Open letter to white people
Here is what you can do for racial justice so that you never have to ask again (10 minutes for a lifetime of activism!)
When the horrors of racial injustice become painfully visible, some of us (white people) are shocked and eagerly ask “what can I do to bring about change?” All too often what we really want is for a person of color to tell us what we should do. Either way,
we begin our path to anti-racist action by looking for answers outside of ourselves, thus already limiting our anti-racist potential.
As white people, we tend to think of ourselves as ancillary to the movement (for racial justice), and so what we are really asking is how we can support it. But we (white people) are not just part of the movement, we don’t just belong to the movement, we have primary responsibility to the movement. We are essential to the movement because we are white supremacy; so nothing is going to change if we don’t do something about ourselves.
Yes, we must learn to drop our racist power, but we should not drop all our power by placing all answers outside of ourselves
because that’s how we become a burden to the movement, rather than a positive force within it.
But that’s only the beginning of our problem because, as it turns out, “what can I do?” is not even the question we are actually asking! So, in the next 10min I’m going to tell you how to go from an empty question to committed anti-racist action. That’s how long it’ll take you to read this letter. And no, I cannot give you all you need to make this work any faster than that, so please read all of it. I’m going to show you exactly what to do, how, and why, so that you never have to wonder again.
I do this out of love for you and trust in you. So that you can stop doubting your anti-racist power. So that you can do what’s yours to do, and do it over and over again. As we have the choice to be racist or anti-racist with every action we perform (as Dr. Ibram X. Kendi explains in How To Be An Anti-Racist). So do what’s yours to do before domestic terrorism hits, when it hits, and after it hits.
Because, as I learned from Rev. angel Kyodo williams (co-author of Radical Dharma), anti-blackness is the methodology of white supremacy.
Public executions of black and brown bodies have calculated purposes (plural). Some of those purposes are directed at us, white people.
Public killings are both horrifying and terrifying. And when something is horrifying and terrifying, paralysis easily ensues. Inaction and compliance are short steps from there. We (white people) are literally shocked into a stupor (and that’s only if we are already awake enough not to retreat into denial and blame the victim altogether). And if we make it out of that, we then ask others to save us from ourselves by telling us what to do.
And because we positively know that we are deeply implicated, we panic further, as we dread being seen as racist. So we also officially enter the “stereotype threat” zone and desperately try to confirm our goodness. What we seek are actually “cookies” (i.e., rewards), not answers (in the words of Dr. Dolly Chugh, in How Good People Fight Bias: The Person You Meant To Be).
Asking “what can I do?” in moments of crisis is letting the panic brought about by helplessness and the fear of being seen as racist speak. It’s not a real question and therefore it is not answerable.
When we panic, we are not in a space of receptivity, our brains are not open to learning. What we are seeking is validation, not collective liberation, so we cannot use the answer even when it’s given. And the answer is given all the time! There is literally an article titled “75 things white people can do for racial justice” (no, it’s not recent, it was published 3 years ago), and you can google in seconds innumerable additional resources.
In a country founded on racism, with a 400+ years history of infusing racism into its social fabric, whether we witness its horrors on video or not, whether our “white” eyes and bodies can detect it or not, we can safely assume that it’s happening all the time. As white people, we have had at least 400 years to answer the question of what we should do about it (even more if you are me, since I come from the Old Country where it all started). If we haven’t found the answer, it is because we have been so systematically trained into numbness that we have felt too rarely compelled to look for it. And when we do, we keep looking outside, when we should be looking inside.
In fact, I’m sure many of us have read variations of the 75 things you could do about racial justice several times already. And yet we are still not clear about what to do. I know that because I’m white too.
It’s crazy making, isn’t it? We have read at least 75 things we could do about racial justice and we are still paralyzed asking panicked questions that no one can answer for us!
That’s because knowing what we must do is the easy part; getting out of our paralysis is what we don’t know how to do.
And worst of all, we have been convinced that what we have to give is not good/enough (hang in there, I’m going to get to the point soon…but this is super important). And boy do we do a great job at reinforcing that for each other as white people! We are on an endless, pointless competition about who is most “woke”, who most effortlessly uses the most inclusive language, who does the most visible advocacy. We want to look great at anti-racist work, we want to do it perfectly
…hello white supremacy! It lives right in our hearts and minds and activism. And it sucks much of our anti-racist power out of us.
So let me start with this: what you do won’t be enough! Because WE are needed, not just you (no, you are not superhuman…hello white supremacy!). You are still necessary; and yes, indeed, you are not sufficient.
How does a book get written? One sentence at a time. This is a collective story, so add your sentence, no one else can do it for you.
In the words of Rev. angel Kyodo williams,
“without inner change there can be no outer change; without collective change, no change matters.”
And so we must rely on the “WE” and do our “I” part.
Here is a better message to tell yourself and each other (white people):
“I count, I’m needed, I’m necessary, I’m essential. You count, you are needed, you are necessary, you are essential. We count, we are needed, we are necessary, we are essential.” (Thank you Rabbi Yael Levy!)
Ok, now you know why you are asking an empty question, but you are still frozen. So next I’m going to tell you exactly the way out of your paralysis. In exchange, you have to promise me that you are going to take the first step towards committed action the very second you read the last word of this article. And I know you will. Because you will want to. Because if you do what it takes to step out of your paralysis, you won’t be able to stop yourself from doing it.
And this is why: while we are born with a fully developed threat detection system (white supremacy’s breeding ground), our “empathy” system needs some caretaking. That caretaking simply means experiencing love and loving back. This is neuroscience, people, not wishful thinking! (You can read more about that briefly on my blog or more in depth in Dr. Barbara Fredrickson’s Love 2.0). The magic follows from there:
when you empathize with another living being, the message reaches simultaneously both your empathy and “action” centers in your brain (for real!).
This means that if you let yourself empathize fully, you can’t help but respond fully, and I mean physically respond.
That’s it. Got it? Just in case you are not 100% clear, here is the sequence again: the experience of being loved and loving back allows you to develop empathy, which automatically engenders appropriate compassionate action. And NOT because you are an especially good person, ONLY because you are a human being.
Now, you can’t cheat your physiology: you have to really empathize to ignite this chain reaction!
So no, we (human beings) are not intrinsically evil (something else white supremacy would like us to believe). In fact, our entire emotional and physical health depends on this mechanism. We need physiologically to love and feel loved to be well. Which means that we cannot be well on our own! We need each other and therefore we have a responsibility to each other. So no, you are not evil. You have sheer goodness tucked away in your brain (literally) and all you have to do is lean into it for it to explode out of you.
How do you make that happen? It’s super simple (which doesn’t always mean easy). You must lean fully into your empathy without shutting down, keeping your heart wide open. Yes, this means that you have to FEEL! And I mean really feel. And as white people we love to overintellectualize everything (hello white supremacy!). We are trained (not born) for numbness (feelings are for children and the weak, we are told), not to look past ourselves, to remain “polite” at all times (hello, hello, hello white supremacy!).
So, train to feel! Starting immediately: listen to (not deny or minimize) yours and others’ pain, witness yours and others’ pain. And grieve (no shortage of opportunities there),
so that you can begin to heal. Because racism is a sickness and it lives within us.
But you may not shut your heart down or fall into despair or become cynical (all wins for white supremacy). So you must also welcome awe, beauty, and joy, and believe fully in the power of community and connections. Because that is also true and you need to feel all of it for sustainable compassionate action.
As you deeply feel what others feel without shutting down, watch what your body craves to do. Because it’ll crave it. And yes, you will weep first. And you will keep weeping because suffering will continue to arise while you are doing your part (because despite what white supremacy tells you, you are not superhuman — it’s worth repeating, we have such a hard time dropping that one — and so you can’t stop injustice all at once and on your own). But
as you commit to hold pain and love simultaneously, you will unleash your innate capacity for fierce compassionate action.
And so you will continue to do what is yours to do.
And now, in the unlikely possibility that you are still not sure about what to do: do ANYTHING that feels even remotely appropriate, however imperfectly and awkwardly, and learn from that step. After that first step, take the next one and keep on going without ever stopping! Keep showing up, forever, because the work is never finished, it’ll continue past our lifetime. Cook for justice, promote healing for justice, keep people fit for justice, march for justice, change policies for justice, educate for justice, raise children for justice, fund-raise for justice, write letters for justice, vote for justice…the list is infinite. If you need some immediate support in taking action, subscribe to the CTZNWELL podcast newsletter, which provides a weekly action toolkit.
And in the event that you are still tempted to ask people of color to teach you and guide you, please don’t! Unless they offer and are abundantly compensated for it.
Zoom out 50 or 500 years and decide what ancestor you want to be for future generations. What’s your (necessary, even if not sufficient) drop to add into the ocean of our communal life?
How do you fulfill your responsibility to the wellness of your fellow human beings? Do what’s yours to do for justice, and financially support others in doing their part (yes, MONEY COUNTS!). And do all that today, tomorrow, and forever.
You won’t be everything to everyone (did I say ‘hello white supremacy’ yet?), and trying to do so is a sure way to be nothing to no one. Don’t try to be perfect either (hello white supremacy!), because I can tell you right now that you won’t be, ever. Don’t look for the “right” solution, because it doesn’t exist. Don’t think of anti-racist action as heroic work (hello white supremacy again…yes, because if only heroes can act in anti-racist ways, then most of us will remain seated).
Anti-racist action is simply our basic civic duty and our task as humans. No need for heroes, only people!
And we need YOU. So take this oath:
I won’t let myself be paralyzed into submission and compliance by the horrors of white supremacy. I will train to feel fully. So that my compassion can flow fully. So that I will never cease to do what’s mine to do. Starting immediately. (You promised, remember?)
So now you’ll never have to ask again what to do when the horror of white supremacy becomes visible to you, because you will have been doing it all along. And you will be so trained to feel deeply without succumbing to despair, that while you will weep at the horrors, you won’t be stopped by them. In fact, your focus will only sharpen, because your empathy will make your compassionate action explode out of you even more powerfully. You’ll look at white supremacy right in the eyes and quote Sonya Renee Taylor by saying:
I love you, I believe in you, and now go:
Feel. Act. Learn. Repeat. Never stop.
In solidarity and love,
