Something has got to give.  Someone has got to give.  That someone is white.  What we have to give up is 1:silence, 2:comfort, 3:power.

Part 1 of the re-awakened Motherthink space: SILENCE – give it up white girl

In frank, stark terms we need to talk about what’s white and black and what’s right and wrong about everything we are doing and not doing.

Enough with silence in the face of injustice. As painful as it may be, use the words that tell the truth, the whole godforsaken truth.

Information on racial injustice has been around for a long, long time.  Some of it I happen to have known due to my particular upbringing, exposure to black leaders and activists from early on, a particular black best friend who taught me about how love, hate, and racism co-mingle. But racism has NEVER been a topic of conversation in the whiter and whiter circles in which my life has entered over the decades. If ever raised, it was shut down before the words got real.  Until now.

Though never discussed, racism as a functioning tool of implicit domination has been alive and thriving in these uber liberal, privileged, white-as-white-can-be communities.  Yet suddenly, now, white voices are joining the chorus and the language has changed, for white people at least.  Of course, none of this is new to communities of color.  White folk are just waking up to it. And we have mountains to learn.  If we don’t learn deeply, and act meaningully, and get uncomfortable in the process, change will not take place.

Words hurt, words heal, and sometimes, well-crafted words do both as they aptly explain. The truth. Robin D’Angelo’s words in White Fragility  do all of the above as she explains the background we are so totally oblivious to as white people.

If you are white and want to read a succinct book on the topic of race, read this book.  If you are a person of color and want some good phrases to use to explain to white people when they are being idiotic, racist, imperialistic, or just naive, read it.

How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi is next on my list.  But want to get this out there before more time passes, the window of openness closes, and we return to our invisible white fortresses.

When you read White Fragility, please comment with something you learned, a revelation, or something you previously did not know how to explain.

My revelation is the framing of white supremacy as a founding principle of our country – That race – the construct – was invented by white people to keep power. The history of Policing?  Created to chase down runaway slaves. Our whole country, and many others that have followed our model, is founded on the principle of maintaining white power.  White people to this day enjoy the fruits of this structure.  Invisible to us but in vivid display every single day for people of color.

My friend Leroy Moore, a Black Disability rights activist and founder of Krip Hop Nation, has been lecturing on this topic formally and informally for as long as I have know him (30+ years).  But you know, the power dynamic is such that we need a white person to explain this horrific shit to white people.  I got it, in pieces, but didn’t have the right language to spell it back out to set myself and my white peers straight.  In any case, DiAngelo’s book came at just the right time right when we are looking for new words and seem to be accepting that change is a necessary constant.

It is eerie to remember that before we were dumbstruck to tenderness and empathy bloomed like an exotic flower in Covid confinement and before George Floyd touched the world with his wholly unnecessary, but world rocking death, we were silent, we were complacent, we were complicit. In the face of the death of children at the hands of law enforcement, the death of mothers in the hands of a biased medical system, the death of neighbors as a result of abject poverty and homelessness, we went about our business.  I believe that without Covid, George Floyd’s death would have been a forgotten blip in the white dailies.  And yet another searing scar for communities of color.  But here we are.

Around the world people have poured into the streets and activism has surged among white people.  Human chains of white arms protecting black protestors from the police is a very good symbol of hope.  I hold on to that image.  Now we must carry on and do our part to 1.END SILENCE. 2. ACCEPT DISCOMFORT 3. CEDE POWER.

Comment as you read the book!  The print copies will be out of stock for a long time so get the ebook or audio.  I want to hear from you!