REBOOT: Dear White Mansplainer

Hello friends,

It’s that time again, and this blast from the past is about mansplaining, especially from those racialised as white, especially from men. As it turns out, the phenomenon hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, there seem more of them about than before - I wonder why? I’ve made a few updates to the language, and added a couple of notes relevant to the current times:

Dear White Mansplainer

I was so irate when an ill-informed guy racialised as white ignored my point about racism that I wrote a rant, which turned into this letter. If you are subscribed to this newsletter, this likely doesn’t apply to you, but I’m sure many of my activist friends can relate.

Dear White Mansplainer,

I’m not in the mood today. When your mansplaining and whitesplaining come in the same sack of skin they are doubly hard to hear, especially because - and I can’t say this too clearly - you are telling me things I ALREADY KNOW. In fact, in most cases, I know more about them than you do.

Take racism, for example. Do you really think that you know more about whether it exists and what it feels like to experience it than I do? Let’s think about that. You are basking in the unearned advantage of being a man racialised as white. I’m a woman racialised as Black with five six decades of experience in being identifying and being harmed by racism. Frankly, I’ve got more than a PhD in this area and all you have are your unlearned and unwanted opinions.

Or misogynoir - that peculiar and harmful intersection of anti-Black racism and sexism. Can you, part of the group most likely to perpetrate it, be more aware of how that feels than someone who’s repeatedly experienced it?

I don’t think so.

MY education included the history of enslavement (not something that’s common where you come from, as far as I can tell). I got to explore it again, in even more detail, when my daughter was in school. I’ve read narratives, I’ve gone to museums, I’ve continued to learn. I know what I don’t know, and I’m confident in what I do. Specious, ill-informed arguments about the nature of enslavement and racism aren’t the way to try to take me down.

For example, when I said it took a while for a white person to be locked up for a Black man's murder, it wasn't ignorance of the time it usually takes in the legal system. I already know that. It was soul weariness at the constant wait for justice. [2025 update: that hasn’t changed, on either side of the Atlantic. Just take a look at the recent refusal to name racism as a cause of what happened to Child Q in the UK.]

When I cited a friend who talked about race abuse I didn't need to hear from you about how actually abuse shows up in many places. Again, I know, and your comment wasn’t relevant.

And when you suggested I was finding racism where none existed… well, let me go back to my original point that you are singularly ill-equipped to spot it, even when you are perpetrating it. I, on the other hand, know EXACTLY what racism looks and feels like.

If you start out assuming you know better than I do because of the difference in the colour of my skin and yours, you are in for a shock. I am a lifelong learner, I am well read and I've been on the planet for quite a few rotations. I've learned from what I've done, seen, and read. So you do me a disservice when you start with the assumption that I don't know whatever it is you happen to be trying to whitesplain or mansplain to me today.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don't expect everyone to agree with me on everything. And I enjoy a constructive discussion where we all learn something. But don’t take that as license to dismiss me because of your assumed but unjustified superiority. It doesn’t hold water.

My advice to you: stay out of my comments until you know what you don't know. Check out these top voices in anti-racism and learn from them.

Then maybe you’ll be equipped for a constructive discussion with me.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Sharon

Friends, what would you like to tell the white mansplainers who turn up in your comment threads? Please share below.

P.S. Yes, they’re still around, and their arguments are just as unfounded, as I show in my Letter to Omega Dirt - check it out!

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I am an anti-racism educator and activist, the author of “I’m Tired of Racism”, and co-host of The Introvert Sisters podcast.

© Sharon Hurley Hall, 2022, 2025. All Rights Reserved. This newsletter is published on beehiiv (affiliate link).