A Syrup Bottle, My Brother, and the Conversation I Thought I was Ready For.

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.

“Because of hundreds of years of slavery,” I said immediately.

Even as the words came out, part of me whispered, slow down. But my voice got louder instead.

“Because generations of black and brown families have been socially and economically disadvantaged so that generations of white families could reap the benefits.”

I could feel myself slipping into something familiar. A kind of lecturing momentum. Facts stacking on facts.

“Because of the burning of Black Wall Street. Because of the massacre of black families in Tulsa a hundred years ago.”

Because of. Because of. Because of.

I gave him plenty of reasons. I gave him history. I gave him context. What I didn’t give him was an opening.

The conversation ended there.

And sitting with it later, what hurt wasn’t just that the discussion stalled. I was that I could feel how far I had drifted from the way I want to be. I hadn’t slowed down. I hadn’t stayed curious. I hadn’t connected what I know to who we are—to our shared family story, to our relationship, to what might have actually mattered to him in that moment.

Instead, I turned the exchange into a monologue. One that doesn’t invite reflection so much as it shuts things down. One that carries a quiet message of shame—you should already know this.

My brother wasn’t trying to provoke me. He wasn’t mocking or dismissing anything. He asked an honest question. And I pounced. I reacted, rather than related.

What made it sting even more is that this is exactly the kind of conversation I’ve been preparing myself for. Talking with my family about race matters deeply to me. Creating meaning together. Staying connected while we look honestly at the narratives we inherited. I want to be someone who can help shift the story we carry about race—not by overpowering others, but by staying present, grounded, and human.

And yet, in that moment, I did the opposite.

I didn’t just miss an opportunity with my brother. I disappointed myself.

I’ve spent years trying to loosen the grip of whiteness on how I move through the world. I’ve been listening, reading, unlearning. Trying to form a relationship to race and racism that isn’t handed to me by my place in the racial hierarchy, but one that I choose deliberately. One that works against the imbalance I was taught to accept. One that aligns with my values, my faith, my sense of shared humanity.

I’m trying to engage race not as an abstract issues, but as something woven into my own story—my family, my upbringing, my assumptions, my reflexes. I’m learning to notice how whiteness encourages distance, certainty, control. How it rewards being right over being connected, and the status quo over change.

And still, whiteness caught me.

Yes, I spoke up. I didn’t stay silent. But the way I did it — the sharpness, the speed, the need to dominate the moment—wasn’t new. It was exactly what I was taught. It was whiteness showing up through me, even as I was trying to speak against it.

I know this pattern well. Being the loudest voice. Taking up all the space. Leaving no room for someone else to think out loud. I’ve seen where it leads. Conversations end. Defensiveness grows. Connection thins.

It doesn’t work.

And more than that, it keeps us from each other.

That, I’m learning, is one of whiteness’s most reliable functions—keeping white folks tethered to it by disrupting our ability to belong deeply to and truly care for one another. In that moment, I belonged more to whiteness than to my brother. And I felt it.

What makes the whole thing even more layered is what we were actually talking about.

In 2020, Quaker Oats announced it would discontinue the Aunt Jemima brand, saying it was part of an effort “to make progress toward racial equality.” By the end of that year, the image was gone—acknowledging the brand’s roots in the Mammy stereotype. Other companies followed suit. Uncle Ben’s rice was renamed Ben’s Original. Mrs. Butterworth’s began reevaluating its branding and bottle shape. Cream of Wheat faced renewed scrutiny for its “Rastus” logo, another caricature drawn from a long history of racial stereotypes.

None of this happened in isolation. These were public reckonings, prompted by decades of critique and a renewed national attention to how racism lives not just in laws and institutions, but in every day things we’ve been taught not to question.

That’s what my brother was brushing up against. A syrup bottle. A shift. A disruption of something familiar.

And instead of getting curious about what that disruption stirred in him—confusion, annoyance, skepticism, genuine wondering—I overwhelmed him with history. Important history, yes. But delivered without care.

I wish I had chosen differently.

I wish belonging to my brother, to my family, to our shared humanity had eclipsed my instinct to perform knowledge. I wish I had asked something more questions: What made you notice this? What feels confusing about it? Why doesn’t this matter to you right now? Why bring it up to me?

There will other chances. I believe that. This work—this unlearning, this practicing a different way of being—isn’t tidy. It’s full of missteps. It asks more of me than simply knowing the right facts. It asks me to slow down, to stay open, to seek equity, to keep choosing relationship even when my nervous system wants control.

I’m still on this journey. Still learning how to loosen what I was taught. Still trying to show up in ways that make room for connection instead of cutting it off. Still trying to take apart whiteness rather than reinforce it.