Framework for Healing Your Own White History

Healing White History changed me. I’m sharing the framework because I believe other white folks can use their own family histories to move from inherited stories toward healing – and toward repair.

I need to point out that there are plenty of different ways to go about racial reckoning, healing, and reparation. For one alternative approach, as an example, I recommend “Families: Designing a Plan of Repair,” by Reparations 4 Slavery. For another, dig deep with the comprehensive, scholarly reckoning of Dr. Mary Watkins in White Work and Reparative Genealogy: Reckoning with Ancestral Debt as a Path to Racial Reparations.

But if you want to try my approach, you’re in the right place. This tool has two parts: 1) a broad, conceptual framework called Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (“TRHT”) -- as developed by Dr. Gail Christopher, the former Senior Adviser and Vice President of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; and 2) a specific set of guidelines and suggestions for white folks reckoning with their personal family histories.