Reparations opportunity: contribute to a Still & Sovereign Retreat scholarship
for a Black woman - we need to raise $3.5k)
Hello {{ first name | friends}},
This month’s reboot was about an incident that happened online, and I’ve seen a few more examples since then. This was originally sent to paid subscribers, but now this rebooted version is free to read. I’ve updated the links and some of the terminology to reflect what I usually use now.
For me, it reinforces the importance of community in anti-racism work, both as support and as a tool for growth. See what you think…
What If Being Called "Racist" Were the Start of the Conversation?
There’s a thing that happens in mixed company (that is when folx racialised as Black, racialised as Black, and people of the Global Majority share space) whenever someone describes a white person’s behaviour as “racist”.
Invariably, the person whose behaviour has been described that way shuts down and they stop hearing anything else. Some even behave as if having their behaviour called racist is worse than, you know, actually experiencing racism. (It isn’t; not by a long shot.)
But something that happened a while back made me believe there’s hope, and that calling behaviour racist does not have to end a conversation.
Indeed, it can be the start of a new avenue of learning for the white person in question.
Some time ago, a Global Majority person posted on LinkedIn about racism and white people, and made a point about the unearned advantages many white-presenting people enjoy, and the system we all are raised in. What happened next was interesting.
As so often happens in these cases, a slew of white men descended on the post to excoriate the original poster, with the usual mansplaining, whitesplaining, denials and table turning. It could have turned into another flame war.
But it didn’t.