I'm currently reading "Me and White Supremacy" by Layla Saad - will review at the end of the month - and trying to engage more actively in anti-racism. Just saw an interesting diagram called the "Pyramid of White Supremacy" and I thought I'd transcribe it for screen-readers. 1/12

I've seen a few versions, but they're all based on work by Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence and Ellen Tuzzolo, and all depict a triangle or 3D pyramid split into different sections. Each layer has words written onto it, often with a side caption for the layer. 2/12

I'm going to start at the top (the smallest section of the pyramid) and work my way down. I'll write the name of each layer, and then the words within that layer (I'll separate with semi-colons, diagrams tend to just space them apart). Warnings for racism / white supremacy. 3/12

It's worth noting that many of the examples used are specific to the USA (e.g. British audiences might not be familiar with redlining or the image of burning crosses), but that's not an excuse to pretend that a similar pyramid couldn't be written with UK examples. 4/12

Top layer is "Genocide: mass murder". 2nd layer is "Violence: lynching, hate crimes, police brutality, police murders of people of colour". 3rd layer is "Calls for violence: Neo-Nazis, KKK, Confederate flags, the N-word, swastikas, burning crosses." 5/12

Some diagrams add an extra line under this point, and mark everything above the line as "Overt White Supremacy (Socially Unacceptable)" and everything under the line as "Covert White Supremacy (Socially Acceptable)". 6/12

4th layer is "Systemic discrimination: mass incarceration, racial profiling, school-to-prison pipeline, redlining, hiring discrimination, racial slurs, stop and frisk, fearing people of colour, anti-immigration policies, funding schools locally, predatory lending". 7/12

5th layer is "Veiled racism: victim blaming, racist jokes, paternalism, English-only initiatives, bootstrap theory, Euro-centric curriculum, racist mascots, tokenism, cultural appropriation, colourblind was, tone policing, claiming reverse racism". 8/12

6th layer is "Minimisation: not believing experiences of POC, two sides to every story, white saviour complex, false equivocation, denial of white privilege, white ally speaking over POC". 6th layer also includes some common phrases mixed in, which fit into this category. 9/12

Phrases for 6th layer are: "It's just a joke", "But my Black friend said...", "Get over slavery", "We all belong to the human race", "It doesn't matter who you vote for", "Post-racial society", "Not all white people...", and "Why can't we all just get along?". 10/12

7th and bottom layer is "Indifference: Politics doesn't affect me, avoiding confrontation with racist family members, remaining apolitical, not challenging racist jokes". One version of the diagram which I saw also has an following important phrase as its header. 11/12

The phrase is: "In a pyramid, every brick depends on the ones below it for support. If the bricks at the bottom are removed, the whole structure comes tumbling down." I don't know if removing the bottom bricks is sufficient to topple the pyramid, but it does seem necessary. 12/12

PS: I've also seen a version with more examples of covert supremacy: calling the police in Black people, self-segregating neighbourhoods, respectability politics, Halloween costumes, "All Lives Matter", treating kids of colour as adults, prioritizing white voices as experts...

Inequitable healthcare (especially maternity care), assuming good intentions are enough, Euro-centric beauty standards, exceptionalism fetishisation, meritocracy myth, weaponised whiteness, expecting POC to teach white people, saying "You're so articulate / You don't sound Black"

I might have missed a few there, and other versions might have other variations - for instance, it doesn't mention the anti-Blackness embedded in ideas of "professional" hairstyles - but that's the core of it. End of thread!