Reckoning With Whiteness Isn’t Cool.

I’ve been told that I write and talk about race because I think it’s “cool.”

Photo by Kasia on Unsplash

Some have said that I’m trying to fit in with the “woke” or “liberal white” crowd in my attempts to examine whiteness. Others say it’s self hate or that I’m a bigot. Really, if I’m honest about my feelings about what I’m trying to do with whiteness, racial identity, and picking apart the stories I have, and the meaning I’ve made of race, it’s lonely and it’s necessary. I feel isolated, often confused, and compelled to continue on.

For the most part, white people around me don’t want to hear about race. My people seem uninterested in or not ready to look at the ways we contribute to racial inequity and the work we might need to do to disentangle ourselves from whiteness. When I bring up race with other white people, I feel as though relationships are in jeopardy, the connection begins to feel tenuous. I need to tread lightly, proceed with caution, and hold tight to love, care, and shared values so we don’t lose one another in this struggle. It’s not cruelty or dislike that I feel with the white people in my life, it’s distance and trepidation. It’s having similar values and having different ideas about how to live out those values.

I’m also sensitive to sharing what I’m going through with my loved ones of color. I imagine a white person talking about and inviting them into this long overdue process could feel like too much. I hear them when they say that the ways race negatively impacts them daily, is burdensome, and that whiteness is tiresome. Some of us have long been shouldered with the weight of our collective troubles with skin color, power, and racialization. Add to that another white lady wanting to talk through her troubles with racial identity, that’s something I don’t want to put on my already taxed loved ones who don’t share the privilege of society allowing them to ignore race.

I’m unsure what to do with the loneliness. I can sympathize with how my white friends and loved ones might be feeling because I know the whiteness that we’re all are caught up in. What I don’t know is how I’d feel if I were a person of color. But, I imagine if someone was finally coming to a table that they should have been at long ago, that they’re just now starting to understand how our shared system has been crushing me and my ancestors, I’d be pretty impatient with them. I’d want them to hurry up and be about the work already, not spending time and energy telling me about their struggles with the work.

And feeling lonely, it’s because I’m what you might call a people person. I’m energized through relationship and interaction with others. I thrive in accountable and vulnerable connection. Right now, I’m struggling to find affinity in this journey I’m on.

And I know why I’m doing this work of reckoning with whiteness. I can’t not do it. I can’t avoid this work and be about nourishing the well-being of people most dear to me - all of those most dear to me - white, black, brown, all. I can’t be about tending to my own well-being if I’m not attending to race.

Because race is a part of relating in the US. And because race is part of who I am - because being racialized as white has an impact on me. Race is a piece I’ve too long ignored - there’s much I need to attend to that’s been left untended. It’s work that I must do to be whole. People will say what they must and I’ll try to listen with an open heart and receptive mind. I’ll lean into criticism to take in and reflect on why they might have said what they did. But I can’t stop reckoning with whiteness.

So what’s my point? Why am I telling you all of this? Part of it is to feel less lonely - it’s to make the loneliness less daunting. I wonder if other people might feel lonely too. That maybe in sharing it with one another, we’ll be better able to continue the important work of fixing social imbalance and embracing shared humanity.

But it’s also so I learn to work through the loneliness, confusion, and unknowing. It’s so that I can keep on. I’m teaching myself new ways to keep going because some of my preferred ways - of leaning on close, similar-minded community - aren’t available right now.