Should You Be Writing About Race Right Now?

Some Thoughts for White Writers

Photo by rashid khreiss on Unsplash

Writers are storytellers; given that the world is on fire, it’s understandable that some who have never written about (or given much thought to) racism now feel they have something profound to share on the subject, or some personal story to add to the national dialogue. Understandable — but not necessarily productive or timely.

So if you’re doing any of these things … it may be time to pause and reflect.

• If you are messaging us — Black writers — and you have rarely spoken to us in the past, but now you want us to pre-read your stories for sensitivity … but really you want us to validate your wokeness for you, because when we actually give you feedback, you reject it. You only want to hear #NotAllWhitePeople.
• If you’re trying to create “topical content” right now, and you think that means writing stories about that time I saw a racism or that time I had a Black boyfriend. Newsflash: you see racism all day, every day. You just haven’t done anything about it.
• If you think your Christianity or spirituality or atheism gives you the “understanding” the rest of us angry, unenlightened mortals lack.
• If you really do support police reform, racial equality and economic/environmental justice, but what you’re writing is a self-congratulatory essay in hopes of receiving public acknowledgement of your courageous allyship.
• If you might start supporting police reform, racial equality and economic/environmental justice, if only Black people would approach you in the right way.
• If you say there’s only one race, the human race. Newsflash: this is a variation of I don’t see color. This is dismissing our Black lives and experiences under a false layer of so-called love. This is I find talking about racial justice very uncomfortable, and I have no desire to take a painful look at my privilege or my own role in this horror, so I’d like to revise and re-center this whole thing so that I can feel more spiritual about it.
• If you are writing stories that you think are about *unity* by telling Black people how much you *admire* our skin color, hair creativity, ability to sing/dance /dribble/be a badass/fill-in-the-blank — just stop. You’re objectifying and fetishizing us. Worse, if you think we should appreciate these *compliments*.
• If you don’t know the difference between non-racist and anti-racist.
• If you are comparing the rights of Black people to breathe and exist, to animal rights.
• If the murder of George Floyd has opened your eyes and now you want a cookie.
• If you feel the need to tell Black people what racism is and what it isn’t, how we should or should not be protesting, or how we should or should not feel about being in danger every fucking minute of our lives.
• If you are asking your Black friends, co-workers or neighbors to please help you understand this turmoil — stop. If you want to talk to somebody, pick up your phone and call your mayor, your chief of police, your city councilperson, and tell them you insist on reform. Call again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and go to the meetings, and raise your voice to demand change. If you want to engage, join the protests in your town, register people to vote, phone bank for anti-racism candidates, donate to legal defense funds. If you want to help, talk to the white people you already know and stop them in their tracks when they say or do something harmful to Black people.
• If you think *love* is the answer. Listen … Love is not possible without justice. Without equality. Pity is possible; concern, kindness, and charity are possible. But not love.
• If you quote Martin Luther King to *prove* love is the answer, you’re not listening. Please go read King’s entire body of work instead of random internet memes. Justice is the answer. Equality is the answer.
• If you don’t get that once Hate is in control, you can’t Love your way out of a knee on your throat. Or a bullet while you sleep.
• If you think part of the solution is singing Kumbaya, and holding hands with those who will turn and pepper spray you when the camera goes off. Real love breaks shackles, breaks curfew, breaks barriers.
• If you think love means being patient with fascists, being kind to lynch mobs, believing white supremacists, or enduring torture — you’re wrong. Love is a warrior, not a saint.

The best thing you can do right now — the only thing for ALL of us to do — is to work for justice. As if our democracy depends on it, as if America itself hangs in the balance. Because it does.

And if that’s too hard, then please, just be quiet.

As a Black Mother, I Have No Choice But to Raise Warriors