Let’s Get To Work

2) Deep fear of engaging with loved ones – partners, parents, close friends – about what we are seeing, some of us for the first time though not because it is new but because we are seeing for the first time. Fear of conversations with people who know us intimately, conversations we’ve maybe or even probably never had, not for real anyway. Fear that someone we love is not where we want and need them to be. Fear that someone is us.

We white people need to develop a shared language about oppression that gives architecture to these conversations. There is a beautiful, painful, poignant, brilliant canon of teachings by leadership of color, expanding every minute, that you and I and all white folks can access, discuss, wrestle with, honor, ingrain. White folks’ self-education is also a key component of anti-racism work. For it cannot be on BIPOC to carry the burden of our unlearning, or to hold us emotionally through that journey.