Dominant White Culture Behaviors

I am reading a helpful book called Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving. Below are excerpts from that book. I recommend you read it to get the full context of these points. -DG

The list of dominant white culture behaviors that hold racial barriers in place:

• conflict avoidance
• valuing formal education over life experience
• right to comfort/entitlement
• sense of urgency
• competitiveness
• emotional restraint
• judgmentalness
• either/or thinking
• belief in one right way
• defensiveness
• being status oriented

Understanding each is essential if I am to relate to people outside my own culture. The more conscious I become of my cultural adaptations, the more I'm able to choose when they are and are not appropriate.

...no one was saying all white people act this way all the time....or only white people act this way.
...there is no single white culture any more than there is one Asian culture or one black culture.

(excerpts from pages 194, 196)

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