Pop quiz: what do all of these statements have in common?
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
“It’s not my job.”
“I can’t figure out where to start.”
“It’s just too hard.”
“We really don’t want to make waves.”
If you paid attention to the title of this blog post, you might have guessed that the thing these all have in common is either inertia or white supremacy.
The real answer is both.
And if these statements also sound like excuses to you, too, well, bonus points, because you’re not wrong.
I wrote a scholarly article on inertia based on my experience with bullshit systems.
A million years ago (okay, it was really 2017), I wrote an article for the Journal of Donor Relations and Stewardship (here) called “Managing the Forces of Inertia on Donor Relations Programs.” The article was based on my experience over nearly two decades of working in non-profit fundraising and management.
At the time I wrote the article, I could not have known that today, in November of 2023, I’d be applying my initial thinking on inertia in these bullshit systems to my personal work dismantling the poison spoon of white supremacy that’s in me. The poison spoon that’s in all of us, but most especially White people like me.
White supremacy is a bullshit system, and it’s subject to inertia, too.
I know we usually hear about inertia as it applies to physical science, in terms of the way objects move (or not) depending on how a physical force is applied. Think back to your awkward pre-teen self, sitting in your 6th grade science class and hearing the teacher say: “An object at rest stays at rest unless a force acts upon it to move it,” etc.
In the introduction to the JDRS article, I wrote this about the way inertia shows up in our everyday lives, too, in the social systems we humans have devised:
Inertia infuses bureaucracies as both a positive and negative force. Routines, which depend on momentum, assure that bureaucracies are efficient and use the fewest resources possible to carry out a function. Inertia, however, can reduce effectiveness if the value of processes is not frequently reviewed against the strategy or outcomes sought. These laws of bureaucratic function influence…activities and can become enshrined or part of tradition, without review and revision.
Would our science teachers be surprised to hear us talking about inertia is it applies to bullshit human systems, I wonder?
I’m going to push this thinking a little further and relate inertia to the system of white supremacy in two critical ways. Inertia is why the system of white supremacy is so damn hard to budge, and it’s a handy rationalization to avoid working against white supremacy.
The inertia has been building for hundreds of years.
Here are some examples of the mighty inertia of systems of white supremacy - hard to get rid of and hard-to-deny excuses - that we’re up against.
White Christian Nationalism, which has been rapidly gaining steam for the past century. Read Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (here).
The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, encouraging White U.S. citizens to feel entitled to own and use guns almost since the founding of this racist nation. Read The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, by Carol Anderson (here).
The criminalization of Black Americans and the explosive growth of the U.S. prison system. Watch “13th” (here).
And, last but certainly not least, the system of enslavement that enthusiastically increased the economic prosperity of a tiny percentage of White southern land owners at the terrible cost of personhood for Black people in the U.S. Start by perusing the “1619 Project” website (here).
As if this list isn’t long enough, there are, of course, many more U.S. systems subject to the power of white supremacy, like voting, health care and housing. I’ve spent less time learning about those systems so far, so the above list is just based on the topics I feel a bit more comfortable discussing.
Inertia = Power. The good news is, it’s a two-way street.
If the concept of inertia tells us that the way to move something is to apply a force - push or pull - then we know those of us who want to dismantle white supremacy need to push or pull against white supremacy. Every way we can think of.
Because the people who benefit from the systems of white supremacy want those systems to stay right where they are. And they are counting on the inertia of hundreds of years of system-building to keep it that way.
We must build our capacity to act against the oppressive system of white supremacy.
Here’s a workshop you can take to help you build your muscles to do your part to dismantle white supremacy.
If we work together to apply the inertia needed to change white supremacy, it will happen. Little by little, step by step, one conversation at a time, one system at a time - we’ll push white supremacy out.
We must do this together. Because what we also know about inertia is that if we don’t act to apply force, white supremacy won’t go anywhere.