From hurt to healing: my first confrontation with my own internalised whiteness was when living with a Black woman. This is how it went
I met B in a Reading Literature seminar after freshers week at Manchester University, 2013.
We exchanged numbers and had eachother on Facebook, though it wasn’t until third year that we started to get to know each other.
It was summer, 2016, and I still hadn’t sorted out my living situation for my final year of uni. B uploaded some gorgeous shots of her flat and I slid into her DMs to tell her how stunning it was.
It turned out her previous co-tenant was leaving, so there’d be a possibility of living together, if I’d be interested.
I was very interested.
We spoke over the phone to talk about the details of living together. B was away over summer so we wouldn’t meet in person until moving day. Our phone conversation felt positive, honest and bright. We both studied literature, loved food, and agreed that open communication was essential.
We looked forward to shared coexistence.
The day I moved in, B was there to greet me and we had a wonderful, heartwarming chat over dinner.
“I think this may be the start of a beautiful friendship”, said B as we hugged and said goodnight.
I sat on my bed and felt calm, looking forward to a year of peace and hard work, feeling motivated by B’s studious nature, and excited for the times we would share in our moments between studying.
When B said ‘open communication’, it’s safe to say I had not been prepared for what was to come. I thought it was great that we would say things to each other off the cuff, instead of internalising pain and generating resentment.
The problem was that I had no idea how to do that effectively, and was not humble enough to accept criticism without defence.
B, as promised, brought up issues more or less as they came about. Some — okay, many — were to do with cleaning, something I’m not overly proud to admit I am shit at.
I really wanted B to feel comfortable in her own home, so made a concerted effort to do things to her standard, being aware that she had lived in the flat longer than me, so it seemed kind of unfair to come and disrupt the place with my own slovenliness, which would in turn become her struggle.
This, of course, was a source of tension, as I tried my best to keep the level, but had no natural or learned fastidiousness. I came from an untidy home, so didn’t see mess in the same way as B.
Had this been our only issue, I hope to believe that we eventually would have gotten through it. I learned to wash the dishes the same way, mop the floor more often, and generally clean up in the moment rather than hours later.
However, this wasn’t our only issue.
One morning, B asked if we could talk about something important to her.
“Sure”, I said, unsure of what was to come.
The night before, B had friends over who I’d been introduced to and liked.
B told me that some of the things I had said, whilst almost certainly said with good intention, had highlighted the fact that I’d not experienced much diversity growing up.
“Like what?” I asked, baffled that beyond accent, my Northern upbringing could be reflected in general conversation.
B said that when one of her friends had told me where she was from — a city not far from Manchester- that I had looked surprised and disbelieving.
I recalled the moment in my head, and remembered feeling surprised that she wasn’t from London — I had assumed her & B knew each other from there. B expected that the surprise was due to the colour of her friend’s skin, and that I had expected her to say a different country.
I totally denied this, and hung on to the idea that I’d seemed surprised because I’d thought she was from London.
Looking back at this, even the assumption that she was from London shows my ignorance, in perhaps subconsciously thinking that the capital city is the only place in England where there is racial diversity.
Anyway, that’s when I dropped the typical, eye-rolling, cringeworthy, loaded, hurtful, white faux pas bombshell:
“But I don’t see colour.
We’re all one race: the human race.”
Knowing what I know now, I’m amazed that B didn’t just leave the room.
Instead, patiently, calmly, and with deep breaths, she explained to me how that belief was hurtful to those who had experienced prejudice based on the colour of their skin.
Again, I was baffled, and my internal white oppressor leapt to my defence:
“But slavery was abolished years ago.”
It pains me now to see the words I said, imagining how hard it must have been for B to hear them in her own home.
I was totally asleep. It wasn’t fair for B to have to wake me up, at the mercy of her own wellbeing.
I argued and I defended myself. I said hurtful things like
“I think you’re just hypersensitive”
I didn’t understand the need for safe spaces.
I didn’t understand how I, a loving, compassionate and caring person could ever hurt anyone. All I ever wanted to do was make people feel good about themselves. I cared about people’s emotions. I wanted people to be happy.
My intentions were good, so surely the way someone else interpreted my actions wasn’t my fault?
Oh, how wrong I was.
Oh, how I wish I could go back and not say those things, not inflict pain on my friend by refusing to acknowledge her hurt because of my need to protect my own ego.
The identity I’d built for myself as a ‘nice’ person was challenged, and I couldn’t handle that, not understanding that my rejection of responsibility was harming my flatmate.
After things reached a nadir, in which we had a full blown argument where I said that she behaved as though superior (the fact that I was being called out made me feel dominated and inferior), we eventually decided that it was best if we no longer lived together.
As it was B’s idea first, I stubbornly said that it was she who should leave as it was her problem.
I’m wincing as I write this, but I have to be honest about who I was. This is the only way we can heal. It’s bullshit if I post a black square on my Instagram feed, call out friends and family members, but never own up about the damage I did personally to a young black woman.
Eventually, I found someone else to live with and moved out. I felt a lot of pain, I was sad that our friendship hadn’t blossomed in the way we’d first thought, and felt mixed feelings of guilt and relief.
Somewhere in me, I knew I was wrong. I knew I’d caused her pain, and that didn’t sit right. I felt guilty, but didn’t know where to go from there.
I had spoken to B about my guilt — yet another white faux pas. But hadn’t managed to get beyond processing it and towards becoming actively anti-racist.
Again, unimaginably exhausting for her to have to listen to.
However, full credit to B, she shared useful information with me that kick started my education in the realities of structural and everyday racism.
She sent me a sheet of microaggressions that helped me understand the problems with ‘color blindness’ and asking people where they’re really from.
She introduced me to bell hooks and Audre Lorde, when my Language & Gender reading list was snow white.
Just to be crystal clear, B was not obligated to do any of this. It was my responsibility to educate myself. I had no idea where to start, and was incredibly lucky to be given these tools by her.
Looking back, I’m so grateful that she took the time to share these resources with an ignorant person who was also hurting her. It’s astounding, unfair, and I am sorry and ashamed.
It took me four years to apologise properly to B.
I’d reflected on our time together a lot over the years.
My trip to Ghana confused me somewhat as the ideas of racism there were vastly different. The information I’d learned from everyday feminism which said that people wearing traditional dress from cultures other than their own is appropriation, contrasted with the encouragement of volunteers by our Ghanaian friends to wear the local fabrics, get our hair braided and buy tribe bracelets.
Since then, I’ve done a lot of reading, particularly ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ by Reni Eddo-Lodge. Passages from there really hammered home how depleting it must have been for B to explain to me basic concepts that she had understood her whole life.
Akala’s ‘Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire’ helped me to start understanding how systemic racism begins in schools and affects people’s whole lives, not just in the US, but the UK and many other countries, too.
I’m not going to pretend that now I get it all, I never will. I am a white, privileged woman who comes from a small town in the North with a majority white population. Basically, I have no idea.
There are probably issues within this text itself, and I am committed to the acceptance that anti-racism is an ongoing process. I’ve had to learn how to be humble, how to apologise for making mistakes, how to educate myself on issues that matter, how to accept criticism and work to move forward from it.
I’ve written this text in the hope that some can glean understanding from my experience, too.
When I apologised to B, she told me I didn’t know how much it meant.
I asked if I could donate to a charity of her choice, and she asked me to share our story; that would be the biggest and best gift.
