The summer after my second year of law school, I worked at a law firm in London, England. It was my first time there and I was giddy with excitement when the fancy car that collected me at Heathrow Airport deposited me in front of the fancy apartment building I'd be living in for the next month.
After lugging my suitcase up the stairs to the front door, I was met by a sweet-looking elderly white woman; my landlord. I went to shake her hand. Looking sick to her stomach, she yanked her right arm behind her back and dropped the keys on the ground so she didn't have to touch me.
She muttered something about the apartment number and left. I was gutted. I knew that look, I had seen it many times in my life.
But never before had a white person been so repulsed that they wouldn't touch me.
A few days later, my laundry machine broke. I called the landlord multiple times. She didn't return my call. I called HR at the New York City office headquarters to tell them what was up, namely, the landlord was racist and I needed my machine fixed.
The white woman head of HR was furious that I "accused" the landlord of being a racist; not at all furious about the actual racism, and absolutely unconcerned about the laundry machine.
"We've used her for a decade and we've never had a problem."
"Have you ever sent a lawyer of color to this flat?" I asked.
"Hmmmm," she thought. "No, I guess we haven't."
"Then how can you say she's not racist if the first lawyer of color you've sent tells you that she is."
I tell this story because, for starters, it takes place in London, the place many white Brits say is free of the kind of racism we find in America.
But that's not the only reason. I tell it because it hits just about every note we experience in our Race2Dinner work: The racism, the disbelief of racism, the anger over the accusation of racism, the absolute lack of concern for the racism itself, and the harm the racism has caused to the Black and brown person.
In short, the complete centering of white feelings and comfort, white innocence over white violence.
Starting Race2Dinner to make a change
When Regina and I started Race2Dinner in early 2019 in Denver, Colorado, we got a lot of pushback: That'll never work; we don't like your strategy; that's impossible.
If you don't try then, by definition, everything is impossible. In this case, what white folks deemed to be impossible was us; a Black woman and a South Asian woman hosting dinners with 8-10 white women to discuss their white supremacy and racism.
As Regina says: "You can't change what you don't acknowledge." At these dinners, we help white women to acknowledge their white supremacy and their racism so that they change it.
But instead, we've been called grifters, scammers, con artists, race hucksters, and my personal favorite, Pearl Harbor. That's how entrenched white supremacy is—that even talking about it over a meal is likened to starting a world war.
Flash forward four years and our impossible dinners are sold out a year in advance; we have a New York Times bestseller, White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better; and our film, Deconstructing Karen, is being screened around the world.
In America, our work has not only been rendered possible, but it is, dare I say, popular. Not popular like Taylor Swift, but popular like white women are reading our book, watching our film and internalizing it, understanding how white supremacy is killing them just like it's killing us, and wanting to make a change.
White American women are actually working to dismantle their own racism and white supremacy.
But we're getting rumblings of the word "impossible" again. Why? Because in a few weeks, Regina and I head off to London for our first screening outside of the U.S. and Canada.
Here's what we are hearing from white folks in the U.K.: "That'll never work. Brits won't like your strategy. We're not racist like Americans. The U.K. is NOT the U.S."
Our answer: First of all, you will recall that white Americans were YOU. As in, many white Americans are descendants of British colonizers. America was, after all, first a British colony. Furthermore, amidst any cultural differences (American football v. football in Britain, for example), one thing is absolutely the same: White supremacy.
After all, white supremacy is about power, and who better knows about power than the empire that has colonized countries all over the globe. That'd be the British Empire.
This means that each and every white person upholds the systems and structures of white supremacy. That each and every one of them is—by design—a white supremacist.
White supremacy persists seamlessly because of everything that white British women did, and everything the white American HR woman did, and didn't do.
Obstacles
You can think of it like this. White supremacy culture is a gigantic castle with oceans, rivers, tsunamis, mountains, jungles, floods—you-get-the-picture—surrounding it from every angle to ensure nothing can penetrate its hegemonic hold.
These fixed obstacles (after all, who besides white Jesus can move Mount Everest or walk on water?) are meant to make you feel overwhelmed and confused.
Oceans of denial that white supremacy hurts you too; that white supremacy is also killing you, your children, and your grandchildren too. That white supremacy is killing humanity.
Mountains of powerlessness; white feminism necessarily means that you ignore your white power and view everything through a gender lens, seeing your gender oppression clearly while ignoring what you do have, namely power as a white person.
And tsunamis of imperfection: The foundation of white womanhood is perfectionism, your need to be perfect. You won't even dip your toes into waters where you might be less than perfect, like seeing yourself for what you are, a racist.
These obstacles are meant to make you feel like you'll drown, burn, choke, or freeze if you even attempt to get to the other side. These obstacles ensure you believe the work is impossible.
This is not true.
They were made to keep people, namely white people, from dismantling white supremacy. They were white man-and-woman-made and they can be unmade. Unmade by you, the architects.
The reality? These obstacles are a mirage. But they are indeed obstacles. And you have to get over and through them to get to the guts of the work.
We know, because like we said, we work with white women every day.
We are seeing, in real life, in real-time, white women waking up and internalizing how white supremacy is killing them; how they absolutely possess white power; and how they will not die by not doing anti-racism work perfectly.
They have realized that perfection doesn't exist—and that it's a trap meant to keep white women in their place, which is firmly beneath white men.
White supremacy and patriarchy go hand in hand. As such, if you don't fight your whiteness, you will never be free of patriarchy. As such, fighting white supremacy is foundational to being liberated.
Saira Rao and Regina Jackson are the co-founders of Race2Dinner, an organization that allows women to have honest conversations about race. You can find out more about signing up for their next events in July in London and Bath, U.K.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? Email the My Turn team at myturn@newsweek.com.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Saira Rao is the co-founders of Race2Dinner, an organization that allows women to have honest conversations about race.
