“Don’t be a tool.” Photo by James Orr on Unsplash I heard that a lot growing up. Maybe you did too. It usually meant something like, don’t be annoying  or don’t ruin the fun . Sometimes it was said to someone who seemed entitled—someone acting like they thought were better than everyone else. I don’t hear the phrase much anymore. But I think about it often. Because now, when I hear the word tool , I think of Audre Lorde’s words: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the m

I’ve been thinking a lot about how close so many of us are to things we still refuse to see. Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash We’ve shared meals. We’ve sat on each other’s couches. We’ve celebrated birthdays, graduations, weddings—so many markers of life together. We say we care about one another. And I believe many of us mean it. And still, there are realities shaping my daily life—and the daily lives of many people who aren’t white, or who love people who aren’t white—th

At the start of a new year, I notice my questions shifting. Photo by Buddha Elemental 3D on Unsplash They’re less about what I want to accomplish and more about what I’m already part of—sometimes without choosing, and often without fully seeing it. Less about fixing myself alone. More about how we’re living together, and what our ordinary, everyday lives are helping to create. One question keeps returning—even when I try to set it down: What do division, violence, and “safet

I can’t seem to deny it—people’s capacity to change. Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash This time of year invites that sentence out of me almost without asking. Maybe it’s the lights strung up against the darkness. Maybe it’s the way we talk — earnestly, sometimes desperately — about fresh starts and clean slates. Maybe it’s the rituals — gathering, giving, pausing long enough to take stock of what’s been and what might still be possible. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m wildl

“Where are you from?” And then, almost always the follow up: “Where are you really from? Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash My partner gets asked these questions often—especially by white people. Yes, he speaks with an accent. But this isn’t actually about what someone sounds or looks like. It’s about whiteness. And who is assumed to belong here without explanation, and who is not. No matter where my partner was born or raised, in the U.S. he is seen first as a black man .. An

Not long ago, I wrote about white-ing hard —a familiar experience many of us white folks know. It’s when we show up in ways that make the world bend toward what feels comfortable, familiar, and unsurprising to us. Photo by Rapha Wilde on Unsplash When our habits, preferences, and stories become the default, the “normal,” the only way that seems right. That piece was a personal reckoning—a way to name something I saw in myself and others, something quietly shaping so much of

There’s a pattern in our story that’s hard to unsee once you start noticing it. Over and over, we’ve been handed chances to tell the truth—about who we are, what we’ve done, and what we could become. Chances to stop pretending that justice in the U.S. has ever been equally available, when it’s always been unevenly rationed. And yet… again and again, we chose whiteness. Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash I think about this a lot — how many moments in our history were crossroa

I’ve heard people say this all my life — if you want to win, you’ve got to play the game. It’s often said like simple wisdom. Just the way things are. Photo by oo verthing on Unsplash A friend said it to me recently, and this time, I couldn’t just nod and move on. It lingered. It made me angry. So I sat with it. I asked myself: Why does this idea bother me so much? Why do I feel something tighten every time I hear it? And then it came to me — I don’t want to play the game I

I just finished reading a novel. I won’t tell you the title—I don’t want to spoil it. But in the very first pages, every white person dies. Not from a violent act or some grand revenge. They simply couldn’t live in a world where whiteness no longer existed. So when whiteness died, they did too. Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash It might sound strange, but I found the idea hopeful. I like the idea of whiteness not being permanent. I can already hear a response I’ve gotten