Listen. That’s Step One. Now Let’s Act.

If you’ve been attending the BLM conversations, good. But it’s not enough.

Since George Floyd’s death there have been plenty of reactions, stories, articles, discussions and confessions. There are the inevitable folks who will leap on the latest movement because it’s a party and they want to be a part of it. They usually disappear after a few weeks or months, when it’s clear that the road is long and the work is hard.

The long overdue reveal of the true history of horrors, the massacres and the whitewashing of the American story can be overwhelming to anyone who hasn’t been paying attention. That would be most of us, with all due respect.

In case you missed this, here is a superb broadcast that might help shift the conversation about American terrorism and genocide. Please listen to the podcast

The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done

Ask any Black person about long and hard roads. About real work. Please. This is part of what White people, and I am one, don’t always understand about struggle. This is part of what Black writers and friends have been doing their best to explain to us about. Their struggle isn’t solved in a one-hour prime time show or a miniseries. It’s all day, every day, all their lives.

Awareness to Action

Step one has been about attending. I’ve read plenty of articles and had difficult conversations and attended without arguing or excusing or trying to explain away being White. While my life and my work may well have been different from many, I still fall well short of what I could have been doing, and the level of awareness in my writing, work and life which could have done more good. Being in denial or getting defensive proves nothing more than a level of ignorance and ingrained privilege. Awareness begins with stripping off the blinders. A willingness to be wrong.

It’s not about being comfortable. It’s about being so deeply uncomfortable that you and I will do something about what we care about, which will different for each of us.

As other writers have also pointed out, wearing a hair shirt of guilt for your Whiteness is useless. Nobody is taking you to task for the accident of your birth. You and I are being asked to wake up, pay attention, and learn to notice.

If you see, but then don’t choose to act when it’s called for, that’s another story.

Here’s a perfect example of what noticing looks like if you’re paying attention:

About two weeks ago I saw an article by what seems to be a White author attacking White Fragility. Without addressing the merits or lack thereof of his points, I found it intriguing that he mentioned that his publisher had commissioned him to write a book that counterpoints and takes apart her logic and her arguments.

What leapt out at me were:

• If that was a committee doing the commissioning of this book that attacks White Fragility, how many of those were Black folks?
• Did they even bother to test the (Black) and other markets to find out whether such a book was viable or did they just assume that their White (male) voices were far more important than DiAngelo’s? Or are they just assuming their market is other White men who need to be calmed that it will all just go away, it’s just some stupid woman being hysterical?

Some years back I attended a big meeting in Spokane about women’s/diverse rights. The panel was a lineup of the city leaders. All White men over fifty. Experts on women and minorities indeed. Nothing is obvious to the uninformed.

We start asking different questions. Those questions lead to awareness, dialogue, and likely, lots of denial, excuses and resistance. But different people are asking the questions and that’s part of what makes such an impact. More, and different people.

What Action Can Look Like

This depends entirely on you.While right now, it might look like walking in protests, that protest needs to be carried right into a workplace where you see racism in action. Please, let’s be tactful. You don’t get to be the Avenging Angel for the Black folk who can’t stand up for themselves. Not only is trying to take on the White Savior role insulting, it does little more than undermine progress and worse, it secures the sense that White folks are the only people who can create change.

We aren’t empowering people by fighting their battles for them. We do if we join that fight alongside, which is a whole other matter. Genuine systemic change is going to take generations. I saw segregation formally end in the 1960s. Oppression didn’t. Nothing did, really, except a few laws.

But you can speak up. You can call out what’s not working, what’s not fair. You can submit formal complaints and point out where hiring processes overlook better talent for the comfort of familiarity. You can call out the people at the table who overlook, ignore or even hijack suggestions offered by Black folks as if they’re invisible. You do not have to crack their heads open, just the minds. Call it out, cause awareness. Doing this respectfully creates conversation, not emnity, but not all the time. Change is hard.

Enabling, amplifying and opening doors

While this applies across the board from business to body positivity, we are being challenged to share. Not just share but make room for Black folks. For example, do you link to Black writers? Do you make sure your readers can also find their work? Do you follow, comment on, engage, and amplify what they write so that your audiences can also find these writers?

Do you actively introduce your talented Black friends to potential business? Do you promote them to people who could use their services, or see them as a threat to your work? Are you willing to link arms with Black entrepreneurs? Find ways to cooperate and collaborate? Or do you always and forever have to be in charge and have the upper hand? Be the mentor, the patron, the person calling the shots?

Perhaps even more in your face, are you willing to work for one? Because if you can’t countenance the notion of working for a Black business, a Black entrepreneur, here’s a fine time to ask why on earth not?

What threatens your sense of equilibrium so much?

If you’ve got a Black boss and you resent getting instructions or being guided, it might be interesting to look at the source of that irritation. It might well be nothing at all. Or, it might be that your picture of the world doesn’t currently comfortably hold space for Black leadership. The only way to know is to notice, to ask, and then explore those feelings.

One of my brilliant Black friends told me the other day about a young woman she has mentored since high school who struggles with this very thing. It is so deeply ingrained that she cannot see how she responds to Black skin even when what’s inside that skin is excellence defined.

Another thing that same person just said to me is that it’s one thing to be invited to the Christmas party, which looks and feels like inclusion, but can often be purely superficial.

It’s a whole other story to be in the boardroom where power is shared, decisions are made, and lives get changed. Until that happens, not much is going to shift.

Until the White patriarchy stops hoarding power, doing everything it can to protect its power base, it will keep right on enlisting Gatekeepers. Please see:

Above all, ask. Just ask. What does action, real support look like? Every situation will be different. There is no one size fits all answer, no easy prescription, because your relationships are going to be as varied as your friends are, as your coworkers are.

There’s nothing easy about any of this.

But I might gently remind you, before that idea makes you quail, Black folks never got easy as part of what they got handed. It really is time we shared the burden.