The false safety of “listening & learning.”

In response to #MeToo, “listening and learning” emerges as the “thoughts and prayers” of social justice movements.

We stumbled into a reckoning.

It had been a regular staff meeting — standard announcements, small talk, and project updates— until we began discussing the results of the 2016 presidential election. My fellow white coworkers and I bemoaned the state of the nation. What went wrong? How did we get here? And why didn’t we see it coming?

After many long minutes of shock from a chorus of white voices, a colleague of color chimed in.

“We did see it coming,” she said. “We saw it coming in our work. We saw it coming in our country. We told you. You just didn’t listen.”

There was a long silence. I felt my stomach collapse in on itself, the telltale sign I was hearing a terrible truth about myself. She was right.

“Black women don’t get to be surprised. We don’t get to be exhausted or ‘woe is me’ or any of it. We’ve been here a long time. So, I guess, welcome, but what took you so long?”

With that, our office plunged into a conversation that so many white people fear. We were talking about racism. Not broad, systemic…