Getting Beyond Performative White Allyship, Part 2: Welcome to Authentic Action

Last month I used the systems iceberg to dig into the phenomenon of White Action Bias in social activism. This revealed several interlocking mindsets that create the systems that uphold the patterns of this surface level activism.  Given all this, it’s no wonder that White people new to ideas of diversity, equity and inclusion make the choices they do. Yet, if we as White people are to quit producing impacts we don’t mean to have, we need to follow the iceberg down one more level, to the “Source” of creativity and consciousness.

What is the Source?

If you’ve seen an older version of the systems iceberg, the lowest it goes is the “paradigms of thought” or “mindsets” level. A deeper, “Source” level has been added by MIT’s Otto Scharmer. In Essentials of Theory U, he refers to it as “The most important blind spot in leadership today,” and “the inner condition from which we operate.” What, exactly, is it the source of? Scharmer lists curiosity, compassion, creativity and courage. When pressed for a synonym in an in-person workshop, his answer was “consciousness.” I equate this to my deepest Self. Accessing this deep consciousness connects us to our own gifts, skills and experiences. This in turn reveals what our unique contributions to the situation might be.

Connecting to the source level also connects us to one another.  Scharmer speaks of this as a shift from “Ego to Eco.” Psychologist Daniel Siegel uses the term “MWe” (Me + We) to describe this “intraconnected” consciousness. Lack of connection to source or consciousness is what ultimately keeps people’s outrage momentary. It allows us to center our own pains of empathy and inaction and seek immediate distracting activities. In other words, it prompts us to look away from the pains of others or the dysfunction of the larger system and center on ourselves.

So how can we direct people toward this consciousness?

Ideally, when a White person - or anyone else - has recently had their eyes opened to injustice, someone would help them decenter their consciousness to get to a more lasting advocacy. Sadly, this isn’t usually the case.  As antiracism author Ijeoma Oluo put it in the title of a recent post, “There’s no welcoming committee here. But there probably should be.” A Black woman and self-described “writer, speaker, internet yeller,” she regularly produces educational books and other content, but finds it exhausting and  painful to answer questions about racism on-demand. The welcoming committee is White people’s work. 

Oluo further points out that members of the Alt Right “excel at turning the frustrations and confusions of uninformed folks and nurturing it into full-blown hatred and bigotry in just a few simple steps.” This process is examined in Christine Saxman & Shelly Tochluk’s Being White Today. In addition to relating White identity development to seductive Alt Right messaging at each phase, they also point out progressive messaging that can push people out in those same phases. Not only do we lack a welcoming committee here, we tend to put people at the door who seem exasperated by the newcomer level of consciousness - hardly the warm greeting that signals we’re glad they’re here and hope they will stay.

The way to get out of exasperation is to connect with our own “Mwe” or “eco” consciousness. We can do this through remembering back to when we were new and what would have helped us adjust. In the words of Christiane Seuhs-Schoeller, “Today I am deeply grateful for my past experience, as it enables me to hold huge empathy & compassion for people who are on the same journey.” This mindset is also what is needed to design a truly welcoming environment for newcomers.

Fortunately we don’t need to start from scratch. Susie Wise’s excellent Design for Belonging lays out steps from Invitation to Diverging & Exiting.

Invitation & Entering

My experience in event planning tells me it’s a good idea to wait to design the invitation until we have the details of what we’re inviting people to do. And, once we’ve got a structure, we will need to be transparent about what’s going on and what’s expected of people once they enter. As Wise notes, “Confusion at the entry point can set people up to feel othered.” Do they just show up to a meeting? Sign up online? Is there vocabulary they should use or avoid? Just this week I was in a national level meeting where someone asked the meaning of the terms “BIPOC” and “White Saviorism.” I had to check my own assumption that everyone knows these things. Because the language is always shifting (see my earlier post) in social movements, a dynamic of right and wrong vocabulary can arise, with new folks feeling ambushed for their use of otherwise innocuous terms. 

“Confusion at the entry point can set people up to feel othered.” —Susie Wise

We also must, in Oluo’s words, “address the fear, grief, and isolation that often comes with budding awareness.” This means acknowledging that these emotions and sensations are par for the course, particularly for White people who have taken the idea of “fragility” to mean that it’s unacceptable to show emotions at all. Since these same folks may have little stamina for difficult emotions, it is also helpful to offer embodiment practices to help them process them. These don’t need to be elaborate — one of the most accessible is simply focusing on the breath, as shown in this elegant short video, Just Breathe, or this more detailed post, Take a Breath.

Wise adds that “Entering a space means entering the story of that space.” The lack of knowledge of the histories of movements, from Stonewall to Civil Rights, presents a huge opportunity for newcomers to embarrass themselves. Because of the incomplete narratives taught in US History courses, most Americans have enormous gaps in their understanding. This sets up a hierarchy wherein some people are “in the know” about activists past and present, and others are not. And this hierarchy leads to the perennial interest in book groups as a way to get “in the know.”

Compounding this is a lack of cross cultural understanding of norms and mindsets. These can develop from interracial friendships and work relationships, but we can’t assume newcomers will have these given that segregation is the default state for most White people. White coaching clients ask me all the time what was “wrong” about something they said or did. For example, more than one has received a cold response after assuming they were on a first-name basis with a Black elder. I didn’t always know it, but this is due to a long history of being denied status by being called “boy,” “girl,” or with a first name at best. As a result, many Black Americans appreciate being called by their title and last name: Dr. Jones, Ms. Smith, etc. In fact, renowned sociologist and writer W. E. B. DuBois used his initials precisely because it forced people to use his last name. It makes perfect sense once you know the story. We need to onboard neophytes into the story of whatever movement or group we’re in.

Welcoming Committee Tasks:

• Make clear what people are joining, how to join, and anything else that will make them more comfortable — including what to do when discomfort inevitably arises. 

• Come up with a concise story of the space - of your group, and of the movements it resides within. Offer a few resources, or a go-to person so that the knowledge doesn’t turn into an arcane initiation rite.

Participating & Contributing

If we want people to get beyond performative social posts, we need to offer them other ways to Participate, and we need to be sure we’re not ignoring barriers to participation. Are we using a social platform that new folks aren’t on? Are we consistently using spoken English? Are we meeting someplace difficult to get to in a wheelchair? Or via public transit? Do we meet in bars or otherwise normalize socializing with alcohol? The more barriers we eliminate, the more we facilitate participation.

Once people are in the door and able to participate, they need to have ways to Contribute by sharing some part of their unique gifts. This goes beyond the typical organizational roles of note-taker or time-keeper, to things that are more deeply aligned with personalities and experiences – and with the specific values of the organization. Deepa Iyer has mapped out a set of roles and a process for aligning them with your values in her excellent Social Change Now workbook. Her point is that as in biological communities, we need a range of interconnected roles working together in our social change ecosystems.

As much as we need Disrupters of the status quo, we also need Healers of current and historical wounds; as much as we need Visionaries to dream up new systems, we also need Builders to implement them. I’ve offered this book to both friends and clients when they have descended into self-criticism because they are not, for instance, the amazing Frontline Responders they see others being. It’s both comforting and grounding to understand that their abilities as, say, Experimenters or Storytellers can support those Frontline folks. Nobody has to do it all, and each person’s gifts are needed.

The welcoming committee especially needs two of these roles: Guides and Weavers. Iyer describes Guides as those people with the wisdom and discernment to teach, connect, and advise others. These are our potential mentors – regardless of their formal position in the organization – who can be a vital resource to new folks. In fact, this kind of guidance is important over and over as people navigate the transitions between stages of identity development, as well as the inevitable regression to prior stages. 

“Today I am deeply grateful for my past experience, as it enables me to hold huge empathy & compassion for people who are on the same journey.” —Christiane Seuhs-Schoeller

Weavers, similarly, are important resources to newcomers. They are the folks who can connect people to ideas, learning resources, events, organizations, and each other. They see the big picture and can help others find their place in it. When newcomers struggle to find their own role or to understand the story of the space, they need a Weaver to show them what steps to take next.

 Welcoming Committee Tasks:

• Identify the various roles in your group and how they connect to your values - potentially using the Social Change Now workbook.

• Include these roles in the story of your space.

• Make sure your Visionaries and Builders channel your equity values into recognizing and taking down barriers to participation. 

• Make clear to new participants who are the Guides and Weavers that they can connect with.

Code-Switching & Flowing:

Code-switching in its most technical sense means to be able to use more than one language or vernacular dialect of a language. In the larger sense it includes being able to blend in with different cultural norms, a marker of being part of more than one culture. As Wise puts it, it is a “skill of adaptation and an ability to move fluidly between contexts.”

In historically White organizations, the pressure to code-switch is on Black, Indigenous and other racialized individuals. If the ways they speak, act and present themselves in their home culture is different, they are expected to switch into the dominant White cultural norms at the office. Because the average White person experiences a continuous culture from home to work, we don't need to code-switch, and many of us don’t even realize it’s going on. This is part of that old adage that culture to the dominant group is like water to the fish - we are not even aware of it. 

But in order to welcome newly awakened White people into multiracial spaces, we must show them how we are re-culturing and illuminate their need to pay attention and code-switch. This in turn means that we need to be transparent about the dominant cultural norms that we are not adopting, and the alternative mindsets that we are striving to normalize. The specific mindsets to de-emphasize that encourage surface level activism, described in detail here, are:

Over-mentalization - Preference for thought to the exclusion of feeling and sensation

Action bias - Preference for doing over being or becoming

Assimilationism - Acceptance of dominant narrative without seeking multiple perspectives

Cultural Individualism - Belief in a heroic, individualist model of change

Catastrophe bias - Tendency to notice dramatic catastrophes over gradual decline or improvement 

A “gotcha” culture of unwritten rules is another mindset that exists in the dominant culture that isn’t healthy to reproduce. For example, at Courageous Conversation, the work is based on a set of agreements and conditions called “The Protocol.” Some clients would take it upon themselves to act as the “protocol police.” They seemed to delight in catching newer people not following it exactly, and correcting them publicly. This type of public shaming for technical mistakes is common in social justice circles and has been written about by Loan Tran, Kai Cheng Thom, adrienne maree brown and many others. 

A mindset shift from trauma work would benefit us in the welcoming committee context as well. There, the operative question is no longer “what’s wrong with you?” but “what has happened to you?” In the case of privileged individuals, what has happened is a great deal of insulation from the suffering, the resilience, and even the daily life of people unlike them. When a person breaks through that insulation only to be ensnared in a “gotcha,” they are highly likely to take the nearest exit. We are all more likely to develop deep understanding and become lasting advocates when we have some proactive guidance about what is going on around us. 

All of these re-culturing changes set your group up for periods purpose and play - what Wise calls Flow. This can take place as people enact their roles in an experimental, curious way, or as they find release in laughter, dance or games. The catch is that there needs to be some belonging for people to take the risk of being playful, but once they do, flow enhances everyone’s sense of belonging. 

Welcoming Committee Tasks:

• List any re-cultured mindsets your group has adopted, along with what they look like in your context.

• Encourage noticing how conversations, events and ideas are landing in your body; verbalize these: “My shoulders tightened up when you said. . . “

• Institute reflective pauses into your decision making process.

• Normalize seeking multiple perspectives, questioning how things have “always been done,” and noticing what stakeholders are absent that might enrich the dialogue.

• Practice gratitude for all who have contributed to your successes. Note that this will also promote belonging by making the contributing aspect visible.

• Regularly celebrate progress, large and small. 

Dissenting & Repairing, Diverging & Exiting

Wise includes these phases in Design for Belonging, and, though not in the scope of the welcoming committee, they are important to think about. What is relevant for the committee to communicate is that dissent is normal and welcome; that there’s a process for it; and the ground rules or communication norms that hold interactions with empathy and respect. As reproductive justice activist Loretta Ross put it, “A group of people moving in the same direction with the same thoughts and beliefs is a cult; A group moving in the same direction with different thoughts and beliefs is a movement. I’m not interested in joining a cult – I’m interested in building a human rights movement.” This means that if a newcomer spends some time with us and then realizes that their passion lies elsewhere, or their gifts are better put to use in a different branch of the human rights movement, we send them off with our best wishes. 

“A group of people moving in the same direction with the same thoughts and beliefs is a cult; A group moving in the same direction with different thoughts and beliefs is a movement. I’m not interested in joining a cult – I’m interested in building a human rights movement.” — Loretta J. Ross

And this is a different thing entirely than someone coming in, glancing around and not seeing how they fit in, having their emotions shut down, not being engaged in the story of the space, feeling frustrated that their actions aren’t amounting to anything, and running off to start over somewhere else.  Allowing someone to leave feeling unwelcome or ineffective, at best, plays into opposition messaging that “social justice warriors” are intolerant and narrow minded. At worst, it drives people into groups that are prepared to welcome them into hateful ideologies. Allowing people to diverge and exit once they (and you) have connected with the source/consciousness level creates more clusters of allegiance in a wider, interconnected change ecosystem.

My work centers around the intersection of systems change, embodied practice and racial equity. What is required for all three is consciousness building. If you’d like to build your consciousness - or your welcoming committee  - get in touch for workshops, cultural ways of being audits, or leadership coaching.