I've been conditioned to think white people are superior to me. Help!

August 6, 2020 7:05 AM

At a deep subconscious level I have a fundamental belief that white people (and men) are superior to me. Help me decolonize my mind.

I'm a woman of color who lives in America and who for the first time in my life is doing self work to uncover how much I've internalized white supremacy. I'm in my thirties and I work as a lawyer. In recent months, due to the BLM protests, a series of consciousness-heightening conversations with POC friends, events at my job, and self work in therapy, I've realized the extent to which my mind has been colonized by racist belief systems, and also the extent to which I've been avoiding thinking about this subject all my life because it's so painful.

When I say colonized it's hard to describe subjectively what I mean. I recognize my own worth and intelligence, and am recognized by others (whites and POC) in my personal and professional circles. On a day to day level, it's not as if I go about questioning myself or comparing myself against whites or experiencing crippling self doubt. If anything, I generally feel secure in myself and proud of my accomplishments and the person I am. But, sometimes certain conditions will produce an interior state in my mind and emotional nervous system that makes me feel fearful, limited, lesser, subordinate, and uncertain of my position vis-a-vis the white power structure and society as a whole.

Here are some ways this has emerged in recent years:
(1) When I am in adversarial situations litigating against whites, particularly white men, or before white judges, I feel tension/fear, I think because on a subconscious level I regard adversaries of a certain demographic as my "superiors." It doesn't help that my bosses, who by definition have great power over me, have historically all been white.
(2) I write fiction, and I've a pattern of effacing myself and people of my ethnic heritage from my work, again because I think on a subconscious level I'm afraid to insist to white readers and the 85% white publishing industry that art about people who look like me can be meaningful, significant, or beautiful.
(3) In POC spaces I notice I'm given a lot of respect and looked up to by other POC, but in white dominated spaces I'm not attributed with nearly the same authority or deference. In the latter spaces I'm treated as a different person, and I accordingly act differently (more passive, not as outspoken, etc). To the extent I attempt to act more fully like myself/speak out in white dominated spaces, it's an act of will to assert myself, and I have to struggle with whites and white men to seize and take up that space. It's tiring and bizarre to have to shift between these two roles and worlds, and it really highlights the shitty racial and gender hierarchies in this society. So, often what happens is that I just don't assert myself in white spices, because it's so friggin' tiring.

What are some resources for unlearning these belief systems and patterns of conditioning, and getting free? If you have experiences or thoughts to share to help me on my journey, I'd love to hear those too.

posted by anonymous to Society & Culture (13 answers total)

I'm white and female. I've been hella aggressed against for the crime of being female in predominantly male spaces, and I relate to a lot of your post on that basis.

I've always thought that language matters a lot in how we are conditioned. When I read about the Wharf-Sapir hypothesis in college, it clicked with so many observations I'd made in life.

For the most part, you can't change how other people express themselves, but you can notice it, you can mentally correct it, and you can change the way you speak and write yourself, and that may help undo some of the conditioning of language.

For example, in English, often words like "black" or "dark" are meant as negatives, and "white" is meant as a positive. Not using terms in this way, and perhaps gently pushing back when some others (friends or colleagues who are decent, well-meaning people) use them may help change the atmosphere in which you exist to a less toxic one.

Another example, it is still pretty common for people to say "man" when they mean "people" and "he" when they are trying to refer to a prototypical human being. Very often, people will hand-wave away any suggestion that this matters. They will say that others know what they are talking about, but that is provably not entirely true. There was some very interesting research that showed that when test subjects were asked to illustrate a sample textbook chapter that used sexist language, they tended to overwhelmingly use illustrations showing men. But when asked to illustrate the same chapter with gender neutral language, the images chosen were more balanced.

This stuff is insidious, and I think it needs to be consciously fought against.

I think it also helps to listen to, read, and consume media by and about different types of people. Especially if X type of people are less common in a certain domain, seeking out their input and perspective can normalize it. So, if a majority of lawyers are still white men, seeking out and surrounding yourself with the voices of those who are not may help prove to your subsconscious self how knowledgeable and worthwhile lawyers who are not men or white can be.
posted by nirblegee at 9:02 AM on August 6, 2020

The Body is not an Apology is centered around radical self love, and decolonizing notions of what bodies are acceptable. I know you don't specifically say that you struggle with colonial beauty standards, but I found it helpful to understand how taught shame manifested itself in relation to my body.
posted by FirstMateKate at 9:13 AM on August 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

Just taking up the relatively minor fiction-writing/appreciation issue under point (2): if you have an interest in SF/F, the Hugo Award results from last weekend might be worth a deep dive, in part to enjoy the wide array of wins from women and BIPOC authors being celebrated on a global stage and in part to observe the casual incompetence and supremacism of the very famous white writers presenting. I'm sure it's a familiar kind of situation--it's just a recent high contrast example with articulate reactions. Similarly, August is Women in Translation Month, and I wonder if that kind of celebratory immersion in things an American context tends to obscure, as a matter of both conscious and structural racism, might be a relatively enjoyable way of building up your image of what's worth writing about. If by chance you've been worried in the past about self-stereotyping, both suggestions offer oblique ways to find positive models, but being symbolically anti-essentialist isn't really better--both seem like obscure 4-dimensional chess problems compared to the more important matter of being happy.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:14 AM on August 6, 2020

(What an exciting question. I'm not the OP but I really do hope that people who respond here (esp. white people!) are mindful of their own race & experiences, understand that BIPOC have been thinking about this for a while, and show up with responses that hold the depth of contemplation of being thought about for years.)

Also: I think your race might be a bit relevant here, because whiteness operates in a few different ways, and it might be helpful to specifically identify which kind of racist belief system you might be more exposed to. I've found this essay, Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy, helpful.

To speak more personally about what I've been doing to undo my internalized white adjacency (as well as anti-Blackness):


# Being part of BIPOC spaces, reading a lot of writings by BIPOC, listening to podcasts, etc. You might be doing this already.. but it's just really nice to be part of a shared discussion that is so good at articulating and understanding whiteness and race.

Being in white spaces is tough and weary, and it's even worse if the white space doesn't realize or understand that it's a white space. I'd highly recommend being engaged in conversations with other poc. Somehow the silver lining through this pandemic has been that personally, I am in almost several zoom calls a week that's about BIPOC organizing groups about anti-racism in my practice/field, and am working on collective projects around this. Are there affinity groups for POC lawyers you know of (because they're out there!). Can you start one?

# Understanding white supremacy as denialism / inferiority complex:

Frantz Fanon talks about this in Black Skin White Masks, and Toni Morrison talks about it perfectly here. Understanding that the traits of whiteness that are usually extolled ("strong leader", "loud & outspoken", "proactive") are compensatory mechanisms to respond to white guilt / racial guilt at dehumanizing/enslaving/othering people. What are the compensatory mechanisms created for people to continuously dehumanize other people? Race is constructed and created/enforced by this desire to dehumanize.

If you see it this way, it makes a lot of sense; strategies of whiteness include othering, aggression, boundary-drawing ('us vs them'), exclusion, hierarchy. The ways in which you see white people performing "well" in the USA might actually be a series of toxic patterns that white supremacy has developed in order to justify systematic enslaving of people and colonizing/stealing of land. Flip the script: White people are holding a collective unconscious -- guilt and self-hatred about continuous, widespread, and historical violence done onto other people -- and have developed a set of strategies to respond in return.

These strategies are the ones you have been trained to understand as "superior" or "meaningful, significant, beautiful". These strategies are the ones that have continued and maintained an explicit or implicit violence and gatekeeping -- in other words, these strategies keep whiteness 'supreme'. Not all of these strategies are bad in of themselves, but it's important for us to isolate and recuperate healthy ways of being that might be distorted/amplified by white supremacy.

This realization/process was really helpful for me to find a light to reunderstand language around""majority""/minority or ""dominant"" race group, and instead see it as a compensatory mechanism for white inferiority/guilt at needing to reinforce oppressive power structures by upholding the construct of race and whiteness. James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and others all have language for this process.

# Examining my own internalized racism

Honestly - this is the work. I didn't do enough progress until I actually sat down and thought about all the things I secretly worried or believed about the race I was part of. For many POC there's a lot of internalized racism that originates from family. Personally it's been really important to find a POC therapist who gets it, or at least when they don't get it won't misread or misattribute something to my race. If you have a white therapist, it might be worth reading this article and reflecting on the whiteness of therapy.


# Orienting your work

Perhaps that might even mean changing your job. Or even deeply understanding why your job is so white; usually for white spaces, not only are there systematic barriers, usually the job or space itself enforces or produces whiteness unconsciously. Is your job itself upholding or reinforcing whiteness? That might explain why it's so white. These are some pretty hard and deep questions, but really important and helpful and healing to unearth.

Wishing you luck and compassion through your journey. Feel free to Memail.
posted by suedehead at 9:48 AM on August 6, 2020 [8 favorites]

Now that you've gotten some POC responses, I'll quickly write: what you wrote really resonated (and painfully!) with me because it sounds so much like a manifestation of impostor syndrome. There are plenty more resources to help in that direction, and I hope you find some of them useful in your own context. I'm white so I'll butt out here (and suedehead, what an awesome response that I will be rereading often). Best wishes and lots of admiration to you.
posted by ashy_sock at 9:53 AM on August 6, 2020

I look white and speak unaccented English, unlike most of my childhood cohort.

I don’t have anything specific to offer but this looked useful:

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10218502362455944&id=1401614751
posted by tilde at 9:55 AM on August 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

For my family, we’ve changed up our media to reduce visual reinforcement. (I dearly miss Gwen Ifil) so we have fewer blondes and more diversity. We watch more shows that demonstrate diversity, with Nova having a broad array of PhDs. We have likely over-indulged in Skip Gates and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but history and astronomy are topics we geek out on. Lately we’ve been supplementing screen time with short videos, and Ted Talks have a lot of powerful women speaking up with their expertise. Talithia Williams is one. There are more law-related women out there. Also, look toward a focused bar association, as there is likely a common interest in exploring internalized racism via a closed discussion or occasional retreat.
posted by childofTethys at 10:08 AM on August 6, 2020

I’ll be explicit that if you’re white and if you haven’t thought about this for years or decades, your (well-intentioned) personal response is probably not helpful. May even be harmful. Speaking to everyone in the thread.
posted by suedehead at 10:41 AM on August 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

Mod note: A few comments removed for being out of format. *Ask MetaFilter comments should address the main question being asked.* OP is clearly asking for resources for unlearning these belief systems and patterns as well as experiences or thoughts to share to help them.
Also, small reminder to anyone commenting here to check the guidelines, and particularly to White commenters to be extra careful and be aware of how much space you are occupying in the thread
posted by loup (staff) at 11:37 AM on August 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

I am a poc in Europe and I have never seen white men as my professional equals. My (white) husband was shocked when I told him this ten years ago, and seemed to see this as a character deficit of mine. As if it were a weakness to internalise sexism and racsm. (I mean, we got over this, so no need to hate on him now.)

I wish I had something better to say. But just the other day I played pokemon go and I'd chosen a female avatar of colour. And so I was training my pokemon to fight others, and got matched up with a white male avatar, and ...no lying, it scared me a little to fight a white man. I felt the expectation of aggression and low regard and lack of empathy or any boundaries. I felt inferior, under attack and exposed.

This shit is insidious.

I work in a female dominated job where men expect us to advise them in communication matters and they take my advice because that's recognised as an area of female expertise. Even women of colour. But I don't know what I'd do if I had your job. I'm forty fucking years old.

I'm sorry. I'm just sharing because it always helped me to hear other people's stories.
posted by Omnomnom at 11:46 AM on August 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Find people who make you uncomfortable because it seems like they’re taking it too far. And keep doing that.

This totally works. There's an internal Overton Window that works much the same way as the political one, and the only way these things shift is by being dragged from the edges.
posted by flabdablet at 9:55 AM on August 7, 2020

In terms of experiences or practices that I've found useful:

1) When I can, I very deliberately try to separate myself from people or systems that I've identified as actively bad for me - because it's very hard to reset your beliefs if you're still soaking in vats of whatever it is that's harming you. This is hard for lots of reasons. First because actually identifying that something is doing you harm isn't always easy. Second, everything exists on a spectrum of obligation/discretion - sometimes opting out of something to the degree one would like just isn't a viable choice.

2) Once I've removed as much of myself as I can, I then try and find/test the beliefs I'd rather have, instead. Therapy is one way to get this done, but "brown people don't do therapy" is more than just a joke - it also means there aren't a lot of therapists who are able to navigate the specific set of issues you've described here (the last thing you want is a tone deaf white therapist reinforcing systemic racism, sexism, whatever when you're trying to work through your stuff). Others have touched on sharing space with others who've lived similar experiences - that's a good option, too.

I'm more inclined to try and do this part on my own, however - and the two specific tactics I've found useful and that I've yet to see mentioned are Abbott Labs' Woebot app and either pretending to be or actively taking on the roles/responsibilities of the person with whom I've having issues.

Woebot is a cognitive behavioral trainer (CBT). I'm not super fond of its chat/text/emoji heavy interface, but it's worth a go to see if the approach might work for you, in general (understanding it's an AI approximation, CBT isn't for everyone, this version of CBT might not be the right fit, it was probably built by biased white people, etc.).

Taking on another's role is really an exercise in checking your beliefs for distortions. When you've been the "superior" - do you act like them? Do you expect that your "subordinates" should act the way that you sometimes do? If the answer to both of those is no - what does that mean for you and how you might prefer to act when occupying an allegedly "subordinate" role? Or when relating to someone allegedly in a "superior" role? This all completely skips past whether or not the superior/subordinate roles are explicitly (like say, with your boss, or your parents) or implicitly (rando white men) defined, with their associated varying degrees of obligatory or discretionary participation.

Good luck - this stuff is hard. Personally, I'm at the point where I might be able to recognize that some specific set of thoughts about a particular situation might be distorted, but how I actually feel is still another story.
posted by NoRelationToLea at 1:43 PM on August 7, 2020

This just came across my social media feed and I thought it might be relevant to you. From Forbes: "An open letter to Black professionals: You were never the impostor." I think it nicely highlights how the side-lining of Black people, POC, women, marginalized, is not imaginary, it's real. Internalizing that reality is not a failure of YOU but the system.

So to my fellow Black professionals who have succeeded despite every odd stacked against you, who followed the Black parent mantra that you had to “work harder,” “be more educated,” and “be friendlier” than everyone else; for those who navigated the loneliness of being the first or the only one; who swallowed sharp comments when faced with countless microaggressions and code-switched like your career depended on it (let’s be honest—it did).

For those who dealt with countless inappropriate questions about your hair, your culture, and your family; for those who received muddled performance reviews or were told your presence in a room is aggressive/intimidating or you don’t seem like the kind of “guy I could get a beer with.” For all the times you felt like an impostor despite achieving the ever-changing benchmark of excellence.

Remember that you were never the impostor. The true impostor was the corporate hiring system that told you that you just needed to get an education and work hard and that would be enough. Turns out, they just realized their system was broken and the odds were never in our favor.

posted by amanda at 1:20 PM on August 10, 2020