion and strength within the discomfort, blossoming like the lotus. 

—Carolyn Gregoire, “Buddhist Thank-You Cards”   

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Via Tricycle // How to Work with Anxiety on the Path of Liberation

 

How to Work with Anxiety on the Path of Liberation

Anxiety is actually a necessary part of our path. Psychotherapist Bruce Tift gives an instruction in how to relate to it constructively.

Via White Crane Insitute

 

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Nathan Lane

1956 -

NATHAN LANE, (nee Joseph Lane) American actor, born; a Tony Award- and Emmy Award-winning actor of the stage and screen. When he was 21 and told his mother he was gay, her reply was: "I'd rather you were dead." Lane shot back: "I knew you'd understand". His professional association with his close friend the playwright Terrence McNally includes roles in Lips Together, Teeth Apart, The Lisbon Traviata [Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards], Bad Habits, Love! Valor! Compassion! [Obie, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards ], and Dedication.

Lane, who came out publicly after the death of Matthew Shepard, jokingly describes himself as "one of those old-fashioned homosexuals, not one of the newfangled ones who are born joining parades." When he was asked once by a reporter whether he was Gay, rather than providing a blunt yes-or-no answer, he famously declared, "I'm 40, single and I work a lot in the musical theatre. You do the math." 

He has been a long-time board member of and fundraiser for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, and he has been honored by The Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and The Trevor Project for his work in the gay community. Lane lives in New York, and on November 17, 2015, married his long-time partner, theater producer and writer Devlin Elliott.

Via Tricycle // Thich Nhat Hanh in Paris

 

Thich Nhat Hanh in Paris
By Fred Eppsteiner

On a trip to France in 1975, an American Zen student finds all his beliefs powerfully (and playfully) challenged by a young Vietnamese Buddhist activist named Thich Nhat Hanh.

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Via Daily Dharma: Generate Gentleness

 Meditation is not necessarily about generating intense concentration. It can be about the exact opposite: a slow, steady gentleness that adds no intensity to what already exists. 

—M. Sophia Newman, "Straight Outta Kapilavastu"   

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - February 3, 2021 💌

 

 

"When somebody provokes your anger, the only reason you get angry is because you’re holding on to how you think something is supposed to be. You’re denying how it is. Then you see it’s the expectations of your own mind that are creating your own hell. When you get frustrated because something isn’t the way you thought it would be, examine the way you thought, not just the thing that frustrates you. You’ll see that a lot of your emotional suffering is created by your models of how you think the universe should be and your inability to allow it to be as it is."

- Ram Dass -

Top 7 Stretches to Do Everyday | Target Every Joint!