Attn: White Women from a White Woman: Complicity to Accountability

Part 1: A Starter Resource List for Centering Black, Indigenous, and Decolonial Perspectives

What I wish I knew and practiced sooner as a White woman in the helping professions

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN 1.31.2025; UPDATED 2.20.2025 (see comments and asterisks*), 8.7.2025 (to honor name changes for HYWF and MG-SS, plaint text, and archive)

Background: Over the 2024-2025 winter holidays here in the “good ol’ USA” in my very white dominated and segregated home community, I’ve been especially struck by a lack of awareness, recognition, understanding, and language for what is at stake and what is happening for everyone with the new 2025 federal administration. People here historically and presently vote about 50:50 dem:rep along racial and socioeconomic lines. Still, policies lean toward supporting public health and human services, public education, and bodily autonomy, including gender-affirming care. However, the impacts of coloniality, race, disability, trans and queer lived experience, migration, systemic and generational wealth/poverty, the environment, food, housing, transportation, recreation, systems of control and dominance (including carceral, imperial, and supremacist)– and an overall consideration of centering lived experience, access, equity, and contextual intersections– continue to be missed in general and in the helping professions in particular.

Reflecting these patterns, demographics, and economic opportunities, gendered white middle class family norms contribute to middle class white women dominating the helping professions where I live and beyond.

I am a white woman in the helping professions. And white women, we are a tipping factor. Don’t forget: white women voted for *rump. Twice. My hope for white women like me, and really everyone, is to start mindfully, lovingly, and accountably consider that our liberation is bound together, as stated by Indigenous activist Lilla Watson (Murri). And since we are all bound together, we all benefit when we center access and equity; disability justice, Sins Invalid, Imani Barbarin, Alice Wong, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha show us this.

The call is clear to honor, trust, and center the history, legacy, ongoing leadership and organizing, and lives of Black, Indigenous, Trans and Queer, Poor, and Disabled people. We continue to witness and experience over and over again people and white women prioritize their own comfort, center whiteness, and default to anti-Blackness when shifts and change require more effort, face pushback, or become riskier. Black feminists like Loretta J. Ross, a founding mother of reproductive justice, activist for antifascism and human rights, public scholar, and author of Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel (2025); myisha t. hill, founder and guide for the learning community Check Your Privilege/Heal Your Way Forward (2018-present) and author of Heal Your Way Forward: The Co-Conspirator’s Guide to an Antiracist Future (2022); and professor, reproductive justice organizer and scholar, and sexual health educator Brittany Brathwaite, MSW, MPH, PhD, remind us of our sphere of influence, niching down our activism, and that change is local. 

With all this in my mind, heart, and body as a white woman, I thought I would share some concepts that continue to open, deepen, and anchor my praxis toward community care and collective liberation. It is important for me to note that I did not come across most of these practices and texts until entering an aligned graduate program in 2016, which is to say, as an outsider from a privileged position. Please remember: for generations, Black, Indigenous, Trans and Queer, Poor, and Disabled people have lived, led, shared, and died for transformative care, mutual aid, sovereignty, and liberation, while their wisdom has been mined, stolen, and appropriated by white-centered practices.  I am sharing this starter resource list to open the gates of the academic ivory tower, bring more people along, and to center the Black, Indigenous, and decolonial originators and ongoing practitioners of this work. We must honor these realities with a commitment to humility, consent, right relationship, and accountability.

We have to start somewhere. So, let’s get to it:

INTRODUCTION: Note from Sarah J:

First off, you made it this far! Thank you for being here.

For those of us outside & newer to this work, we often deal with disruptive anxiety as we strive toward accountability, moving through feelings of discomfort, shame, guilt, defensiveness, isolation, grief, anger, despair to inspiration, hope, community, healing, joy, & back again.

Mistakes are often made— & oppression & harm are often reenacted— when centering individualism, our own discomfort & priorities, our well-intentioned but misguided help that tends toward saviorism, & whiteness. These are long historical & present repeated patterns.

Breaking harmful patterns involves intentional, ongoing, accountable, embodied practice. This includes:

–Rooting yourself in curiosity & a not-knowing stance (you’re not the expert on anyone’s experience but your own)

–Recognizing & addressing systemic oppression & its disproportionate, differential impacts

–Centering those most impacted & decentering whiteness

–Cultural humility & responsiveness

–Self reflexivity, self management & getting comfortable with being uncomfortable

–Consent, accountability, reparative actions

–Adaptability & iteration

As you keep moving in embodied liberatory praxis, notice your emotions, especially discomfort, & body sensations. Feelings are some of the first clues of where you are & where you might need to go. Notice, ground, breathe, rest; begin again & keep showing up.

POSITIONALITY: About Sarah (she/her):

–Disabled, White & white-assumed, assimilated, cishet woman with mixed race Arab & European ancestry, in late 30s, cash & wealth poor as an adult

–3rd generation so-called US citizen, grew up middle class

–Lives through complex trauma, notably from white supremacy culture; simultaneously benefits from whiteness with unearned privilege & less intersecting harm than other individuals & groups

–Steered toward decentering whiteness in liberatory care as an unlicensed social worker, undoing & repairing 20 yrs of complicity in white-dominated helping professions

Section 1: PROXIMITY TO POWER AND PRIVILEGE

PRIVILEGE WHEEL BY INTERTWINE

IMAGE DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIVILEGE WHEEL (link: intertwine.org.au/privilege-wheel/ ): a color-coded circular visual aide/pie chart, sectioned by identity categories that radiate from proximity to power at center to marginalized identities toward outer circle 

What identities do you hold?

(1) What are your (a) privileged, (b) marginalized, and (c) intersecting identities and experiences?

(2) How do these shift in different contexts? 

For More: Privilege Wheel by Intertwine link: https://intertwine.org.au/privilege-wheel/ 

Section 2: POWER, PRIVILEGE, MARGINALIZATION, & INTERSECTIONALITY

A sampling of Black Feminist perspectives:

–SISTER OUTSIDER: ESSAYS AND SPEECHES by Audre Lorde

–FEMINIST THEORY: FROM MARGIN TO CENTER by bell hooks

–WOMEN, RACE & CLASS by Angela Y. Davis 

-INTERSECTIONALITY by Kimberlé Crenshaw [IN “DEMARGINALIZING THE INTERSECTION OF RACE AND SEX: A BLACK FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF THE ANTIDISCRIMINATION DOCTRINE, FEMINIST THEORY AND ANTIRACIST POLITICS”]

–LOCATION OF SELF by Thandiwe Dee Watts-Jones [“LOCATION OF SELF” IS ALSO REFERRED TO AS “SOCOCULTURAL LOCATION” AND USED TO DESCRIBE POSITIONALITY]

THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE STATEMENT by The Combahee River Collective

Section 3: RECOGNIZING SYSTEMIC RACISM & OPPRESSION

Some starting places:

–AN AFRO-INDIGENOUS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES (BOOK) by Dr Kyle Mays (Saginaw Chippewa)

NOTE: this text by Indigenous author Mays is recommended over the similarly titled work of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz who is not Indigenous

–SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT RACE? (BOOK) by Ijeoma Oluo

–THIS LAND (PODCAST)

–WHY ARE ALL THE BLACK KIDS SITTING TOGETHER IN THE CAFETERIA? (BOOK) by Beverly Daniel Tatum

–I’M STILL HERE: BLACK DIGNITY IN A WORLD MADE FOR WHITENESS (BOOK) by Austin Channing Brown

–STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING (BOOKS, TV SERIES) by Ibram X. Kendi

–CASTE: THE ORIGINS OF OUR DISCONTENTS (BOOK) by Isabel Wilkerson 

–KILLING THE BLACK BODY (BOOK) by Dorothy Roberts 

–THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS (BOOK) by Michelle Alexander

–13TH (FILM) feat. Angela Y. Davis, dir. Ava Duverny 

Section 4: WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE

–WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE (link: WEBSITE LEARNING HUB, IMAGE) by Tema Okun, Image by Melanie G.S. Walby; IMAGE DESCRIPTION (link): aspects of white supremacy culture illustrated as apothecary bottles labeled with toxic poison warnings 

For More: White Supremacy Culture Characteristics https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/characteristics.html

–ME AND WHITE SUPREMACY (BOOK; WORKBOOK) by Layla F Saad 

Section 5: MOVING THROUGH WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE:

NOT-KNOWING, CULTURAL HUMILITY, SELF-AWARENESS, REFLEXIVITY, & ACCOUNTABILITY

Sampling of what I wish I knew earlier but didn’t learn until grad school:

CULTURAL HUMILITY 

–VIVIAN CHÁVEZ (YouTube)

–FISHER-BORNE, M., Cain, J. M., & Martin, S. L. (2015). From mastery to accountability: Cultural humility as an alternative to cultural competence.

–KENNETH V. HARDY 

REFLEXIVITY, RELATIONALITY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY 

–ABIGAIL ECHO-HAWK 

-adrienne marie brown 

–DR. AUTUMN ASHER BLACKDEER

–CELIA JAES FALICOV

–CHELSEY BRANHAM, MPH

–DAWN BELKIN MARTINEZ

-GINA STARBLANKET 

–IMANI BARBARIN

–LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA

–LORETTA J. ROSS* (*added 2.20.25)

–TAMARAH MOSS, PHD, MSW, MPH

Section 6: TRANSFORMATIVE, RELATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY:

DISMANTLING WHITE SUPREMACY AND BUILDING TOWARD LIBERATORY COLLECTIVE CARE 

INDIGENOUS WISDOM STEWARDS:

DR. BLACKDEER, LILLA WATSON, G. STARBLANKET; J. FISH et al., S. YELLOWHORSE, DR. CHARLIE AMÁYÁ SCOTT

EDUCATION AND WORKSHOPS:

–LORETTA J. ROSS / CALLING IN*- Book, Learning Series (*added 2.20.25)

–CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE/HEAL YOUR WAY FORWARD Learning Collective, Book – myisha t. hill

–MAYA-GAWONII SHABAZZ-SHALEH/COWRIE CROSSINGS cowriecrossings.com – Education, Writing, Workshops (including with LWN!)

–YSABEL GARCIA/ESTOY AQUÍ – estoyaquillc.com

-ASIATU COACH – asiatucoach.com

–SLOW FACTORY – slowfactory.earth

–TOI MARIE – toimarie.com

–TRAUMATIZED AND THRIVING – traumatizedandthriving.com

Closing: QUESTIONS? FEELINGS? PLAN TO SHARE & ENGAGE?

You can connect with me, Sarah Joseph, MSW, through the Liberatory Wellness Network below, including for direct links and materials. 

Remember: Feelings are clues. Notice, ground, breathe, rest; begin again, iterate, & keep showing up.

This Black History Month and Black August, and always, acknowledge, credit, and pay Black women for their intellectual, emotional, physical, & spiritual labor, resources, & time. Consider a session with one of the educators listed above, donating to Intertwine Australia for the Privilege Wheel (https://intertwine.org.au/conspire/ ), contributing to a mutual aid request, or donating to a Black-led organization, such as Restore National (bit.ly/damn2high) or Liberatory Wellness Network https://liberatorywellnessnetwork.com/donate/.

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN 1.31.2025; UPDATED 2.20.2025 (see comments and asterisks*), 8.7.2025 (to honor name changes for HYWF and MG-SS, plaint text, and archive)