thank you everybody and thank you for
having here it’s this is such an honor
to be a part of this powerful amazing
event and community I’m going to talk
today about whiteness and sometimes
that’s not usually the first thing I say
to people when I meet them that I want
to talk about whiteness it can be kind
of an awkward beginning whiteness is
something we often don’t talk about in
our society explicitly and especially
for white people it can tend to be this
concept that is unnamed or invisible and
so it can be awkward to talk about it
but I talk about whiteness it’s part of
my work I talk about it for two reasons
one is that for a long time I would show
up to conversations on race and racism
and I would listen intently and I would
nod sympathetically to the stories of
people of color and I felt like I
actually don’t have anything to offer
here except to listen because I didn’t
think that I had a racial story I didn’t
see how racism impacts me the second
reason that I want to talk about
whiteness is that I am in the field of
education and in education when we say
we’re going to talk about race and
education we end up scrutinizing the
outcomes of children and families of
color and we don’t talk about the fact
that 85 percent of the teachers in our
country are white most of our
administrators in the country are white
most of our teacher educators like me
are white most of our policymakers are
white most of our curriculum writers and
textbook writers are white so if we want
to talk about race and education and
we’re not talking about whiteness then
we don’t have the whole picture so I
didn’t always talk like this I grew up
in a community called Mount Lebanon that
was 99.8% white it was a town a suburb
of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
and in my family and in my community we
didn’t talk about race we were raised to
be colorblind and my parents are pretty
phenomenal people they have said that I
can say
anything that I want about our family in
the way they raise me if it means it’s
going to help people learn which is very
a very powerful permission they’ve given
me and my parents did wonderful things
for us we each of the kids in my family
studied abroad we learned different
languages we also had foreign exchange
students live with us throughout the
years we talked about multiculturalism
and we were taught to value the content
of a person’s character not the color of
their skin and we never talked about
that one difference which is racial we
never talked about racism and so
emphasizing a colorblind ideology meant
we couldn’t talk about racism and if you
had asked me Ali did you grow up in a
segregated community I would say no we
had 20 families of color and they lived
among us and we were all friends
it wasn’t segregated but what I couldn’t
see at that time was that I couldn’t
zoom out and see that I lived in a
community that was almost a hundred
percent white and we lived ten miles
from the hill in Pittsburgh where all of
August Wilson’s plays take place there
was almost a hundred percent black and
we didn’t mix we didn’t talk to each
other we didn’t play each other in
sports we didn’t drink from the same
proverbial water fountain and so we were
segregated but I couldn’t see that so I
went to college with this colorblind
lens this sense that race really doesn’t
matter that what my whiteness has never
impacted my life and I was required to
take a course on diversity and I’m a big
fan of diversity requirements because I
would not have taken this course if it
hadn’t been required not because I
didn’t think it was important not
because I wasn’t interested but because
I didn’t feel like I belonged there it
was the first time I ever had a black
professor it was the first time I ever
had black classmates it was African
American literature and I spent the
whole first part of the semester being
totally intimidated by the content I had
to say words that I had never said out
loud before like white
and black and racism and I could feel my
tongue swelling in my mouth I would trip
and Bumble and stumble and I had this
professor who was he would do things
like he would tell a race of racist joke
and then half the class would laugh and
then he’d say that was a racist joke you
don’t laugh at racist jokes you have to
think before you laugh and so I would
sit there thinking like really every
time he said anything I would think am I
supposed to laugh now if I’m not
supposed to laugh how does not laughing
look I honestly spent much of the day in
class thinking like do I look more
racist if I cross my legs this way or if
I cross my legs this way and it was all
this very self-focused analysis trying
to figure out how do I show up here I
have no practice being in this
conversation that semester we read 14
novels by african-american authors and
by the end of the semester I had learned
two really important things that have
stayed with me for my life one is that
racism has impacted every day of this
country since the first colonists
stepped foot on the shores of the United
States which was not then the United
States we call them colonists because
that word is linked to the word
colonizer racism is a huge part of our
history and whiteness is not incidental
to who I am as a white person it’s not
just a peripheral piece whiteness is
integral to who I am and who my
ancestors are racism has impacted my
life every day of my life
and since before I was born my ancestors
are part of that history of colonization
my ancestors who immigrated here were
allowed to immigrate in part because of
their whiteness my ancestors were able
to get jobs we’re able to join unions
were able to bust unions because of
their whiteness they were counted in the
founding document of our country the
Constitution my ancestors were counted
as whole people black people were
counted as three-fifths of a person
that’s part of the founding document of
our country that not every person would
be whole
in this country that whiteness has
impacted my life my community my my
segregated community that I thought was
integrated white communities all white
communities don’t happen by accident but
I didn’t know about the legislation and
the policy and the banking strategies
and mortgage lending practices and
individual violence that went into
preserving the whiteness of all white
communities that likely happened before
I was even born
but that impacted the fact that I went
to a school that was considered safe
that was considered a Blue Ribbon School
and from which I could go to college and
my parents could pay for my college
because of the housing market that we
were able to buy into because of our
whiteness whiteness was integral to my
life the second lesson that I learned in
african-american literature is that I
can get better at talking about race at
the beginning of that semester I was so
bad at talking about race and by the end
of that semester I was still so bad at
talking about race but I was better than
I had been and I could see the way that
practice made it possible for me to get
better that this is a skills based
competency and that I can grow and so I
went on to take every class I could with
that Professor I became an Africana
Studies minor I studied abroad in South
Africa and when I was in South Africa I
met a black feminist
South African activist named Gertrude
knows what Ghazi squint – and she asked
me to like write her life story so after
college I spent two years working with
her recording the stories of her life
and how racialized policy had impacted
her as a black child growing up in
apartheid South Africa and through that
relationship and through that project I
started to get angry I was so angry
about racism and I was uncomfortable and
ashamed of being white and I was sad and
I felt guilt and then I decided what I’m
gonna do is I’m gonna show up to the
table of racial conversations and I’m
gonna feel guilty that’s what I can do
for racial justice I’m gonna feel guilty
whenever possible I’m gonna make all the
other white people feel guilty and
that’s what I’m gonna do and what I
found was that I would see people on the
street who’d been in my classes or who
I’d had conversations with and they they
kind of duck into stores at the last
minute so they didn’t have to see me
coming and there was a moment where I
just thought this has not been a victory
for racial justice the way that I’m
doing this is not working I need to
recalibrate and about that time I read a
book by a black psychologist Janet Helms
who writes about the importance of a
positive racial identity and she says
white people need to get a positive
racial identity and I remember thinking
what is a positive racial idea how can I
have a positive racial identity I’m
light you know
just feeling good about being white
because you’re white that sounds too
like some white supremacist stuff and
Janet Helms writes yes a positive racial
identity for white people is not about
just feeling good about being white
because you’re white that’s some white
supremacist stuff a positive racial
identity is not about feeling good about
being white it’s also not about feeling
bad about being white it’s about
understanding what it means to be white
in the context of a heavily racially
racialized society that has historically
and still today distributes resources
and opportunities in equitably favoring
white people against people of color
understanding what it means to live in a
society that teaches people of color
internalized oppression and teaches
white people internalize superiority and
dealing with that sense of internalized
superiority so that I can show up and be
and live in healthy multiracial
community with people of color in which
we work against racism and other
oppressions knowing that all oppressions
are connected that’s what having a
positive racial identity is for a white
person a negative racial identity is
what I had when I was growing up a
negative enter a tional identity is not
about feeling bad for being white it’s
about having no consciousness that being
white has impacted your life
it’s about attempting to be colorblind
and not seeing how racism operates it’s
a negative a negative racial identity is
necessarily a delusional identity
because there are so many
racial myths and stereotypes that
circulate in our society if you don’t
have the lens that’s able to see that’s
a myth that’s alive that’s a stereotype
you believe them and it clouds your lens
and so you’re unable to see the world
clearly so I became very interested in
figuring out at one point how do you
talk to white kids about race because I
was pregnant with my first child and I
part of my work involved standing on
stages and talking about how badly my
parents had taught me about race and I
you know that’s very easy to say well
look at what my parents got wrong what
am I supposed to teach my daughter I had
this experience and Target when she was
a baby and we’re just going through the
aisles and she has white white hair and
blue eyes and people were always
stopping me to say oh she looks like
such a dull baby and one day I just
snapped she was about eight months old
and I said you know what the reason my
baby looks like a doll baby is because
we live in a white supremacist society
in which all the doll babies have blonde
hair and blue eyes if we could live in a
society in which we could honor and
acknowledge the multiplicity and
diversity of skin colors and hair
textures and the beauty of humanity then
maybe my baby wouldn’t look so much like
you doll baby and maybe she would just
look like a regular old baby
okay so it makes a good story but the
woman just looked at me you know and I
looked at her and I remember thinking
this too has not been a victory for
racial justice so with a research team
that I had worked with throughout grad
school involving Howard Stevenson and
Keisha Bentley Edwards and Eleanor
Bartoli we started looking into how
white families talk to their kids about
race and the amazing thing is that what
we found is that most of the families we
interviewed in the teens that we
interviewed talked to their children
about race the same way that my parents
did they don’t teach them anything about
whiteness whiteness is incidental to who
they are it doesn’t matter racism is bad
but racism is also a violent individual
action on the part of a self-declared
racist like as somebody from the KKK
there’s no talk of the systems and the
history of racism that was in place
before any of the children that we’re
even interviewing were born people are
learning that they should be colorblind
that they shouldn’t talk about race that
talking about race is racist but one of
the things that I’ve been learning is
that when we don’t talk about race what
we do is we make it possible for the
status quo to exist how it is
we can’t rectify any of these historical
wrongs if we’re not able to talk about
it so I continue to search for answers
for how I talk to white people about
race and how I talk to my children about
race a couple years ago my daughter who
she was five two years ago she decided
she wanted to dye her hair purple and
I’m thinking this sounds good to me
so I was talking to my friend Gertrude
from South Africa on the phone we talked
every couple weeks and and I said so
Tina wants to dye her hair purple and
Gertrude said how interesting what do
you think and I said I think it seems
good I think it seems like a healthy
detachment from her blondeness anchor
tree said what you say and I should have
known that I was in trouble the minute
she asked me to repeat myself I should
have known but I thought it was a bad
connection so I’m like I think
it’s a healthy detachment from her
blondness and Gertrude’s like yeah I
thought that’s what you said and she
said listen to me Ali your daughter was
made by her creator blond hair blue eyes
light skin pink cheeks that is her
vessel how is she supposed to repair the
world if she’s broken if she’s detached
from any part of who she is how she’s
supposed to love people if she could get
if she’s not fully loved how is she
supposed to show up and have other
people become whole if she doesn’t feel
whole herself and I know that she’s
right and her words guide me in the work
that I do when I think about talking to
my children when I think about talking
with teachers and in communities what is
the point of talking about race and
racism the point is to see the way that
racism has fractured us as a country as
a community as individuals and to work
to repair and heal those fractures in
multiracial solidarity in community to
build a world in which race truly
doesn’t matter but not because we refuse
to see it not because we were colorblind
not because we turned away but but
because we looked at that historical
legacy and we stared it right in the eye
and we examined what it did to us and
then we work together in community to
fix it and I think that that could be a
victory for racial justice thank you
[Applause]
having here it’s this is such an honor
to be a part of this powerful amazing
event and community I’m going to talk
today about whiteness and sometimes
that’s not usually the first thing I say
to people when I meet them that I want
to talk about whiteness it can be kind
of an awkward beginning whiteness is
something we often don’t talk about in
our society explicitly and especially
for white people it can tend to be this
concept that is unnamed or invisible and
so it can be awkward to talk about it
but I talk about whiteness it’s part of
my work I talk about it for two reasons
one is that for a long time I would show
up to conversations on race and racism
and I would listen intently and I would
nod sympathetically to the stories of
people of color and I felt like I
actually don’t have anything to offer
here except to listen because I didn’t
think that I had a racial story I didn’t
see how racism impacts me the second
reason that I want to talk about
whiteness is that I am in the field of
education and in education when we say
we’re going to talk about race and
education we end up scrutinizing the
outcomes of children and families of
color and we don’t talk about the fact
that 85 percent of the teachers in our
country are white most of our
administrators in the country are white
most of our teacher educators like me
are white most of our policymakers are
white most of our curriculum writers and
textbook writers are white so if we want
to talk about race and education and
we’re not talking about whiteness then
we don’t have the whole picture so I
didn’t always talk like this I grew up
in a community called Mount Lebanon that
was 99.8% white it was a town a suburb
of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
and in my family and in my community we
didn’t talk about race we were raised to
be colorblind and my parents are pretty
phenomenal people they have said that I
can say
anything that I want about our family in
the way they raise me if it means it’s
going to help people learn which is very
a very powerful permission they’ve given
me and my parents did wonderful things
for us we each of the kids in my family
studied abroad we learned different
languages we also had foreign exchange
students live with us throughout the
years we talked about multiculturalism
and we were taught to value the content
of a person’s character not the color of
their skin and we never talked about
that one difference which is racial we
never talked about racism and so
emphasizing a colorblind ideology meant
we couldn’t talk about racism and if you
had asked me Ali did you grow up in a
segregated community I would say no we
had 20 families of color and they lived
among us and we were all friends
it wasn’t segregated but what I couldn’t
see at that time was that I couldn’t
zoom out and see that I lived in a
community that was almost a hundred
percent white and we lived ten miles
from the hill in Pittsburgh where all of
August Wilson’s plays take place there
was almost a hundred percent black and
we didn’t mix we didn’t talk to each
other we didn’t play each other in
sports we didn’t drink from the same
proverbial water fountain and so we were
segregated but I couldn’t see that so I
went to college with this colorblind
lens this sense that race really doesn’t
matter that what my whiteness has never
impacted my life and I was required to
take a course on diversity and I’m a big
fan of diversity requirements because I
would not have taken this course if it
hadn’t been required not because I
didn’t think it was important not
because I wasn’t interested but because
I didn’t feel like I belonged there it
was the first time I ever had a black
professor it was the first time I ever
had black classmates it was African
American literature and I spent the
whole first part of the semester being
totally intimidated by the content I had
to say words that I had never said out
loud before like white
and black and racism and I could feel my
tongue swelling in my mouth I would trip
and Bumble and stumble and I had this
professor who was he would do things
like he would tell a race of racist joke
and then half the class would laugh and
then he’d say that was a racist joke you
don’t laugh at racist jokes you have to
think before you laugh and so I would
sit there thinking like really every
time he said anything I would think am I
supposed to laugh now if I’m not
supposed to laugh how does not laughing
look I honestly spent much of the day in
class thinking like do I look more
racist if I cross my legs this way or if
I cross my legs this way and it was all
this very self-focused analysis trying
to figure out how do I show up here I
have no practice being in this
conversation that semester we read 14
novels by african-american authors and
by the end of the semester I had learned
two really important things that have
stayed with me for my life one is that
racism has impacted every day of this
country since the first colonists
stepped foot on the shores of the United
States which was not then the United
States we call them colonists because
that word is linked to the word
colonizer racism is a huge part of our
history and whiteness is not incidental
to who I am as a white person it’s not
just a peripheral piece whiteness is
integral to who I am and who my
ancestors are racism has impacted my
life every day of my life
and since before I was born my ancestors
are part of that history of colonization
my ancestors who immigrated here were
allowed to immigrate in part because of
their whiteness my ancestors were able
to get jobs we’re able to join unions
were able to bust unions because of
their whiteness they were counted in the
founding document of our country the
Constitution my ancestors were counted
as whole people black people were
counted as three-fifths of a person
that’s part of the founding document of
our country that not every person would
be whole
in this country that whiteness has
impacted my life my community my my
segregated community that I thought was
integrated white communities all white
communities don’t happen by accident but
I didn’t know about the legislation and
the policy and the banking strategies
and mortgage lending practices and
individual violence that went into
preserving the whiteness of all white
communities that likely happened before
I was even born
but that impacted the fact that I went
to a school that was considered safe
that was considered a Blue Ribbon School
and from which I could go to college and
my parents could pay for my college
because of the housing market that we
were able to buy into because of our
whiteness whiteness was integral to my
life the second lesson that I learned in
african-american literature is that I
can get better at talking about race at
the beginning of that semester I was so
bad at talking about race and by the end
of that semester I was still so bad at
talking about race but I was better than
I had been and I could see the way that
practice made it possible for me to get
better that this is a skills based
competency and that I can grow and so I
went on to take every class I could with
that Professor I became an Africana
Studies minor I studied abroad in South
Africa and when I was in South Africa I
met a black feminist
South African activist named Gertrude
knows what Ghazi squint – and she asked
me to like write her life story so after
college I spent two years working with
her recording the stories of her life
and how racialized policy had impacted
her as a black child growing up in
apartheid South Africa and through that
relationship and through that project I
started to get angry I was so angry
about racism and I was uncomfortable and
ashamed of being white and I was sad and
I felt guilt and then I decided what I’m
gonna do is I’m gonna show up to the
table of racial conversations and I’m
gonna feel guilty that’s what I can do
for racial justice I’m gonna feel guilty
whenever possible I’m gonna make all the
other white people feel guilty and
that’s what I’m gonna do and what I
found was that I would see people on the
street who’d been in my classes or who
I’d had conversations with and they they
kind of duck into stores at the last
minute so they didn’t have to see me
coming and there was a moment where I
just thought this has not been a victory
for racial justice the way that I’m
doing this is not working I need to
recalibrate and about that time I read a
book by a black psychologist Janet Helms
who writes about the importance of a
positive racial identity and she says
white people need to get a positive
racial identity and I remember thinking
what is a positive racial idea how can I
have a positive racial identity I’m
light you know
just feeling good about being white
because you’re white that sounds too
like some white supremacist stuff and
Janet Helms writes yes a positive racial
identity for white people is not about
just feeling good about being white
because you’re white that’s some white
supremacist stuff a positive racial
identity is not about feeling good about
being white it’s also not about feeling
bad about being white it’s about
understanding what it means to be white
in the context of a heavily racially
racialized society that has historically
and still today distributes resources
and opportunities in equitably favoring
white people against people of color
understanding what it means to live in a
society that teaches people of color
internalized oppression and teaches
white people internalize superiority and
dealing with that sense of internalized
superiority so that I can show up and be
and live in healthy multiracial
community with people of color in which
we work against racism and other
oppressions knowing that all oppressions
are connected that’s what having a
positive racial identity is for a white
person a negative racial identity is
what I had when I was growing up a
negative enter a tional identity is not
about feeling bad for being white it’s
about having no consciousness that being
white has impacted your life
it’s about attempting to be colorblind
and not seeing how racism operates it’s
a negative a negative racial identity is
necessarily a delusional identity
because there are so many
racial myths and stereotypes that
circulate in our society if you don’t
have the lens that’s able to see that’s
a myth that’s alive that’s a stereotype
you believe them and it clouds your lens
and so you’re unable to see the world
clearly so I became very interested in
figuring out at one point how do you
talk to white kids about race because I
was pregnant with my first child and I
part of my work involved standing on
stages and talking about how badly my
parents had taught me about race and I
you know that’s very easy to say well
look at what my parents got wrong what
am I supposed to teach my daughter I had
this experience and Target when she was
a baby and we’re just going through the
aisles and she has white white hair and
blue eyes and people were always
stopping me to say oh she looks like
such a dull baby and one day I just
snapped she was about eight months old
and I said you know what the reason my
baby looks like a doll baby is because
we live in a white supremacist society
in which all the doll babies have blonde
hair and blue eyes if we could live in a
society in which we could honor and
acknowledge the multiplicity and
diversity of skin colors and hair
textures and the beauty of humanity then
maybe my baby wouldn’t look so much like
you doll baby and maybe she would just
look like a regular old baby
okay so it makes a good story but the
woman just looked at me you know and I
looked at her and I remember thinking
this too has not been a victory for
racial justice so with a research team
that I had worked with throughout grad
school involving Howard Stevenson and
Keisha Bentley Edwards and Eleanor
Bartoli we started looking into how
white families talk to their kids about
race and the amazing thing is that what
we found is that most of the families we
interviewed in the teens that we
interviewed talked to their children
about race the same way that my parents
did they don’t teach them anything about
whiteness whiteness is incidental to who
they are it doesn’t matter racism is bad
but racism is also a violent individual
action on the part of a self-declared
racist like as somebody from the KKK
there’s no talk of the systems and the
history of racism that was in place
before any of the children that we’re
even interviewing were born people are
learning that they should be colorblind
that they shouldn’t talk about race that
talking about race is racist but one of
the things that I’ve been learning is
that when we don’t talk about race what
we do is we make it possible for the
status quo to exist how it is
we can’t rectify any of these historical
wrongs if we’re not able to talk about
it so I continue to search for answers
for how I talk to white people about
race and how I talk to my children about
race a couple years ago my daughter who
she was five two years ago she decided
she wanted to dye her hair purple and
I’m thinking this sounds good to me
so I was talking to my friend Gertrude
from South Africa on the phone we talked
every couple weeks and and I said so
Tina wants to dye her hair purple and
Gertrude said how interesting what do
you think and I said I think it seems
good I think it seems like a healthy
detachment from her blondeness anchor
tree said what you say and I should have
known that I was in trouble the minute
she asked me to repeat myself I should
have known but I thought it was a bad
connection so I’m like I think
it’s a healthy detachment from her
blondness and Gertrude’s like yeah I
thought that’s what you said and she
said listen to me Ali your daughter was
made by her creator blond hair blue eyes
light skin pink cheeks that is her
vessel how is she supposed to repair the
world if she’s broken if she’s detached
from any part of who she is how she’s
supposed to love people if she could get
if she’s not fully loved how is she
supposed to show up and have other
people become whole if she doesn’t feel
whole herself and I know that she’s
right and her words guide me in the work
that I do when I think about talking to
my children when I think about talking
with teachers and in communities what is
the point of talking about race and
racism the point is to see the way that
racism has fractured us as a country as
a community as individuals and to work
to repair and heal those fractures in
multiracial solidarity in community to
build a world in which race truly
doesn’t matter but not because we refuse
to see it not because we were colorblind
not because we turned away but but
because we looked at that historical
legacy and we stared it right in the eye
and we examined what it did to us and
then we work together in community to
fix it and I think that that could be a
victory for racial justice thank you
[Applause]
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