For a while now, I have been part of a community of white anti-racist activists that are working on understanding our own relationship with racism and anti-blackness and how to take action. We live all over the country, do a range of work, and come from a range of class backgrounds. We don’t have a lot of answers, but apparently our friends think we do because they keep texting us, asking us questions like: Where do I donate? Why is the uprising violent? Should I go protest?

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In light of that, I along with a small group of fellow white anti-racist activists decided to create a collective Q&A that could be shared widely. These are not the answers, but they are some answers. One mistake white people make is trying to show up only when they think they can do it perfectly.

Another mistake white people make is doing stuff like this (that is, compiling answers to questions) without asking people of color, particularly Black women, how this sits with them. We, however, did that and got some crucial feedback that is integrated here.

We hope it is useful to you as you navigate this moment, the lifelong journey of countering white supremacy, and taking anti-racist action. (Speaking of anti-racist, if that term is new to you, or you want to learn more, this is a great resource.) We also know it is a time when a lot of Black and/or people of color are enduring a lot of requests for emotional labor on behalf of white friends and colleagues; we hope this might be something they can send along.

Of course things are changing minute by minute right now, so some of this may seem irrelevant in the coming days and weeks. Then again, sadly there are speeches from the late ’60s that will blow you away with how contemporary they sound.

1. Why is the response violent and destructive?

First and foremost, police officers and the National Guard themselves are initiating violence. Violence. Take that in — not the destruction of property, but violence against people; these are two very different things. There is also evidence that much of the destruction has actually been instigated by white supremacists. This is not new. White Americans have a long, storied history of violence and destruction in this country.

Read mainstream media reports with that in mind. As Mia Birdsong writes: “The mainstream media generally parrot the ‘official story.’ Police are official. They hold press conferences.” (Follow her!)

Language is important here. White people use the word riot in a largely negative way, but riots or uprisings or revolutions, or… or… or… have led to some of the most important advances in justice that this country has ever known. Charles Blow reminds us that the Fairing Housing Act came about as a direct result of the uprisings after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. King, a pacifist, said, “In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear?” So while he didn’t encourage riots, he didn’t condemn them either.

Consider why the sight of a burning building is so repellent to you, but so many other acts of violence and destruction that are a part of daily life in America for Black people haven’t registered in the same way. (Trevor Noah’s video on this, and the broken social contract, is well worth the 18 minutes.)

2. Should I go protest? Won’t I get Covid-19?

Protest is only one way to participate in change right now. There are so many things we need to be doing long-term. In other words, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Ideally, the biggest reason we’ve been staying home during Covid-19 has been to protect the health and well-being of our community in the face of an horrific threat. While it’s important not to be brash about any exceptions to that rule, the reason why Black activists have asked for white people to join them in the streets is exactly the same — to value community in face of an horrific threat. White people showing up and following the lead of local Black leaders during these protests is critical for a variety of reasons. There are also a variety of kinds of protests happening, including car caravans and other safer forms of gathering.

But whatever you choose, remember that having the choice, itself, is a privilege, and that the fear you feel for your own physical and emotional safety is what a Black person likely feels, but with far more accuracy given that they are more likely to be targeted by police and more likely to be vulnerable to Covid-19 infection because of our racist economic, health care, and other systems. Don’t wallow in guilt if you choose not to go, but do take a moment to really reflect on why you’re not showing up. If it’s fear, consider that the fear you feel is no less real than the fear others feel (and likely out of proportion to your actual risk). Also take a minute to feel in your body how much this fight means to Black people that they are willing to show up in the face of those fears.

3. Is defunding or abolishing the police really the answer?

One of the most beautiful aspects of the contemporary prison and police abolition movement (regardless of whether you agree with it fully or not) is its ability to imagine the potential for community support and solidarity. While it’s easy to focus on the headline — “defund police” or “abolish police” — a more helpful starting point might be to think through “what would need to be true for the way communities worked with and related to each other that would make law enforcement, as we currently know it, unnecessary?”

Abolition may feel like an extreme answer to you right now. That makes sense. You’ve been socialized to think that police “protect and serve” and are a necessary presence for our common life together. But try on the idea that abolition doesn’t mean anarchy, but intentionality. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, one of the most venerated abolitionists in the country, said of incarceration, but it applies to policing: “So many of the proposed remedies don’t end up diminishing the system. They regard the system as something that can be fixed by removing and replacing a few elements.”

From her perspective, this is a strategic mistake (and goes a long way in explaining why we’ve seen so many of these videos in the last five years and felt so little change despite the increased awareness, protests etc.). Instead of trying to fix policing, how do we focus on policy that reduces the need for it in the first place? How do we change our approach to addiction and mental illness from punitive to healing? How do we move toward an economy that works for people? How do we bolster public schools so they are a place where young people find compelling projects? There are so many rich questions when you stop just asking: but don’t the police have to exist? Stop asking that. Start asking new questions.

Consider the words of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors-Brignac: “If you were willing to say #AbolishIce. I need you to be willing to say #DefundThePolice. Full stop.” (Follow her, obviously. And her co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.)

4. What are resources I can call in my community instead of the police?

Before calling anyone, take three deep breaths and ask yourself about your motivation. Is anyone actually in danger? How is your own racial and/or class bias potentially playing a role in your interpretation of the situation? Can you check your interpretation with someone else nearby?

If you still feel like a call needs to be made, what are the alternatives in your community to the police? Most places have an alternative number for a mental health crisis, for example, which is non-punitive. Or if you know your neighbors and can get support from other people, maybe you call them to help you figure out how to support someone in crisis. Having actual relationships with your neighbors and community members means you have more options to get help if conflict is happening — more effective and less dangerous options than calling the cops.

If you’re never heard of restorative and/or transformative justice, now would be a good time to do some exploring. Not all forms of justice are binary, win-lose. Some aim to restore both perpetrators and victims and they are being used in all kinds of settings to profound effect.

Many white people, especially white men, are raised with the idea that calling the police is heroic. We must unlearn this. This is a great read on how to think about your own motivation to call the police.

5. Where should I donate money?

We’d recommend thinking about this in two ways. First, short-term, immediate needs like bail funds in your local community (assuming there is uprising there). Note on bail funds: This was a need before this week and will continue to be a need after the cameras have moved on because we’ll still be under the weight of the systemic injustice of the criminal justice system. The Minnesota Freedom Fund has received a flood of support and asked that people give to other organizations, like Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, and the North Star Health Collective.

Which brings up the second kind of donation you might consider: Black-led organizing in your own community. Check out this resource guide that folks in Minneapolis put together as a great example. (Does such a guide exist in your community? If not, who could you work with to build one?) This, like bail funds, is the kind of giving that you should consider making on an ongoing basis if you’re able to, not just when another hashtag bubbles up.

You should give money if you’ve got it, but you should also remember that we can’t donate our way out of white supremacy.

Some Black leaders have also been asking that white allies pledge to invest in and/or spend their money in Black-owned businesses, in addition to their philanthropy. Another great idea, and one you can organize around locally. (Does your community have a list of Black-owned businesses? If not, who could you work with to build one?)

6. What should I read?

There are so many amazing books. Here’s a good list. And another. But don’t forget to feel and act, too. The work of our time, as white/privileged people, is to take real measurable action to redistribute power and resources and reform systems, focus on the well-being of Black people and other people of color, but also to work on ourselves (not just intellectually, but emotionally and physically). It’s easy to order a book and feel like you’ve done something. You have, but it’s a familiar, safe something.

Do something harder. Explore how racism lives in your own body via a somatic practice. Create a giving circle with other white neighbors and focus on redistributing some of your wealth to local Black organizing. Refuse to be on any panel that doesn’t include a person of color. Pass on work opportunities to people of color, brag on them to the prospective employer. Share your cultural capital with young people of color (making intros, explaining industries etc.), even if it means you don’t have time to mentor your friends’ white kids. Volunteer repeatedly and reliably for an organization serving the unhoused in your city. Send your kid to a global majority school and show up humbly.

Whatever you do, don’t use the reading you haven’t yet done as an excuse for the action you haven’t yet taken. Read alongside imperfect action. Look inside yourself. Reckon with the obvious.

7. What should I say to my kids about all this?

It depends what age your kids are. What you should definitely NOT say is nothing (which is all too common). Tiny humans are already making meaning about race. If you don’t say anything, they will make their own meaning. We all experience what is called “racial development” — when and how we make sense of our own racial identity and that of others. Jen Harvey (this podcast interview is a great listen), emphasizes “scaffolding” information about white supremacy for white kids. Start now so you can keep building on it. Create lots of space for your kids’ questions. Tolerate the silence. Signal that you’re there for future questions and conversations.

They already know. As Harvey says:

Every single study… shows us that kids have internalized messages about difference by the ages of three… Prelingual they start to, and this is all kids, negatively affix characteristics to darker skinned people and falsely attach notions of superiority to light skin people. And by the ages of five, children can tell that those differences have something to do with social status in the world. By the ages of five, they also know that they aren’t really supposed to talk about that with adults. That’s how early our kids learn that it’s taboo, if they are in family structures where you’re not, where you don’t talk about it, which is what white families tend to do.

Mia Charlene White encourages exploring the phrase “police impunity” rather than talking about it in terms of misconduct by a bad apple. She writes:

Let’s have community conversations about how to fight police impunity and the way in which we all pay (literally money to pay off judgments against cops — if tax money is a main metric to convince some folk) when we can never get these lives lost back.

If you commit to having the conversation about the historic and present reality of white supremacy with your kids before the next tragedy, you’ll be extremely surprised by the ability of even young kids to apply that lens in the future. They’ll amaze you at their ability to process and think critically about how you all respond as a family both in everyday moments and in moments of acute tragedy.

8. What should I say or do for my Black friends?

If you have Black friends that you are close to, a simple text checking in on them would probably be welcome. Let them know you’re upset and taking action, but don’t make them take care of you or expect praise. Just let them know you’re thinking of them. Tell them you love them. Consider offering to do something nourishing for them, like buying them some takeout or some beautiful plants. Racism is exhausting and traumatizing for people of color. You can’t change that today, but you can show up as a nourishing force in someone’s life.

Do not center yourself in your communication. The last thing they need right now is to take care of you. If you need to talk about being upset about what you’re seeing and hearing, and you probably do, do that with other white folks.

9. Why does the Amy Cooper thing matter so much to people?

Amy Cooper matters because she represents the truth about so many self-identified liberal white American women — so many of us haven’t actually done the work to confront our own racism, we’ve just learned how to say and do some of the right things to signal that we don’t want to be racist. Not seeing yourself as racist is not enough. It’s hardly anything, actually. It’s self-preservation in an era where it’s not socially acceptable to be openly racist. (But perfectly acceptable to be racist in a million other ways.)

Her actions weren’t a caricature of racism — some extreme, tiki-torch racism that is easy to distance ourselves from. She is uncomfortably identifiable — it should be easy to see ourselves in her, and that makes her actions less easy to distance ourselves from.

As Trevor Noah also points out, in some ways, Amy Cooper’s threat was so clarifying because it confirmed what so many people of color knew: That white people, for all of our heartbreak and solidarity in public, often still operate in this way under even the smallest private pressure, so calculated and with such total disregard for Black lives. She knew exactly what to say to weaponize whiteness, meaning with one panicked phone call to the police, she could threaten Christian Cooper’s life. She didn’t need a gun. She just needed her white skin and her feminized vulnerability. (This kind of weaponizing has been happening throughout American history.)

10. Why are Black people frustrated when I say I’m shocked? Shouldn’t I be shocked?

It’s critical that you are now paying attention, but it’s hard to hear that it’s shocking because it’s not new. It means you weren’t really paying attention before if you are shocked. Imagine walking along the street with a friend and being harassed, and then when you say something to the friend, he says, “I’m so upset. I’m so surprised.” But you were right next to one another? Did he not see what was happening, did he not hear? Your friend’s surprise would be hurtful. Our surprise is hurtful.

Looking at this timeline of events that led up to this moment might prove helpful. Also, watch this address by Rachel Cargle to get some sense of what that surprise sounds like and put it in the context of this moment. Follow her on Instagram for ongoing education and ideas for meaningful reflection and action.

11. Does posting on social media matter or is it performance?

Both! It is performative, but do it anyway. Just don’t only do that. Sign Petitions. Donate (see above). Read. Feel. Show up. Shut up. Commit for the long haul. But sure, post on social media, because the more white and/or privileged people make their outrage visible, the better. Amplifying Black voices is a great way to boost the signal. If you are telling your own friends and family something that you think will be more powerful coming in your own words, do that, but give credit to the Black thinkers who are influencing you.

Another thing you can do: Counter the posts by your white friends and family that perpetuate tired myths about how white supremacy works (“all we need is love,” “my children are colorblind”-type shit). You don’t need to wait for a rabidly racist comment to pop up to be an ally.

As you decide what to post and when, think about the difference between being an ally and an accomplice. As Colleen Clemens writes:

An ally will mostly engage in activism by standing with an individual or group in a marginalized community. An accomplice will focus more on dismantling the structures that oppress that individual or group — and such work will be directed by the stakeholders in the marginalized group. Simply, ally work focuses on individuals, and accomplice work focuses on the structures of decision-making agency.

As you post, keep looking for ways to show up as an accomplice, not just an ally.