Anti-Racism Resource: ‘White Like Me’ Documentary Film
Greetings y’all. As some of you may know, I recently enrolled in a graduate program in Social Work and am pursuing a master's degree with the goal of becoming a licensed therapist in the next few years. While it has been a ton of work, I am deeply enjoying getting to know my cohort and diving more deeply into topics which have interested me on a personal and professional level for many years. One of the topics we have been covering this semester is the prevalence of white (mostly women) in the profession of Social Work. This has led us to examine our privileges and the concept of whiteness itself in many of the same ways that we do in PLC at our monthly Anti-Racism Circle. As a part of this sharing and exploration we white folks are doing together, I wanted to share a documentary that I am presenting on in my class (chosen because y’all have inspired me so much), and suggest that it might be not only a really great resource for anti-racism inquiry and examination, but also perhaps a tool for starting conversations with white friends and loved ones as we go into the season of family get-togethers.
To quote from the documentary’s website:
White Like Me, based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the U.S. through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a stunning reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we've entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today.
The title of the film is based on Wise’s book of the same name, itself a riff on the John Howard Griffin’s groundbreaking 1961 book Black Like Me, in which Griffin darkened his skin to experience firsthand the prejudice of the pre-civil rights South. In White Like Me, Wise points out that it is far more useful to us as white folks to examine what it means to be white in America today, and why it seems invisible to us, when the experience of being Black or Brown in America is so very visible every day for our brothers, sisters, and sibs of color.
For folks who have been working on unlearning internalized white supremacy for a while, there might not be a whole lot new here about what whiteness means, or how to conceptualize our experience of race in our minds and bodies. There are deeper, more intensive resources for doing that work, such as Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands, and Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy. But as a welcoming and nonjudgmental “front porch” to the concept of anti-racism, White Like Me is a wonderful tool for education and opening conversations with folks who might otherwise be resistant to the concept. Wise is humble and plainspoken and discusses how even as a professional in the field, he still has to check his biases and privileges every day.
And even better, the full documentary is free to watch on YouTube right now!
May your upcoming holiday season, no matter what or how you celebrate, or with whom, be filled with love, compassion, and conversations that lead to growth and connection.
Peace,
Djinn