I’m on the board of a non-profit, and we hired anti-racism consultants to do an assessment of our culture and practices. One thing that came up is this notion of how whiteness, as an identity, is constructed. You can’t “fix” racist structures without doing the “heart work” too.
Meaning, if you pit structural solutions (eg, “hire more Black people”), against a racist culture, the culture will always win out, and you will likely fail in your goals. The heart work — unlearning the deep programming of white supremacy—is not optional.
The kicker is, part of white identity construction involves emphasizing technical (acute) over adaptive (systemic) change. Meaning, how we are trained to approach problems in white culture? Often just exacerbates those problems. And that’s a problem if you actually want change.
I’m a student, not an expert here, but I’m sharing this because, as I engage in this work in several spaces, I’m noticing our failure to do the heart work. And I’m noticing, too, how white identity construction is reinforced by (or hard to disentangle from) white patriarchy.
White women aren’t exempt here! In fact, our behavior can be more insidious, as we embrace niceness or reject our power. Or we just adopt white patriarchal culture to get ahead in leadership positions, creating a culture that’s just as toxic or worse.
So, here’s where I’m going with this: last night, I learned about unlearning toxic white culture. Then, I read a profile of a prominent white male climate activist that upset me so much, I kept waking up all night, angry. This morning, I realized these things are connected.
Lone hero narratives are white culture. Rugged individualism is white culture. Over-intellectualizing is white culture. Selfishness is white culture. Inflexibility is white culture. And these things? They’re barriers to real, systemic change.
There are other stories here, other approaches, whether to climate change or something else. Ways of processing your pain that don't lash out and hurt others. Ways of holding love and grief, fear and purpose, in solidarity with others. Ways of listening, and not just yelling.
If we genuinely care about climate change, we have to unlearn these toxic elements of white culture (and that includes self-care -- burnout, too, is toxic white culture). This isn't optional, or a distraction.

This project won't work unless and until we do the heart work.

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More from @JacquelynGill

25 Jan
Hey, while I have you here, I wanted to share two of my lab's papers that came out right around the election when everyone was a bit distracted.
The first is by my former PhD student, @DulcineaGroff. She found that the establishment of seabird colonies in the Falklands 5000 years ago triggered a big ecosystem change on land. She was able to pick up this shift thanks to (you guessed it) poop! advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/43/e…
Seabirds eat in the ocean, and nest on land, so they're a kind of sentinel of global change. Long-term records like Dr. Groff's can help us protect these birds (and their habitats) as the climate warms in the Southern Ocean.
Read 5 tweets
25 Jan
I keep thinking about something Dr. Sacoby Wilson (@ceejhlab) sad during this episode. He talked about Ernest Boyer's five dimensions of science: discovery, teaching, integration, engagement, application. “If you’re not doing all five dimensions, you’re doing science science.”
"I’m not curious about anything I work on when it comes to environmental justice. Because it’s macabre. “I’m curious about being poisoned,” basically, that is inhumane. Unethical..." 2/n
"So when we do science that only observes an issue or science that extracts from people’s experiences and doesn’t give back, that’s (in my opinion) bad science." 3/n
Read 7 tweets
22 Jan
Please don't use body fat as a climate change metaphor. First, it's a bad metaphor (fat is farm more complex than calories in - calories out). Plus, this basically equates eating food with fossil fuel burning, and reinforces fatness as something to be combatted or ashamed of.
When I say "bad metaphor" I mean it. Most of what you hear about body fat is woefully anti-scientific, as body fat scientists will tell you (and yes, this includes what you hear from doctors): highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/ev…
This also goes for journalists or climate communicators jumping on the opportunity to include obesity as a moral imperative for fighting climate change ("Ride bikes! Go vegan! Fight climate change and the obesity crisis!"). Greenwashing fat-phobia doesn't make it suddenly okay.
Read 6 tweets
17 Dec 20
I just participated in this session on failure, and I learned so much from my fellow panelists and the amazing, supportive comments from attendees. I wanted to share a few concrete strategies that have helped me. #AGU20 #INV15 #AGUEarlyCareer
In grad school, my advisor normalized rejection, which really helped. I've passed his advice on to my own students: give yourself a day to mope and grieve, eat ice cream, cry, etc., and then dust yourself off and move on.
What I like about this is that it gives you space to feel perfectly valid emotions, but you don't let yourself get bogged down or to dwell. You can the review comments on the shelf and come back a week or a month later, and re-assess with a clear head and heart.
Read 9 tweets
17 Dec 20
One summer in grad school, I was in the lab every day counting pollen with a couple of undergrads, and we all had very different musical tastes, right? But the one thing we could all agree on was classic rock.
We put on the classic rock station in the lab all day, every day. One of the undergrads started a game, where whenever a new song came on, whoever called our the name of the song and/or the artist’s name got a point, one for each. We kept score on the lab white board.
We kept this up all summer long, vari-colored tick marks next to our names. It was super close, because we were extremely competitive and all loved music.
Read 5 tweets
5 Dec 20
Boys are only easier to raise than girls because you’re outsourcing your parenting to the women they’ll date in the future.
(Not all boys grow up to date women, but the emotional labor that corrects our hands-off approach to raising boys is extremely gendered.)
PPS Shout-out to all the parents struggling to do better without role models. I’ve had so many people ask me for books on parenting feminist boys, and they still don’t exist the last I checked. Free book idea, anyone?
Read 4 tweets

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