Cultural Resistance: Transmuting Censorship into Collective Creation

Welcome back....again.  It´s Season 3! 

In this return episode of Eyes on Whiteness, Maureen reflects on the global rise in censorship—from banned books and criminalized drag to the erasure of murals and public memory. But this moment is not just political—it’s cultural, spiritual, and creative.

Drawing from history and present-day resistance, Maureen shares how artists have long transmuted oppression into beauty, grief into expression, and truth into action. You'll hear powerful examples from across the U.S., Palestine, Brazil, Germany, and beyond—and receive a personal reflection on rest, rhythm, and reclaiming imagination as a sacred tool of resistance.

This episode is a call to the culture-bearers and creators—to resist erasure through collective creation.

In this episode:

• Executive Orders from T**mp and the whitewashing of public history
• Censorship of Black and queer voices in schools, museums, and public art
• Global artistic resistance movements and the power of memory
• A personal reflection on transparency, urgency, and sacred pause
• An invitation to join the Cultivating Intersectional Leadership course—especially for artists and arts organizations

🎨 Learn more & join us:
→ Podcast home: www.eyesonwhiteness.com
→ Course info: www.cultivatingintersectionalleadership.com

→ Newsletter + reflections: www.transmutingwhitesupremacyandpatriarchy.com

This Week’s Reflection Practice:
Where in your creative practice or leadership might transparency feel risky—but necessary?
How might truth-telling, with compassion, allow more freedom—for you and your community?

Let these questions sit with you. Let them compost.
Let something tender grow.

Transcript

This is Eyes on Whiteness—a podcast that illuminates the insidious and ignorant ways of whiteness, regardless of intent.

This space is held to practice the work of transmuting white supremacy and patriarchy, because these constructs are pervasive and ever-present—for all of us.

I’m Maureen Benson, a white woman doing my best to be a principled accomplice for racial justice in these apocalyptic times.

Welcome to the show.

Hi friends,

It’s been a while.

Welcome—back or for the first time—to Eyes on Whiteness. This podcast was born from a deep commitment to truth-telling, reflection, and the ongoing work of transmuting white supremacy culture from the inside out.

This is Maureen, and I’ve spent the past season outside of the U.S.—not just geographically, but spiritually, emotionally, and politically. I needed space. After nearly thirty years in movement work—education, justice, community—I reached a moment where I couldn’t keep going the way I had been.

I left to re-root. To reground. To unlearn some of the survival habits I picked up in systems that demanded my urgency but never offered reciprocity.

What I’ve been doing is deeply internal work—quiet, sacred, often messy—so I can return to the fight for justice in a different way. A way that’s in alignment with my values. A way that honors my body. A way that’s in right relationship with the people I’m committed to fighting for and with.

And today, this is a beginning. Again.

We are in a moment where culture itself is being contested—not just policy, not just institutions, but the very soil of imagination and story and collective memory.

The arts are under attack. From censorship to surveillance, from defunding to the criminalization of expression, we are watching a wave of repression that is not new—but dangerously familiar.

And yet, we create.

Artists and cultural workers have always been among the first to be targeted—and the first to rise. To resist. To remind us of who we are and who we could become.

So this space isn’t about performing answers. It’s about practicing transmuting. It’s about turning pain into purpose. Grief into action. Silence into story.

If you’re feeling disoriented or tired or quietly fierce right now, you’re not alone.

I’m so glad you’re here.

Let’s begin.

Rewriting History Is a Strategy of White Supremacy

When Trump, out of office, claimed that American schools were teaching children to “hate their country,” that wasn’t a stray comment. It was a calculated precursor to what’s unfolding now. And it echoes what white supremacist regimes have always done: erase dissent, reframe violence as virtue, and disguise dominance as unity.

Now, back in office, he’s operationalizing that rhetoric.

Executive Order 14253, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, is a deliberate move to enforce a whitewashed, state-approved version of the past. Under this order:

• Federal exhibits are being reviewed and in some cases altered or removed if deemed “ideologically divisive.”
  
  
  
• One striking example: an exhibit on Harriet Tubman at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture was recently revised—a quote from Tubman about resistance and self-liberation was taken down, reportedly because it was “not sufficiently celebratory.”
  
  
  
• Discussions are underway to reinstall monuments to Confederate generals under the banner of “restoring national pride.”
  
  
  
• Educational content across federal agencies is being purged of anything that references white supremacy, structural racism, or intersectionality.
  
  
  

This isn’t about truth—it’s about silencing truths that make whiteness uncomfortable. And it’s not just academic. This is cultural warfare.

Because the stories we tell—the art we honor, the voices we platform—shape what we believe is possible.

White supremacy knows this. That’s why it always goes for the imagination first.

This moment is not just political—it’s spiritual, emotional, creative.

And in this moment, the arts are not a luxury. They’re a lifeline.

And it’s not abstract.

• In Florida, drag performances have been criminalized in public spaces if minors are present—an intentional blurring of queerness with danger, and an erasure of queer artistic expression.
  
  
  
• In Texas, state libraries have banned books by Black and LGBTQ+ authors under the guise of “protecting children”—including memoirs, poetry, and history books that speak to survival and liberation.
  
  
  
• Across the U.S., laws are expanding that surveil educators, performers, and curators, threatening their jobs—or their freedom—if they refuse to comply with new standards of so-called “truth.”
  
  
  
• Public art has also been targeted. In Oklahoma, a mural honoring Indigenous women and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement was defaced, then removed entirely, after lawmakers called it “political.”
  
  
  

This is not about protecting truth. It’s about protecting power.

And we’ve seen this before.

Historically, every authoritarian movement—globally and here in the U.S.—has attacked the arts as one of its first steps.

• In the McCarthy era, the U.S. government blacklisted actors, musicians, and playwrights—accusing them of communism for challenging dominant narratives. Entire careers were destroyed. Voices were silenced.
  
  
  
• Under Jim Crow, Black expression was criminalized—from blues lyrics to church gatherings—because white supremacy understood that art was organizing. That a rhythm could carry revolution.
  
  
  
• In Chile, during the Pinochet dictatorship, singer-songwriter Víctor Jara was tortured and murdered for his music. His guitar was broken in front of him—because they feared what his voice could spark.
  
  
  
• In South Africa, during apartheid, music was banned. Plays were shut down. Poets were jailed. Because in the silence, art still speaks truth.
• The Nazi regime staged a notorious exhibit of banned modern artworks to mock and discredit artists whose work they deemed “un-German,” “Jewish,” or “Communist.” Over 650 works were seized from German museums, The goal was to control imagination by labeling dissent as deviance.
  
  
  

These are not just echoes. These are warnings.

When we see books banned, murals taken down, drag performers surveilled, Indigenous and Black histories erased—this isn’t new.

These are the tools of white supremacy: erase memory, distort truth, and punish imagination.

But artists have always known how to smuggle resistance through beauty.
 Through metaphor. Through movement. Through rhythm and ritual and reclamation.

Culture has always been a battleground—and a portal.

So let’s look at how, even now, people are transmuting oppression into art, into memory, into something free.

But before we do, take a breath.

Notice how you feel in your body hearing this. The tightness. The fire. The grief. The fierce hope.

You are not alone.

Because hope is medicine and art is inspiring into action…I want to walk us through some powerful ways that people are transmuting oppression into art and action.

In the U.S., when the AP African American Studies course was banned in Florida, high school teachers and students began organizing underground teach-ins—circulating banned texts, hosting public readings, and creating zines that kept the knowledge alive.

In Tennessee, after drag performances were targeted and criminalized, a coalition of queer artists launched Drag is Sacred, a traveling performance series blending protest and art—offering joy, satire, and survival as public acts of defiance.

In Minneapolis, Black muralists responded to the erasure of George Floyd memorials by painting ancestor walls on abandoned buildings—transforming grief into sacred sites, refusing invisibility, and marking space with memory.

And globally—

In Brazil, Indigenous artists are reclaiming museum spaces through performance and installation—refusing to be displayed as artifacts and instead narrating their own living cultures, histories, and resistance to land theft and colonial science.

In Palestine, young poets and musicians are archiving oral histories and remixing them with hip hop, refusing to let the truth of occupation be erased. Their work is banned in some public spheres, yet it multiplies across WhatsApp, underground theaters, and diasporic stages.

In Germany, Afro-German and Roma artists are transforming sites once used for Nazi propaganda into performance spaces for healing and truth-telling—transmuting history into a call for collective accountability.

This is what it means to practice cultural resistance—not as a trend, but as a lineage.

Artists have always been the ones to hold memory when institutions collapse. To hold truth when it becomes dangerous. To hold joy when despair is what they expect of us.

And when we witness this kind of resistance—when artists refuse to be erased, when creativity becomes both a shield and a sword—it reminds us:

We are not powerless.

Even when the attacks feel relentless…
 Even when the systems feel too vast to undo…

We still have choice.

Our art, our truth-telling, our relationships—these are seeds.
 And tending to them, especially now, is sacred.

Because the garden doesn’t grow overnight.
 But each time we root into clarity, plant with intention, or prune what no longer serves—we reclaim a little more ground.

So before we close, I want to offer a reflection—one that’s also guiding this week’s newsletter and community practice:

Where in your creative practice or leadership might transparency feel risky—but necessary?
 How might truth-telling, with compassion, allow more freedom—for you and your community?

Let those questions sit with you. Let them compost. Let something tender grow.

Before we go, I want to pause for my own reflection.

This week’s theme is transparency—and I’ve been sitting with what that really means in my own life.

To be transparent about my choice to leave the U.S.—to leave behind the only movement terrain I had ever known—feels risky. But also necessary. Necessary to live with integrity. Necessary to practice what it means to choose alignment over approval.

Because the truth is: I didn’t leave to escape. I left to live.
 I left with intention. With practice. With a deep commitment to my own wellness and spiritual clarity.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t wrestled with guilt. The kind of guilt that tells you you’re only worthy if you’re burnt out. The guilt that’s been passed down in movements and ministries and marginalized communities that says, “If you’re not drowning in everyone else’s needs, are you doing enough?”

But I’ve seen too many people I love reach the brink and sometimes cross it—mentally, physically, spiritually. So many folks in addiction, chaos, turmoil, mental health crisis. And I didn’t want that for myself. I wanted to return to this work whole.

One of the most powerful things I’ve transmuted in this time is urgency.
 Not the kind that moves from clarity and collective need—but the frantic, scarcity-fueled urgency that had become a second nature to me that I was navigating a tension around every day.
 The part of me that believed rest was weakness, or that pausing meant I didn’t care enough.
 I’ve composted that belief.
 And in its place, I’m planting rhythm. Breath. Presence.

That’s what transparency has offered me:
 A way to honor the full truth—of what I carry, and what I choose to lay down.

So I offer that to you:
 Whatever your truth is in this moment, may you meet it without shame.
 May you name what’s yours, and release what’s not.
 And may you practice the kind of transparency that makes room for your own humanity.

Let’s keep walking.
 Together.

If you’re sitting with those questions…
 If you’re ready to move through this moment with more clarity, care, and collective courage—

You’re invited to join us.

Cultivating Intersectional Leadership is not a DEI training.
 It’s a rhythm of reflection. A place to re-root. A space to compost what no longer serves—and begin again, in alignment with your values.

Each month, we gather individuals and organizational pods who are ready to do this work from the inside out.

This week, we’re especially inviting artists and arts organizations to join us.

Because in creative spaces, justice cannot be an afterthought.
 And in a time when aesthetics often mask inequity, we need brave, grounded leaders like you—ready to move beyond performance into real transformation.

This space is for you if you’re seeking:

• Tools to name and shift systemic patterns in your creative space
  
  
  
• A rhythm that honors both rigor and rest—without sacrificing integrity
  
  
  
• Practices that nourish artistic vision and accountability
  
  
  

Whether you’re leading a team, curating a season, or holding a story that refuses to be silenced—this journey is offered with tenderness.

You don’t have to do it alone.

Check it out on our site, and you can message with inquiries..there are groups forming now to be in community together on this journey.
 www.cultivatingintersectionalleadership.com

Let’s root in. Together.

Before I close, I just want to say this—

To the artists, the culture-bearers, the memory-keepers, the ones weaving beauty from grief and fire from silence:
 Thank you.
 Your work is not just decoration—it’s direction.
 You remind us that resistance can be soft. That liberation can be sung. That joy is a path.

This episode was created with deep love, and deep thanks to the frameworks and tools within Cultivating Intersectional Leadership, a course I co-created with Diedra Barber.

CIL isn’t just a training. It’s a transformative journey—one that supports individuals and organizations in making the systemic, strategic, and spiritual shifts needed to build something different.
 Something rooted in justice. Something aligned with who we say we want to be.

You're invited to learn more or inquire about participation at:
 🌐 www.cultivatingintersectionalleadership.com
Or visit our podcast site at:
🎧 www.eyesonwhiteness.com

If this episode stirred something in you, share it.
 If you’re holding big questions, write them down.
 And if you’re tired—rest. But don’t quit.

This is a long journey. And we don’t do it alone.

See you next time on Eyes on Whiteness.