Today, it feels odd to hear this question from another white person—and I say white because I’ve only been asked this by white people. And I don’t disagree with the observation—I do take race personally. But it’s not something I’ve always done.
I’m not talking about taking it personally in the sense of getting upset over something I assume is about me but really isn’t. Instead, what I mean is I’m no longer operating with the belief that race and racism only involve black and brown people. It’s being mindful of how I relate to whiteness, recognizing the consequences of that relationship, and not being quiet about it.
As for why? I take race personally because it is personal to me. Before, when someone pointed this out, it bothered me. I would look for all the ways race didn't belong to or affect me. It feels silly that it took me so long to realize that getting upset about someone trying to tie me to race was proof it was personal for me.
I've stopped wasting energy denying simple truths. Honestly, accepting that I'm white and that this impacts me has been freeing. It lets me focus on understanding how whiteness affects my life and relationships.
I didn't have just one moment or experience that made me realize my personal relationship with race. It was more a series of them over time. Some memories definitely stand out more than others.
Like this one time I tried to discuss a significant event involving race with another white person. This wasn't just any white person—it was someone dear to me. A person who, time and again, has expressed concern about how race impacts my multi-racial family.
I hoped for a meaningful talk where we could connect and understand each other. But, that’s not what happened. To this day, it ranks as one of the worst conversations I’ve had.
Problem is, this sort of thing wasn’t a one time deal—it was a pattern. More often than not when I tried to have conversations about race with white people who are important to me, these exchanges seldom seemed to go how I wished they would.
My main issue wasn't with the other person. I was constantly frustrated and upset with myself. Each time left me feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to change. I wasn't like this in other discussions, and I didn't want to be this way in discussions about race either.
I worried more and more about balancing my commitment to challenging racism with maintaining relationships with other white people. Among the white folks in my life, I felt mostly alone in my need to examine my relationship with race. The thing is, this is a journey I need to take with other white people.
But I kept causing separation when I needed solidarity and connection. I wondered where I’d end up if I continued on what seemed to others to be a misguided path with race. I had no other story of whiteness besides the one I shared with the other white people in my life, and I didn't know how to create a different one.
This struggle didn't just affect my personal relationships—it was a professional issue too. As a therapist, I was trained to facilitate meaningful conversations about the most troubling parts of human experience and relationship. I could be present for my clients in ways that others in their lives couldn't.
But I couldn’t talk about or navigate my own relationship with race. I felt like a fraud. One thing was clear—I couldn’t continue this way.
So, I read books about racism, whiteness, and white identity. I listened to people of color in my life and anti-racism experts. I tuned into podcasts about race and attended racial equity and white identity workshops. These resources helped me feel less alone.
More importantly, they highlighted a big hurdle — I was relying on others to sort out my relationship with race for me.
I saw that, like many relationships in my life, my relationship with whiteness is complex. Similar to other important parts of my identity and story, I have to examine whiteness for my own sake — not to please others, compare myself, or prove my worth, or intelligence. I need to understand race deeply because it is and has always been deeply connected to me.
To face my own attachment to whiteness, I borrowed practices and knowledge from therapy and leaned on what I learned from reading, listening, and reflecting on race. Taking ownership of my relationship with whiteness revealed a disconnect between what I learned about being white and what I believed about justice and human worth.
While the rapacity and cruelty of whiteness often made me feel fear, shame, and disgust, other parts of it provided familiarity and belonging. I realized that, time and again, I let these comforting aspects keep me from recognizing or addressing the harms of whiteness. Even the damage whiteness brought me.
White friends, the thing I wish I’d understood sooner is that our relationship with race is significant—it's truly a matter of life and death. When we let whiteness remain as it is, anti blackness, anti brownness, and race based violence abounds. Here in the US, we’re all caught up in a cultural value system filled with race-based dehumanization and brutality, and we can’t be part of such a system without being touched by it. Race is personal.
Many of us are probably familiar with the good white person response in moments of tragedy. I've seen it and even done it myself. It's when white people get really distressed about race and the hate and callousness we witness. We ask, “Why does this keep happening?"
I think there's a deep sense telling many of us we need to do more than question why it happens—that our connection to whiteness inextricably links us to inequity and death. Still, even though we’re walking around sharing this thing in common, attempting to talk with other white folks about whiteness is really difficult for me. Maybe it’s daunting for you too.
But, when we see and name it in our own lives and stories, when race becomes personal, it opens up new opportunities for us to change how we relate to whiteness and redefine its impact. Making race personal gives us a chance to tell new stories about whiteness and about ourselves as white people.
I guess what I’m saying is, learning to take race personally hasn't been easy for me. It’s often been quite lonely, but it’s absolutely necessary. It’s the sort of thing that’s harder to work out on our own. If being white has you feeling sad, uneasy, overwhelmed, hopeless, guilty, or something else unwanted, you're not alone. We can take race personally together.
Comments