Do’s and Don’ts for Talking About Racial Injustice
by Taylor Crain
Empathy is important. However, it is not appropriate to insert your personal experiences into the narrative of Black experiences. This can be harmful and take away from the severity of the situation.
Colorblindness is defined as an attempt to minimize or distort existence of racism, insistence that race does not matter or should not be talked about (e.g., ‘we’re all the same’), hence, racism is taboo (usually used by persons in an attempt to be perceived as unbiased).
The language of “colorblindness” is gaslighting and invalidates the experiences of people of color. Social constructs around race and the color of skin are real, and they have real consequences on the lives of people of color. Implicit biases around race are also real and have been heavily studied.
To use a popular analogy, when a house is on fire, firefighters do not spray water on every house in the neighborhood. They only go to the house that is on fire. All lives do not matter until Black lives matter. The statement “blue lives matter” is problematic because “blue” is not a race. Black people cannot take off their skin-color, but police officers can take off their uniforms. “Blue lives” are not under threat by an institution. More importantly, modern-day police forces grew out of white militia and slave patrollers back in the Jim Crow era and slavery days. This is why we all must maintain a stance of abolition. The abolition of police forces is necessary. That systemic racial legacy cannot be reformed. We are also not living in a post-racial society because a lot of systemic inequity is centered around race, which gives white people certain privileges like an invisible knapsack.
Please do not condemn what you do not understand. To quote Martin Luther King Jr, a protest “is the language of the unheard.” May 31st-June 1st is the anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Black history is filled with mass violence committed by white supremacists for voting, integrating, achieving financial prosperity, taking electoral positions, etc. These protests are a byproduct of this history of systemic racism and lack of accountability. Recent protests address the murders of Tyre Nichols, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony Mcdade, Ahmaud Aubrey, and all those murdered for taking a jog, driving their car, sitting in their home, playing with a toy gun, an alleged counterfeit check, etc. It is insensitive to focus on destruction of property over the loss of black life. And it is insensitive to invalidate and gaslight Black expressions of anger, grief, frustration, and sadness.
In the words of James Baldwin:
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one's work. And part of the rage is this: It isn't only what is happening to you. But it's what's happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance. Now, since this is so, it's a great temptation to simplify the issues under the illusion that if you simplify them enough, people will recognize them. I think this illusion is very dangerous because, in fact, it isn't the way it works. A complex thing can't be made simple. You simply have to try to deal with it in all its complexity and hope to get that complexity across.
It is not the responsibility of POC to educate white people. Some POC may be willing or offer to, but you should not ask for it. This is asking for POC to perform emotional labor and to do the work for you. Transformative change requires that more white people take it upon themselves to self-educate and educate other white people. Racism is not a Black problem. It is a white problem that has traumatized and been internalized by BIPOC to varying degrees.
Being anti-racist requires a worldview shift because the world’s power, resources, beauty, and wealth is centered in whiteness (specifically rich, cis, male, and heterosexual whiteness).The rest of the world is oriented in proximity to whiteness and “othered” to pseudo-justify this margin-center orientation. To be anti-racist means that you must actively decenter whiteness in your life and in your work, and that you use your privilege to actively de-invest in the project of whiteness. This means transferring power back to the marginalized with the goal of remedying systemic inequity.
Here are some resources.
A great place to start is with reading the Combahee River Collective Statement, Emergent Strategy, Homegoing, Kindred, and Parable of the Sower, so you can expand your imagination and understanding of the interconnection amongst issues surrounding race, sexuality, class, gender, and the environment.
Read “The Souls of White Folk” and Discourse on Colonialism.
Watch the documentaries The 13th, Time: the Kalief Browder Story, I Am Not Your Negro, Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, and Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am.
Read Heavy: An American Memoir, "In Search of Our Mothers Gardens,” and Pleasure Activism. Watch HBO's Random Acts of Flyness and Watchmen.
Read The Color of Law, The Color of Money, The Unsteady March, Black Visions, Women, Race, and Class, The Long Emancipation, and The New Jim Crow to establish historical, social, class, and economic context. You can go from there into womanism and Black feminism as well as other resources included at the end of this document.
Please do not provide examples of the Black people you know in your life who have been impacted or who you are close with to demonstrate you are not racist. Please do not ask for the Black people in your life or on your team to speak about current unrest, protests, and murders.
Microinvalidations are often unconscious acts. They are comments or behaviors that discount, question or diminish the thoughts, feelings or worldview/reality of the recipient.
Being well-intentioned is not enough. What matters are your actions, your support, and your allyship. Indifference, minimization, and microinvalidations are all microaggressions.
Black life is dehumanized by the “spectacle” of black death on social media. Avoid sharing this content because it contributes to the problem. There is a history of watching black murder (lynching) as entertainment. Black life must be respected. It cannot and should not only be valued in death.
This is an emotional and traumatic time for many. It is appropriate to address current events with the Black people in your life in the context of offering support. It is also appropriate to privately check in with your Black professional team members and ask how you can best support them during this time whether they need to be off-camera, time-off, reducing their meeting load, and/ or deadline extensions.
If you are not well-educated on these issues, it is okay to admit that. It is better to admit that than to make unintentional problematic statements. It is normal to feel uncomfortable, guilt, shame, and/or anger about these issues. Personal accountability and awareness is important.
Nobody needs to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. It is impossible to be perfectly anti-racist because racism and anti-blackness is systemic not only in this country, but around the world. What the world needs is people committed to fight racism in their lives and within themselves.
It is problematic to think that once you’ve read a few books on race you are completely knowledgeable about it, are a perfect ally, and no longer need to self-educate. Being anti-racist is a journey with constant unlearning and re-education. It is an active commitment without a destination.
So take the time to understand both covert and obvious white supremacist language. Use diagrams such as this one. Watch the brown eye blue eye experiment that recreates the experience of racism and segregation for white people and this accompanying interview/breakdown with Jane Elliot. Also, here is a short video explaining systemic racism.
Optical allyship or performative allyship is “allyship that only serves at the surface level to platform the “ally.” True allyship centers the experiences of those impacted. Use your privilege and your platform to amplify Black voices. Hold yourself and others accountable. Self-educate and point others to resources. Support through donations, petitions, policies, and promoting Black media/initiatives/businesses.
“The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether white people know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes Black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you.”
-Scott Woods
If you want to compensate the creator for her ongoing work on this resource, her CashApp is $taylorcrain01.
Resources:
Questions to ask yourself (allies, co-conspirators):
*Questions originate from the Bamby Collective