Exploring Nuance as a White Woman Writing About Anti-Racism

1. Soft

Two or three years ago, a fellow writing coach reached out to me to ask about my business and marketing strategy. I remember chuckling, since I don't particularly have either, but I agreed to hop on the phone with her to chat. We talked for maybe an hour. What stands out at me most as I recall our conversation was something she said towards the end of it: "You are so much softer than I expected you'd be."

This surprised me greatly. She had known me on social media for quite a long time, read much of my writing, and presumably seen photos of me. I am a hair shy of 5'1", weigh between 112 and 120 pounds, and have deep smile lines around my eyes and intractable creases between them from too much furrowing and worrying over the years. I have been told that my face is exactly the same as it was when I was an infant, a little girl, a teenager, a young woman. I think of myself as nonthreatening, though in my teens and 20s I did work hard to perfect my "don't fuck with me" look on the subway.

When this woman, who is maybe 10 or 15 years older than me, said I was softer than she'd expected, I wondered what she had expected. How was it that she'd seen me? To this day, I have no idea, and I never asked. I suppose I still could, but the moment has long passed.

2. Swinging

Sometimes I come out swinging.

Usually with strong feelings and opinions. A racing heart. A figurative spear in my hands.

Sometimes I try to temper this impulse by slowing myself down. I really do. I try to be intentional about how I interact, especially online, and to remember that us challenging each other is also a form of love, or can be. There is so much trepidation among white folks around saying the wrong thing. I try to consider why I’m saying what I’m saying and then, if I feel clear in my heart about it, I put things out there. I wonder if that’s why she was surprised by my softness; it’s as if we associate presence or assertiveness with strength, and we think of strength as something other than soft, as if the two are murually exclusive.

Sometimes I am more attached to my rightness than I can see or wish to admit. This is a tricky thing about writing, about being a writer. As I was falling asleep last night, I realized “rightness” rhymes with “whiteness,” and it made me think about how the two are connected. I fall into judgment of others when I’m sure that I’m right, and this is surely a function of whiteness, of internalized white supremacy. It’s not pretty to look at but here we are, looking. Here I am, looking.

Sometimes I forget to be curious. We don’t have time for curiosity, this part of me wants to shout, even as something like shame hisses hot at the back of my neck. I don’t want to be told to sit down, to listen, to slow down, to calm down, to tone it down. I want to speak up, rise up, up up up.

See, a lot is happening very, very quickly in moments like that. I feel it as I write. Memories come pouring in of times I was told to put my hand down. “Shut up” and “Whoa, Nellie” come to mind. This passionate, quick-thinking, eager part of myself, such a gift in many ways, also learned along the way that she talked too much and took up too much room. She learned, very effectively, to shut it all down. I imagine this is true of many bright and eager children, particularly those assigned female at birth but perhaps even beyond gender, most of us probably experienced being put in our place along the way.

When it comes to anti-racism, as a person with white privilege, learning to be quiet and listen is essential. So is speaking up and talking to my fellow white people, my friends and family members and really anyone in my personal and professional spheres of influence. Knowing when to do which is a skill. I’m not always great at it. I am learning. The forward-facing, vocal part of myself and the soft part that wants everyone to get along get uncomfortable when they’re forced to sit at the same table. They vie for superiority (another form of whiteness, by the way, this competitive vibe where someone has to be right, which means someone else has to be wrong).

There has to be room for both, which sounds nice but is not a simple thing when it comes to embodying one’s whole self.

Here I pause from writing to take a sip of coffee and a long, slow, deep breath. I woke with anxiety this morning, and have been keenly aware for days (weeks months years) of how these things show up in the body, willing me to pay attention. Asking me to be more patient with myself and others while also staying strongly rooted in my values and commitments. 

When I slow down on the inside, I see where my heat can keep me from hearing. I also see where I gaslight myself into self-doubt. Both things happen. Both things are true. Neither is productive.

When I slow down on the inside, I see where I want to keep all the doors open, and know that it takes skill and discernment – both things that benefit from a quieter mind and body – to know when to leave a door open and when to walk away.

When I slow down on the inside, I see where I do not want to yield. And then I have to slow down even more, to look at whether this unyielding is rooted in my attachment to being right for the sake of rightness, and where it is actually rooted in my attachment to justice. I think of James Baldwin: “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” What a steep imperative this is.

We all know that yelling at each other on the internet is about as effective as yelling at each other in person. I am not a yeller. Ask my wife and kids. But a lot of the time, I find myself yelling on the inside and needing to tend to this part of myself that is angry at being told to take a softer approach.

There is so much here to explore.

3. Shaming

Shaming and cancel culture are shitty. Omkari Williams recently wrote, “Very few people learn from being shamed, all that does is send most of us into fight or flight. How the hell does that advance the cause? … If you see someone doing harm speak up, but please don’t do it from a place of superiority. You would hate it if someone did that to you.”

I do not think of myself as shaming. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need to be on the lookout for where that behavior might sneak into my interactions. Here is where I keep returning to this particular part of Resmaa Menakem and Krista Tippet’s conversation back in February:

Menakem: …For me to say, “We’re gonna have a white body supremacy talk; deal with the root of this stuff” …

Tippett:You can’t drop that on people, either, because they won’t be ready to — they’ll also brace.

Menakem:But let me say this. So you just did something I think is very important.

Tippett:If anybody could see me, I physically, like …

Menakem:You braced. You were like, “No” — your face turned red; the whole thing. Just — “No.” But, you see, that’s where you start; right there, not in this “Let’s bring everyone in and make them all comfortable.” Bodies of culture are uncomfortable every day. White people have the luxury of not being so. And what I’m saying is that that idea — just what you did, that piece right there — that’s where you have to start, and white people have to start with that, because — I say this all the time. 

White people want to start with our own readiness to have these conversations and confront these realities. Black people don’t have this option. That right there is something I have been grappling with. How do white people write and communicate in such a way that we are not centering white comfort, and also not making people feel shamed?

I see a few things happening here. One is so obvious as to be laughable, but it needs to be said: I have to remember that I am also white. I have to remember that I am a product of this system in more ways that I can see, and that I am capable of causing harm.

Another is that there is a difference between shaming and people feeling shamed. I cannot control how another person, be it a family member or a total stranger, will respond to anything I write. This is true of absolutely any content as much as it’s true of addressing race-related questions.

If someone feels shame(d) and I know my intention was to invite self-reflection or to speak to what’s true through the lens of my own learning and experience, that is not about me. It is about that person, and then it becomes a question of whether they are willing to investigate their own response.

But if I am forgetting to be curious, if I grow rigid in my own attachment to rightness, then perhaps it is I who has work to do. (Spoiler alert: We all have work to do. Welcome to being human.)

Bottom line: I want to open doors to conversation without centering white comfort. I will continue to dive into the deep, often murky waters of how this feels in my own body as well as how to do it with integrity in relationships. I will keep being imperfect and practicing (this part is hard!) being compassionate with my imperfection rather than critical or ashamed of it.

4. Nuance

Nuance is not something our culture prizes. We don’t have time for nuance when we are so busy being productive, keeping up, and reacting. We are living in a system that eats people for breakfast. We are living in a country where abusive tactics are employed to make our heads spin, keeping us confused, frightened, uncertain, and unwell. We are living in a system where the only people who truly benefit have traded their conscience for personal comfort and gain. We are living in a system that divides and conquers and encourages competition on every front rather than community, collaboration, and the deep work of really seeing each other. We are living in a system that disenfranchises rather than develops, decimates rather than deepens true connection. We are living in what often feels like the end times. The effects of living in such a system on our nervous systems, our hearts, our very bodies, our minds, our relationships, and our ability to meet each other in authentic ways is evident everywhere we turn.

Nuance: Where we do not mistake softness for weakness or accountability for shaming. Where we learn how to learn. Where we learn how to unlearn. Where we hold up healing on every level – physical, emotional, spiritual, systemic, creative, financial – as a birthright. Where those of us born into white privilege are willing to look deeply within ourselves and at our lives, acknowledging all of the ways doors opened for us, all of the myths we learned about hard work paying off, all of the unearned advantages that rolled out like red carpets, especially if we also had class privilege. (This touches on a whole other conversation.)

Nuance: Where we sit quietly with ourselves, noticing the electric storm in our chest or our gut our or mind or all of these when confronted with difficult, painful, brutal truths. When we grapple with how to contribute to repair.

The truth is, every white person has the capacity to weaponize our whiteness. Not doing so is not as simple as, say, not calling the police on a Black person for existing.

In order for me not to do harm, no matter how good my intentions may be, I need to be in a continuous state of self-examination. At the same time, it is crucial to remember that this is not a self-improvement project but rather a matter of safety and justice for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in America.

Nuance: Requiring me to hold both of these truths together, to do my inner work without becoming self-absorbed, and to do the outer work without forgetting that I, too, am a white body in a racialized system.

5. We Can’t Wait

None of this is simple or easy, nor is fast or fleeting work, as the BIPOC leaders of this work and movement who have been leading the way for centuries can attest.

If we let it, it will and must penetrate every aspect of our lives and our beings, every relationship. We must take care of ourselves, yes; if we don’t, we are much more likely to turn away from this work altogether. And, we must also renew our commitment every day to learning and growing, to taking action, no matter how small it may seem, and to tuning into how it is we are meeting ourselves and the world.

Where do we shut down? Where do we soften? Where do we center our own comfort? Where do we fall into perfectionism and self-criticism? Where do we lash out? Where do we implode? All of these are questions to explore not before we do the work, but as part of the work itself.

As I often tell my writing students, everything counts. We can’t wait to be perfect to show up.