Hi, Garrett. Love seeing your thinking on this, since I've only just learned about the White Supremacy Culture site literally in the past couple of weeks.
For me, rather than a weapon it was a balm that's helped me find a way to be gentle with myself. "See? There's not something necessarily wrong with *me*, there's something wrong in the water we're swimming in, and maybe together we can figure out how to clean it up."
It's not that the info is new, exactly, but somehow the way Okun wrote about it all (and the beautiful art on the web site!) got through in a deep way.
That's really beautiful! And powerful! I'm so happy for you (and what a credit to the work that she's done with the new website to present it in a way that gave you, and I'm sure a whole lot of others, that experience). I think you articulated really wonderfully the kind of empowering, purposeful realization that can motivate all sorts of great doing and being. Can't wait to hear how that keeps coming alive for you.
I loved this definition of white supremacy - and not just because it's pretty close to the definition I've also given it - “a cultural project of disconnect in service of the power elite courting power and profit- wed to capitalism.” I'd never heard of "Characteristics" or its author. I am always being taught by The White Pages! But after reading this piece, I can see how its influence exists in many of the places I find myself. I was also delighted to see Elite Capture mentioned here. It's the next book on my metaphorical nightstand. (And the next book on the literal floor next to my bed.) I loved Reconsidering Reparations.
Thank you for leaving us with this,
"I just need to trust that there are many of us who want to move just a bit further away from the mere recitation of correct words and instead towards the messy, beautiful world of human action and interaction. The trick isn’t in persuasion, it’s helping each other do the work we truly want to do."
Thanks for all this Meg. I almost made a caveat up top saying that "hey, if you're part of the world that hasn't read "Characteristics" that's cool! This might be a niche piece" so thanks for still reading. Okun's got some great offerings for us, especially that quote you shared.
Also, as a huge fan of big piles of "to-be-reads" next to my bed and as somebody who benefits so much from the research/reading/synthesizing you do, I'm sure your pile is super rad.
... And yet, I still encounter people who've never heard of Okun's article. Corporate America is vast, and I take it as a good sign that her ideas seem to be saturating it's fledgeling DEI culture. I like your point that we need to push beyond our (mis)interpretations of her seemingly ubiquitous essay, rather than just using it to embellish McIntosh's ubiquitous backpack. But some white folks gotta start somewhere. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. =)
Oh, I hope I made it clear that I have no beef with the article or the positive benefits its had or folks who've used it as a starting place or even folks who have been stuck in the same reflection conversation. My hope is that this can be read as an empathetic invitation- one rooted in an understanding that there's lots of reasons why its hard to get more practically involved in communities but that we should help each other do so. If that didn't come through, that's on my limitations as a writer and idea-sharer, so I appreciate you sharing that you got more judgmental notes from it than I may have hoped.
Totally. I guess my comment was maybe more for folks who might not make it past the first part of your (thoroughly engaging!) piece. My initial reaction after reading the lead was "Oh no! Maybe I shouldn't assign Okun anymore." Albeit knee-jerky, I'm sure some WMWP might have had the same thought.
It's a great point. One of the risks in the way I structured the piece is that my more critical/grumpy takes are up top, so you have to stick with it to the generous parts. Totally fair for somebody to read the more critical parts and be like "damnit, he's judging me" and not read farther.
Hahaha, as someone who's found Characteristics very personally illuminating over the years, and just recommended the website to my nonprofit coworkers at a planning session the other week, I was metaphorically popping popcorn to read this one, and I really enjoyed it, while feeling gently and lovingly called out.
I also really agree that people of my approximate ilk tend to overfocus on workplace-based interventions, AND ALSO I've really valued how my workplaces have been the biggest lever I've had ready access to in my life where I can exert pressure on a lot of money and power held by people who are more politically moderate than I am, so I remain really interested in what tools will work in that setting. I think, and hope, I've been able to do a decent amount of good in that way, but it's definitely never going to be the most transformative or meaningful or soul-enriching type of work in my life. And maybe I'll feel differently, and less optimistically, after a few more years in the nonprofit-industrial-complex mines!
If I really wanted you to enjoy that popcorn, I probably should have written a super un-nuanced bullet point take down and put it on social media as "RANDOM WHITE GUY NEWSLETTER WRITER GARRETT BUCKS EPICALLY CLAPS BACK AT TEMA OKUN" lol. I'll remember to become more of a bomb thrower in the future (get ready for "The Backpack Has No Clothes: Unpacking 'Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack'").
More seriously, I appreciate your reminder that workplaces are places where money and power and influence can often be leveraged, and while we should be thoughtful about the ways we're balancing our energy in different spheres of our life, it's also important to not write off any space where useful justice work can be done.
My top question coming out of this article - What is white supremacy an example of?
Is it caste? Is it elite capture?
Seeing the trees in this case as a type of trees, or the forest as a type of forest, is what I’m looking for.
After EF Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, I am not wholly convinced that capitalism alone is the culprit - Schumacher proposes that the issue with capitalism is that it’s values-neutral, and because of that, is pairable with any values system. Here you point out that white supremacy has wedded capitalism (which I can totally get behind).
But for me it begs the question, what KIND of values system is white supremacy?
What’s its ilk?
What’s the oldest version of that the world ever saw?
Who in history has disentangled them - them meaning values systems like white supremacy from ANY sort of economic system? Who won, who didn’t, who sunk into violence or disarray, whose economies crumbled, whose values crumbled, whose changemakers crumbled, whose emperors crumbled?
I appreciate the context on Okun - didn’t realize I had assumed race and context in her name. But I’ve had a similar experience to @Anna’s with it, possibly with a side of sharing it with WOC in corporate roles who have gone “well fuck - this is all of Amazon.”
Villainization and weaponization aren’t the point. But if I want to be an agent for transformation of values sets in corporate culture in a level more structural than workshops, it feels like it would help me to name a values TYPE that WS represents - power monopolies? - to dialog about that with values owners in an organization.
If training the masses in orgs isn’t the full scope of the answer,* let’s name the values set and then go get accountable for values & the practices they give rise to at the org level.
(*It feels important to acknowledge here that - granted as a white person - I HAVE personally found diversity trainings including unconscious bias immensely useful in the workplace, personally, interpersonally and systemically. To me even unconscious bias trainings in a for profit business were a crucial platform for people to name and disclaim prejudiced practices in our teams, filling interpretive resourcing gaps in people - including me - directly suffering from inequity, prejudice (well intentioned and annoyingly ignorant), and directly regressive behavior (asking women to explain diversity to you in their 1-1s, because another woman they talked to said it’s no longer an issue these days). These trainings may not be best assessed for their own impact given my experience - rather as an intervention to move from monopoly to plurality of values in corporate trainings - especially since for me these took place alongside anti sexism training that primarily taught tech managers how to ensure they wouldn’t be named in lawsuits for sexual harassment or impropriety as long as they paid for drinks on their personal credit card not their corp cards).
All impact data always stops short of capturing full impact. The practice of assessing a few narrow research questions on the impact of trainings to shift an entire centuries old system sounds like something we should look at through this lens of.. well.. Characteristics.
Grateful for this dialog and your artful thinking and conversation convening 💚
Hey Megan! Thanks for the gift of so many different thoughts and reflections. I probably won't reply perfectly to all of them (nor tie the threads as well as you did) but here are some initial thoughts.
1. I love your questions about "what values system is White Supremacy an example of and what is the first example of that?" At least currently, the best response to both of those questions I've heard is that White Supremacy is a way of sorting human beings in a hierarchy of worthiness to justify treating certain human beings as less than human for the purpose of power and wealth. There's a great argument to be made (and Gerda Lerner makes it in her incredible book, the Creation of Patriarchy) that the first instance of that kind of classification-for-oppression purposes was gender oppression (when tribes found it advantageous to treat birthing-aged women as property and therefore had to invent patriarchy to justify that act of inhumanity). While there were then examples from across the country of racialized/caste-based hierarchies that were subsequently developed to justify enslavement, oppression and colonization, White Supremacy was the specific permutation of that evil trick that developed in Western Europe.
2. I think it's incredible (echoing what I'm hearing from some other commenters) that workplace equity trainings (and documents like this one) have been really powerful and helpful for you. That isn't minor! I definitely agree there's so much work to be done in workplaces AND that, as important institutions in our lives, that those can be places where we learn and grow. The "yes and" I would add is just that our communities deserve our time and energy and care for transformation outside of our day jobs too and I care a lot about how to help folks find that time/space/energy in extra-occupational spaces (recognizing that for a lot of folks, that's a real challenge!).
I found the book "Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God," by Kelly Brown Douglas, to be fascinating on the subject of ancient roots of white supremacy. She traces it back to the Roman general Tacitus and his admiring writings about the Anglo-Saxons (after finishing her book, I went back and read Tacitus, too). I don't know that she's right or not, but I found her history-tracing, especially the kind of "inheritors of ancient supreme race" thinking that went first to England and then came to North America and entangled itself completely with certain branches of Christianity to be particularly compelling.
I definitely co-sign that book recommendation. While not strictly White Supremacist (it was Mediterranean Supremacist) there's also a very clear through line from the Greek Empire as well and Aristotle in particular. As it turns out, 19th and 20th Century Empires learned a lot from previous empires!
Garrett! I missed this last week so thank you for linking to it this week. I don't know if I'm alone in this but I had NO IDEA that Tema Okun was a white Jewish woman!! I thought she was a Black woman. I too agree that this article is often used for circular self-flagellation and not as a call to action. Also I've had weird feelings about the critique of urgency when actually a lot of good can happen when we act urgently after a disaster. Idk I have lots of thoughts but I'm so grateful for this piece!
Thanks for this! I think one thing I'm learning since posting this piece is that there's such gifts in talking about how resources like this one have both been useful and counter-productive, and also why we fall into the trap of being fairly fundamentalist about them rather than living in that nuance.
From Yes Magazine. Author Chris Winters: "But DEI programs alone aren't enough to make sustainable changes. There are still too many barriers that keep people of color out of promotions, hiring opportunities, pay increases and retention. Education is needed, but so is accountability, and the funding to pay for both. 'If we don't create change that empowers the people who have the least amount of privilege and experience discrimination the most, we will see the same issues over and over again.' (Angelica Geter)"
I found this to be a very good and generous take on the afterlife of Okun's piece, Garrett. I also have. . . complicated feelings about it and how it gets used, and especially people's initial reactions to it. To put on my professional hat (or mortarboard, whatever), it's a fascinating piece of anti-racist rhetoric, and its circulation is a great example of what I often say to my students about rhetoric and intent: You might absolutely be dying to know what someone intended to say with x rhetoric, but ultimately it's the circulation and interpretation and use that's really interesting.
And, as always, I appreciate your concluding on a note of empathy and invitation to connection with our neighbors. As you say, judging people's (or our own) motives for using Okun's piece might be a waste of our energy when we could instead be thinking of how, practically, we can dismantle what she describes. I am really trying to counter my own feelings of exhaustion by just thinking about the small ways I can stick it to these systems by doing something really slowly (e.g. growing and canning my own food) or joyfully (e.g. making flower arrangements with my kiddo to share with people). But it's hard.
I’m so glad you put on your academic/rhetorician hat because I am FASCINATED by that aspect of this story (the author’s intent vs. how it has lived in the world). What would the response have been if this hadn’t been offered in list form (with the assumed definitiveness of headings and bullet-point language)? Would it have been used differently? Would it have been as popular? (Interestingly, I think there’s a fascinating live case study of that question with Okun’s new website, which is deliberately much less linear and reproduceable)? What would the response have been if the White author had a name that is more commonly coded as “White” than Okun’s is? Or if a Black co-author hadn’t been listed?
Ok, enough of those questions, but yes! And yes to your second paragraph too— I love you naming practical behavior changes that can feel more accessible to our exhausted minds and bodies but that get us in habits of resistance and joy and connection. It’s not JUST prison visitations and protests.
Thanks for this piece. I did, however, feel that you were too glib in dismissing Matthew Yglesias's critique. You say only that the critique "was largely predicated on the old trick of 'reading something that requires a degree of reflection and imagination, pretending to be stupid enough to take it extra-literally, and therefore declaring that it has no value.'" (You don't seem to cite the source of this quote--not that I can see, anyway.)
To give an idea where I'm coming from, I'm a quantitative researcher in a state government agency. So take my criticism of Okun (and by extension, I suppose, your piece) for what it's worth. I can't imagine how Latino or Black biostatistician would react to the statement that “things that can be measured are more highly valued than things that cannot.” (I would love to ask one but am afraid to; there seems to be very little room in my organization for progressive, or any, questioning of Okun. I, too, want to dismantle white supremacism but fear that in raising questions, I would get reflexively lumped together with all the right-wing a-holes who, like Rufo, dismiss any discussion of white supremacy culture as "woke" nonsense.) Our agency's valuing qualitative research is more than mere lip service--we've hired people who actually do in-depth interviews, focus groups, and the like--but what we do is absolutely inconceivable without numbers. We probably do value "things that can be measured" more highly--or at least as much as--"things that cannot." Does that make us white supremacists?
I got to your piece because my agency just had a reflection exercise aimed at identifying these characteristics at work in our agency. That the exercise's facilitator didn't identify them as signs of "white supremacy" (a colleague pointed out that they were taken from the Okun piece) probably does validate Yglesias's criticism that "[t[he craziest thing about 'The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture' is that it has literally nothing to do with race." Each of these characteristics, taken to extremes, can certainly be harmful. But if we can discuss these characteristics without referring at all to white supremacy demonstrates—to me, anyway—that there's nothing intrinsically racial about them.
The most valuable part of Yglesia's piece, I think, is its epistemological critique of Okun: she never establishes any empirical basis--at all, ever--for considering these characteristics part of a "white supremacy culture." No survey research. No qualitative evidence, no analysis of texts, no citations to historiography or culture studies. Nothing. We're asked to believe these traits constitute habits of white supremacist organizations just because Okun says they are; we're asked to take her word, something that any researcher is loath to do.
Put another way, just how does Okun know that these beliefs or habits really are characteristic of white supremacy? She takes this as given; I'd like to see the evidence. But just as talk of "OKRs" or "SMART" objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) evidences, to her, an organizational culture of white supremacy, merely asking about the empirical foundation of her work makes me an execrable reactionary, I suppose. Of course, as Yglesias points out, we progressives are constantly enjoining people to "follow the science," "trust experts," and insist on "evidence-based results." It turns out that those injunctions are, in Okun's reckoning, white supremacist.
You state that Yglesias is taking Okun's work "extra-literally," setting up, in effect, a strawman argument that nobody would ever actually make. To take Okun at her word seems to be, for you, to take an exaggerated version of her assertions (they aren't arguments) and, in bad faith, demolishing it. But I'm not sure how you would take Okun other than literally. Is there, in practice, a distinction between "worship of the written word" and, say, encouraging clear communication? Or asking that documents comport with grammatical norms, or that emails have better syntax and a more formal register than an email I would send to my bros?
Ultimately, this lack of distinction between behaviors that do constitute white supremacy and behaviors that superficially resemble, but aren't, white supremacy owes to the opacity and unclear case definitions in Okun's work. What counts as "worship of the written word" or "linear thinking"? In a word, Okun's work is unfalsifiable: there's no evidence that could, for her and her adherents, disprove the thesis that these traits are characteristic of white supremacy culture.
"This memo--even the fact that it exists--constitutes worship or the written word."
"No it doesn't."
"Yes it does."
The problem is that, notwithstanding Okun's disavowal of weaponization of her work, people actually do base organizational practice—culture, training, dismissals—on her principles, taken extra-literally or not. That's (mostly) not on Okun, though her disavowal of weaponization of her work (the original essay is from 1999) came two decades too late, in a 2023 interview she gave to The Intercept. Maybe there's a way to integrate Okun's observations into organizational culture that's not confessional "self-flagellation," but nobody seems to have found it. In fact, her very real concerns about "weaponization" indicate that the main problem is, perhaps, flagellation of others rather than self: criticism of Okun's work, or failure to adhere to its principles, has very real consequences. People's reputations suffer. They get dragged in public, investigated by HR departments. Some even lose their jobs and their livelihoods. We hear talk of "grace," but the primary thrust of reactions to perceived white supremacist behavior is punitive.
I appreciate your acknowledging that most DEI training has yet to show "meaningful results," Garrett. Sadly, though, the punitive nature of many (most?) progressive reactions to microaggressions, putative white supremacy, even honest questions drastically reduces the space for grace and individual growth, as well as for a good-faith criticism of Okun's work and the DEI industry based on it. Trump's frontal assault on DEI further reduces that space, especially in real-life work settings. There, criticism is tantamount to treason.
In short, if I subscribe to any criticism of Okun's notion of "white supremacist culture," I must do so either anonymously or with non-negligible risk to my reputation and job—even though I abhor white supremacy.
Hi, Garrett. Love seeing your thinking on this, since I've only just learned about the White Supremacy Culture site literally in the past couple of weeks.
For me, rather than a weapon it was a balm that's helped me find a way to be gentle with myself. "See? There's not something necessarily wrong with *me*, there's something wrong in the water we're swimming in, and maybe together we can figure out how to clean it up."
It's not that the info is new, exactly, but somehow the way Okun wrote about it all (and the beautiful art on the web site!) got through in a deep way.
That's really beautiful! And powerful! I'm so happy for you (and what a credit to the work that she's done with the new website to present it in a way that gave you, and I'm sure a whole lot of others, that experience). I think you articulated really wonderfully the kind of empowering, purposeful realization that can motivate all sorts of great doing and being. Can't wait to hear how that keeps coming alive for you.
I loved this definition of white supremacy - and not just because it's pretty close to the definition I've also given it - “a cultural project of disconnect in service of the power elite courting power and profit- wed to capitalism.” I'd never heard of "Characteristics" or its author. I am always being taught by The White Pages! But after reading this piece, I can see how its influence exists in many of the places I find myself. I was also delighted to see Elite Capture mentioned here. It's the next book on my metaphorical nightstand. (And the next book on the literal floor next to my bed.) I loved Reconsidering Reparations.
Thank you for leaving us with this,
"I just need to trust that there are many of us who want to move just a bit further away from the mere recitation of correct words and instead towards the messy, beautiful world of human action and interaction. The trick isn’t in persuasion, it’s helping each other do the work we truly want to do."
Thanks for all this Meg. I almost made a caveat up top saying that "hey, if you're part of the world that hasn't read "Characteristics" that's cool! This might be a niche piece" so thanks for still reading. Okun's got some great offerings for us, especially that quote you shared.
Also, as a huge fan of big piles of "to-be-reads" next to my bed and as somebody who benefits so much from the research/reading/synthesizing you do, I'm sure your pile is super rad.
... And yet, I still encounter people who've never heard of Okun's article. Corporate America is vast, and I take it as a good sign that her ideas seem to be saturating it's fledgeling DEI culture. I like your point that we need to push beyond our (mis)interpretations of her seemingly ubiquitous essay, rather than just using it to embellish McIntosh's ubiquitous backpack. But some white folks gotta start somewhere. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. =)
Oh, I hope I made it clear that I have no beef with the article or the positive benefits its had or folks who've used it as a starting place or even folks who have been stuck in the same reflection conversation. My hope is that this can be read as an empathetic invitation- one rooted in an understanding that there's lots of reasons why its hard to get more practically involved in communities but that we should help each other do so. If that didn't come through, that's on my limitations as a writer and idea-sharer, so I appreciate you sharing that you got more judgmental notes from it than I may have hoped.
Totally. I guess my comment was maybe more for folks who might not make it past the first part of your (thoroughly engaging!) piece. My initial reaction after reading the lead was "Oh no! Maybe I shouldn't assign Okun anymore." Albeit knee-jerky, I'm sure some WMWP might have had the same thought.
It's a great point. One of the risks in the way I structured the piece is that my more critical/grumpy takes are up top, so you have to stick with it to the generous parts. Totally fair for somebody to read the more critical parts and be like "damnit, he's judging me" and not read farther.
Hahaha, as someone who's found Characteristics very personally illuminating over the years, and just recommended the website to my nonprofit coworkers at a planning session the other week, I was metaphorically popping popcorn to read this one, and I really enjoyed it, while feeling gently and lovingly called out.
I also really agree that people of my approximate ilk tend to overfocus on workplace-based interventions, AND ALSO I've really valued how my workplaces have been the biggest lever I've had ready access to in my life where I can exert pressure on a lot of money and power held by people who are more politically moderate than I am, so I remain really interested in what tools will work in that setting. I think, and hope, I've been able to do a decent amount of good in that way, but it's definitely never going to be the most transformative or meaningful or soul-enriching type of work in my life. And maybe I'll feel differently, and less optimistically, after a few more years in the nonprofit-industrial-complex mines!
If I really wanted you to enjoy that popcorn, I probably should have written a super un-nuanced bullet point take down and put it on social media as "RANDOM WHITE GUY NEWSLETTER WRITER GARRETT BUCKS EPICALLY CLAPS BACK AT TEMA OKUN" lol. I'll remember to become more of a bomb thrower in the future (get ready for "The Backpack Has No Clothes: Unpacking 'Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack'").
More seriously, I appreciate your reminder that workplaces are places where money and power and influence can often be leveraged, and while we should be thoughtful about the ways we're balancing our energy in different spheres of our life, it's also important to not write off any space where useful justice work can be done.
My top question coming out of this article - What is white supremacy an example of?
Is it caste? Is it elite capture?
Seeing the trees in this case as a type of trees, or the forest as a type of forest, is what I’m looking for.
After EF Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, I am not wholly convinced that capitalism alone is the culprit - Schumacher proposes that the issue with capitalism is that it’s values-neutral, and because of that, is pairable with any values system. Here you point out that white supremacy has wedded capitalism (which I can totally get behind).
But for me it begs the question, what KIND of values system is white supremacy?
What’s its ilk?
What’s the oldest version of that the world ever saw?
Who in history has disentangled them - them meaning values systems like white supremacy from ANY sort of economic system? Who won, who didn’t, who sunk into violence or disarray, whose economies crumbled, whose values crumbled, whose changemakers crumbled, whose emperors crumbled?
I appreciate the context on Okun - didn’t realize I had assumed race and context in her name. But I’ve had a similar experience to @Anna’s with it, possibly with a side of sharing it with WOC in corporate roles who have gone “well fuck - this is all of Amazon.”
Villainization and weaponization aren’t the point. But if I want to be an agent for transformation of values sets in corporate culture in a level more structural than workshops, it feels like it would help me to name a values TYPE that WS represents - power monopolies? - to dialog about that with values owners in an organization.
If training the masses in orgs isn’t the full scope of the answer,* let’s name the values set and then go get accountable for values & the practices they give rise to at the org level.
(*It feels important to acknowledge here that - granted as a white person - I HAVE personally found diversity trainings including unconscious bias immensely useful in the workplace, personally, interpersonally and systemically. To me even unconscious bias trainings in a for profit business were a crucial platform for people to name and disclaim prejudiced practices in our teams, filling interpretive resourcing gaps in people - including me - directly suffering from inequity, prejudice (well intentioned and annoyingly ignorant), and directly regressive behavior (asking women to explain diversity to you in their 1-1s, because another woman they talked to said it’s no longer an issue these days). These trainings may not be best assessed for their own impact given my experience - rather as an intervention to move from monopoly to plurality of values in corporate trainings - especially since for me these took place alongside anti sexism training that primarily taught tech managers how to ensure they wouldn’t be named in lawsuits for sexual harassment or impropriety as long as they paid for drinks on their personal credit card not their corp cards).
All impact data always stops short of capturing full impact. The practice of assessing a few narrow research questions on the impact of trainings to shift an entire centuries old system sounds like something we should look at through this lens of.. well.. Characteristics.
Grateful for this dialog and your artful thinking and conversation convening 💚
Hey Megan! Thanks for the gift of so many different thoughts and reflections. I probably won't reply perfectly to all of them (nor tie the threads as well as you did) but here are some initial thoughts.
1. I love your questions about "what values system is White Supremacy an example of and what is the first example of that?" At least currently, the best response to both of those questions I've heard is that White Supremacy is a way of sorting human beings in a hierarchy of worthiness to justify treating certain human beings as less than human for the purpose of power and wealth. There's a great argument to be made (and Gerda Lerner makes it in her incredible book, the Creation of Patriarchy) that the first instance of that kind of classification-for-oppression purposes was gender oppression (when tribes found it advantageous to treat birthing-aged women as property and therefore had to invent patriarchy to justify that act of inhumanity). While there were then examples from across the country of racialized/caste-based hierarchies that were subsequently developed to justify enslavement, oppression and colonization, White Supremacy was the specific permutation of that evil trick that developed in Western Europe.
2. I think it's incredible (echoing what I'm hearing from some other commenters) that workplace equity trainings (and documents like this one) have been really powerful and helpful for you. That isn't minor! I definitely agree there's so much work to be done in workplaces AND that, as important institutions in our lives, that those can be places where we learn and grow. The "yes and" I would add is just that our communities deserve our time and energy and care for transformation outside of our day jobs too and I care a lot about how to help folks find that time/space/energy in extra-occupational spaces (recognizing that for a lot of folks, that's a real challenge!).
I found the book "Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God," by Kelly Brown Douglas, to be fascinating on the subject of ancient roots of white supremacy. She traces it back to the Roman general Tacitus and his admiring writings about the Anglo-Saxons (after finishing her book, I went back and read Tacitus, too). I don't know that she's right or not, but I found her history-tracing, especially the kind of "inheritors of ancient supreme race" thinking that went first to England and then came to North America and entangled itself completely with certain branches of Christianity to be particularly compelling.
I definitely co-sign that book recommendation. While not strictly White Supremacist (it was Mediterranean Supremacist) there's also a very clear through line from the Greek Empire as well and Aristotle in particular. As it turns out, 19th and 20th Century Empires learned a lot from previous empires!
Funny how that happens!
Garrett! I missed this last week so thank you for linking to it this week. I don't know if I'm alone in this but I had NO IDEA that Tema Okun was a white Jewish woman!! I thought she was a Black woman. I too agree that this article is often used for circular self-flagellation and not as a call to action. Also I've had weird feelings about the critique of urgency when actually a lot of good can happen when we act urgently after a disaster. Idk I have lots of thoughts but I'm so grateful for this piece!
Thanks for this! I think one thing I'm learning since posting this piece is that there's such gifts in talking about how resources like this one have both been useful and counter-productive, and also why we fall into the trap of being fairly fundamentalist about them rather than living in that nuance.
From Yes Magazine. Author Chris Winters: "But DEI programs alone aren't enough to make sustainable changes. There are still too many barriers that keep people of color out of promotions, hiring opportunities, pay increases and retention. Education is needed, but so is accountability, and the funding to pay for both. 'If we don't create change that empowers the people who have the least amount of privilege and experience discrimination the most, we will see the same issues over and over again.' (Angelica Geter)"
Great, great quote!
I found this to be a very good and generous take on the afterlife of Okun's piece, Garrett. I also have. . . complicated feelings about it and how it gets used, and especially people's initial reactions to it. To put on my professional hat (or mortarboard, whatever), it's a fascinating piece of anti-racist rhetoric, and its circulation is a great example of what I often say to my students about rhetoric and intent: You might absolutely be dying to know what someone intended to say with x rhetoric, but ultimately it's the circulation and interpretation and use that's really interesting.
And, as always, I appreciate your concluding on a note of empathy and invitation to connection with our neighbors. As you say, judging people's (or our own) motives for using Okun's piece might be a waste of our energy when we could instead be thinking of how, practically, we can dismantle what she describes. I am really trying to counter my own feelings of exhaustion by just thinking about the small ways I can stick it to these systems by doing something really slowly (e.g. growing and canning my own food) or joyfully (e.g. making flower arrangements with my kiddo to share with people). But it's hard.
I’m so glad you put on your academic/rhetorician hat because I am FASCINATED by that aspect of this story (the author’s intent vs. how it has lived in the world). What would the response have been if this hadn’t been offered in list form (with the assumed definitiveness of headings and bullet-point language)? Would it have been used differently? Would it have been as popular? (Interestingly, I think there’s a fascinating live case study of that question with Okun’s new website, which is deliberately much less linear and reproduceable)? What would the response have been if the White author had a name that is more commonly coded as “White” than Okun’s is? Or if a Black co-author hadn’t been listed?
Ok, enough of those questions, but yes! And yes to your second paragraph too— I love you naming practical behavior changes that can feel more accessible to our exhausted minds and bodies but that get us in habits of resistance and joy and connection. It’s not JUST prison visitations and protests.
Hey, Garrett-
Thanks for this piece. I did, however, feel that you were too glib in dismissing Matthew Yglesias's critique. You say only that the critique "was largely predicated on the old trick of 'reading something that requires a degree of reflection and imagination, pretending to be stupid enough to take it extra-literally, and therefore declaring that it has no value.'" (You don't seem to cite the source of this quote--not that I can see, anyway.)
To give an idea where I'm coming from, I'm a quantitative researcher in a state government agency. So take my criticism of Okun (and by extension, I suppose, your piece) for what it's worth. I can't imagine how Latino or Black biostatistician would react to the statement that “things that can be measured are more highly valued than things that cannot.” (I would love to ask one but am afraid to; there seems to be very little room in my organization for progressive, or any, questioning of Okun. I, too, want to dismantle white supremacism but fear that in raising questions, I would get reflexively lumped together with all the right-wing a-holes who, like Rufo, dismiss any discussion of white supremacy culture as "woke" nonsense.) Our agency's valuing qualitative research is more than mere lip service--we've hired people who actually do in-depth interviews, focus groups, and the like--but what we do is absolutely inconceivable without numbers. We probably do value "things that can be measured" more highly--or at least as much as--"things that cannot." Does that make us white supremacists?
I got to your piece because my agency just had a reflection exercise aimed at identifying these characteristics at work in our agency. That the exercise's facilitator didn't identify them as signs of "white supremacy" (a colleague pointed out that they were taken from the Okun piece) probably does validate Yglesias's criticism that "[t[he craziest thing about 'The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture' is that it has literally nothing to do with race." Each of these characteristics, taken to extremes, can certainly be harmful. But if we can discuss these characteristics without referring at all to white supremacy demonstrates—to me, anyway—that there's nothing intrinsically racial about them.
The most valuable part of Yglesia's piece, I think, is its epistemological critique of Okun: she never establishes any empirical basis--at all, ever--for considering these characteristics part of a "white supremacy culture." No survey research. No qualitative evidence, no analysis of texts, no citations to historiography or culture studies. Nothing. We're asked to believe these traits constitute habits of white supremacist organizations just because Okun says they are; we're asked to take her word, something that any researcher is loath to do.
Put another way, just how does Okun know that these beliefs or habits really are characteristic of white supremacy? She takes this as given; I'd like to see the evidence. But just as talk of "OKRs" or "SMART" objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) evidences, to her, an organizational culture of white supremacy, merely asking about the empirical foundation of her work makes me an execrable reactionary, I suppose. Of course, as Yglesias points out, we progressives are constantly enjoining people to "follow the science," "trust experts," and insist on "evidence-based results." It turns out that those injunctions are, in Okun's reckoning, white supremacist.
You state that Yglesias is taking Okun's work "extra-literally," setting up, in effect, a strawman argument that nobody would ever actually make. To take Okun at her word seems to be, for you, to take an exaggerated version of her assertions (they aren't arguments) and, in bad faith, demolishing it. But I'm not sure how you would take Okun other than literally. Is there, in practice, a distinction between "worship of the written word" and, say, encouraging clear communication? Or asking that documents comport with grammatical norms, or that emails have better syntax and a more formal register than an email I would send to my bros?
Ultimately, this lack of distinction between behaviors that do constitute white supremacy and behaviors that superficially resemble, but aren't, white supremacy owes to the opacity and unclear case definitions in Okun's work. What counts as "worship of the written word" or "linear thinking"? In a word, Okun's work is unfalsifiable: there's no evidence that could, for her and her adherents, disprove the thesis that these traits are characteristic of white supremacy culture.
"This memo--even the fact that it exists--constitutes worship or the written word."
"No it doesn't."
"Yes it does."
The problem is that, notwithstanding Okun's disavowal of weaponization of her work, people actually do base organizational practice—culture, training, dismissals—on her principles, taken extra-literally or not. That's (mostly) not on Okun, though her disavowal of weaponization of her work (the original essay is from 1999) came two decades too late, in a 2023 interview she gave to The Intercept. Maybe there's a way to integrate Okun's observations into organizational culture that's not confessional "self-flagellation," but nobody seems to have found it. In fact, her very real concerns about "weaponization" indicate that the main problem is, perhaps, flagellation of others rather than self: criticism of Okun's work, or failure to adhere to its principles, has very real consequences. People's reputations suffer. They get dragged in public, investigated by HR departments. Some even lose their jobs and their livelihoods. We hear talk of "grace," but the primary thrust of reactions to perceived white supremacist behavior is punitive.
I appreciate your acknowledging that most DEI training has yet to show "meaningful results," Garrett. Sadly, though, the punitive nature of many (most?) progressive reactions to microaggressions, putative white supremacy, even honest questions drastically reduces the space for grace and individual growth, as well as for a good-faith criticism of Okun's work and the DEI industry based on it. Trump's frontal assault on DEI further reduces that space, especially in real-life work settings. There, criticism is tantamount to treason.
In short, if I subscribe to any criticism of Okun's notion of "white supremacist culture," I must do so either anonymously or with non-negligible risk to my reputation and job—even though I abhor white supremacy.