Regina Jackson and Saira Rao join the Small Doses with Amanda Seales podcast to discuss what it’s like to confront white women with radical honesty about racism and white supremacy.
Jackson and Rao are the co-founders of Race2Dinner, through which they facilitate dinner table conversations with white women about white supremacy, racism and xenophobia. Race2Dinner participants experience radical honesty about their role in upholding systemic racism (intentional or not) as well as “the essential part they can play in tearing down the systems that are killing Black and Brown people every single day.”
Race2Dinner events are “not for the faint of heart,” their website warns. One Race2Dinner dinner table conversation was documented in the provocative 2022 documentary Deconstructing Karen. “A lot of people left in a huff, let me say that,” Jackson tells Small Doses host Amanda Seales.
“As Black people, we can’t stop.”
While their work can seem draining, Jackson emphasizes that refusing to speak up about oppression is not an option as long as white people as a whole continue to turn a blind eye to righting the wrongs of America’s sordid history.
“As Black people, we can’t stop. We don’t have the privilege of saying, ‘I’m done talking about racism,’” Jackson says. “I love it when white people say, ‘You guys make everything about race!’ No, you all made everything about race.”
Deluded privilege and end-stage white supremacy
Rao and Jackson observe that while their Race2Dinner events draw plenty of white women who will at the very least show up to have these tough conversations, this is rarely followed by action.
Rao says we are witnessing what she calls the end stage of white supremacy.
“There’s this real hubris that white people have that they will be untouchable,” she says. “They are deluded because of their centuries-long privilege into believing that if they don’t do anything, they will be protected.”
The data is proving otherwise, Rao notes. From widespread gun violence to climate catastrophes, she argues that now is the time to take action in the face of systemic crises that impact us all, white people included.
“This is the end stage of white supremacy. We are actually seeing it right now, when white supremacy is killing white people,” Rao says.
Get the full conversation. Listen to this episode of Small Doses: Side Effects of Deconstructing Karens (with Regina Jackson & Saira Rao) here. This episode is also available on Apple and Spotify.
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