White Folks Guide to Uncomfortable Holiday Conversations

White Folks Work

You've been doing the work to support Black lives for months now. You've read the books; you've learned the language; you've listened and met and discussed. Perhaps, you've even moved onto co-conspiratorship in some areas of your life: standing up to racist policies at work, joining local grassroots groups, and looking for important, consistent ways to redistribute your wealth. This is a good start, but this is just the set up for White Folks Work.

White Folks Work, and co-conspiratorship in general, is about taking risks to bring our world closer to justice. As daunting as it sounds, that means that as White folks, we need to be the ones having the hard conversations about race, equity, and politics with White folks on the other side of the aisle. Black and Brown folks are not responsible for defending their existence to the very White folks that put them in harm's way. As Jarrett Hill wrote, "This reaches back to conversations about the concept of 'allyship' and the fallacy of this year’s discussion about how Black people really need their white allies to show up and support ending systemic racism and anti-Blackness. That very idea is inherently flawed. Black folks don’t need white people’s help ending what white people created. That’s not Black people’s work, that’s white people’s work. We can be their allies – if, when, and where we so choose."

That said, you know Uncle Seymour and Cousin Madge. There is no way they are doing this work without some prodding. This is where we, as White folks, need to step up and take on the emotional labor of challenging our friends and family to think differently. We need to have tough conversations, listen, ask questions, and have patience. Part of not tolerating intolerance is challenging it.

Moreover, being a co-conspirator is about taking risks to support marginalized folks. In this case we are risking three things:

1. Comfort: These conversations will inevitably be challenging and uncomfortable. They may require you to listen when it feels impossible and to stay engaged when you feel enraged. They will require you to stretch your patience, but you've been doing the work, so you know that discomfort is the only path to growth.

2. Relationships: While conversations about race, equity, and politics are likely to put strain on relationships, we have to take that risk. The risk of damaging our relationships is small in comparison to the physical risks of being marginalized in this country.

3. Reputation: Will this maybe change the way your family looks at you or thinks of you? Will your high school friends perhaps talk about your stupid liberal elitist views? Certainly, but that is a risk we must take. Even though these conversations may give you a reputation for being a killjoy and a left-wing zealot, as Jason Reynolds once pointed out, "There's a difference between being uncomfortable and unsafe," and we cannot "maintain emotional safety at the risk of physical safety for other people."

This is White Folks Work. It is the slow, frustrating, necessary unraveling of White supremacy from our communities. All of our communities; not just the ones that are ready to listen.

As always, this guide is free. However, I do suggest that if you have the means, you use them to support any of the educators or organizations
I list here.