In the last Pacific Central District UUMA retreat, a friend I highly respect, Rev. Jacqueline Duhart said, "Let's stop saying white. There is no white." And I agree.
But perhaps I need to say how I understand my agreement with it.
If it's not clear yet, we, the marginalized folk of our UU faith, are not racists against white-skinned people. Even if those white supremacists think they are a race or that race can maintain purity at this juncture in human history. No, white is not a race we can be against. When we say white, it is a culture. And you can have dark, brown, bronze, yellow, red skin and still be white --- that thing we call dominant culture marked by :
1.) "fragility" - hates emotions, complexity, and realities like the diversity of the human race
2.) "privilege" - an illusion that they come first because they "get" things and they're "a fit".
3.) "exclusivity" - like that club of cool kids in high school
4.) "supremacy" - that they are better than the rest
5.) "propriety" - the idea that the genteel can never be violent
6.) "objectivity" - an ignorance or blatant obscuring of the diversity of human needs and context
7.) "reason" - a sensibility that maintains the power dynamics in the status quo
8.) "correctness" - a position that is imposed through coercion into conformity with dominant strands
You will have persons of color demonstrating these traits without knowing it. We have all been colonized by the dominant culture, no matter if we are white-skinned or not. What we need to be clear about is that we are flushing out the white culture. People shutting down white-skinned people are not going to help the cause. Culture is more complex than skin and it will be easy to fall into the visual traps. But I suggest follow the emotion, which is the best radar for cultural oppression.
