White Noise Collective
The White Noise Collective was founded in 2009 to address how certain ethnic minority feminists criticized white, female feminists for failing to end racism and for perpetuating racism. The organization dissolved in 2022. It used the identity politics concept of intersectionality to advocate for issues specific to white people who also identify as female or non-binary seeking to promote anti-racism. 1
Contents
The White Noise Collective was a fiscally sponsored project of the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) and received funding by offering workshops that solicited donations from attendees. It reported “redistributing” up to 50 percent of its donations to like-minded activist organizations and was not required to disclose its grantees as it was not an independently registered nonprofit organization. In 2020, it reported that it began “divesting” all donations received through its workshop. 2
Background
The White Noise Collective was founded in 2009 when it offered its initial workshop titled “Theater of the Oppressed.” The workshop was exclusively offered to those who “self-identified as white women.” The founders reported that they “didn’t feel comfortable” leading a workshop that included ethnic minorities that discussed how white people allegedly have oppressed and continue to oppress ethnic minorities. 3
In response to “a monumental number” of concerns raised from the first workshop, the founders of the White Noise collective report that they spent six months in 2010 creating a three-day workshop examining behaviors it claims are common amongst white women that function as supports for white supremacy and patriarchal systems. 3
In 2011, the White Noise Collective began expanding to include hosting monthly meetings and publishing a blog to expand the advocacy of its workshops, continuing to focus on how white women can be “oppressed” as women while also being responsible for the oppression of ethnic minorities due to them being white. 3
In 2012, the White Noise Collective reported that it began to make its “curriculum” available for all genders, and in 2014 it began to create programs that specifically trained white people to support the advocacy of the Black Lives Matter movement. 3
Activities
In July 2015, the White Noise Collective published a blog post written by co-founder Zara Zimbardo titled “White Women, Patriarchy and White Superiority” that describes what “White Noise” from the organization’s name meant. It included an excerpt written by Tilman Smith: “It is in those moments when I feel most challenged around my oppressed identity as a woman that I call on my areas of internalized superiority. This is an invitation to all white women to explore when and how we are doing this in the hopes of causing a little less harm to both others and ourselves.” Zimbardo wrote that while she and other feminists often try to sympathize with how ethnic minorities are allegedly oppressed, she has a hard time confronting her own white supremacist qualities and that the same must be true for other white, anti-racist feminists. 4
Funding
Between 2019 and 2022, the White Noise Collective reported that it made grants to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, the Community Ready Corps, and the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective. In response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations, it made additional donations to Arab Organizing, the Black Lives Matter mural in West Oakland, and the Showing Up for Racial Justice Bay Area’s Racial Justice Emergency Relief Fund. 5
Leadership
Levana Saxon co-founded White Noise Collective in 2009 when she led the first workshop and in her later years was an advisor to the group. 3 Saxon is also a co-founder of Collaborative Change. 6 She has worked with the Paulo Freire Institute, the Rainforest Action Network, the Center for Political Education, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Youth In Focus, El Teatro Campesino, the Ruckus Society, and Oakland Public Schools. 7