Can empathetic white allies be emotionally or psychologically impacted by the injustices towards BIPOC?
By: Alli Ruttger
Tags: White Privilege, Anti Racism, Equality, Racism, Social Justice

With this, I want to invite white readers to pause and hold these truths. We cannot enter this fight solely because racism indirectly impacts us, nor can we circumvent it because it does not belong to us. By inviting these seemingly opposing views into consideration, my hope is that white allies can find pathways to enter the fight against systemic racism that do not gratuitously centre themselves. Instead, entering this conversation necessitates a willingness to give up one’s privilege and leave white fragility behind for the benefit of BIPOC. Furthermore, if we’re going to unpack racism and its harms, we cannot forget to invite discourse around the ways in which we as white people continue to benefit from structural and institutionalized racism. In fact, I would say that the latter must precede the former. The sole reason that race was socially constructed was to benefit one group over another, and this must be thoroughly understood before we move toward ways structural racism has indirectly harmed white people.

“The harm [systemic racism] does to us, white people, is subtler. It corrupts and limits us. It is a poison that, if unchecked, flourishes in us. It is meaningful to understand how racism benefits white people, and it is also meaningful to unpack how it hurts us.” — Rachel Siegel, Peace and Justice Centre

Now, let’s be clear: all forms of racism are a problem for dominant groups as well. They’re a deeply ingrained, self-perpetuating societal ill that live within the bodies of white people and People of Colour in vastly different ways. So yes, white people are indirectly impacted by injustice toward BIPOC, and not just emotionally. Racism also limits us in the way we think, the way we behave, and the way we socialize. I’ll stress again that these are indirect affects and they are not the result of being oppressed. Below, I highlight a few of the ways racism hurts white people, and I invite other white people to reflect on the ways in which these indirect harms have impacted their lives—gently, and without self-judgement. As we’ll see later, guilt and fragility can paralyze us when what we need is to be galvanized into joining this fight.

Relationally

Systemic racism and the implicit biases that it creates which play out individually and interpersonally are based on outright lies about BIPOC. These lies limit us as white people in who we connect with, who we grow with, who we learn with. Perhaps the most urgent and pressing limitation here is that these lies perpetuate differences in who we choose to align with in our advocacy work, meaning that our work could exclude essential voices and intersectional lived experiences, leading to oppressive structures being permitted to thrive unchecked.

Emotionally

Of course, we can experience distress from witnessing injustice or consuming stories that dehumanize BIPOC. We might feel sadness, rage, despair, hopelessness, indignation, guilt, or anger. We might want to process these feelings in therapy or with our white friends and family members, but we should not use our relationships with BIPOC to process these feelings, as this would centre our despair and create a situation where BIPOC need to care for us and nurture us, which is consistent with harmful stereotypes about our respective roles in society. We need to process our distress without burdening BIPOC in order to do the work of showing up as allies, not as liabilities. Myself, I have used therapy as a space to process the rage that I feel about the injustice enacted against BIPOC, against women, against the LGBTQ+ community, and against disabled folks, so that I can use my anger in the way it is intended to be used; to advocate more fiercely.

Culturally

The creation of whiteness as a homogenized construct, which is the basis for all fallacious notions of white superiority and the subsequent inferiority of others, has literally whitewashed the rich tapestry of culture that makes up “whiteness”. As a result of the creation of this falsehood, many of us do not feel a strong connection to our ethnocultural traditions, heritage, or values. The creation of whiteness as the monolithic, dominant, and exclusive group devoid of culture—this narrative of white and other—has limited the ability of white people (myself included) to see themselves as cultural beings.

Author and therapist Resmaa Menakem explains how the intentional creation of whiteness and its eventual inclusion of those who were once considered non-white served to uphold white supremacy and homogenize a majority into the dominant culture:

“Dividing working-class Black and white people from each other was repeated with later waves of immigration: Italians, Irish, eastern European Jews, and other European immigrant groups were initially regarded as stupid, barbaric, and dangerous. Within a generation or two, however, each of these new white immigrant groups was socialized, colonized, and accepted by other Americans by being inducted into the false community of whiteness. One group (and one generation) of poor white people after another began to see their interests aligned with those of the ruling class.” — Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands

Cognitively

Racism lives in our minds through implicit biased and distorted beliefs about BIPOC which can create dissonance and confusion which block us from accessing our value system or engaging in meaningful discourse. Knowledge of these cognitive impacts is important, though it should be said that common cognitive methods of intervening on ingrained racist beliefs, attitudes, and values are inadequate. I fear that the implicit bias argument absolves people of their responsibilities to marginalized groups, as it is all too easy to dismiss one’s racist thoughts as outside of the realm of their control and therefore allow them to remain firmly in place. Resmaa Menakem offers that cognitive interventions such as cultural diversity trainings, focus groups, and dialogue focus on the mind, and do not adequately address the ways in which racism has impacted white bodies, which brings me to the next point.

“Racist ideas make White people think more of themselves, which further attracts them to racist ideas.”—Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist

Somatically

Racism lives in our bodies, too. In fact, according to Resmaa Menakem, from a neurophysiological point of view, the visceral (bodily) reactions associated with the fear and othering of BIPOC require specific and deliberate attention should healing occur. He asserts that racialized trauma takes up space in the nervous systems of white people—a very, very different space than that of BIPOC, but real indeed. Basically, this means that bodily tendencies to fight, flight, or freeze (which we normally associate with tangible threats to our safety) also apply when we face tangible threats to what we think we know. This causes white people to react to ideas and discourse surrounding white supremacy and racism with one of the aforementioned responses, thwarting any hope of calm and regulated dialogue. By this logic, historical racialized trauma needs to be addressed in the bodies of white people in order for us to unpack the ingrained tendency to respond to it as a threat to our integrity or our privilege.

A note on intersectionality

Last, racism upholds and benefits other forms of oppression, all of which ultimately benefit a white, able-bodied, upper middle-class, masculine, cisheteronormative identity. This means that there are many white people who do not fit into this dominant identity who are ultimately being affected indirectly by systemic racism. Misogyny, transphobia, and other forms of oppression do not work in isolation—they all work to benefit and empower the aforementioned demographic above all others.

Rachel Siegel illustrates this with an example around her identity as a white Ashkenazi Jew: