by Sarah Stuteville
There is something so obnoxious about white people talking about whiteness. The constant compulsion to center white experiences, the fragility, the evasion, and the virtue signaling set me on edge (even as I participate in it). But the only thing worse than white people talking about whiteness is white people who ignore whiteness or refuse to talk about it.
It was in this cringey tension that I held a copy of a recent collection of essays — and the centerpiece of this Thursday’s Town Hall event, “Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor: Essays on Life and Lineage by White Women.” The book — edited by Bellingham-based therapist, author, and publisher Lisa Iversen — is urgently personal. Whiteness is a system and all white people, past and present, have served to uphold it. Feeling the discomfort and pain in that truth — and using it to motivate change — is at the center of the project.
Continue reading ‘Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor’ Book and Town Hall Event Explore Urgent Need for White People to Talk About Whiteness