The Owner's Manual To Your White Brain: An Intro

That's right, guys. A manual. To YOUR White Brain.

Well, we need one. I sure as heck didn't know how to run mine when I first started trying to understand racism, so it's a foregone conclusion that anyone else who's just started doesn't, either. In addition to the aforementioned fuckup, I've gone through so many dumb ideas and misunderstandings and complete failures to figure out what people are saying that it finally hit me: white people probably don't need to learn as much about racism (in the first few months of their education) as they need to learn how to learn about racism. It's not something that can simply be conveyed through memes and quick ideas (though I do love me some memes), nor is it something that can be understood just by knowing the facts that it is made of. It is something that has to be felt, as close as the white brain can possibly come to grokking it. Unfortunately, you cannot tell someone to feel something and cause them to feel it. You have to communicate in the right way, and sometimes they just won't get it until one day it sinks in and then they're going to wonder how the heck they could have been so stupid.

What I want to do is provide a resource for white people to start untraining themselves without making a mess all over PoC's work space - an online workshop, if you will. I'll be staying away from buzzwords - which newbies tend to stare at befuddledly before wandering off for a game of checkers - and relying on allegory, the resources I have found that have helped me to get it, and parables. (Unlike Jesus, I will not make fun of people if they fail to understand them.) During the process, I hope to draw from and bring light to the work and resources of people of darker persuasions (and their pale allies, as relevant), without whose efforts I would still be completely clueless.

I cannot teach someone about racism. I can only teach them how to learn about racism. And that, I hope, will be worthwhile.