Why The Name?

Little White Lives is a play on the phrase little white lies—those small untruths we tell to keep things smooth.

As white people, we often carry protective stories: "I don't see color" — "That was in the past, things are better now" — "I earned everything through hard work" — "I voted for Obama."

These feel harmless on their own. But together, they keep systemic racism running quietly in the background.

They aren't usually malicious lies—they're comfort stories. Ways we avoid looking too closely at history and privilege.

"Little" points somewhere else too: to children—the little white lives shaped from birth by what came before.

Before we learn to read, we absorb ideas about who matters and why. Before we make conscious choices, unconscious biases are already forming.

I was once that little white life. So were most white adults who've never really stopped to examine what we absorbed.

We grow up believing we're self-made, not recognizing the child inside us who was shaped by centuries of racial hierarchy.

The name Little White Lives captures both: the small stories that protect us, and the small lives shaped by them.

It's about naming what's hidden. It's about facing what we've absorbed. And it's about interrupting what gets passed down, one honest conversation at a time.

Image Source: Grace McKinley takes Rita Buchanan and Linda McKinley to school among protesters, Nashville, TN, September 1957. © Nashville Public Library.