White women, let’s have a chat.
Earlier this week, I wrote Dear White Women out of frustration with the many white women whose ignorance of the Black American experience gave them permission to cast a vote to re-elect a racist like Donald Trump.
Since writing that piece, the country has been hanging on tenterhooks waiting for election results. What’s become clear in that time is that Black Americans got out the vote to defeat Donald Trump. Full stop. And the Twitter commentary of brilliant Black women such as Nikole Hannah-Jones and Bree Newsome Bass on the behavior of white liberal Biden voters has reminded me of my own words from Dear White Women – that those of us white women who voted for Joe Biden are just as ignorant of the Black experience as Trump voters. Because, well, we’re white. And Black folks have had it up to here with us, too.
The reasons are lengthy and complex, but the crux of it is this: white people, even those of us who identify as a Democrat, progressive, leftist, or liberal, perpetuate anti-Blackness when we put whiteness first. We tend to put our own feelings and experiences at the forefront of any dialogue about racism or Black progress, which silences Black voices and ideas. White people’s tendency to see white experiences as the norm, and to focus on that rather than on very different Black experiences, is what allows anti-Blackness to continue.
You may find yourself feeling defensive right about now. I get it. We all want to believe we’re good people. We want to believe we have good ideas. We don’t like it when someone points the word “racism” in our direction. We’re just trying to help!
But here’s the thing: this is not about you.
This is about Black Americans. Their experiences, their voices, their ideas. This is about what they need and the changes they’d like to see in the world.
Our job is to listen to their frustrations without being defensive. To promote their ideas without co-opting them. To learn from their experiences without speaking for them. To be curious without being demanding. To trust their judgment about what is racist, and how to eradicate racism, without making it all about us.
This is hard. I’m still learning, too. I’m probably going to re-read this post fifteen times before I publish it, just to make sure I’m getting this right. But I want you to come away with this key point: you can’t help if you don’t learn. You can’t learn if you don’t empathize. You can’t empathize if you don’t listen. And you can’t listen if you’re too focused on yourself.
We can only make progress as a country if Black voices lead the way. The onus is on us to get out of the way.
Please feel free to reach out to me on social media if you’d like to chat about this in a judgment-free zone.