On Becoming Anti-Racist
5 books, 4 podcasts, and several conversations
It’s been four months since I wrote an article in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and countless other Black Americans. In that article, I wrote about my struggle with how to respond to those events as a middle-aged white woman with a small sphere of influence. I felt helpless and a little hopeless in my ability to change anything. But I also felt the imperative to do something.
I began to tease out what that might look like in that article. I decided that I would use whatever means possible not just to be a white person who isn’t a racist, but to strive to be anti-racist.
This is a distinction I hadn’t really considered before. I mean I have Black family members whom I love dearly. I grew up in Arizona and developed a love of both Mexican and Native American cultures. I studied and traveled extensively in Latin American. I knew about white privilege…my white privilege. I knew about systemic racism…our systemic racism.
But the distinction between not being racist and being anti-racist is an important one. As Emily P. Freeman said in a recent episode of her podcast, The Next Right Thing, the day we all put black squares in our Instagram feeds was…
“…the day I made a decision to be more than not…
