Hi, my name is Andie and I am learning in real-time! Remember a couple of days ago I did a long post tying one of my past organizational experiences to Tema Okun’s classic “White Supremacy Culture” article? Grateful to a couple of friends who pointed me towards the re-appraisal of that article which is currently happening in progressive movements that I respect, especially this article.

I think my big takeaway is that we don’t need to essentialize these practices of (false) urgency, (false) objectivity, etc. as “white supremacy” and therefore inherently BAD. I absolutely believe that organizations and movements *need* urgency, structures, written documents, and so on.

But I’ve lived in organizations where the practices Okun named are held up as unquestioned cultural assumptions. Since the orgs themselves were traditionally white-led to a greater or lesser extent, those practices still served to reinforce racial inequities that hurt the organization’s impact. They hurt the people who were part of it as staff and clients.

In my experience of MYSELF and the leaders I’ve worked for: people who are working on social issues but who lack equity and justice frameworks in our thinking – no matter what our racial identity – often instinctively behave in the ways Okun called out.

Whether we know it or not, these behaviors perpetuate our power over people who could have helped strengthen the org and its impact. They undermine the power of the work. And again, looking at myself as the example I know most deeply, I have to say it’s because of the ways I as a white leader was taught by our culture and my experiences to think about myself and my BIPOC colleagues, and about what outcomes and impact should fundamentally look like.

We do need to be careful. There are examples everywhere of people using the language of freedom and justice – intentionally or un – to hold terrible systems in place. Orwell’s “1984” envisions a Ministry of Truth whose job is to tell lies, and a Ministry of Love whose job is to terrify and punish. My current org just learned we can’t use the phrase “fair access to capital” because it’s been co-opted by right-wing activists advocating to make it illegal to use environmental, social, or governance filters in investing.

So yeah, we need to pay attention to how words *function* – what they are really being used to support or take down. I can definitely accept that Okun’s article may have net-negative *impacts,* regardless of its original *intention.* And of course I can accept that as always, my personal experience may not be a completely trustworthy guide to how less-privileged people experience the same workplaces I’m in.

What I will walk away with today is the idea that there is always a shadow side. The original article helped me start to name patterns that I saw reducing the impact of the orgs I’ve loved – patterns that stopped us from accessing more of the power I believe we could have had for equity and justice. As such, these practices helped hold white supremacy in place, within the orgs and the communities we were there to serve.

But as I’ve written before, the difference between medicine and poison is the dosage. We don’t need NO urgency, NO written word, NO hierarchy. We DO need to shine a light on what’s unhealthy in our organizations and movements – and we need to watch out for the shadows that creates, too.

That’s what I’ve got so far, my friends. I really, really appreciate it when y’all help me learn. Thank you and onwards, together.