a group text to my white friends
Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten a barrage of texts and calls from white people in my life, that all follow a similar script:
“I have been thinking about you so much lately, and my heart is breaking for you. It’s really upsetting to see what’s happening in our country right now, and I just want you to know that I’m here for you in these difficult times.”
While the sentiment is understandable, a lingering question I’m constantly left with is why are these people reaching out to me now? — because of George Floyd? because of quarantine?
All throughout the last week I was on the verge of just sending a group text to all of my white friends to ask them one overarching question:
“What’s the point?”
As we all know, it’s been a hell of a month for many people, but for Black people in particular much of this isn’t new. For me, the last few weeks have been wrought with emotional rollercoasters: navigating through celebrations of graduations and the end of the school year, and the sorrows and anguish from the continued killings of Black people at the hands of racism. For those of you who might still need a reminder, Rayshard Brooks was just killed on Friday, June 12th. For Black people, as traumatic as the rollercoaster can be, this isn’t a new ride to be on. But for white people, now that’s a different story.
I’m actually convinced that for many white people, they are experiencing something new for the very first time.
I think white people are trying to answer a lot of questions for themselves and others, and it has left them only with more uncertainty and angst. The ‘something new’ that I feel like white people are experiencing is perhaps an awareness of their own complicity in racism, or perhaps a sense of powerlessness to change what is an entire system, and not just the singular actions of “racist Jimmy down the street.” I think for the first time, white people are having to answer for other white people, and are feeling compelled to reach out to Black friends and colleagues in response to this calling, and “explain themselves.” I’m not saying this because I feel like any white person I know has given me a “good explanation” of white privilege or racism, but because there seems to be an overwhelming consensus among white people that now is the time to absolve themselves of their white guilt, by reaching out and expressing their “pro-Black stance” to their non-white friends.
So, what are the questions that white people are asking themselves? (White friends, please let me know if you see yourself in any of these questions):
- When do I post, and if I do, what do I say?
- Is racism my fault? If so, what can I do about it?
- How do I support Black people?
- My parents were racist, but that doesn’t make me one, right?
- Will my Black friends appreciate a text? Or will it be unasked for?
- The news is overwhelming and I want to turn it off, but shouldn’t I be informed?
- Is it my place to talk about Black issues? Should I let Black people lead the conversation?
- But isn’t it not a good thing for me to be silent? Aren’t people calling for white people to speak up? But I don’t want to speak for anyone.
- If I don’t say anything, will people think I’m racist?
A whole seminar could be led on any number of these questions individually. Together? No wonder white people don’t know what to do.
And before I go any further, I should acknowledge that it has been heartening to see white people at marches and protests, risking their own health in standing up for Black lives. It has also been nice to see white people participating in online movements like fundraisers, or trends like #Blackouttuesday.
But even with these actions beginning to take place, it still compels me to ask the question of my white peers: “What’s the point?”
Truly, I don’t know that many people have an answer.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the compulsory nature of reciprocity and what it does to the human psyche. French sociologist Marcel Mauss wrote in his seminal text The Gift, that gift-giving inherently creates a sense of indebtedness for the receiver of the gift, pushing them toward a need to reciprocate. Are the text messages or phone calls I’ve received emblematic of that gift? Am I obliged to reach back out and thank people for “caring about me”? Or to ask about how they’re doing in exchange?
The truth is I am conflicted and confused.
On one level, I am a friendly person, and most people who know me know how I make quick relationships with anyone. So surely, for me to receive texts from white people I have known for years, leads me to feel like I owe them some debt of responding. At the same time, I’ve shared a lot of space with Black peers and family lately, and those people and spaces have emphatically reminded me that I don’t owe white people anything.
In fact, as Nikole Hannah-Jones emphasizes in the essential 1619 Project:
It has been over 400 years.
At this point, white people owe me all of their wealth, their land, their properties, and their lives. WE BUILT this country.
So, why should I feel badly if I haven’t responded to someone in over a week after they reached out to check in on me?
I honestly shouldn’t give a shit about what white people think or say; but the reality is, my reality is, that my life has long been imbued with whiteness and white culture, and there are people with whom I have shared space, and with whom I now find myself in a incredibly complicated relationship.
I don’t know that the solution is “cancelling” all of my white friends (as cancel culture might ask us to do), but I am seeking — as is much of my family — to isolate myself from the constant, heightened exposure to white people and culture during this time.
My sister recently turned her phone and computer off for an entire weekend, and I wasn’t on social media for over a week, which is definitely a lot for me. I know many others are experiencing serious stressors, and are taking precautions right now to protect their mental and emotional wellbeing. Being constantly around white people and overexposed to whiteness is a hard way to live. Being constantly mistrustful of authority figures and police who are supposed to protect us, is a hard way to live. Not feeling comfortable in your own neighborhood, outside of your own house, is a hard way to live. It is all exhausting.
Every year when we have #BLM flare ups because several Black people have been killed by racism in the US, I find myself retreating to Black literature, Black film, Black music, and surrounding myself with Black people. It’s a safe space. Now, more than ever, I struggle with the interactions with the very white people I’ve referenced above. And again I ask the question: “What’s the point?”
What is your underlying intention behind sending texts? What do you want people to get out of what you’re saying right now? For whom are you posting on social media? Why are you reaching out to me now if we have not talked in forever?
Why now?
This is a question that I know for a fact many of my Black friends, family, and colleagues have been asking themselves and their white peers.
And to amend that question I ask:
Where were you in 2009 when Oscar Grant was killed?
Where were you in 2010 when Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed?
Where were you in 2012 when Rekia Boyd was killed?
Where were you in 2014 when Yvette Smith was killed?
Where were you in 2016 when Gregory Gunn was killed?
Where were you in 2020, just last month, when Dion Johnson was killed?
Why this week? Is now just a convenient moment? Are white people feeling more social pressure and more unignorable obligation to act? If so, good. However, the question then becomes, how do you act, when do you act, and why are you taking the action you are?
There are a million ways to get to the heart of those particular questions, and I won’t spend any time walking my white peers through techniques like abstraction laddering, or urging them to go to therapy or get to know their Black neighbors. You can do that on your own. Google!
(sidebar: I saw a white man standing on a street corner near my house recently, holding a sign that read, “Do your children know who assassinated Fred Hampton?”, and shouting at cars that passed by, “Do you? Do you?? Google it!” That gave me a nice chuckle.)
White people really do need to do their own homework. Stop cheating off of the metaphorical one Black person in your class. We’re tired of keeping your grades up and us being the ones who get in trouble for cheating because our answers look identical.
White people really do need to educate themselves. I also think, however, that white people need to call out their peers toward real action, and use their platforms to put more Black people in the spotlight.
I don’t necessarily agree with the many conversations I’ve heard of “cancelling all white people,” but I do feel that white people need a break from defaulting to a reliance on Black people, and that they need to examine their own intentions and motivations. White people need to be able to answer their own question of: “What’s the point?”
I want to see more white people like Alexis Ohanian give up positions of power and use their privilege to benefit the Black people who could do their job just as well, if not better in some cases.
White people need to understand (and not just consume) the richness of Black culture. To do so takes reading, it takes listening, it takes shutting the hell up and just letting Black people have the stage.
It’s OKAY to not have the answer, to not be right all the time, but it’s not okay to blindly put the onus of education and social justice work on Black people, who have already carried this nation on their backs for centuries.
That’s why we’re tired.
It’s generational exhaustion. That’s why all of these texts from my white friends aren’t reassuring, they’re stressful and draining. I don’t want to be obliged to respond to you, I just want to see you call out your white peers and sit with all of the discomfort that comes with that. I want to see you use your privilege in radical ways beyond just donating and retweeting.
To my white peers: are you truly considering the implications for me, your friend, when you do decide to reach out? Is your motivation for reaching out, more for me, or for yourself?
I want to see white people be able to actively and thoughtfully answer the question — what’s the point? To really wrestle with their own discomfort. Rather than tell a Black person that they’re “there for them” or “they stand with them”, I want to see white people truly stand, through their actions, and to speak not only with their dollars, but also in their relationships to other white people.
That’s what I want to see right now, and that’s how I will begin to truly feel comforted “in these difficult times.”
PS: To hear more of the chorus of Black people sharing much of my experience, you should click here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. Oh yeah, and read this amazing Twitter thread.
