Even Me
White Anti-Racism Requires Discomfort
I’ve written quite a bit over the years about race, but during this time of great momentum in the wake of the most recent round of Black deaths — Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks — I have struggled to put pen to paper.
I’m a pragmatist, but I have a streak of optimistic empathy for people that is near militant. For years, I’ve been tossing out anti-racist life lines to white audiences with the conviction that one day they’ll take the line, one of these times they’ll see. They’ll get it; we just have to keep at it. “The arc of the moral universe [may be] long, but it bends towards justice,” I believe that. In my bones, I believe that. They’ll come around! They’ve got to. And I will be here as a friend and mentor to help rehabilitate them from the addiction to privilege and systemic white supremacy, and we’ll all work together to dismantle the inequities and build a better world — hooray!
It’s not really going like I expected.
More white people are showing up now than ever before, and I feel like I should be happier about it. More welcoming, maybe? But instead, I find myself so… aggravated. I am having to dig deeper than I had anticipated needing to dig in order to find the patience and empathy I’d always assumed would come naturally to me in this moment.
