The white supremacy myth is the notion that white people represent the apex of all that is good, true, beautiful, worthwhile, trustworthy, meritorious, and so on. It’s reflected in myriad practices, images, beliefs, customs, and media. In short, the WSM says it’s better to be “white” than “black.”

However, the privileges light-skinned people of European descent get come with invisible costs. We didn’t consent to any of these. Unless we learn what happened and undo how whiteness lives in our consciousness, we remain steeped in that which we were born into.

1. We got stripped

Whiteness “whitewashes” that which makes us culturally unique. Most…

I love the subtlety of the distinction you make among types of fictions. Some are indeed clearly born of love.

You’ve probably heard of logical fallacies. They’re errors in logic that sound right for various reasons but do not hold up to logical scrutiny. Here are a few of the most well-known logical fallacies:

1. Argumentum ad hominem, or argument “against the man.” This fallacy points out a defect in someone’s character in order to refute their argument. For example, discrediting someone’s scientific discovery by claiming, “That person is a thief.” The person may or may not have stolen, but that does not affect the truth or falsehood of their scientific discovery.
2. Tu quoque, which means “You’re another.” In this instance…

Recently, in response to an article I wrote about white leadership, a colleague asked, “[H]ow does one de-pathologize and de-shame enough to engage in meaningful work, especially when there is so much shame shade being thrown around?” Here’s my answer.

First, step back and realize these things:

1. We’re in a transformative moment. These early stages of white people becoming aware of the big, white white supremacy myth (WSM) element in the room are looking messy, frightening, and at times intractable. This is to be expected.
2. In this transformative moment, the first thing many white people want to do is to dissociate themselves with the “other white people”…

You’re a good white person. You posted “Black Lives Matter” signs or memes. Your heart has been in the right place from the moment you became aware that something was rotten in the state of melanation. Since Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, you’ve become even more concerned about the state of Black lives in the United States of America.

So when your high school friend Susie, your cousin Fred, or your uncle Rob counter your Black Lives Matter posts with “All Lives Matter,” “Blue Lives Matter,” or “God takes care of all things, leave it to Him,” what do you…

I want to tell you about a marriage (of sorts) catalyzed by current events, and how it will change the world. At the end I’ll invite you — or someone you know who resonates — to join me in the result.

Travel back with me a few decades.

Sometime in 1993, I attended an informational meeting for the California Institute of Integral Studies then-nascent Transformational Leadership Development PhD program. While there, I met a tall human with a rich booming voice, deep belly laugh, and captivating ideas. …

A Google search for “dismantling white supremacy leadership” returns a page of mostly schools, community organizations, and independent educators. By contrast, a search for “diversity and inclusion leadership” returns a page of corporate initiatives, including articles in the Harvard Business Review.

What does this tell you?

It tells me corporate America is not fond of naming white supremacy, let alone excavating the white supremacy in its spaces.

Could this be because white supremacy is interwoven into the history of capitalism? …

Dear Robert Redfield:

Please stop using the word “race” in CDC forms, literature, and official communications to refer to peoples’ ethnicity. Science has shown that there’s no such thing as more than one human race, and also, this idea fuels violence, which as you know, isn’t good for health.

Eliminating the word “race” to refer to ethnicity would help the CDC better uphold your pledge to the American people. Point 3 of that pledge is “Base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively.” …