Posted By Nicki Leone,
Monday, February 13, 2023
Updated: Saturday, February 11, 2023
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 "But all our phrasing-race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, White privilege, even White supremacy-serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this." - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Author Photo Credit: Wikicommons | Excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.
Learn
Of the four levels of racism (internalized, interpersonal, institutional, and systemic – for a summary of these check out this link), internalized can be the hardest to see and is often the hardest to talk about. And yet for healing to happen, what is otherwise unseen must be named. Internalized racism can manifest as internalized racial inferiority on the part of Black, Indigenous and People of Color and as internalized racial superiority for White people.
To learn more, watch this short 3 min video by Dee Watts-Jones, which focuses on internalized racial inferiority, as well as this short 2 min segment with Hugh Vazquez. Also take a look at this page from the Dismantling Racism website which lifts up elements of both internalized inferiority and internalized white superiority.
Reflect
- Consider how you relate to these notions of internalized racial inferiority and superiority. Is either one familiar to you? If so, how do they show up in your life? How do they show up in your workplace, school, place of worship and/or community? How do they interact with feelings associated with other aspects of your identity (gender, age, ethnicity, class status, etc.)? Consider writing, drawing, singing or embodying your reactions in movement.
- See if you can identify any specific feelings as they surface while doing this reflection (refer to the Feelings Wheel). What comes up? What messages do these feelings convey?
Act
- Engage others in this conversation about internalized racial inferiority and internalized white superiority. Look for evidence of how these internalizations show up externally through interactions in your community, school, place of worship and workplace.
- Walk around your bookstore, as you were prompted to do last week, and look at what you're messaging to your community. Do your gift cards and gift selection feature and potentially cater to only/mostly White people? What books are you facing out around the store; are they written almost exclusively by White authors, or is there a significant balance of BIPOC authors?
- Form race-based caucuses to take these conversations deeper. For more information on and resources for supporting caucusing, see this page from Racial Equity Tools website.
- Engage in healing work for yourself. See this short article from Anneliese SIngh, author of The Racial Healing Handbook.
Dig Deeper
Explore other links on the Challenge Resource Page. See how other Challenge participants are doing, and let them know how you are doing on the Challenge Bulletin Board
SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:
 
 Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.
Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE), a regional collaborative network organized to support the emergence and continued viability of a New England food system that is a resilient driver of healthy food for all, racial equity, sustainable farming and fishing, and thriving communities. We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.
Feedback? We welcome your thoughts.
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