Whiteness Under Stress and the Harm We Can Do

From 2020: I have been speaking with a lot of womxn these past few weeks about navigating the stress of this moment. Both womxn of color and white womxn. Sharing my doodles of some archetypes I'm seeing show up to the Covid 19 party--in myself and in others. Under stress, we’re doubling down and re-entrenching in white dominant habits. This is an invitation to pause and notice so we don't cause even more harm, despite our best intentions. *I'm not doing a formal blog post on this. I want to interrupt the habit of the written word. Embracing "just enough" here and also directing to work by other colleagues (like Kad Smith, Monica Dennis, and Rachael Marie Ibrahim) if you want to go deeper. I've added links to some of their work below. **White Supremacy Habits informed and inspired by the work of Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones, Gatekeeper archetype inspired by the work of People's Institute for Survival and Beyond and Monica Dennis. Bootstrapper archetype inspired by the work of Jackie Payne and GALvanize USA. ***Appreciation to Fleur Larsen for thought partnership.

Michelle Gislason, 2020

Whiteness Under Stress Visual //2nd page includes Spanish translation (THANK YOU, Claudia Lopez)

Resources for Going Deeper 