With other white people, I keep finding, it’s really hard. Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash I had an epic discussion with another white person over the weekend. This person is one who I dearly love. Someone I admire for their kindness and patience and their strength, generosity and goodness. We talked about race, marginalization, power, privilege, faith and about how whiteness is entangled with these things. It started off as a simple conversation about faith and what it m

What is whiteness? Honestly, it’s hard to pin down. For most of my life as a white person in the U.S., the goal was to not even notice...

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash There’s an idea I first encountered while training to be a therapist—one that has stayed with me ever since. It goes something like this: the thing we don’t talk about, the thing that stays hidden or unnamed, is often the very thing that most needs our attention. I can’t say this is always true. But I can say this—whiteness fits that description in my life. For a long time, I didn’t talk about whiteness. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t no

In all honesty, I’m still figuring it out. The story I have of my first memory of race happened when I was 4 years old. It was Easter and...

“Mommy, your skin is white and you are good to us… and other white people love us too…” Image of the author’s young daughter She looks at...

It’s a real question. And I don’t ask it lightly. Image by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash When I look back on my life, I realize that...

My brother and I were talking about a syrup bottle. Picture of the author and her brother It was sitting on the table at a family gathering the day before—familiar, unremarkable, the kind of thing you grow up with and don’t really see anymore. And then he said it. “I just don’t understand why it’s a big deal. Why does taking the picture or the name off of a bottle matter?” I didn’t pause. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t ask what he meant or what he was curious about. I jumped. “Be

Picture by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash I’ve written before about being frozen by big feelings in the face of overt racism (see post N**** r Lover ). The kind of moments where shame, sadness, or fear rise up so fast that my voice seems to disappear. Those moments still sit with me. They remind me the distance between who I’ve been and who I’m trying to be. I imagine myself naming racism clearly, thoroughly disrupting it, refusing the pull of whiteness that taught me silence. Bu

This week, as we were watching the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, someone on the screen called the January 6th insurrection...