Has white Comfort Re-Emerged Center Stage?

This February snowy day I’m working in my attic office looking out at the winter wonderland outside. I can hear my partner and children laughing and yelling through the window pane as they tumble in the snow. I feel joy and gratitude.

And I feel deep angst because so little is changing. I know the world my Brown boys are inheriting. Last night we watched the Netflix series, Raising Dion. The lead child actor is Dion, a Black boy. After a scene where Dion and a white boy have an altercation and a white male teacher intervenes accusing Dion of being the villain, my oldest son, without skipping a beat, says to us, “the teacher is treating him like that because he has dark skin.”

My son is 5 and his little soul knows the realities of this world. Now, I know someone reading is going to come at me and say, “you’ve set him up to believe this.” We discuss realities in our family. Norman Rockwell’s famous piece, The Problem We All Live With hangs above our dining room table. For those who are not familiar, the piece is an illustration of Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old Black girl, being escorted by Deputy US Marshalls into a historically all white school in New Orleans in 1964. A racist slur and the letters KKK can be seen in the background as well as a squashed tomato. The piece is not uplifting but it is honest. We do not shy away from conversations of race and racism’s historical and present-day harm. We talk honestly about the piece. We tell our sons that Ruby Bridges is the same age as my white mother, their grandmother and that Ruby was brave to be the first Black child in her school.

Questions arise like,

“Mommy, people who look like you were mean to people that look like Daddy?”

“Yes, and we still are.” I can see my precious son trying to make sense of the dissonance.

“But Mommy why?”

“Love, because of the color of their skin.”

Our hearts rip open but we do not want our sons to have to unlearn a reality they thought existed but is simply not so out in the world. Then, after a pause, “So people are mean to Daddy and Grandad because they are Black.”

“Yes, sometimes baby.”

Another long space for my son to take in air to breathe, “And, that means me too, right?”

“Yes, you too baby.”

Conversations like this surface weekly if not daily. The grief and confusion living in his little body is palpable. There’s nothing special about these conversations our family has as they are common in homes with children of color.

I am a white woman raising Brown boys with a Black male partner. This is not virtue signaling — I fall, stumble, and misstep on my racial journey. And, yet, in my bones I know those of us living in white skin are full of fluff…yet, again. How much do we really care about the liberation of Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC)? Collectively, we white identifying and passing persons are comfortable and our laissez-faire attitude towards the oppression of BIPOC is harmful. All the moments I am laissez-faire I am harmful.

I recall the urgency so many of us white identified people felt just one year ago today — weeks out of the January 6th insurrection. There was a stirring and unsettling reckoning with the racist society we co-create. There were demands for change in 2020 and 2021. And…then, there is our numbing silence. I can’t help but think we have succumbed to the comfort living in our white skin.

Is the journey of our inner work we must do to unveil, acknowledge, and reckon with our racial history, identities, and the necessary unlearning just more effort than we are willing to give?

Is it too much grief to let go of who we thought we were? Our grief and challenges in our journey will always pale in comparison to BIPOC when it comes to race. Yet, it is all too easy to navel gaze.

I know we turn away when we get uncomfortable sometimes. We deny and become defensive. We question our role in oppression, and some struggle with being an oppressed oppressor so only fixate on how we have been oppressed in this life. We wrestle with the guilt and shame that interrogating whiteness undoubtedly bubbles over us like an overflowing tulip glass of champagne; and yet we know when we get caught up in our guilt and shame we may get stuck in a closed loop that self-centers our whiteness rather than taking risks and cashing in on our privilege (Dr. Bettina Loves’ words — check out Dr. Love’s book, We Want to Do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom) for racial equity.

Have we ever wondered if more of us white identifying folks really gave a damn, how much could change? If we, as white folks, would collectively listen to the voices of WOC? If we would make space, give love offerings for reparations, vote for candidates and policies who/that champion equity. What if more of us would have honest conversations with our own children as well as all children in our lives about the history of race in our nation and the world? What if we simply didn’t shy away from race and allowed ourselves to get messy, to sit with the dissonance and then actively work to dismantle internalized racism and racist practices in our spaces of influence? What if we wouldn’t shun away from each uncomfortable conversation about race but really listen, read the books of Black racial educators, and pay them for what they teach us, and then implement what we have learned? What if we would research the history and narratives of race in our communities and neighborhoods with honest critical reflection and then examine how we have benefitted from the history; and further, decide that we have a responsibility to repair what harm we can and co-create a more equitable community?

Is it really that hard or are we making it hard through our resistance, entitlement, and comfort? We co-create the reality of racism and so when we shrug our shoulders, and feel it isn’t on us to change, we say through our actions, “racism is working for me.”

The momentum of our momentary co-conspiratorship of 2020 and 2021 has halted. The air is dead, our silence deafening, and the flames of harm are smothering our conscience as we look away. Racism isn’t going to magically disappear, and some predict it never will. Though, if we are going to have any hope in changing the tide, it is on us to do something. BIPOC shouldn’t do it alone nor should they have to fight something our ancestors created, and we continue to co-create.

So, if we notice the moments we ease into our white comfort might we encourage ourselves and one another to get back in the arena and get uncomfortable?

Just last week my business development coach and friend, a Black woman, was asking me, “why in the heck aren’t you writing about Black History Month for your February blog?” The truth is that I had just read Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from white Supremacy by Rachel Ricketts and was fixated on how white women center ourselves. It is a truth that I receive. In the interrogation of my own centering, my whiteness, I went into my spiral questioning if there’s space for my family’s story that is very much tethered with mine and my perspective? So, I planned to write about sexual misconduct prevention and my book coming out in March — you know, stay in my lane.

Again, without hesitation, my business development coach and friend said, “Honestly, if you’re not writing about Black History Month, what the fuck?!”

I paused and said, “I gotta put my money where my mouth is and write about Black History Month.”

She responded, “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

The discomfort of knowing people are going to slam and ridicule us and we are going to make mistakes can be paralyzing. Though, when we are and stay paralyzed, we are restricted from moving forward in the fight for racial equity. We can be white and advocate for racial equity; and, if we are to ever have a revolution of love and freedom, more of us who live in white skin have to be actively invested in the toil.

And, at minimum, when someone in white skin claims they don’t understand why it is important to have Black History Month or makes a joke — lets, for the love of humanity, not be silent. Anti-blackness exists in all white spaces we find ourselves in and we have a responsibility to disrupt racism. Black excellence, brilliance and contributions to this country and world are all around us and have always been. Acknowledging and celebrating Black History Month is acknowledging Black Lives Matter to me, to our communities, this nation and world. Let’s not be paralyzed in the overwhelm but committed to daily action for equity. And, when our white comfort re-emerges to center stage, because if we are honest with ourselves, it will — we remind ourselves and one another we are all necessary in this fight. Let’s put our money where our mouths are — get or stay uncomfortable, learn more than the lies of the white washed history we’ve been taught, cherish the contributions and support the liberation of all people this Black History Month and every month to come!