Community Activism Insights

When Dr Moore and I (Dr Rita) came together to talk about our reflections on 20-30 years of justice work, we agreed on one fundamental point. At the start, we underestimated the cost of what justice work would do to our bodies, our families, our pockets, and our careers.

One of the questions I am asked most often is, “Michelle, why do you do this work?” People ask it with genuine curiosity. Sometimes they wonder what could motivate a white woman to spend nearly two decades facilitating conversations about race and writing a book called, "Liabilities of Whiteness."

A number of years ago, while I was writing my book, Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart, I started doing something uncomfortable: I began talking with people who had voted for Donald Trump.

Hey Family! We have a BIG announcement! WE”RE GOING GLOBAL, AGAIN Y’ALL! We’re excited about this decision. We’ve been looking forward to the White Privilege Conference returning to an international venue. #NowIsTheTime

When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, it attacked the machinery of disenfranchisement directly. The law prohibited literacy tests and poll taxes, while authorizing the federal government to intervene where Black voters had long been blocked from registering to vote and casting ballots.

I’ve been sitting on how to write this article for days. I’m watching what’s happening in Minneapolis with horror, as most of us, wanting to do my best to channel my power, and my rage, and not become hopeless and stunned. For the system feeds off shock and hopelessness. As long as we live from fear, state violence wins; racism wins. As a scholar of history and social patterns …