"I Didn't Choose To Be White."

I’ve heard this sentence more times than I can count. And I get why white people might say it. The same thought has crossed my mind, and sometimes my lips.

For a long time, it was a stopping point for me. A way out of conversations that made me uneasy. I wonder how often it does the same thing for other white folks.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Recently, I was talking with two white guys about Hello Whiteness, the organization I started. They knew a little about my work, but this time they wanted to understand it more deeply.

“Why call it that?” one of them asked.

It felt like a real question. So I gave a real answer.

I started with how most white folks I know grew up learning a similar story: white is “normal.” White means raceless. Race may touch other people’s lives, but not ours.

I learned that story too. For most of my life, I didn’t think much about race. But something happened in me when someone called me white, or when I had to identify myself that way.

I am a white person in the U.S. But being named as part of whiteness left me uneasy. It felt like there was an accusation tucked inside the naming. Sometimes I’d get defensive. Sometimes I’d shut down. Whatever my reaction, it was rarely pleasant, and it was never neutral.

I couldn’t help but wonder: If whiteness was supposed to be nothing, why did naming it stir up so much in me? And why did I see similar reactions in other white folks?

The white guys seemed to be following along. So I kept going with an explanation I often share about my journey.

I’d always cared about equity. I could see things weren’t fair when it came to race. I wanted a world where people’s lives weren’t limited or shaped by the racial categories and meanings we’d inherited.

I could talk about what I believed and what I hoped for. What I didn’t know was how to live it. How to feel it. And how to reconcile it with my own racial identity.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand, and what we start from at Hello Whiteness: whiteness affects everyone in the U.S. It was never neutral. It was constructed to keep some people from the privileges and benefits handed to those it included. It was written into our laws and policies and woven into our culture. And the effects of that continue to shape our lives today.

At this point, the white guys started to look distracted, as though what I’d said had stirred something in them. They didn’t respond. So, I went on.

Whiteness has mattered a whole lot in this country since the beginning. And yet I’d been living as though it hardly mattered at all. Most white folks around me seemed to be doing the same. Meanwhile, whiteness works against the very things so many of us say we care about.

So the name Hello Whiteness carries a hope. We say hello to whiteness—to all the ways it’s been hidden in plain sight—so we can say goodbye to it. Together, we practice seeing it, naming it, and working out how it shapes us. And we practice something different together—ways of responding to and resisting whiteness and the world it helped create.

That’s when the white guys pushed back.

Isn’t this just centering whiteness? How would white people talking about race change anything? Doesn’t it just create more division?

The curiosity I’d sensed at the start of the conversation had shifted into something else.

Then one of them added, “I didn’t choose to be white.”

And that was it. The conversation ended. The questions seemed to be reasons not to go any further. That last line was the period at the end of the sentence.

If this kind of conversation sounds familiar, it might be because I’ve written about another one like it before—a party, a conversation, and a long silence. I have a lot of conversations about Hello Whiteness. And when I’m talking with other white folks, they often end like this one did.

I recognize this particular stopping point. I’ve been there.

And now I can see how it got in my way. I’d spent my whole life learning—mostly without realizing it—how to be white in the U.S. There was no single lesson. I picked up whiteness in a thousand ordinary ways. I absorbed stories about race, ideas about who belonged, assumptions about what was normal, and ways of being with people I rarely questioned.

I didn’t know how to hold my deep care for equity alongside the fact that I was benefiting from, participating in, and feeling stuck inside a racial structure built to keep things inequitable.

I was also afraid of what might happen to my relationships with other white people. What if I started challenging the assumptions and patterns about race we’d always shared? What if I spoke up when other white folks wanted me to stay quiet? What if the rejection I feared became real?

I didn’t have a roadmap for any of this. And I didn’t have many white people around me willing to wrestle with these questions alongside me. Believe me, I tried. The results were not good.

No wonder I felt unsettled. Unsure. Afraid.

It might have seemed easier to stop asking questions. To tell myself I hadn’t chosen to be white and leave it there. But stopping wouldn’t settle the relentless unease I felt around race. And it wouldn’t let me unsee the racial injustice I’d already seen.

So I leaned into the discomfort.

My background in therapy had taught me how powerful it can be to look at the things that shape us, especially the things we’ve learned to avoid. I’d practiced doing that with other parts of my life, my sense of self, and my story. Whiteness was clearly shaping me. And it was definitely something I’d learned to avoid. So I figured I’d try a similar approach with whiteness.

I started learning more about the history of whiteness in the U.S. I learned about the role whiteness played in building racial hierarchy here, and in keeping it going. I learned how it was never just about individual prejudice, but about the stories and structures that made racial inequity seem normal, natural, or deserved.

Slowly, I began to see that living out my values would ask more of me than believing in fairness or wanting everyone to thrive. It would ask me to let go of the idea that good intentions are enough. It would ask me to look at how I learned to be white, how those lessons shaped me, and how I was carrying them into my relationships and everyday life.

Along the way, I started practicing a different kind of questioning. When discomfort came, instead of looking for the exit, I’d ask: What could this discomfort be saying about what’s important to me? Who do I want to be in this moment? What might become possible if I stay curious?

That practice changed things for me. And it changed me.

All of that, along with many smaller realizations, eventually led me to start Hello Whiteness. I knew I’d be inviting white folks into what could be a difficult journey. I also knew difficult things can be easier to face when we don’t have to face them alone.

I wanted to create a space where white people could practice seeing and naming what we’d been taught not to see. A place to ask questions we might otherwise avoid, get curious about the stories we’d inherited, and begin to understand what those stories had been asking of us. A place to do all of this alongside other like-minded, like-hearted folks on a similar journey.

And I wanted us to keep going.

To look at how whiteness affects more than just individual white people. How it shows up in our relationships, families, workplaces, schools, faith communities, organizations, and this country. To listen to and join people of color in naming what they’ve been naming for generations. To take responsibility for our part without getting stuck in shame, blame, overwhelm, or defensiveness. And to begin changing the patterns, and unraveling the fabric, that keep racial inequity in place.

The hope was never simply that white people would learn more about whiteness.

It was that we might become freer to live the values we care about. That we might find new and more preferred ways of being with ourselves and one another. That we might stop letting inherited stories and structures determine how we show up. And that we might witness and celebrate who we’re becoming, together.

That’s why I keep writing, talking, and journeying with others.

If I had to name this journey, I’d call it a practice—and one we do together. Of looking closer at how whiteness has shaped our relationships, our choices, and the ways we move through the world. And, again and again, choosing to stay with it. Because of how it changes us. And because of what staying has made possible, and might still make possible.

It has been worth it. I’ve found freedom in this journey. And I've witnessed other white people begin to find that kind of freedom, too.

I’ve seen what can happen when we stay in conversations we used to avoid. I’ve watched us begin to find language for things we’d sensed but couldn’t name. Listen differently. Speak up when we once would have stayed quiet. Imagine, and live into, new ways of being with ourselves and others. And lean into relationships we trust, with white folks and folks of color, where we’re accountable, where we’re learning to really see each other, and where we let ourselves be seen, too.

And that freedom doesn’t stop with us. I've seen it ripple out into families, organizations, and communities.

So today, when I hear another white person say, “I didn’t choose to be white,” I agree.

None of us chose the racial category we were born into. We didn’t choose the histories we inherited, the messages we absorbed, or the structures and stories that were already in place before we got here. But we were probably shaped by them. And we get to choose what we do next.

That’s part of the hope I had when I started Hello Whiteness. It’s a hope I’ve seen take shape in my own life, in the lives of others, and in the possibilities that keep opening up.

And it’s a hope that keeps growing. Because I keep seeing how freedom can really take hold when we stop asking whether we chose the world we inherited, and start asking—together—what we want to do with it.