Why breakdown whiteness?

White people: let’s take responsibility and do our homework to understand racism.

Black people and people of color shouldn’t have to explain structural racism to white people. They deserve an opportunity to say, "Do some reading, then we can talk,”  or "Start here, find some other white folks to talk to, and get better informed.” 

This website is a place to start. 

Breakdown Whiteness exists in response to a call by the Rev. Nikia S. Robert, who took to Twitter in June 2020 to express her fatigue with explaining anti-Black racism to white people. She wished there was a resource to share instead. As one way to practice allyship and solidarity, we created this website. Breakdown Whiteness is now sponsored by The Stead Center for Ethics and Values at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. The Stead Center addresses compelling ethical issues facing contemporary society, promoting teaching and research on ethics and values by providing space for conversation and developing resources that enhance moral communities.

Breaking down whiteness in a U.S. context starts with a focus on anti-Black racism, particularly given the historical construction of whiteness in opposition to enslaved Africans. The binary of white and Black is a formative piece of the historical legal reinforcement of white supremacy in the U.S. But definitions of whiteness have been used as legal weapons against many others as well, from Native Americans to Asians to people from the Middle East.

Collected by a group of academics in religious studies, history, and ethics, the resources provided on this site originally leaned heavily toward anti-Black racism, and might be seen as reinforcing the binary of white and Black to a certain degree. It has never been our intention to reinforce the binary, but rather to show how the binary works as a necessary part of both sustaining and breaking down the broader context of white supremacy in the U.S. As we expand the scope of the conversation, we are gradually adding resources that attend to how structural racism historically and currently affects a wider diversity of racialized communities, intersecting with other forms of oppression as well.

You can browse resources by subject matter or by the age groups for whom they are intended. If you have comments or questions about the entries provided, please let us know.