Racial Audit Implementation Team Update
Reflection on Theme 1
May 2025 | Rev. Anna Swygert, MDiv
Note: In June 2023, the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) Board of Directors established the Racial Audit Implementation Team to carry forward the recommendations from the comprehensive Racial Audit. This work represents our deep commitment to becoming an anti-racist organization. Rev. Anna Swygert is a member of that team, and this reflection is part of our collective journey to name, confront, and transform the white dominant culture within MFSA. It emerges from ongoing conversations centered on six key themes/patterns of white supremacy identified within our organization. These are the entrenched patterns we are actively working to disrupt as we move toward the liberation and equity we seek.
We are sharing these reflections and insights publicly with our movement because accountability, transparency, and shared learning are essential to dismantling white supremacy. We know that transformation does not happen in isolation. By sharing our process, struggles, and growth, we hope to invite our broader community into this work with us—offering tools, solidarity, and space for mutual reflection as we continue building a more just and faithful movement.
Theme 1: MFSA prioritizes white comfort, focusing on “white saviorism¹” and being “the good white ones”. This behavior results in performative allyship². It commodifies and renders People of Color³ invisible.
The racial audit taught us that MFSA is a predominantly white organization that perpetuates racism, despite its commitment to justice. The audit showed 64% of people of color and 49% of white people agree that there is a gap between MFSA’s stated commitment to being anti-racist and actually working to dismantle white supremacy. This discrepancy between its anti-racist commitments and internalized white supremacy results in performative allyship that centers whiteness above all else. But what is at this center, and why does it continue to strengthen and take hold within an organization that should want it removed? Some of our first steps as an implementation team were to take a strong look at this white center of dominance.
The white center of dominance⁴ is all of what a culture presumes to be normal, standard, moral, good, civilized, righteous, fully human, or whatever word you prefer that communicates the norms by which we all abide. This center of white dominance subjugates that which is other. The impulse at the center is to appease the guilt of the powerful and try to bring people into the white center by “helping,” “fixing,” or “rescuing” people and communities in the borderlands⁵. But the question should not be, “How do we grow the center?” The question should instead be, “How do we interrupt the boundaries of who is at the center? What would it look like for there not to be a center at all?”
The white center of dominance is hard at work in MFSA. It pits justice movements against one another for resources, attention, and people, so each group of the borderlands is siloed and isolated by competition. Often, individuals and communities on the borderlands form their own groups and organizations to fight injustice. Though there is a real possibility that MFSA could speak to the intersectional⁶ nature of justice and attend to all of the ways anti-racism also connects to other issues, MFSA misses the mark as the “whitewashed⁷” group. At the same time, those in the borderlands are involved elsewhere, already doing justice work.
But what does it mean to be “involved” in MFSA? Sometimes people of color may be so involved in other communities that they may not have the capacity to engage deeply with MFSA. In addition, we may unintentionally poach leaders from different groups that are equally in need of great leadership by recruiting them for MFSA leadership. And why should they engage with MFSA if they are already doing incredible justice work? Our aim should not be to recruit people for MFSA simply to get more members or diversify our membership; it’s about doing the work of justice. How can we support the work that is already being done, rather than inviting you to join our work? How can MFSA be a place to organize and coalition build⁸?
Whiteness promotes arrogance. It seeks to isolate power, and it cannot recognize strength or value outside of the center. MFSA can sometimes exhibit the arrogance that the work someone is doing with a different organization is not part of our organization’s work. We take on the responsibility that we will bring about the kingdom as if we are the only ones. The misconception is that the work of justice is all on our shoulders and ours alone.
This misconception is contrary to the idea of prevenient grace; God is already at work in the world and doing things in places we are not even aware of. Prevenient grace says there are no borderlands and there is no center. God is at work for justice, regardless of the name of the organization on the signing line. The kingdom of God is for everyone, and MFSA is not the only community with a key. What would it look like for us to enter into a season where we recognize and support our neighbors, our friends in other justice communities? To be with them, hear their stories, and collaborate in their work?
White saviorism has no place in MFSA and no place in Christianity. If we truly believe in Jesus Christ as our savior, we cannot allow the white center of dominance to continue to oppress and disempower us and our neighbors. We must unroot the power of dominance within us as a justice organization and recognize the ways God is at work in the world in the multitude of individuals, communities, and organizations fighting for justice.
*Key definitions:
White saviorism:
"White saviorism propagates the idea that white people’s experiences are the only ones that are valid and that white people must save racially marginalized people—this can show up as white employees thinking that they know better than those with lived experiences of racism. This can also manifest as microaggressions that affirm that people of color are not authorities in their own experiences." (https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2022/09/30/what-is-white-saviorism-and-how-does-it-show-up-in-your-workplace/?sh=66eda899126d) Because of internalization People of Color can become advocates for the role that white people have as white saviors which is a dangerous perpetuation of White Supremacy.Performative allyship: When a person acts as an ally to a minority group without fully engaging with their needs for equity or fairness.
People of Color (POC): Like the term Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, People of Color is a political framework that seeks to articulate the experiences of and relationship to white supremacy for all people of color within a U.S. context. "People of color explicitly suggests a social relationship among racial and ethnic minority groups. ... [It] is a term most often used outside of traditional academic circles, often infused by activist frameworks, but it is slowly replacing terms such as racial and ethnic minorities. ... In the United States in particular, there is a trajectory to the term — from more derogatory terms such as … colored, to people of color. ... People of Color is, however it is viewed, a political term, but it is also a term that allows for a more complex set of identity for the individual — a relational one that is in constant flux." (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/30/295931070/the-journey-from-colored-to-minorities-to-people-of-color).
White center of dominance: The set of cultural norms, behaviors, and assumptions that treat whiteness as the default or standard for what is normal, moral, professional, or desirable, often unconsciously shaping how organizations function and who is valued.
Borderlands: Center / Borderlands is a power analysis methodology developed by Crossroads. At its foundation is the work of Dr. Gloria Anzaldua. Center / Borderlands signifies the socio-political, cultural, and economic arrangement of the United States. Within the arrangement, the center represents that which is dominant and the borderlands that which is subjugated. In other words, the center is made up of those people and ideas deemed normal, standard, good, moral, and civilized. Consequently, the borderlands are populated by those labeled deviant, foreign, immoral, uncivilized, and threat.
Intersectional: A framework for understanding how different aspects of identity (such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and disability) intersect and shape experiences of oppression and privilege. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Whitewashed: A term used here to describe organizations or actions that erase or dilute the voices, histories, and leadership of people of color, even while claiming to promote diversity or justice.
Coalition building: The practice of forming alliances across movements or communities to support shared goals, particularly in justice and advocacy work. Effective coalition building emphasizes mutual respect, shared power, and relationships.
Anna Swygert (they/them/theirs/she/her/hers) is a Deacon in the Florida Conference of the UMC and the Co-President of the Florida Regional Chapter of MFSA. She serves as the Assistant Director of Streetlight at UFHealth, a peer-support, palliative care program for adolescents and young adults with chronic and life-limiting illnesses, and the Director of Community Engagement at the Gator Wesley Foundation, the United Methodist campus ministry for the University of Florida and Santa Fe College. They are passionate about spiritual care, individual and community resilience, and intersectional justice-work to promote holistic health.