David Dean
he/him
David Dean is an educator, speaker and writer supporting the growth of powerful coalitions in our social movements—solidarity that undoes the centuries-long project of reactionary elites to divide and rule. He gives particular focus to helping white people engage in multiracial movements with political clarity and deep purpose. Over the past decade, David has taught racial and economic justice education courses for more than 7,500 people, training activists from all 50 states and 34 countries. He is the former Associate Director of the national anti-racist training center, White Awake (now called Comrades Education), and is currently writing a book called Roots Deeper than Whiteness that supports white Americans to reclaim the legacies of political resistance, meaningful culture and spirituality, and multiracial class solidarity that were taken from their ancestors when they were socialized to become “white.”
Learn more about David’s work at davidbfdean.com, subscribe to his substack, Toward Solidarity, or help bring his book to life by contributing to this fundraiser.
Overview: What if white anti-racism were not only about what white people must reject, but also about what we can reclaim? This article explores ancestral recovery as a way for people of European descent to reconnect with the traditions of political resistance, meaningful culture, and multiracial class struggle that were taken from our ancestors when they were socialized to become “white.” It argues that cultivating this rooted sense of belonging can strengthen white anti-racist organizing and help us build the powerful coalitions we need in this era of right-wing backlash.
It is of fundamental importance that white anti-racism not only question nationalist narratives and supremacist ideologies but build a rooted sense of self within Euro-descendant people—that it reconstruct a liberatory identity based in a deeper understanding of our ancestry and history. Our ancestors once had greater connection to land-based and earth-honoring tradition. They also had a deep sense of belonging to a centuries-long struggle for collective liberation—of struggle for autonomy and community in the face of empire. It is this exact sense of belonging that white racial identity was designed to erase. We were resistors of empire and we were pushed to become its foot soldiers.
When anti-racism education doesn’t involve this type of identity reconstruction it can leave Euro-descendant people with the debilitating feeling that they have no life-affirming lineage to hold on to. It can turn us into deferent, fearful “allies” who put people of color on dehumanizing pedestals and struggle to organize our communities.
In recent years, it has also become clear just how much right-wing nationalist elites have been able to exploit these weaknesses. They have used them as cannon fodder to grow their bases, attack anti-racism education as a whole, and recapture the White House. They have proclaimed that the left wants white people to have no sense of belonging and no meaningful connection to history. On top of this, they have deemed the pursuit of racial justice to be an economic threat to working and middle class white Americans.
These realities make it all the more clear that we must not only challenge the fabricated, harmful identity of whiteness. We must also root people in something different, something far more meaningful, and something that revives our class consciousness and grounds us in the stake our communities have always had in multiracial solidarity.
Jewish Voice for Peace has sought to do something very similar to this for their members as they have reclaimed ancestral lineages of Jewish revolutionaries who saw their safety as dependent on building powerful, international working class solidarity. It was these exact lineages that antisemitic western political and economic elites worked to snuff out through their backing of political zionism.
The Bund valued Yiddish culture, fought against both Zionism and anti-semitism, and believed that Jewish safety could only be achieved through international working class solidarity.
The Poor People’s Campaign has also sought to nurture this type of identity development as they have resurrected the social gospel and uplifted lineages of multiracial, class-based resistance to racism and corporate domination throughout US history. Their consistent message to white communities has been to find belonging in these legacies rather than in the harmful and self-defeating tradition of white Christian nationalism.
While the project is in its infancy and doesn’t bear direct comparison to long-lasting organizing projects like Jewish Voice for Peace or the Poor People’s Campaign, in its humble way this is also what Ancestral Ground strives to accomplish. The project is built to weave together and amplify a network of people who are blending white anti-racism with transformative ancestral recovery. If our activism remains solely focused on what white people must renounce, we will continue to be out-organized by our opponents. It must also be about what we can reclaim. I deeply believe that Ancestral Ground has the potential to amplify this renewed paradigm of white anti-racism and aid the struggle for multiracial democracy in this age of backlash.
