The making of a white anti-racist activist: autoethnographic notes from an unfinished journey

What experiences, contexts, and relationships are involved in the ongoing, unfinished making of a White anti-racist activist? What motivates me, as a white non-binary queer femme (and others like me) to do this work? I engage in an autoethnographic inquiry, using life narratives to examine these questions. I argue that the traces of this anti-racist orientation are found early on–in my father’s anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights activism, in my older brother’s climate justice activism, in moving between cultures as a child, in experiencing sexist microaggressions and patriarchal violence, in experiencing deep multicultural community that re-socialised me away from White individualism and meritocracy, and in my alienation from heterosexual romance and feminine self-presentation. Though these feelings of alienation were necessary for my development as an activist, I argue that they were not sufficient; instead, relationships and social contexts were crucial to turning feelings of alienation into effective allyship.