“If you do not understand white supremacy – what it is, and how it works – everything else that you understand, will only confuse you.” – Neely Fuller, 1957 For Black people the world wide, “beauty” is political - there are negotiations of power at play in the naming, claiming, and recognition of our (potential) levels of attractiveness - and “White supremacy” is the beast. The reality is that for many of us, global White supremacy is a taken for granted reality. Although we may understand some of its basic premises and recognize its most egregious manifestations, few of us are familiar with its historical development, and as such, we have limited insight into the various ways in which it continues to impact our lived experiences. So pervasive is the ideology that it has shaped how Black people see ourselves - literally - even when and where White people aren’t around. This course draws explicit connections between beauty and White supremacy, and explores why and how beauty, as both a concept and a practice, functions as an agent of White supremacy. Open Edu is Slow Factory’s free and accessible series of anti-colonial, intersectional classes center the voices and perspectives of People of the Global Majority. ASL interpreters are always included and each class is recorded and archived on our website with open captions.