Middle Brook American Quarterly Article

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The Ballot Box and Beyond: The (Im)Possibilities of White Antiracist

Organizing

Jeb Aram Middlebrook

American Quarterly, Volume 62, Number 2, June 2010, pp. 233-252 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/aq.0.0131

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|234 American Quarterly

scholarly and activist claims that white people should not or could not organizeother white people eectively against racism because, in sum, “there is no such

thing as a white anti-racist.”

4

The Ballot Box and Beyond demonstrated thatthe practice o whites organizing whites toward antiracist action, in alliance with people o color, can produce viable models o racialization, coalition, andsocial change. Drawing rom ethnographic, historical, and textual research andanalysis, this article oers a way to think through the unique roles o whitepeople and people o color in mass-based movements or social justice, and toenvision a world beyond racism through race.

The White Question

Saturday, October 25, 2008, 5 p.m., UCLA Downtown Labor Center. Thecommunity panel or the Ballot Box and Beyond event began with AWARE–LA organizer Joshua Busch raming the discussion. He centered Barack Obama’scandidacy or president and the way it “has shed the national spotlight onrace that this country has not seen or a generation-plus.” Busch observedthat millions o white voters had been moved by Obama’s message o unity

and hope and “millions more seemed poised at this moment [in 2008] to setaside racist prejudices to vote based on their own economic and social inter-ests.” Despite the rush to embrace Obama as a “postracial candidate,” Buschpointed out that systemic racism, white privilege, and serious inequalities andopportunity between white people and people o color in terms o access toquality education, healthcare, housing, jobs, and healthy and sae communi-ties continue to exist.

The event was timely and attempted to reorient a mainstream discussion

on the role o white voters. The Ballot Box and Beyond occurred ten daysbeore a historic U.S. election that seemed to hinge as much on the questiono whether the white working class would vote or a black man or presidentas it did on the qualications o either o the presidential candidates. In many ways, mainstream media treated the 2008 presidential election as a reerendumon white racism: “Obama reaching out to white working class,”5 “Will gun-toting, churchgoing white guys pull the lever or Obama?”6 “White supportor Obama at historic level.”7 The Ballot Box and Beyond event, however

small, interrupted a media white out in the days leading up to the electionthat ramed white people as either the impediment to or the source o racial justice in the United States.

The event represented a signicant point o development or AWARE–LA,as well as or what has come to be termed in various academic and activist



| 235White Antiracist Organizing

circles the “white antiracist movement.” The eventdirectly oregrounded the “white question” or, inother words, the question o white people’s role inchallenging white supremacy, by attempting to or-ganize the general white population in Los Angeles

to support antiracism in theory and practice. The “white question” is nothingnew, however. The history o slavery abolition and women’s rights movementso the nineteenth century set a precedent or what could be accomplished when white people directly challenged individual and institutional whitesupremacy—rom playing key organizing roles against oppressive systems tobuilding political relationships and alliances across race. Communist organizers,at least since 1930, argued that “the struggle or equal rights or the Negroesis in act, one o the most important parts o the proletarian class struggle o the United States.”8 They recognized the “Negro problem” as a problem o “white superiority” and argued that “the struggle or the equal rights or theNegroes must certainly take the orm o common struggle by the white andblack workers.”9 The abolition, women’s rights, and communist movements were not without faws, however. The possibilities o multiracial alliances inthese eorts oten broke down as a result o white radicals internalizing whitesuperiority and white privilege, patronizing people o color, and subordinatingissues o race to class. Hence W. E. B. Du Bois ocused on the question o the

Figure 1.

Flyer with invited presentersor AWARE–LA’s Ballot Boxand Beyond event. Courtesy o

AWARE–LA.




white worker as a lever or both slavery and democracy in Black Reconstruc- tion in the U.S (1935). Du Bois’s summary o chapter 2, titled “The White

Worker,” read as ollows: “How America became the laborer’s Promised Land;and focking here rom all the world the white workers competed with black slaves, with new foods o oreigners, and with growing exploitation, untilthey ought slavery to save democracy and then lost democracy in a new andvaster slavery.”10 The “problem o the color-line,”11 as Du Bois put it thirty years earlier, was and is certainly infuenced by which side o the line whiteschoose to stand.

Some grassroots organizations rom the late 1950s to the mid-1970s took

seriously “the white question” and worked to organize whites to both challenge white supremacy and to ally with people o color in building antiracist and anti-capitalist power in the United States. O the radar o most social movementscholars is the historical lineage that connects the ollowing otherwise disparate white-led organizations in alliance with people o color-led organizations:

• SouthernConferenceEducationFundandtheSouthernStudentOrganizingCommitteein alliance with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Southrom 1960 to 1969;

• YoungPatriotsinalliancewiththeBlackPantherParty,theYoungLordsOrganization,the American Indian Movement, and the Red Guard (otherwise known as the original“Rainbow Coalition”) in Chicago rom 1969 to 1970;

• MotorCityLaborLeagueinalliancewiththeLeagueofBlackRevolutionaryWorkersin Detroit rom 1969 to 1970;

• PrairieFireOrganizingCommitteeinalliancewiththeAmericanIndianMovement,thePuerto Rican Socialist Party, and the Republic o New Arica rom 1974 to 2006; and

• AllianceofWhiteAnti-RacistsEverywhere–LosAngelesinalliancewiththeLabor/StrategyCommunity Center, South Asian Network, and Community Coalition in 2008.

All o these white-led groups built white antiracist membership organizationsin alliance with radical people o color membership organizations to challengethe white supremacist system. They enacted the theory and practice o “aliate. . . autonomous” organizing,12 or the development o racially separate but alliedorganizations dedicated to supporting sel-determination in communities o color, and to ostering white responsibility or ending white supremacy in theUnited States. This organizing model, articulated by white antiracist organizer

Anne Braden in 1964, emerged rom her refections on the organizationalrelationship between the white-led Southern Student Organizing Committeeand SNCC at the time.13

In keeping with the notion o aliate-autonomous organizing, the panelistsor the Ballot Box and Beyond included speakers rom dierent people o color




organizations, as well as AWARE–LA. The panelists refected on multiracialalliance building, as well as the possibilities and limitations o antiracist orga-

nizing. Manuel Criollo, a lead organizer with the Labor Community Strategy Center’s Bus Riders Movement, argued that “the United States is a white settlercountry, and so white supremacy, white privilege, racism, and empire is a way o lie. It permeates everything—democratic rights, elections.” Criollo arguedthat the denial o democratic rights, particularly in relation to black and Latinopeople in the United States, is commonplace, and that an Obama victory in2008 would be a “blow against racism . . . and against white privilege,” but would not be their end. “What’s your organizing plan i Obama wins?” he said.

“It’s our jobs as letists, as progressives, as antiracists, as revolutionaries to havea real plan.” This sentiment echoed throughout the day’s dialogue.Panelist and proessor o political science at the University o Southern

Caliornia, Dr. Ange-Marie Hancock agreed, arguing that all the commit-ments Obama made in the primaries will “be on the table or changing when[he] gets inaugurated” and that scholars and activists should “use hope andtrust [in Obama] strategically rather than as a blanket strategy.” Many o thepanelists argued that exclusively ocusing on electoral politics as the remedy

or social inequality was a mistake. Some now declare, as Criollo did, that i not pushed to the Let, an Obama presidency could be a continuation o the white supremacist system, just under dierent leadership. Many o the panel-ists argued that community organizing, within and beyond electoral politics,is necessary to help guarantee people’s basic needs, as well as to check govern-ment power. Their comments suggested that any approach to ending whitesupremacy must be multiaceted in order to counter the multiaceted natureo white supremacy itsel. White antiracist scholarship, in this regard, has the

potential to play an important role against white supremacy.

The Whiteness Studies Question

Contemporary scholars, many o whom were involved in antiracist organizingand multiracial alliance work in the 1960s and ’70s, such as Robert and Pamela Allen, David Roediger, Theodore Allen, and George Lipsitz, have interrogatedthe ways that the white working class has supported white supremacist policies

and actions on the basis o white privilege, oten against whites’ own social andeconomic interests.14 The work o these scholar activists led to a burgeoningacademic and proessional eld called whiteness studies in the 1990s, whichcontinues today. As whiteness studies developed, however, the ocus o earlier writing—on white supremacy in relation to capitalism, and antiracism in




relation to multiracial and anti-capitalist organizing—was put to the side inavor o an increasing interest in white privilege and white identity ormation.

Books such as the ollowing became common: Becoming and Unbecoming White , The Making and Unmaking o Whiteness , Not Quite White , Beyond the Whiteness o Whiteness , Ater Whiteness , Out o Whiteness , Working Through Whiteness . However well-intentioned, this orm o whiteness studies encour-aged white scholars interested in race studies to sideline multiracial or ethnicstudies projects or disciplines in avor o proessional work that was eectively “whites only,” with a ocus on accommodating whiteness to capitalism ratherthan abolishing both.

There were also those scholars who were anti-capitalist but believed thatclass, not race, should be the ocus when theorizing or enacting multiracialalliances.15 Views such as these assumed that issues o race divided an otherwise consolidated working class. Social movement history, as in Robert Allen’sReluctant Reormers , however, revealed that it is oten the racism o the whiteLet that has made class-based alliances across race impossible.16 Reluctance tosee white supremacy as a means o dividing and conquering the nonelite, both white and o color, and hesitancy to prioritize issues that disproportionately

aect people o color created and maintains a broken and ractured radicalLet. Scholars such as Stuart Hall remind us that class relations and race rela-tions are “inseparable” and that in many ways, “race is the modality in whichclass is lived.”17 Holding this complexity in regard to white antiracist work issomething scholars and activists have yet to take up on a wide scale.

In 2010, writing, lecturing, and attending workshops and conerences havedominated white antiracist work against white supremacy,18 in many cases re-placing organizing as a viable strategy or social change. The theory and practice

o building white-led antiracist organizations to recruit and mobilize whites orcoordinated antiracist action with people o color eectively disappeared amongthe white Let in the 1970s, presumably as a result o government repressionthat hobbled radical organizing across race, as well as what scholar Noel Ig-natiev called the “academic industry” o whiteness studies. Ignatiev continued,“Scarcely a week goes by that does not see a new book on ‘the construction o whiteness.’ There are at least ve college Readers on the subject. At least threeuniversities have sponsored conerences on whiteness, and more are planned.”19

Since the 1990s, white people can be paid to be antiracist.This move in whiteness studies away rom a multiracial and activist-oriented

position prompted a response rom a group o scholars at the University o Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. They developed an extensive docu-ment called “Towards a Bibliography o Critical Whiteness Studies” in an




eort to push studies o whiteness in a more multiracial and activist direction.David Roediger, one o the key organizers o the Critical Whiteness Studies

Group (CWS) that developed the bibliography, wrote o the importance o the project:

At a time when some initiatives or the study o whiteness begin as a conversation solely and deliberately among whites only, CWS has been interracial rom its inception and hascentrally involved aculty and students rom the university’s ethnic studies programs. . . . Notsurprisingly, this knowledge developed most quickly and systematically among racialized,enslaved, conquered and colonized peoples or whom white power and white pretense wereurgent problems. Both this long sweep o the study o whiteness and the key role o peopleo color in undertaking such study are represented in the bibliography published here.20

Taking cues rom Roediger’s characterization o the CWS bibliography, Iargue or a whiteness studies that is allied to ethnic studies—similar to the ways Arican American studies, Chicano studies, and Asian American studieshave come to typiy projects on individual racialized communities but alsoinorm, and are increasingly in conversation with, a larger ethnic studies project.Considering whiteness studies in this way does not necessitate that projectsalways be interracial but does push such scholarship to be in dialogue withethnic studies scholars and projects, and multiracial alliances. The questiono antiracist organizing is another matter. The act that only one article in the143-page CWS bibliography mentioned organizing —William Aal’s “Movingrom Guilt to Action: Antiracist Organizing and the Concept o ‘Whiteness’or Activism and the Academy”21—suggests that there is much scholarly andactivist work to be done to translate the theory o an interracial whitenessstudies into actual interracial or multiracial alliances, antiracist organizations,and movement making in the United States. An allied whiteness studies wouldperhaps make these connections clearer, pushing scholars to rame with whom, with what projects or organizations, and to what ends is a particular study inalliance.

The event at the center o this study, the Ballot Box and Beyond, suggestedthat whiteness studies and white antiracist activism have missed the mark inrecent years, and with potentially dire consequences. White antiracist organiz-ing, the theory and practice which inormed AWARE–LA’s eorts,22 has existed

largely without a complement in academic scholarship, proessional writing,or community organization.23 A document rom AWARE–LA titled “Char-acteristics o (Some) Community Organizing” (gure 2) attempted to centerorganizing within white antiracist work. It drew rom a long history o social justice organizing in white communities and communities o color, in particular




AWARE–LA’s experiences with long-standing racial justice organizations ledby people o color in the Los Angeles area, including the Labor Community

Strategy Center, South Asian Network, Community Coalition, Inner City Struggle,andYouthJusticeCoalition.Thedocumentdened“communityorganizing” as a practice that involves building an “active membership base which carries out the work o the group.”24 From this base, the organizationdevelops members as leaders to move the group’s work orward, which mightinclude building alliances with local and national groups, organizing supportersin the larger community, engaging in issue campaigns, and working towardsystemic change while enlarging the membership base. The “White Antira-

cist Community Organizing Model” (gure 3) is built on “Characteristics o (Some) Community Organizing” to envision a ve-prong strategy particularto white people organizing white people toward antiracist thought and action.This strategy involves an organizational workgroup structure that carries the work o educating, organizing, mobilizing, alliance building, and movementbuilding simultaneously—with a ocus on antiracist consciousness and leader-ship development, and organizational alliances with people o color and other white antiracist organizations. These documents by AWARE-LA underscore

the importance o the role o organizing in white antiracist and racial justice work, and unction historically as one answer to the call by people o color or whites to organize other whites against racism.25

The Organizing Question

AWARE–LA emerged rom an eective thirty-year silence on the theory andpractice o building organizational inrastructure that could systematically

recruit, develop, and mobilize large numbers o white people toward antiracistaction. In his talk at the 2008 American Studies Association conerence, Mark Rudd, coounder o the Weather Underground, argued that “the organizingmodel has been lost” in recent years,26 basing his remarks on his discussions with and observations o student and activist groups across the United States.Certainly, Rudd wasn’t talking about the kind o organizing that was takingplace as he spoke to win a presidential election or Barack Obama, but ratherantiracist organizing against the white supremacist system endemic to U.S.

institutions, rom immigration to incarceration to banking to housing to war.The Ballot Box and Beyond event was an attempt to revive white antiracistorganizing as a legitimate theoretical and political strategy toward building amultiracial social justice movement.27




Figures 2 and 3.

Above: AWARE–LA’s “Characteristics o (Some) Community Organizing.” Below: AWARE–LA’s “White Antiracist Community Organizing Model.” Courtesy o AWARE–LA.




AWARE–LA recognized a crucial need or whites to organize against racismin the contemporary moment. Other white people, not just antiracists, are

already organizing around race. Consider the report rom the Southern Poverty Law Center that documented 932 active hate groups in the United States in2009, an increase that caps a decade in which the number o hate groups grewby 55 percent.28 Consider the book Blood and Politics: The History o the White Nationalist Movement rom the Margins to the Mainstream (2009) by LeonardZeskin and the documentary White Power USA (2010), which identied 30,000 white people in the United States as members o white supremacist organiza-tions, such as the National Socialist Movement. With more than 250,000 active

sympathizers, according to watchdog groups, white supremacists are workingto build alliances with anti-immigrant and Tea Party membership organizationsand have set their sights on lobbying, policy change, and electing representativesto Congress (gure 4).29 Consider the headline rom the Wall Street Journal attheendof2009,“WallStreetJournal/NBCPoll:TeaPartyTopsDemocratsand Republicans,”30 which showed a larger approval rating among likely votersor a right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti–people o color organization than oreither established political party. Not to mention that the extreme racist right

oten provides ideological cover or a less extreme right-wing populism thathas devastating eects on poor and working people across race, as seen romthe atermath o Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush’s presidential runs. Nowcount the number o white antiracist organizations you know.

The question o white people’s response to white supremacy was o particu-lar interest to AWARE–LA organizer Clare Fox, who also participated in theBallot Box and Beyond panel. She oered a November 5 scenario, orecasting what white supremacist hate groups might do to expand their membership

and outreach i and when Obama was elected: “We need to be as organizedor more [than white supremacists], specically as white antiracists,” she said.“We need to be organized as white antiracists reaching out to the white com-munity rst, and creating that strategic wedge in the white community. Themore visible we are, then the more white olks have to ask, ‘Where do I standon the issues?’” The key is organization, Fox argued, and being in alliance with community organizations o color. Naming Obama’s possible electionvictory, she said, “We don’t want to give any opportunity to hate groups to

use that to their advantage.” The rise in hate crimes and organizing by theracist and radical right since 2008 suggests the white Let is behind in termso organizing on race issues.

It is within this context that the Ballot Box and Beyond event represented animportant contemporary example, rst, o white people organizing other white




people toward antiracist consciousnessand action, and second, multiracialalliance building against the white su-

premacist system. Participating groupsincluded some o the oldest and most

radical people o color membership organizations in Los Angeles, all o whichcontributed speakers to the community panel and discussion at the conclusiono the event. Represented were the Labor Community Strategy Center, Com-munity Coalition, and South Asian Network. The Labor Community Strategy Center’s Bus Riders Union and the anti-prison, youth-o-color organization, YouthJusticeCoalition,alsoofferedworkshopsalongwithAWARE–LAat

the event.Participating organizations ocused on multiracial organizing as a primary

strategy or social change—that is, on increasing and mobilizing the member-ships o antiracist and racial justice organizations across race to overturn theexisting structure o white supremacy and, some believed, capitalism in theUnited States. As the Labor Community Strategy Center declared:

We build consciousness, leadership, and organization among those who ace discrimination

and societal attack—people o color, women, immigrants, workers, LGBT people, youth, allo whom comprise our membership. Linking mass struggles to the need or radical, structuralchange, we develop campaigns and demands that help build a revitalized world united rontthat can stop the rising tides o war, racism and imperialism, the ecological crisis and thegrowing police state. Our work oten challenges both major political parties and takes onthe organized Right. We ght to win.31

Figure 4.

Members o the National Socialist Movementmarch in Phoenix, AZ with United States’ fagsand swastikas chanting “USA!” From the docu-

mentary White Power USA (2010), courtesy o Big Noise Films.




Another participating group, Community Coalition, stated: “We Believe In:Community Involvement. South LA is primarily an Arican American and

Latino community. A core value o the Coalition is to promote the activeinvolvement and unity o all South LA residents. The Coalition serves as avehicle or community activism in South LA.” The organization brought to-gether multiple approaches to social change, including leadership development,education, training, and advocacy. In terms o building a social movement,“the Coalition does not believe one organization alone is capable o improvingthe quality o lie in our community and throughout the City o Los Angeles. We believe many organizations are needed; thereore the Coalition works in

alliance with other organizations dedicated to social and economic justice.”32

Executive director o Community Coalition, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, de-clared at the Ballot Box and Beyond event that “as progressives we always seepoll results or voting results, and we go, ‘Where are the white organizers? Willsomeone go and talk to these people?’ And I really appreciate that AWARE hastaken an attempt to begin to do that—to begin to speak to racism directly to white people rom white people.”33 South Asian Network, also present at theevent, described itsel as,

a grassroots, community based organization dedicated to advancing the health, empower-ment and solidarity o persons o South Asian origin in Southern Caliornia. Together,volunteers and sta have created multilingual, culturally appropriate approaches to com-munity organizing encompassing community outreach and education, direct service, andpolicy advocacy in ve ocus areas: immigration, public health, violence prevention, hatecrime/discriminationandcivilliberties.34

Hamid Khan, the group’s executive director, was a partner in developing

AWARE–LA’s Racial Justice Alliance, a multiracial workgroup or strategizingabout organizing and building alliances across race in Los Angeles. Most notableabout this eort was a revision o the traditional notion o “accountability,”or responsibility o white people to people o color in social movement work.The workgroup argued or a notion o “transormative alliance,” or mutualaccountability between white people and people o color or the ways privilegeand oppression play out within, across, and among various racialized com-munities.35 The transormative alliance model argued that white people should

step up in shared leadership with people o color in organizing against whitesupremacy, and that political partnerships could be built on mutual individualand organizational trust across race. This idea had its roots in revolutionary multiracial organizing rom alliances like the Student Non-Violent Coordi-nating Committee and the Southern Student Organizing Committee, and




theBlackPanthers,YoungLords,andYoungPatriots.Lessonsdistilledfrom AWARE–LA’s Racial Justice Alliance were collected in a paper titled “Powerul

Partnerships: Transormative Alliance Building.”

36

The timeliness o the Ballot Box and Beyond was articulated by two panelistsat the event. Harris-Dawson noted: “This is an interesting time in the UnitedStates because two o the major pillars o this country, white supremacy andcapitalism, are getting renegotiated at the same time. It’s really unprecedented.. . . When I say renegotiated, I want to be clear that I’m saying neither o them will go away; they just will change in complexion. . . . What you’ll see and areseeing with Barack Obama is that subtle racism will dramatically increase.”

Khan extended Harris-Dawson’s analysis to a global scale, arguing that “theU.S. is a continuation o what was European occupation o the world,” andthat in any “postracial” or “postcolonial” society such occupation is still ineect. Identiying Barack Obama’s presidential campaign as “historic,” Kahnalso argued that “there is a continuation o a history o white supremacy andempire building.” Various U.S.-based economic, social, and military systemsare now globalized, Kahn observed, resulting in a worldwide U.S. “occupationo minds and bodies.”

The Ballot Box and Beyond event and its brainchild organization, AWARE–LA, resisted this occupation. They were and are signicant in the history o antiracist organizing in the United States, oering a vision o whiteness without white supremacy, and a United States without empire. Three white people inLos Angeles in 2003 picked up this challenge, and ater developing a substantialmembership base over our years, AWARE–LA went public with the messageand organizing in the summer o 2007.

How (Not) to Build a Movement

The theoretical basis or AWARE–LA’s organizing work was laid out in thepaper “One Step Forward on the Path to Liberation: White Anti-Racist Or-ganizing and Its Role in the Struggle Against the White Supremacist System,”penned by the AWARE–LA coordination team. The paper argued that “whitepeople are uniquely situated . . . to make choices that can either contribute toor undermine the white supremacist system. It is time . . . or white people to

take an active and visible stand against the white supremacist system by utiliz-ing anti-racist community organizing strategies to create systemic change.”37 The dominant paradigm o antiracist work in recent years has been antiracisteducation through workshop models based on tolerance, multiculturalism,and diversity—not on community organizing. This approach has signicantly




hampered the building o a multiracial movement against white supremacy.The rst national study o the eectiveness o diversity trainings, published

in 2006, showed that educational models alone have not led to institutionalchange. The paper, published in the American Sociological Review by proessorsrom Harvard, the University o Caliornia, Berkeley, and the University o Minnesota, concluded that eorts to reduce bias in the private sector, wherethe majority o such workshops occur, have eectively ailed. Frank Dobbin,proessor o sociology at Harvard said o the report,

For the past 40 years companies have tried to increase diversity, spending millions o dol-lars a year on any number o programs without actually stopping to determine whether or

not their eorts have been worth it. Certainly in the case o diversity training, the answeris no. The only truly eective way to increase the presence o minorities and women inmanagerial positions is through programs that create organizational responsibility. I noone is specically charged with the task o increasing diversity, then the buck inevitably gets passed ad innitum.38

The question remains, then, what programs or work can create individual andinstitutional responsibility or racial justice? AWARE–LA, alongside organiza-tions o color supporting the Ballot Box and Beyond, put their ocus, energy,resources, and time into antiracist organizing.

By the end o 2008, AWARE–LA had a mailing list o almost three hun-dred people rom the Los Angeles area,39 10 to 15 percent o whom regularly attended organizational events. In the years that I engaged AWARE–LA asan ethnographer and participant-observer, rom 2006 to 2008, the member-ship o the organization grew by 30 percent and its organizational leadershipdoubled.40 In 2010, AWARE–LA is preparing or another surge in recruitmentand growth with a campaign that seeks to call out the racism and hate o right- wing populism in Los Angeles and beyond in the interest o “driving a wedgein the white community,”41 and developing a critical mass o white antiracists

who are visible, audible, and active in alliance building with people o colororganizations and coalitions.

AWARE–LA’s organizational inrastructure today includes ve workgroups:1) a monthly antiracist discussion group or the white membership; 2) aquarterly racial justice alliance group or the white membership and mem-

bership o color; 3) a workshop planning group or presenting the politics tolocal institutions (companies, universities, etc.); 4) a community organizingand campaign visioning group, responsible or the political direction o theorganization; and 5) a collective leadership team composed o representativesrom the other our workgroups to promote communication and idea shar-




ing among the groups. Most talked-about is AWARE–LA’s development o “a white space,” wherein white members meet monthly to “discuss issues o

identity, community, privilege, and racism in our lives with the intention tostrengthen our practice as antiracists in alliances and riendships with peopleo color.”42 Despite the question o segregation, AWARE–LA stands by itsorganizing model and its proven eectiveness at moving large numbers o white people toward antiracist action. The organization cites historic calls by revolutionaries o color including Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey Newton or whites to organize whites against racism.43 AWARE–LA’s onlinedocument “Why is Saturday Dialogue or white anti-racists?” urther species

the reasons or a meeting space geared toward white people:People o color shouldn’t always have to be the ones to educate white people about racism andoppression. We are taking responsibility or learning about racism, our own white privilege,and how to challenge it as white people.

In order to challenge racism and dismantle white supremacy, white people need tounlearn racism and discover the ways we enact white privilege. . . . Having a community o

white anti-racist people gives us hope, helps us grow our practice, and gives us strength tostay in it or the long haul.

A white space serves as a resource to people o color who want to work with white

people but don’t want to have to spend all their energy dealing with the racism o whitepeople.44

Such a white space pushes the white membership and leadership o AWARE–LA to develop and justiy their own personal and organizational investmentsin work against white supremacy. Owning the work o racial justice is whatmany scholars and organizations o color have been asking white people todo or decades.

The notion o racially separate but allied organizing is not unique to AWARE–LA. A history o aliate-autonomous organizing in the white anti-racist Let in alliance with people o color exists, but has not been documentedby social movement historians as any sort o historical lineage. Complicatingthis story is the overwhelming evidence and documentation o white peopleacting in support o white supremacy—both within and outside movement work.45 The Ballot Box and Beyond event and the work o AWARE–LA oera dierent story—a story that brings the history o whites organizing against

individual and institutional racism into the present moment, as part o a “largermovement or racial, social, economic, and environmental justice.”46 This work, AWARE–LA claims, will create a broad-based, multiracial coalition or racial justice, as well as a transormation o racial consciousness in regards to white




identity, white community, and alliances acrossrace (gure 5).47

AWARE–LA’s approach is one o many ap-

proaches to white antiracism. It is noteworthy,however, that white antiracism has not oten ocused on organizing. Whitenessstudies scholars and practitioners oten agree that “whites should work with whites,”48 but they neglect that this idea originated rom organizing work by the black-led Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to build Black Power in the United States. SNCC’s notion o coalition politics within thisramework was that “black people organize blacks and white people organize whites,”49 in order to simultaneously practice black sel-determination, and

white responsibility or individual and structural racism. SNCC did not desirean end to working with whites, despite the way their removal o whites romthe organization in 1966 was read by many people at the time, and since.50 Rather, SNCC desired a coalition in which whites would take responsibility ormobilizing whites against white supremacy while supporting black organizing.SNCC wrote in a memo run by the New York Times in 1966 that,

an all-black project is needed in order or the people to ree themselves. This has to exist rom

the beginning. This relates to what can be called “coalition politics.” There is no doubt in ourminds that some whites are just as disgusted with this system as we are. But it is meaning-less to talk about coalition i there is no one to align ourselves with, because o the lack o organization in the white communities. There can be no talk o “hooking up” unless black people organize blacks and white people organize whites. I these conditions are met then

Figure 5.

Members o AWARE–LA join an im-migrants’ rights march in Los Angeles,CA. Courtesy o AWARE–LA.




perhaps at some later date—and i we are going in the same direction—talks about exchangeo personnel, coalition, and other meaningul alliances can be discussed.51

SNCC’s relationship to white organizers is a key beginning point in thehistorical lineage o white antiracist organizing. The act that the rame orcontemporary notions o white antiracism emerged rom radical and revolu-tionary organizing in solidarity with the Black Power movement is a crucialpart o understanding where white antiracist organizing has been and whereit can go.

Regarding uture social movement work, Ballot Box and Beyond panelistManuel Criollo pointed out that “the movement doesn’t want to talk about

racism.” He refected that at times community organizations try to win over what he called “the silent majority . . . white olks” to a ault, avoiding discus-sions and struggles against individual and “deeply embedded institutionalracism” as a central tenet o movement work. Marqueece Harris-Dawsonnuanced Criollo’s remark, arguing that the movement also “doesn’t want totalk about black people . . . the movement has not yet come to grips with thecondition o black people in the United States.” AWARE–LA organizer, ClareFox oered the ollowing:

Racism and white people’s denial about racism and white privilege has really harmed socialmovements, and has really harmed our ability to come together, and be really strong, andachieve our goals o justice and equality or all. As a white person, I want to encourage other

white olks who care about these issues to say in response to those “postracial” analysis olks:this [2008 election] is a historic moment; it is a victory. Now we need to continue to buildon this legacy.

Despite the obstacles o developing a strong antiracist and multiracial move-ment beyond November 4, 2008, the Ballot Box and Beyond let attendeeshopeul. Moderator Joshua Busch closed with this message: “I we really want tosee real change in this country, there has to be work done by activists, there hasto be a grassroots movement that develops that pushes change orward.”52

Without readily available models o white antiracist organizing, however, white antiracist work oten ends at writings, lectures, workshops, conerences, ornetworks. These approaches are necessary components to any social movementbut would never be characterized by scholars or organizers as THE movement.Believing that education is the beginning and end o all antiracism eortsassumes, as mainstream media did with the 2008 presidential election, thatending white racism is simply a matter o consciousness raising—as i structuraland institutional white supremacy is not also an impediment to racial justice; as




i the question o white supremacist capitalism is not also a question o powerand consent; as i white supremacists aren’t always organizing.

History shows that social movements cannot be built without organizing—amovement to end the white supremacist system is no exception. Organizers o color have asked white people to build organizational inrastructure to challengeracism since at least 1966. White people have been asked by people o color todevelop approaches to systematically politicize, mobilize, support, coordinate,and ally large numbers o white people with the causes and struggles o radicaland revolutionary people o color. Will whites heed the call today? They may not have a choice. I white antiracist organizing and multiracial alliance are

not taken up readily in scholarship and activism, we will continue to debate whether or not racism still exists, while white supremacists and their sympathiz-ers organize a critical mass o people toward their own ends, and any struggleor social justice will be eectively lost.

NotesSpecial thanks to Lian Cheun, Lanita Jacobs-Huey, Cameron Levin, Curtis Marez, and John CarlosRowe or their helpul suggestions on this article.

1. Epigraphs are taken rom the ollowing sources: “Excerpts rom Paper on Which the ‘Black Power’Philosophy Is Based,” New York Times , August 5, 1966, 10, parenthetical reerence in original; Kil Ja Kim[Tamara Nopper], “The White Anti-racist Is an Oxymoron: An Open Letter to ‘White Anti-racists,’”http://www.nathanielturner.com/whiteanti-racistsopenletter.htm,February24,2003(accessedJuly29,2009), emphasis in original; Sandy Banks, “Where Whiteness Meets Race,” LA Times , November 11,2008,http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks12-2008nov12,0,1810753.column(accessedFebruary 3, 2010).

2. Banks, “Where Whiteness Meets Race.”3. Allianceof WhiteAnti-RacistsEverywhere,WhoWeAre,http://www.awarela.org/who (accessed

October 7, 2008).4. Kim, “The White Anti-racist.”5. Kathy Kiely, “Obama Reaching Out to White Working Class,” USA Today ,June6,2008,http://www.

usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-06-05-Obama_N.htm(accessedJanuary3,2010).6. Matt Bai, “Will Gun-Toting, Churchgoing White Guys Pull the Lever or Obama?” New York Times

Magazine ,October15,2008,http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/magazine/19obama-t.html(ac-cessed January 3, 2010).

7. DavidPaulKuhn,“WhiteSupportforObamaatHistoricLevel,”October25,2008,http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/24/politics/politico/main4544827.shtml(accessedJanuary3,2010).

8. Jane Degras, Communist International: Documents, 1919–1943 ,vol.3,1929–1943(NewYork:Rout-ledge, 1971), 128.

9. Ibid.10. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America : 1860–1880 (1935;NewYork:FreePress,1998),17.

11. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls o Black Folk (1903;Mineola,N.Y.:Dover,1994),ii.12. Memo rom Anne Braden to SSOC, April 17, 1964, 2. Constance W. Curry papers, Manuscripts

Archives and Rare Book Library, Robert W. Woodru Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.




13. I analyze this model as a historical rame that connects the above organizations, and their alliances with radical people o color organizations, in my dissertation project, Challenging White Supremacy: Antiracist Organizing and Multiracial Alliance in the United States .

14. See Robert L. Allen and Pamela P. Allen, Reluctant Reormers: Racism and Social Reorm Movements in the United States (Atlanta, Ga.: Howard University Press, 1974); David Roediger, The Wages o White- ness: Race and the Making o the American Working Class (NewYork:Verso,1992);NoelIgnatiev,How the Irish Became White (NewYork:Routledge,1998);TheodoreW.Allen, The Invention o the White Race: The Origin o Racial Oppression in Anglo-America (NewYork:Verso,1994);GeorgeLipsitz,The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Proft rom Identity Politics (Philadelphia: TempleUniversity Press, 1998).

15. There is a similar sentiment among many white activists and organizers.16. Allen and Allen, Reluctant Reormers .17. Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jeerson, John N. Clarke, and Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis:

Mugging, the State and Law and Order (Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 1978), 394.18. The national White Privilege Conerence is in its eleventh year as o 2010.

19. Noel Ignatiev, “Abolitionism and ‘White Studies,’” talk delivered at the University o Caliornia,Riverside,February1998,onlineathttp://racetraitor.org/whitestudies.html(accessedOctober15,2009).

20. David Roediger, “Introduction,” Towards a Bibliography o Critical Whiteness Studies (Urbana-Cham-paign: University o Illinois Press, 2006), 5.

21. William Aal, “Moving rom Guilt to Action: Antiracist Organizing and the Concept o ‘Whiteness’ or Activism and the Academy,” in The Making and Unmaking o Whiteness , ed. Birgit Brander Rasmussen,Eric Klinenberg, Irene J. Nexica, and Matt Wray, 294–310 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,2001).

22. AWARE–LA,“WhiteAnti-RacistOrganizing,”http://www.awarela.org/models/white-anti-racist-organizing/(accessedJanuary17,2010).

23. Despite the scarcity o white antiracist membership organizations in 2010, there are some groups andnetworks led by antiracist whites that work on racial justice issues. Some o these include: Anti-Racist ActionNetwork(http://www.antiracistaction.org),CatalystProject(http://www.collectiveliberation.org),Groundwork(http://groundworkmadison.wordpress.com),WhiteAnti-racistCommunityAc-tionNetwork(http://www.wacan.org),andU.S.forAllofUs(http://www.usforallofus.org),aswellas a variety o local eorts and campus-based student groups around the United States.

24. AWARE–LA,“Characteristicsof(Some)CommunityOrganizing.”http://www.awarela.org/models/ white-anti-racist-organizing/(accessedJanuary13,2010).

25. Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, Vincent Harding. Where Do We Go rom Here: Chaos or Community? (NewYork:BeaconPress[1967]1986)17,8; StokelyCarmichaelandCharlesV.Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics o Liberation in America (NewYork:RandomHouse,1967),58;“Huey Newton Talks to the Movement About the Black Panther Party, Cultural Nationalism, SNCC,

Liberals and White Revolutionaries,” The Movement (August 1968), 8-11.26. Mark Rudd, “The Sixties: A Conversation with Mark Rudd,” American Studies Association coner-

ence, Friday, October 17, 2008.27. Indeed, a global search o academic scholarship through Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) in Janu-

ary o 2010 identied only 4 records containing the phrase “white anti-racist organizing” or “whiteantiracist organizing,” with one o the our articles considering such work in Canada, not the UnitedStates. Compare this to 182 records when the search is “white anti-racist” or 277 records when thesearch is “white antiracist.” And compare all o these results to the 5,310 records that appear whenthe search is “white racist.”

28. SouthernPovertyLawCenter,“RaceontheRight:TheYearinHateandExtremism,”Intelligence Report 237(Spring2010),http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right(accessedMarch3,2010).

29. Leonard Zeskin, Blood and Politics: The History o the White Nationalist Movement rom the Margins to the Mainstream (NewYork:Farrar,Straus,andGiroux,2009); Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen,White Power USA , AljazeeraEnglish,2010,http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleand-power/2010/01/201015124739316797.html(accessedJanuary12,2010).

30. SusanDavis,“WSJ/NBCNewsPoll:TeaPartyTopsDemocratsandRepublicans,”Wall Street Journal ,December16,2009,http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/12/16/wsjnbc-news-poll-tea-party-tops-democrats-and-republicans/(accessedJanuary16,2010).




31. TheLaborCommunityStrategyCenter,“AboutUs,”http://www.thestrategycenter.org/about(accessed January 15, 2010).

32. CommunityCoalition,“AboutUs,”http://cocosouthla.org/about/ourvalues (accessedJanuary15,2010).

33. Marqueece Harris-Dawson quoted rom community panel and discussion at The Ballot Box andBeyond: Race, Elections, and the Making o History, UCLA Downtown Labor Center, October 25,2008.

34. South AsianNetwork,“Homepage,”http://www.southasiannetwork.org/(accessed January15,2010).

35. Cameron Levin and Shelly Tochluk, “Powerul Partnerships: Transormative Alliance Building,”http://www.awarela.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/alliancebuildingnal.pdf(accessedJanuary17,2010).

36. Ibid.37. Clare Robbins, Shelly Tochluk, Hillary Stephenson, Cameron Levin, Sarah Glasband, and Jason David,

“One Step Forward on the Path to Liberation: White Anti-Racist Organizing and Its Role in the Struggle

AgainsttheWhiteSupremacistSystem,”3,http://www.awarela.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/aware-la-chapter-on-white-anti-racist-organizing.pd (accessed February 10, 2010).

38. Ryan Z. Cortzar, “Diversity Training Fails to Boost Minorities into Management: Programs DelegatingResponsibility or Diversity Found More Eective,” Harvard Gazette ,September14,2006,http:// www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/09.14/25-dobbin.html(accessedFebruary3,2010).

39. Alliance o White Anti-Racists Everywhere–Los Angeles membership database. Viewed by author,February 3, 2010.

40. Numbers tabulated by author rom observation o AWARE–LA workgroups, including leadership andmembership o the organization, rom August 2006 to December 2008.

41. Robbins, Tochluk, Stephenson, Levin, Glasband, and David, “One Step Forward,” 3.42. AWARE–LA, “Saturday Dialogues.”43. AWARE–LA, “QuotesByRevolutionariesofColor,”http://www.awarela.org/wp-content/up-

loads/2008/07/QUOTES-BY-REVOLUTIONARIES-OF-COLOR.doc(accessedApril12,2010).44. AWARE–LA, “Saturday Dialogues.”45. Allen and Allen, Reluctant Reormers ; Meyer Weinberg, Racism in the United States: A Comprehensive

Classifed Bibliography (NewYork:Greenwood,1996).46. Alliance o White Anti-Racists Everywhere, Who We Are.47. CameronLevinandSusanGoldberg,“TowardsaRadicalWhiteIdentity,”http://www.awarela.org/

toolbox (accessed October 10th, 2008).48. Constance Curry, Joan C. Browning, and Dorothy Dawson Burlage, Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White

Women in the Freedom Movement (Athens: University o Georgia Press, 2000), 364.49. “Excerpts rom Paper,” 10.50. “The 2008 documentary lm The Jewish Americans , ater highlighting the extraordinary and numeri-

cally disproportionate involvement o Jews in the reedom struggle, recounts the expulsion o whitesrom SNCC. A ery speech by Stokely Carmichael is juxtaposed with ootage o some middle-aged

Jewish women emotionally describing their sadness at being ‘asked . . . to leave the movement.’ RabbiRachel Collin recalls, ‘we wanted to be loved in return, and we weren’t, and that was painul.’ OtherSNCC activists remembered being similarly pained. Abbie Homan claimed that the expulsion o

whites rom SNCC made him eel ‘like a schmuck.’ Casey Hayden recalled that, ‘to me [the move-ment] was everything: home and amily, ood and work, love and a reason to live. When I was nolonger welcome there, and then when it was no longer there and all, it was hard to go on.’” Quotedrom Jennier Jensen Wallach, “Replicating History in a Bad Way? White Activists and Black Powerin SNCC’s Arkansas Project,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly (October 1, 2008): 269–70.

51. “Excerpts rom Paper,” 10.52. Joshua Busch, closing statement at the Ballot Box and Beyond event, October 5, 2008.

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