“Race Is Always On The Table”

It started as an invitation to healing.

Funny thing is, I didn’t even know I needed healing until someone named it—until I was invited in.

Let me back up.

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There are times in life when you know something isn’t working. You can feel it, even if you can’t quite name it. Something about how you’re showing up in the world—or how you were taught to move through it—doesn’t fit anymore. You sense a gap, but you can’t see the bridge or even where to begin building one.

That was me.

In 2015, my partner (who is black), our three small kids, and I (a white woman) moved from a big Midwestern city to a smaller city in the South. We didn’t know anyone. Not a single soul.

We’d started fresh in new places before, but this move was different. This time, we had three kids under the age of five—one of them a newborn. If you’ve ever parented small children, you probably know—it’s all-hands-on-deck, all the time. We had no hands but our own—and that didn’t feel like enough hands.

The loneliness was sharp. We’d left a circle of people who held us—and that we held, too. We showed up for each other. We shared meals, traded childcare, celebrated milestones, and carried one another through hard seasons. It was the kind of mutual care that made everyday life a little lighter, a little more possible. Suddenly, that web of support wasn’t just down the street anymore.

But it wasn’t only the absence of community that left me unsettled. It was also the racial landscape we’d landed in.

I quickly realized that race—and especially whiteness—worked differently here. The history felt heavier. The dynamics trickier. The air carried stories I didn’t quite understand. And I knew I didn’t have the tools or knowledge I needed to navigate this new reality—for myself, for my partner, for our kids.

We needed belonging. We needed wisdom. We needed people.

So we started looking for our village. I knew enough to know that white people weren’t the experts on race. So we looked for spaces led by people of color—our kids’ preschool, our neighborhood, our faith community.

That faith community became a lifeline. They met us with love, grace, and presence when we were running on empty. They showed up for us in ways we didn’t even know how to ask for. And tucked inside that care was something that would change me forever.

This community lived by a principle: “Race is always on the table.”

It wasn’t just a nice idea or a slogan. It was a way of being together. It shaped our conversations, our decisions, our relationships, our imagination.

And for me, it was a revelation.

Because in the mostly white communities I grew up in, race was almost never on the table.

Sure, we talked about it sometimes—but almost exclusively in relation to people of color. Whiteness was invisible. Unnamed. It wasn’t considered race at all, just the neutral background against which everyone else’s story of race played out.

When race did come up, it was awkward. Whispered. Like when someone mentioned black people but lowered their voice, even though no black person was around. It was clear—for most of the white folks I knew, race was about them, not us.

And that silence? It does something to you.

When race isn’t on the table, whiteness quietly gets to shape everything while convincing you it’s nothing at all. It keeps you from noticing how much you’ve been shaped by it—and how much of your own humanity you’ve traded to keep things “normal.”

So even after I left the place I grew up, even as I started learning and noticing more about race, even as I started caring differently, my focus was still mostly outward—on how I could “help.” As if race was still someone else’s issue to fix. It didn’t connect for me then that whiteness was very much my problem.

In this faith community, that changed.

Here, when we said “race is always on the table,” whiteness was included. We didn’t gloss over it. We didn’t ignore it.

And naming whiteness made it easier to see it. Easier to talk about. It started to feel less like something strange or controversial, and more like an honest part of life. I could better see how being white shaped my choices, my identity, my story, and the way others experienced me.

It was the first time I’d been a part of a group of people who looked at whiteness not as something “neutral” or “normal,” but as something real—something that impacted all of us. Something that needed to be talked about.

And it wasn’t just talk. It was also about who led, who we learned from, and whose wisdom guided our community. For the first time in my life, I was part of a faith space not led by white men. That mattered. I could see and feel the difference—the breadth of perspective, the depth of care, the courage to imagine something beyond what whiteness had trained me to expect.

Looking back now, it almost feels silly that I didn’t see it sooner. Whiteness had always been right in front of me. But I needed community that could hold both belonging and truth-telling—a place that said “race is always on the table” and lived it. That mix of grace and honesty cracked something open in me.

It helped me face the fear I’d been carrying. The silence I’d been living inside. And it led me toward a kind of freedom I didn’t know I was missing.

Now I can say that once you begin naming the things you’ve been taught not to see, things can shift. Once you realize that silence has been keeping you stuck, you can’t unsee it. And once you find a community that offers both belonging and truth, that helps you reset the norms you’ve been stuck inside, feeling unable to change, you don’t want to go back.

For me, “race is always on the table” became more than a community value. It became a doorway.

Living out that principle gave me the courage to examine the whiteness I’d inherited. The tools to navigate what it means for my relationships. The hope that my kids could grow up learning something different than I did. And the push to help take apart what keeps whiteness alive.

That’s why I keep whiteness on the table—it’s a practice of becoming more whole. It’s why I keep getting curious about my reactions when race comes up. For myself. For my kids. For my partner. For the communities I’m part of.

I’ve tasted what it’s like to belong to a community—to relationships filled with love and grace—that insist on telling the truth about race, and I can’t go back. I can’t unknow what it feels like to live more honestly, more fully, more free.

And I want that freedom—not just for me, but for all of us.