Claws Out: Let's Bring Back the White Panther Party 🐈🐈‍⬛

I guess I shouldn’t be that shocked that I was yesterday years old when I first heard about The White Panther Party. It’s not exactly something we learned about in history classes in Catholic schools in Idaho… But after seeing some posts about the Black Panthers stepping up to help keep communities safe during horrific ICE kidnapping raids, I remembered that their community work was something I had wanted to write about here.

And then I saw some posts from some amazing social justice educators that I follow on LinkedIn about the Black Panther Party and an ally group inspired by them that I’d somehow never heard of before: The White Panther Party.

Inspired by the Black Panthers, the White Panther Party was an antiracist and leftist organization that began in the late 60s after Huey P Newton was asked how white folks could support the Black Panthers. They were based in Detroit and Ann Arbor, but also had chapters in Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the UK. The Rainbow Coalition was another organization born out of the Black Panther Party, led by Fred Hampton and Bob Lee and based in Chicago. These revolutionary Civil Rights movements have much to teach us about community organizing, and it’s imperative that we apply their methods to our organizing today.

For my fellow white folks, this one’s for you! (Readers of color can take the day off, although you may find some of the resources helpful). I think it’s our responsibility as decent humans not to simply say we’re not racist, but to be actively and vocally antiracist. And the first step along that journey is to learn to accept that this work is uncomfortable, and then shut the F up and listen. White folks are not the centers of the universe we have been socialized to think we are. And I promise you, becoming aware of white privilege will not hurt you, you’ll be fine. Decolonizing your mind only opens your world and gives you a deeper appreciation of diversity and different experiences.

What Black folks and other People of Color have endured over the centuries, sacrifices they have been forced to make for our comfort, is massively worse than any temporary discomfort you may feel from confronting the shadows of history. The least we can do is learn accurate history, put effort into applying what we learn, and support creators and educators of color who share their teachings (by paying them if possible - and not by demanding more emotional labor from them in the comment section)!

I have never lived in very diverse places growing up in Idaho and living in smaller towns in Northern California. So I’ve made an effort to make my online communities more diverse, and as a result I am constantly learning and also able to amplify the voices of some of the amazing people I follow. And then the algorithms keep bringing me more badass creators with diverse backgrounds. Carefully curating your social media feeds can help turn your daily doom scroll into an enlightening social justice lesson instead. Kinda. You’ll still inevitably have to scroll past the rage bait and the ads, of course.

Below I’ll share some antiracism reading and resources that have helped me in my journey of decolonization and examining my own inherent biases and the ways society has imprinted on me. It starts by accepting that just by growing up white in America, I experience white privilege and absorb racism. And it’s on me to unlearn it.

The White Panthers were a product of their time, and definitely reflected the free love hippie ethos of a lot of white folks in that era. They were definitely more woo woo than the Black Panthers, and were tightly woven with the rock and proto-punk music of the era, but their beliefs and programs were similar.

Why did they start their own collective instead of just joining the Black Panthers? Because organizing and educating white folks is not the responsibility of anyone other than ourselves, and we shouldn’t need to co-opt Black spaces or insert ourselves into them. Bigots are more likely to listen to people who look like them, so we should be the ones vocally correcting and educating them. This is why feminists need male allies as well - many men won’t listen to women, but they might if the same message comes from a man.

The Black Panthers, White Panthers, Rainbow Coalition and many other activist collectives in the Civil Rights era all terrified the government because they threatened the narrative they were trying to sell. They were broad coalitions that cut across lines of race, class, gender or status and that truly served the people, especially the vulnerable populations that government institutions ignored and abandoned. They nurtured communities, made sure everyone was fed, offered a sense of safety, security and camaraderie and called out the perils of capitalism, racism, war and oppression loudly. They held up a mirror that the establishment was NOT ready for. And they were targeted for daring to challenge the status quo, literally by the CIA’s COINTELPRO operations.

There’s so much more to these stories that history has tried to bury, and I hope that the resources and links below will give you avenues for deeper learning. The White Panthers may have fizzled out in the 80s, but the Black Panthers are still here and operate regional chapters, and they need our fierce allyship and support in transforming hearts and minds more than ever. I’m inspired to bring The White Panther Party back, who’s with me?

💡 Inspiration: This post was inspired by some of the social justice advocates that I’ve been following on LinkedIn that I highly suggest supporting: LCDD, isabeau, and Mel. In particular, LCDD’s Substack article Stand - While You Still Can focused on these Civil Rights movements, with an INCREDIBLE annotated bibliography for further reading. Also please check out and support their collective project Record Resistance, which has been archiving important historical documents that have been removed from government websites, especially in the last year by the regime (authoritarian much?).

🐈 White Panthers History: Wikipedia has a basic overview of the White Panther Party, and I also found the Cross Cultural Solidarity post on them informative. You can read their Ten Point Program here.

✊ Antiracist History: Find stories of antiracist white folks to inspire you to action from Lynn Burnett’s White Antiracist Ancestry Project on Medium.

🏛️ Black Panther Museum: Visit the Black Panther Party Museum in Oakland and be sure to check out the Women of the Movement mural and museum in West Oakland as well.

🎒 Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack: When I was first diving into this work, I came across this essay explaining white privilege that breaks it down really well and makes the concept easy to understand. Highly recommend starting here and sharing it.

🪞 Look in the Mirror: Confronting your white privilege is uncomfortable, especially when you realize that yeah, you’ve been conditioned to be racist, so until you actively dismantle the white supremacy that’s seeped into your psyche from society, you will have racist tendencies. It’s natural to feel shame, but the systems you were born into are not your fault. And wallowing in shame is not the point of this work The point is to do better once you know better. This essay “I, Racist” is a great one.

🌈 DEI Training: Now that DEI is apparently a dirty word and so much of the effort towards inclusion and equality has been halted, it’s more important than ever to seek out education on how you can be a better ally, create inclusive workplaces, and celebrate diversity. Look for DEI consultants and social justice educators in your area or online courses you can take, there are likely many educators who are needing work and support right now. The Interracial Sisterhood Coalition is an awesome org who recently held a White Women Town Hall that I highly recommend checking out.

🎥 Documentaries and Films: There are some great films and documentaries about racism or the Black experience that can help give insight into how oppression feels and shed light on the dark history we’re not taught in school. Harvard University has a great list of films in their Anti-Racism Resources archive. And there’s a list of films about the Black Panthers on Wikipedia.

📕 Ibram X. Kendi: One of the books I started with when I was looking for a handbook for antiracism was Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist. He’s the author of MANY other books on the subject including Stamped from the Beginning and several age-appropriate books for children and for parents who want to raise antiracist children.

📗 Ijeoma Oluo: This author, speaker, and self proclaimed “internet yeller” has an excellent book called So You Want to Talk About Race? She also did a talk at Google with the same title that’s worth watching.

📘 Layla F. Saad: Her book Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor is another important handbook for understanding how white supremacy has infiltrated society and how to begin unlearning it and its harm.

📙 bell hooks: I definitely need to read way more of her crucial work on intersectional feminism. Her book Ain’t I a Woman? was a game-changer that challenged the white feminist movement and demanded that women of color to be included in their struggle for liberation. I just picked up one of her more recent ones, All About Love, and I can’t wait to read it.

🤝 Beyond Allyship: Of course we should strive to be good allies for all marginalized folks, but the stakes are very high and things are very dire. We need to go beyond allyship, roll up our sleeves and ORGANIZE. We have some great examples in studying the tactics of the Black Panther Party, the White Panthers, and the Rainbow Coalition.

This was a long one, thanks for sticking with me! There are SO many more possible avenues for educating ourselves, unlearning our biases and undoing the damage that the system has caused. But don’t wait until you’ve done your homework to ACT. Even small acts like offering to run an errand for a neighbor, getting a reading group together to discuss these topics, or volunteering in your community can help. We need to organize, work together, and BE the change we wish to see. Defeating racism starts with your own heart and mind.

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