Confronting white supremacy in the workplace


11 thoughts on “Confronting white supremacy in the workplace

  1. Thanks Caroline Tawio, for providing a different insight into White Supremacy at the Workplace. Its amazing the many layers within racism.

  2. Sincere thanks for the article Caroline Taiwo. In response to your question, I am a white person trying to figure out how to do this work and feel ineffective because there seems to be widespread unawareness among white people that white supremacy exists well beyond the caricatures of racism. I also see there is a lot of fear about addressing these issues directly and speaking up. In my work place, the passion and clear vision of a few people who are aware of white supremacy at the level you write about seem to get swallowed up by the apathy of a large majority. If I knew what would be effective, I would do it. Your explanations of white supremacy are particularly helpful and I wish everyone would read this.

  3. Crystal:
    I speak as another well-intentioned white person. This is a cop-out: “If I knew what would be effective, I would do it.”

    We’d like for someone to give us a guidebook, for sure! But since this problem has never been solved globally, there isn’t one. Therefore, isn’t it our duty to keep trying different things, analyzing the results, seeing what others have done, trying those things… etc. There never WILL be an antidote to widespread apathy if we keep sitting around waiting for a guidebook. Let’s go and try!

  4. Thanks for sharing this well dissected and elaborated of climat in our society espacially in professional environment involving racism. You are pretty deep!
    My take in the issue is about how to resolve it without breaking the circles that put and maintain it in place.
    The society is segrated by affordability.
    Affordability created by socialism.
    Capitalism is a socialism for people with privileges.
    Dismantling and banning some people’s basic rights creates people with privilege.
    Society that worships the accumulation of wealth abstracts the human’s dimemtion of that equation into our life. For the sake of profit human is trying to replace himself by a robot, spoils mother hearth and everything in it and now seeks for a new habitat in a different planet… just for the sake of supremacism!
    There are a lot of levels into supremacism within supremacism itself – everyone of them is trying to find a least fortunate (to express power and privileges) – sounds like a human mental illness expressing an unsecured self-esteem! The human race was not always like this.
    To fight racism we need to find a mechanism that narrows the gap and disparity. Free access to education would be a good start!!!!

    • .Free access to education, healthcare, poison free water, better slumlords laws, especially now that slumlords are switching to contract for dees to avoid rental laws that used to protect tenants etc…and a realization it took the GOP a gen to do this…dear millenials and other progressive perfectionists…
      Please don’t blow our chances if we still have a country in another 30 years.

  5. As long as Whites continue to blame Blacks for the the disparities to HS graduation rates in Mpls. & St. Paul nothing will change. Sometimes I think that Whites want to keep Blacks “barefoot & pregnant” so they will need white people to take care of them

  6. Thank you Caroline Taiwo for such an elaborate writing on Confronting White Supremacy in the workplace. Yes, as a woman of color, a Muslim and an immigrant reading this was very emotional. I hear you very well, and I do get emotional since what you wrote made me feel heard! Now, I know I am not overreacting. I never heard or experienced racism before I came to north America but as time passed not only did I experience racism almost on a daily basis but unfortunately, I have learned how to detect it so fast. I am a very outspoken person and I try to talk about what I see as racism to my own circle of friends but it does not solve the problem.

    One idea I can think of is for my white colleagues whether it is a supervisors or a colleague have discussions on race and white privileges. Secondly, for white colleagues to appreciate the skills and talents of people of color and not feel like the person of color has to be constantly supervised and/or report to white colleagues who are appointed as team leaders and who may posses less, or equal qualifications as the person of color.

  7. Thanks for this. As a recent transplant to the Twin Cities, this is good insight and I am learning it is the case all over the Twin Cities. Being raised Chicano in East Los Angeles and working for a county government agency where leadership of people of color, and mostly women of color, was the norm, it is a culture shock to see what I see here in the Twin Cities. I am retired now and may be looking to volunteer for some local agencies. Hopefully I won’t run into this situation.

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