: What the Author of Me and White Supremacy Wants You to Know About Anti-Racism Work #WorldNEWS When Layla F. Saad thinks back to seeing images from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017,

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What the Author of Me and White Supremacy Wants You to Know About Anti-Racism Work #WorldNEWS
When Layla F. Saad thinks back to seeing images from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, her skin prickles. I think about the pure hatred that was in those mens eyes, and see the connection that the hate is directed specifically at people who look like me, she says. Saad, who was working as a life coach before she became an antiracist educator, was compelled to write a blog post in response to Charlottesville, addressing white women working in her industry and calling out their failure to combat white supremacy. From that blog post came her viral 28-day challenge on Instagram, #meandwhitesupremacy , where she encouraged followers to answer simple yet direct questions about their complicity in white supremacy, and a digital anti-racism workbook, which was downloaded 100,000 times in six months in 2018.

Saads book Me and White Supremacy, published in January 2020, encourages readers to carry on the challenge and write a daily journal in responses to prompts like What have you learned about your white privilege that makes you feel uncomfortable? and In what ways have you been apathetic when it comes to racism? Its one of a selection of antiracism works that have gained significant attention as the Black Lives Matter movement surged in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.
Saad says that her intersecting identities and experiences as an East African, Arab, British, Black Muslim woman, who was born and raised in the U. K. and now lives in Qatar, have given her a unique perspective to look at the different ways that white supremacy shows up, in ways were not even thinking about. TIME spoke with Saad about the response to her work in the current context, her advice for Black communities, and what doing anti-racist work really looks like beyond performative allyship.
TIME: Me and White Supremacy was originally an Instagram challenge that you created, where you encouraged people to think through and reflect on their racist thoughts and behaviors. How would you define white supremacy and what do you think some of the misperceptions are about it?
Saad: I think people hear that word and the image conjured in their minds is the men marching in Charlottesville. And theyre like, “Im not like that, Im definitely not bad. ” But white supremacy is about this idea, this belief, this ideology that people who are white or who look white are superior to people of other races, and therefore they deserve to be dominant over people of other races. And that dominance shows up in various different ways. It showed up centuries ago with genocide and enslavement and colonization. But it still shows up today, in interpersonal relationships, in what we see as the norm in the media, or the norm in companies, or the norm in schools.