Abstract
Drawing from interviews about lives that did not go as expected, the author argues that people reproduce inequality in friendship relationships by leaning into aspects of white supremacy culture and the American achievement ideology—namely, the desire for control, perfectionism, and individualism—when comparing the pace of their lives to those of their friends. Until participants could feel secure about where they were in life, these comparisons simmered competition, self-blame, resentment of peers, and isolation. Striving for these ideals also covertly protects the ideologies of dominant groups without having to name any systems of oppression or their beneficiaries. In the end, interview participants often reproduced (as much as they challenged) cultural understandings of a well-lived life, but one way to combat inequality is to transform expectations for compulsory progress.
TopBackground
Activist and educator Tema Okun (2001) summarizes fifteen types of norms and behaviors that perpetuate white supremacy thinking in groups and organizations. But culture—or the ways that people make sense of the world around them (Geertz, 1973), including white supremacy culture (WSC)—permeates across spheres of life and beyond the workplace. This chapter will focus on four of those fifteen fallacies of WSC and how people use such norms in response to stagnation in their lives while also contributing to the reproduction of inequality in their relationships. These four fallacies include: (1) only one right way; (2) perfectionism; (3) individualism; and (4) imagining progress as (unsustainable) expansion. This section will define these four aspects of WSC before summarizing other concepts that frame this analysis of stagnation and modern life.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Leverage Point: A minor change, shift, or intervention in a system that has the potential to make a large-scale impact on the entire system of stakeholders, organizations, and institutions.
Modernity: The historical shift in politics, culture, and philosophy (in the late 1800s, predominantly in Western Europe and North America, alongside industrialization and globalization) from religious explanations to scientific rationalizations of phenomena as well from a collectivist to an individualistic view of life and society.
Self-Efficacy: One’s ability to effect change or pursue a plan of action with competence.
Compulsory Progress: The cultural expectation that lives ought to have a linear plot of continuous accomplishments and growth to sustain positive feelings of merit, worth, and purpose in life.
Stagnation: The perception of non-movement, regression, or loss of purpose in life, particularly if one does not follow the traditional timing and sequence of widely shared milestones.
One Right Way: A characteristic of white supremacy culture that involves the belief that only one solution exists to a problem and that those who do not comply with that “one right way” are at fault for their shortcomings.
Heterosexism: A system of oppression (that includes symbols, attitudes, beliefs, values, standards, policies, and practices) centering heterosexual identity to be the default way of making sense of intimacy and relationships while marginalizing, othering, devaluing, and stigmatizing alternative identities and practices.
Heteropatriarchy: A system of oppression (that includes symbols, attitudes, beliefs, values, standards, policies, and practices) that privileges the expression of cisgender masculinity—particularly through heterosexual activity—while exploiting, marginalizing, and victimizing those who hold other gender and sexual identities.
Capitalism: An economic and political system that involves the private ownership and control of property, capital, resources, and other means of production by individuals or corporations (versus the government) for the purpose of competing in a free market (with limited regulations) to accumulate additional capital, profit, status, and power.
Patriarchy: A system of oppression (that includes symbols, attitudes, beliefs, values, standards, policies, and practices) that values the perspective, experiences, and authority of cisgender men over the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of trans, nonbinary, and women-identified people.
Achievement Ideology: The belief that individual effort and merit lead to upward social mobility.
Markers of Adulthood: The timing and sequence of cultural milestones that signify the transition to independent, adult status in society, including the transition from school to career, marriage, parenthood, and homeownership.
Perfectionism: A characteristic of white supremacy culture that involves identifying others’ inadequacies and imperfections to sustain positive feelings of security and competence.
Systems-Change: An approach to addressing social problems that involves a holistic exploration of the causal feedback loops between stakeholders, their relationships, resource flows, rules, practices, mental models, and other elements of a system that all work together to produce a result; often in enabling or inhibiting the effects of a social problem. The work of identifying, examining, and interrogating these interconnected elements of a system is in service to devising leverage points, or minor interventions that can transform the system.
Theory of Change: An explanation of how an intervention, initiative, program, or service will reach its goals in addressing a problem.
Culture: The objects, symbols, worldviews, expectations for behavior, and practices that people in a society use to make sense of situations and their interactions with others.
Mental Model: A person’s expectations or thought process about how the world works.
Individualism: A characteristic of white supremacy culture that involves the expectation that one is solely responsible for their own decisions and actions, disregarding contextual factors that also constrain or enable behaviors.
White Supremacy Culture (WSC): The set of expectations and behaviors that perpetuate the beliefs, standards, and habits of white people as the default or superior way of making sense of the world; such norms (often in the context of organizations) often lead to individualism, competition, and isolation while trying to control situations or other people.