White supremacy Q&A

I lead with my heart to unpack some difficult conversations.

You might be here to learn, you might be here to fight. I try to be as human as possible with the capacity that I have available to me when I respond to these questions.

For me, when it comes to race, it has always felt like a battlefield because I am constantly getting blindsided by people who want to fight me and challenge my experience of oppression. So I come into this space feeling a little nervous, a little wrecked, and very ready. These are all verbatim or paraphrased questions and comments I have actually received.

I hope you are also here to lead with your heart and release for a moment the need to be right, though you have every right to disagree at any level. Here we go.

What even exactly is “white supremacy”?

To me, as US resident and citizen, white supremacy in America is the rippling effect of European colonization of indigenous lands that are now called the “United States of America,” sponsored by the enslaved labor of black people and driven by the colonizers’ desire to dominate and evangelize those who did not look like them or think like them. The rippling effect of this colonization has resulted the current state of the white Christian patriarchal late-stage capitalism that continues to take disproportionate advantage of those who do not share the privileges of the cis het white man. The issue is exacerbated by the ones with the most privilege unwilling to examine the unintentional and subconscious effects of their unearned privilege.

Why even use the word “white supremacy” when the people who are truly white supremacists are the ones being actually violent, like the KKK?

One way white supremacy persists is by “othering” those who are physically violent white supremacists and distancing themselves from the ways they perpetuate white supremacy under the radar. Examples:

• Telling people to “just be kind and love one another” when that has resulted non-white people being taken advantage of disproportionately.

• Disproportionately passing up non-white employees for raises and promotions especially in predominately white spaces because of unacknowledged and unexamined subconscious biases

• Refusing to hear out non-white experiences at the risk of feeling attacked because the conversations are uncomfortable

• Telling people to be “more authentic” when non-white people have been excluded for their cultural authenticity for ages

White people are most susceptible to doing these things because they have the privilege of being white to do these things typically without consequence. White men have built the status quo because they have been the ones primarily creating laws and systems that make it most suitable for them to operate in, which offers them sustainable power to keep non-white people in less power.

Note that I don’t say “all white men.”

What about non-white people? So they are all just super innocent?

Nope. We are all complicit in perpetuating systems that result in people being treated differently, including myself. Here are examples of my own internalized white supremacy:

• I used to dress and talk like white people so that I can be more acceptable to white people.

• I used to judge non-white people talking about racial “injustices” when there were “way more intense” injustices going on around the world.

• I used to salivate over connections with rich, white, privileged white people who had the power to give me more resources and status to move through life.

• I used to listen more carefully to what white people thought than non-white people.

• I used to compete with other non-white people so that I can be more recognized in the systems that white people have constructed.

Just to name a few. I still probably do all this subconsciously. It takes a lifetime of me to undo, and it begins with awareness of my complicity.

Why say “white privilege” when it’s more about class AND race rather than just race?

You are right that class privilege is very real, and I am a good example of it. Because I was born into generational wealth, I am able to remove myself from white-dominated spaces that require me to work disproportionately more in order to make money. Instead, I get to dictate how I make money on my own terms (for the most part, because I will never be completely safe and insulated from white supremacy in this world).

Here are the two sticking points:

First, when you are a cis het white man disproportionately benefitting from the status quo, the priority needs to be looking at how you are complicit in the oppressive systems in place, not being right and protecting your pride. This really demonstrates how unfamiliar you are with being on the receiving end of oppression day in and day out. Because if you really knew what it is like to live in a non-white body and see just how many things you take for granted on a daily basis gets stripped away from you, protecting your pride would be the last thing on your mind.

Second, even if you were actually not a beneficiary of the status quo as a white man (which is not real), and even though I get a lot of protection as a result of my class privilege, I still cannot pay my way out of subconscious biases people have because of how I look. I cannot pay my way out of every experience of white people telling me what to do and telling me how I should be ashamed of my differences. The potential of being attacked because I look different exists regardless of how much money I have.

Why are you so angry when you’re talking about these things?

My question is always, why wouldn’t you be angry? I cannot count the number of times unassuming white people have said and done things arising out of their ignorance - not only making comments about my appearance or assuming things about my heritage, but also expecting me to act deferential to white people and speak their language so that I can fit in to their culture. I have been expected to abandon myself and play their game.

And when I say this has happened to me many times regardless of when and where, most white people tell me that that was just an anomaly and that I am being too sensitive. Or they are more focused on being technically and historically right so that they can remain in power without putting in any effort to relate to me or see how they can make the world more equitable to people who are different. Or they demand answers from me without actually trying to empathize where I am coming from.

At some point, I explode because I am human. And sometimes, that is the first instance of people interacting with me, which gives them permission to try to silence me even more. This is why I advocate for honoring our emotions like anger because otherwise, we are in a constant state of demonizing our own anger and, as a result, demonizing others’ anger.

I believe that collective decolonization begins with decolonizing our hearts and our humanity - namely, the emotions that arise naturally as a result of being human.

How are you addressing the fact that you also have all kinds of privileges, even if it is not “white privilege”? How are you examining yourself?

First, I do what I can do take responsibility for my own feelings. So when people tell me that I have hurt them, I believe them. Even if it comes from people with more privilege. Whoever is saying it to me, I believe what they are saying. Maybe they are being “too sensitive” or “overreacting,” but I don’t believe that because those are judgments that arise from my own personal experiences. So if I were to make a judgment about who they were, that would be a reflection of my own projections on what they ought to be so that they can fit into my paradigm of how human beings should be like.

That means I find ways to carry myself through discomfort and confusion if someone tells me that I unintentionally hurt them so that I can really understand their differences and their perspective that can challenge my thinking. I allow myself to be wrong because I believe relating to other humans that don’t share the same privileges is more important than being right.

Second, I am always in a state of decolonizing increasingly more aspects of my life by asking this question: where am I holding on to resources that I don’t need so that I can maintain my place in the status quo? Here are some artifacts of that journey:

• I began my business from scratch by unsubscribing from the hierarchical disposition of the coaching industry. I am no longer a “life coach” but instead a “peer.” This does three things: (1) I am no longer “helping people” do things “better” as if to say that where they are now is not good enough. This is the kind of standard I advocate for when we interact with human beings - not requiring anything from them and honoring who they are and where they are first and foremost. (2) I am not charging exorbitant rates where support is available only to “executive” and “leaders” but making it accessible to everyone, including those who cannot afford next month’s rent. (3) I am releasing the need to participate in the capitalistic need to make more money and be “better” than everyone else. I am a human and a peer first and foremost.

• I am leaving groups where I feel like I cannot express the fullest extent of my own humanity. That means not waiting around for people to stand with me as actual allies. I am taking ownership of my full humanity by not making others responsible for holding space for me when they are not available for it.

• I have abandoned the traditional expectations of monogamy in part because of the ways compulsory monogamy has been a tool of colonization that was used to take control over women’s bodies, decisions, and agency. Another reason I own my identity as a non-monogamous person is that it is simply how to respect my own desires, and when I do that, I have greater capacity to honor others’ desires, especially of those who have been gaslighted out of theirs because of oppressive systems.

By looking at all the ways I still subscribe to colonizing my own humanity, I get to increase my capacity for empathizing with those who are putting in even more work in trying to decolonize their humanity, like indigenous humans who literally cannot decolonize their land, for example, because it has simply been taken away from them.

Do you really think that your aggressiveness will fix anything? That’s not how you persuade people. It’s too much.

I can’t think of a time in my life where I haven’t been called “aggressive” and “too much” for speaking my mind. Yes, sometimes I will say it angrily. Sometimes I am allowed to speak angrily, and sometimes I do regret the way I spoke. I am a deeply flawed individual, and I own it.

One thing I will not do, however, is try to be perfect because that is a slippery slope. There is not a chance where I will say things in a way that is acceptable to everybody looking at it. If I am not going to be acceptable to everyone, the best course of action for me is to express my truth. That is acceptable to some and unacceptable to others. That is out of my control.

One thing I do know is that when I wait until I am acceptable to the “right” people, I will have to wait past my own death. Because people in power will always find a way to say something is wrong with me. They will always find a way to say I am unacceptable so that they remain in power. So sometimes, being unacceptable IS the resistance. By simply existing in an unacceptable fashion, I get to claim space and power unaffected by others’ attempt to take it away from me.

Why are you so obsessed with attacking white people? Would you like it if I attacked Asian people? You are a bigot.

I am a bigot. I am everything bad that you think I am, and more. The reason that is not a problem for me is that, again, you will always find something wrong with me, so trying to be acceptable to you is a fruitless pursuit.

Imagine if I actually submitted to what you were saying. That would be a function of my internalized white supremacy, trying to be more acceptable to someone who refuses to see me the way I want to be seen.

As for the Asian thing, there is reason that there is no such thing as “Asian supremacy.” Maybe there are pockets of history where some lineage of Asians dominated particular lands and people. That culture of domination by Asians is not something that is real, tangible, or present in the US. Even if you had an Asian boss who has power over you and you are a white person, if both of you were to be fired, chances are higher that you would have an easier time finding a job. This is not the case all the time, but it is the case the majority of the time.

For sake of argument, let’s say that that is totally not true. Even if that were the case, have you ever someone tell you to put your burger away because it’s so smelly? Ever had someone make fun of you for how American your eyes are? Ever have someone punch you out of “white hate”?

Before trying to prove being right, please entertain the implications of you not knowing what it is like to be in a non-white body. When you are able to honor that, perhaps we are able to have a discussion on how we can keep honoring each other because our truth is born out of being disproportionately dishonored our whole lives.

Speaking of empathy, do you even have any idea what it is like to be a white person living on minimum wage and many other disadvantages and actually does not get to enjoy the world the way you do?

I don’t. This is one way I am imperfect. I mean, would you require MLK to take care of white people first?

As one of my teachers Melissa Tiers says, everybody shows up to activism differently. I can only speak from what I know to be true for me and others like me, and that is where I get to build my own ecosystem of those who resonate. I never claimed to change the entire world or that all white people are bad. But somehow people seem to believe that when I speak up against injustice, it needs to cover every single instance and that I am simply spreading hate. I see that more as a projection rather than an actual understanding of what I am saying. This is evidenced by the many white people who do listen to what I am saying and are able to learn and digest without requiring me to explain myself or taking it personally.

Do you have any idea how hard I worked to get to where I am? How dare you tell me about my privilege?

I don’t know how hard you worked. I do know, however, how hard I worked and how my “hard work” was made available to me by my privileges. Yes, I worked hard to get into law school, pass the bar, get a job, fight injustice in my own capacity, and all of those things were made possible because of my privilege to even have the space to work hard.

Nobody is trying to negate your hard work. We are inviting you to examine your privileges that may inform any sense of resentment or entitlement arising out of your hard work. Meaning, where are you trying to silence others from speaking their truth so that your hard work can be acknowledged? Can your hard work exist at the same time as the privileges that got you there?

But I have non-white friends, and they don’t seem to have a problem with me. Doesn’t that mean I am doing this right?

This is not about you. This is not about proving that you are “doing it right.” This is about their experiences, and chances are, there are parts of them that they may not entirely feel secure sharing about out of fear that you may not understand them. Just like you may have parts of you that want to remain hidden.

Many of us, including myself, mask our truths a lot and sometimes downright lie about how we actually are because we don’t want to “burden” others with the experiences of our oppression. I have an inkling that you can relate to this, especially if you’ve felt stress and anxiety in other areas of your life, and you didn’t want to “burden” others with it. Except with us, we were born with that burden of being different. I am not playing the oppression olympics, but rather, inviting you to hold space for the kinds of experiences that you may not be familiar with if you want to understand where they might be coming from. Whatever that looks like for you based on your relationship with them.

None of this meant to be easy, and we are all falling forward in the messiest of ways.

What even is white feminism, and why are you attacking all white women?

This is what I have shared in the past: White feminism is the act of white women thinking they are advancing the cause of “all women” by “supporting” more women to get up the corporate ladder by (1) stepping on other non-white women to get up there first (the way white men do) and then (2) “helping” (sort of) others to do the same so that we can all be more like white men.

Let me unpack this a little bit.

First, there is no part of this where I say every white woman does this but that it is something that a white woman does. That doesn’t have to be every white woman.

Second, nobody shows up to intentionally “step on” other women. That is one mistake I made here because I make mistakes all the time. I should have clarified that this is unintentional and steeped in internalized patriarchy. Here’s how.

Late stage capitalism is a direct product of the patriarchy. White men, taking up most of the space especially with the industrial revolution, found the need to move as quickly as possible and dominate as much as possible. In order to do that, they needed to work a lot and take advantage of their wives taking care of everything at home so that they may “succeed” at work, and many of them failed to acknowledge the women’s role in their success, unintentionally “stepping on” them to get what they wanted. Many were also resistant to having women in the workplace at all.

So it goes without saying that white women have been on the receiving end of oppression from white men. But they have also installed in their minds that the ultimate paradigm of “success” is being a leader among white men and being more like them. I mean, that was the only example that was given to us.

So then they unintentionally adopt the behavior of white men of doing things as fast as possible, ignoring the ways they are wired, and even demonizing their own reproductive capabilities. To that end, they also end up putting it on those with less systemic power, namely non-white women, to support them on their quest to become more powerful as defined by the white patriarchy. Examples: denying maternity leave requests, telling them to just “step up” and stop bringing emotions (one of women’s core capabilities) to the workplace, inviting mostly white women executives to “mentor” others because being an executive is what makes you valuable to other women. All this disproportionately affects non-white women.

What then? This is a whole other discussion, but I want to start with this question: who am I, really, outside my calendar, my inbox, and my obligations for supporting my own family? In what ways have I subscribed to others’ definition of success that I actually share little resonance with?

For me, I don’t subscribe to the word “success” all that much because when I think of that word, the image of a person that the word evokes does not look like me at all. Instead, I go on a quest to find other words and expressions that more accurately demonstrate who I am in my truest form, and that is where I begin defining the ways I want to operate in the world, removed from the paradigms that were simply handed down to us. This does not look the same for everybody, and rightfully so, because everybody is different.

How is it “white supremacist” for people to give you feedback? Are you that weak and sensitive?

I am a human being that knows how she wants to be treated. There are people who offer feedback in the following attitude: Hey, I appreciate you, and I also want you to hold space for my own differences. Can you do that?

And then there are people who offer feedback in the following attitude: You are wrong, and I am right.

And then there is somewhere in between, and I make a judgment call on a case-by-case basis on how I want to be available for such feedback, if at all.

I am always working to elevate the standard of human interaction by resisting the culture that women are weak for being emotional. We are very discerning because of our emotions, and I will use that power to hold myself and others to such standards of human interaction, at least in my orbit.

How do you ground yourself when you keep getting kicked around?

My go-to inspiration are those who are doing what I do at a much larger scale. The people I look up to most notably are Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, co-authors of the book White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better and co-creators of the documentary Deconstructing Karen.

It is because of women like this that I find the courage to be hated for the sake of speaking out about what I care about. If you want to go deeper into this work, I suggest very strongly that you go check out their work.

What exactly do you want from white people?

Expand your capacity to feel like shit. To feel like a bad person. To feel wrong. Because for me, it is because of my capacity to feel terrible that I was able to take responsibility for my own emotions and open up space to be wrong about how I affected other people. It was because I was willing to be wrong that I was able to put my pride aside and listen to what they were saying and continue the discussion from a place of humility and curiosity rather than the need to be right.

It is very human to be wrong and bad. That is why words like that exist. It just doesn’t make you any less of a human. In fact, when I was willing to be honest about my blindspots and own my ignorance, that is when I was able to connect with others more deeply because I was willing to be human.

No one is asking you to be superhuman. I am asking you to be human.

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This Q&A is by no means exhaustive, but it is the extent to which I have capacity for writing at this time. Again, I highly recommend looking at Saira and Regina’s work because they have put in even greater effort into unpacking these challenging issues. I also might write more later when the time arises.

Please don’t assume that, because I put in all this work to answer these questions, that I am available with an unlimited capacity for further questions and debate. The work I’ve done here is a product of my own curiosity and desires to express myself, and anything outside of this is beyond the terms of how I want to create. So if you want to have a discussion or understand more, I make my time available under certain terms and conditions. You can find that information here: angela-han.com.

Thanks for reading. This was a lot, and your presence in this discussion is an important part of the movement towards more people being treated as real human beings and not as tokens or statistics.