The Undercover Introvert

So You’ve Been Called Out: A White Person’s Guide to Doing Better

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As someone who writes and talks about race, racism, and white supremacy a lot, I’m used to pushback whenever I point out our racist institutions or racist behavior in individuals. And as a black woman working in mostly progressive spaces, I’m also used to the constant stream of microaggression and casual racism within our ranks. Occasionally, the racism isn’t so casual at all, but those instances are somewhat rare. What’s not rare is the automatic response whenever I or another person of color dares to point out racist behavior in some of the white folks dwelling in these so-called progressive spaces. A torrent of defensiveness is unleashed at the mere suggestion that the white person in question needs to correct their conduct. This reaction is almost always amplified to outrageous levels because, on the whole, progressives believe themselves to be completely ‘woke’. Anything that puts that wokeness in jeopardy is met with brutal defensiveness.

And because this defensiveness is a constant, I’ve come to know it pretty damned well. It’s the kind of thing that never travels alone. It always arrives in the company of several tried and true excuses for why the behavior or comments weren’t problematic at all. These excuses are so common, so often used, so seemingly set in tired, frustrating stone, that you can set a clock by them.

Suffice to say, I’ve heard each and every one of these excuses more times than I can count, and they’re always brandished by self-identified allies taken fully aback by an uppity negro questioning their solidarity with black and brown folks. So, I figured, why not review them one by one? And, while we’re busy reviewing them, let’s also outline in detail why they’re complete and utter bullshit.

That’s Not What I said!!

Yes, the double exclamation point is absolutely necessary. TBH, I could’ve added upwards of three more. This gem of a go-to response also doubles as a great example of gaslighting, wherein the white person tells the black person that what she heard with her own ears (or read with her own eyes) just isn’t true. It didn’t happen that way. She has to be mistaken. Of course, she’s not mistaken, and this plaintive denial only makes a bad situation worse. That’s not what I said usually pairs well with you’re twisting my words, why are you lying?, and why are you trying to make me look bad?!

I Have Black and/or Brown Friends

There’s no piece of evidence more convincing to a defensive white person newly called out for making a racist comment than a conveniently leveraged roster of nameless, faceless black and brown ‘friends’. These alleged best buds of color serve as a convenient barrier behind which a white person can hide from any and all accountability for problematic words and actions. It’s pretty damned gross, but it happens ALL THE TIME. Black and brown folks don’t exist to shield you from blame for whatever you just did, said, or posted online, white folks. Stop doing this.

And, furthermore, I’d like to go on record by calling bullshit on these folks having black and brown friends in the first place. More like, they’ve seen black and brown folks before. They work with them or went to school with some. That’s likely it. You can’t tell me that you have genuine, deep friendships with people of color and you see no problem with using them as proof that you couldn’t utter a racist comment.

But let’s pretend that you actually do have a black friend (again, doubtful). Just because this single black individual is allegedly fine with your bullshit doesn’t mean that I am, simply because I’m also black. You do understand that’s not how this works, right? I would never expect you to act the same as another white acquaintance because you’re white too. Thinking all black people act essentially the same is part of the problem, as well as further evidence of the impossibility of you having genuine friendships with black people.

You Don’t Know My Heart

This tired excuse is usually either shouted or accompanied by tears. If typed in response to a post or comment, it comes ready with some exclamation points, is in all caps, or both. The translation for this excuse is: forget what I just said or did to you; let’s focus on who I’d like folks to think I am. Because that’s the long and short of all this defensiveness. No matter who you are, getting called out on your inappropriate behavior is uncomfortable. So is knowing that you did or said something that hurt people. I get it. We all like to think we’re good people, and many of us actually are. I truly believe that. But every single one of us was raised in a society that was built on a foundation of racism and white supremacy. Some racist shit is going to come out of your mouths, white folks, often without you realizing why it’s problematic.

If you’re called out on it, instead of taking that as a brutal indictment of your character, understand it for what it really is: an invitation for you to be better. Personal growth is something that shouldn’t stop for any of us as long as we’re alive. Don’t you want to be better tomorrow than you are today? I sure as hell do. And if I’m doing or saying something homophobic, racist, ableist, Islamophobic, transphobic, or antisemitic, I want people to call me on it. Immediately. Why would anyone want anything different?

Everyone Knows I’m Not a Racist

I just had a white woman tell me this the other day. I laughed out loud, of course, but it also made me wonder, aren’t I part of the ‘everyone’ to which you speak? Very telling. I guess you meant every white person knows you’re not racist. But I digress…

This sounds like something Donald Trump would say, TBH. And can we all agree that if you’re sputtering excuses that make you sound like Trump, there’s a problem? Allyship isn’t a state of being. It’s a journey. And the work is never done. You don’t reach a state of ‘genuine ally’ that, once attained, means you can’t behave in an ignorant, hurtful manner. Don’t brandish your DIY ally badge at me like it wipes away the impact of your terrible behavior. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you don’t get to announce to marginalized communities that you’re their ally. That’s something that gets said about you. Like coolness. Loudly proclaiming yourself cool just means you’re not cool at all. Only calling yourself cool doesn’t hurt anyone, but calling yourself an ally while refusing to listen to POCs when they point out your hurtful behavior actually is causing harm. And following that up by using the blunt end of your defensiveness as a weapon against said POC only multiplies the damage done.

I’m Fighting For You and You’re Just Being Divisive

Calling a black person divisive is a white person’s best chance at quickly ending a conversation that could be damaging to their self-image. Because defensiveness is what happens when the idea of who we are comes face to face with the reality of who we show up as in the world. When someone calls you out for racist comments or behavior, they are implicitly pointing out the gap between who you say you are and who you show yourself to be in your day to day life.

It’s always struck me as odd that the pointing out of racism is considered more divisive to some white folks than the racism itself. But, that’s the situation in which black folks and other POCs find themselves in this country. That’s bad enough, but it’s also the situation in which we find ourselves in progressive spaces and movements. And, if we point it out, woe be to divisive, ungrateful, angry, troublemaking us.

Just because you’ve never been called out before doesn’t mean you’re good to go. Since the situation so often turns nuclear when we point out racist behavior, many POCs don’t even bother to bring it up. Sometimes, it’s just easier to put it behind us and get on with our day, especially since much of the fallout usually ends up burning us. If a POC actually calls you out, keep that in mind. She probably dealt with many dozens of microaggressions before she finally broke and said something to you. She probably calculated the pros and cons using the same automatic equations POCs know all too well. Because, most of the time, it’s just not fucking worth the trouble, no matter how unfairly we’re treated.

I Don’t Even See Color

I wish I had a couple dollars for every time a white person has told me this. I’d have a fuckton of dollars. But, instead, I just have enough pent up frustration to power another thousand articles like this one.

White folks, we all see color. It’s ridiculous to pretend otherwise. What’s more, I want you to see me as black. I just don’t want you to lose your damn mind and treat me like a second class citizen solely based on that blackness. And, for the record, that’s what Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted too, despite your carefully curated understanding of his I Have a Dream speech. The Promised Land had nothing to do with being unable to see racial differences. That’s just ridiculous and lazy. It’s about treating each other the way we hope to be treated: with fairness and respect. It’s about equality, accessibility, and inclusivity in all facets of American life.

The problem isn’t that I’m black and you’re white. The problem is that we live in a society designed to benefit you because of your whiteness and oppress me because of my blackness. You didn’t have anything to do with how that system was constructed, but any racist attitudes and behavior uphold that system instead of tearing it down. Don’t you want to stop upholding that unfair, oppressive system? If so, think of being called out as a blessing. It opens a door to a better way of showing up in this world. It leads to personal growth. And once you walk through that door, you can turn to help others through it as well. Or you can ride away from that opportunity on a tidal wave of your own self righteous defensiveness, which helps no one, least of all you.

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Racism 101: White Privilege

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I post a lot about race, and not just because I’m a glutton for punishment, although I’m sure that plays a significant role. I’m a black woman in a country that was built with the unpaid blood, sweat, and tears of people that looked like me. Those same people were ‘liberated’ after the Civil War, only to be crushed beneath the bootheel of Jim Crow for the next hundred years, a campaign of abject oppression and terror, the echoes of which we can still feel reverberating to the present day.

When you’re black in America, you can’t forget it. It’s transcendental — the condition upon which all other experiences are made possible. Your color informs your every waking movement. The moment you draw your first breath, it sets boundaries you might never overcome. It creates an alternate set of expectations and limitations, all unwritten but strictly enforced, and you disregard them at your peril. Thinking, talking, and posting about race isn’t so much an option for me as it is a requirement.

Like clockwork, in response to one of my many posts about race, a white individual will respond with a lightly admonishing comment that goes a little something like this: Why all of this divisiveness? We need to focus on one race, the HUMAN RACE.

Quaint, right?

What I feel upon reading dismissive, somewhat Pollyanna responses like this to my lived experience as a black individual in this country isn’t so much annoyance (or shock, because this is a pretty standard response, if I’m being honest), as it is bone weariness. The kind of weariness you feel after working a long day only to find your car won’t start and your phone is dead, meaning you’ll need to walk a few miles home in pouring rain and lashing wind. This mental and emotional exhaustion can be all consuming, because it feels like no matter how many times you explain slavery’s enduring legacy, how systems of oppression work (and how this is distinct from individual racists), why it’s damaging to say you don’t see color, there will always be responses like this aimed at making you feel ashamed for always dwelling on race.

White folks, let me tell you, living your life without needing to take race into constant consideration is the very definition of privilege. It’s a magical realm of existence that’s completely closed off to black folks, to Hispanic folks, to Asian folks, to indigenous folks. We have to think about race all the time. Our lives depend on it. Our freedom, our livelihoods, our very opportunity for happiness. We exist in this country at all times as nonwhite. There have been whole systems of oppression constructed to penalize us for being nonwhite. These systems have worked so well for so long, white folks no longer even see them. What they see is that nonwhite people struggle because they don’t work hard enough. They don’t value education. They are just more likely to commit crimes. They don’t speak English well. They are lazy. They waste the limitless opportunities doled out equally to every American at birth. It’s sad, really, how those nonwhites are.

White privilege is the ability to exist as a person while the rest of us exist as nonwhite people, together with all the negative stereotypes that, thanks to our deeply racist institutions, too often become self-fulfilling prophecies.

I can already hear the grumbled complaints from aggrieved white people:

That’s not fair! I’ve faced real struggles in my life!

I had to work hard for everything I have! I wasn’t given anything on a silver platter!

I grew up poor too! How can I have privilege?

Let me tell you what white privilege doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean you haven’t struggled in your lives, white folks. It doesn’t mean you haven’t known poverty. It doesn’t mean you haven’t worked hard or faced difficult situations or gone to bed hungry or survived without healthcare, a place to live, or a job that pays a decent wage. It doesn’t mean you haven’t watched, heartbroken, as your kids go without. White people can struggle. They can live difficult lives and never get ahead. But the reason for that difficulty is never their race. There aren’t centuries’ old systems in place to make sure that they fail based solely on the color of their skin. There’s a real issue of economic inequality in this country that desperately needs to be addressed, but imagine that layered on top of racial inequality, which is systemic. It is purposeful. It was put in place by white folks that did their best to make sure black and brown folks never got ahead in this country. Can you see how that’s different?

So, no, we can’t pretend we live in some post racial utopia where we all receive the same opportunities as Americans. We can’t pretend we are all just one race, the human race. That’s how the world looks through the rose-colored glasses of privilege. Not considering race in every facet of your life, with every breath that you take, is a privilege. Not fearing for your child’s safety simply because of the color of his or her skin is a privilege. Have you ever sat your child down and discussed exactly how to interact with the police because you’re afraid there could be a shoot first, ask questions later scenario, all because your child happens to be black, and sometimes that’s enough of a reason for an officer to open fire? No? That’s privilege.

No one’s asking you to apologize for slavery. But the founders of this country that built prosperity on the backs of the enslaved looked like you. The architects of Jim Crow looked like you. The folks that carefully crafted the New Deal in a way that wouldn’t benefit black Americans looked like you. The folks that waged the War on Drugs and lay the groundwork for every iteration of getting tougher and tougher on (black) crime looked like you. These white folks made damned sure to put systems in place that barred people that looked like me from ever being able to achieve the fabled life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that they enshrined for themselves. We were meant to toil, to obey, to die when we were no longer useful. The very foundation of this nation was constructed upon that baseline inequality, and it has flourished in the centuries since those founding documents were created.

You didn’t ask for your privilege, but you have it. So, now what?

Step one: accept that this privilege is a real thing.

Step two: use the fuck out of it to challenge racism in all its forms.

Lean into your privilege like the shield of legitimacy it is and tear down the systemic inequality that still festers, relatively unhindered, in this country and all its institutions. No matter where you find yourself on the ladder of social status, you have power that black and brown folks don’t possess. Instead of pretending that power doesn’t exist, use it. Challenge other white folks. Be rabidly anti-racist. Don’t just share delusional platitudes about little black children playing with little white children and folks being judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. We aren’t there yet. We’ve never been there. We aren’t even close.

Just by virtue of your skin color, you are endowed with the unique power to tear down systems that benefit you as white and oppress me as black. If black, brown, Asian, and indigenous folks could destroy these systems ourselves, trust and believe it would already be done. We need you to step in and step up. Your privilege is a battering ram that opens doors. Use it to knock down the status quo instead of buttressing it.

No one is asking you to apologize for being born white. But, goddamn it, open your eyes and see this country for what and how it is. Stop berating marginalized people for pointing out inequality because it makes you uncomfortable. Step into this fight in a meaningful way, because the fabled Promised Land isn’t guaranteed. Racism isn’t something that just fades away if we ignore it. It’s the kind of thing that metastasizes in dark spaces. It stretches out. It grows. Think of your privilege as a spotlight. Point at racism and shine the fuck away, white folks.

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Everything We Love is Trash

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When you’re willing to keep learning new things every day, it sure does make it harder to burrow into your ignorance, no matter how warm, snuggly, and persistent it seems. Evolution of thought, though a necessary prerequisite of growing as a person, can also be uncomfortable and stress inducing. The things you once accepted without reflection are now problematic. Popular attitudes have shifted beneath your feet, and, suddenly, you are faced with a radically altered landscape. You can either get with the program or risk becoming one of those individuals constantly talking about how things were better in your day. What you usually mean is that they were better for you, and screw everyone else. But occasionally something happens that shines a harsh spotlight on your past ignorance and complacency, making it impossible to ignore.

Such a thing recently happened to me, in fact.

I was on Twitter the other day — mostly because I’m a glutton for punishment, but also because I adore pettiness in all its online forms — and I happened upon a tweet that went something like this:

You’re trying to tell me that Willy Wonka sent Golden Tickets around the ENTIRE world and five white children got them ALL???

I have to tell you, I was shook. I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child and loved it. I watched Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka more times than I can count, rapt with glee as I imagined myself wandering through the chocolate factory, avoiding all the booby traps and ending up in the glass elevator, an everlasting gobstopper clutched in hand, victorious. But how exactly did I see myself in that story when there wasn’t a single person that looked like me represented in the book or the film? And, seriously?! No kids from Asia, South America, Africa? Not even one? And why didn’t I notice that glaring absence before that devastatingly simple tweet?

I’m not joking when I tell you that single sentence shook me to my core. It made me reevaluate everything I consumed as a child — books, movies, television shows, EVERYTHING — and take a full assessment of the appalling lack of diversity.

I had another such moment of sudden clarity when watching the Last Jedi in the theater a few years ago. I’ve been a Star Wars fan since childhood. Some of my fondest memories involve watching the original three movies on television with my dad and brother. Sitting in the theater, watching the final battle between the resistance fighters and the First Order, there were the obligatory close ups of the rebel pilots in their cockpits, dialing up the drama as you wait for one of them to suddenly burst into flames and explode after getting hit. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a closeup of a black female fighter pilot filled up the screen. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough to sit me back in my seat. I clearly recall saying: WHOA! And I was flooded with real elation…until I realized my excitement was born of the nearly complete lack of black people in the original movies. We had Lando, but he betrayed Han Solo, and he was never a central character. All the central characters were white.

And if something I loved as a child isn’t completely devoid of diverse characters, it’s chock full of sexism or stereotypes of what various POCs are supposed to be like. So much of what many of us adored decades ago has not aged well, leaving us struggling to come to terms with the trash we once believed was treasure. When we know better, we do better, but that’s complicated when large portions of our childhoods are bound up in the soft, sentimental feelings all these books and films stirred up in us back in the day.

I wanted a Golden Ticket with every fiber of my being when I was a kid, years before anyone knew about letters to Hogwarts. I wanted to be a jedi, even though there were no black jedis (and don’t start with me that Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu was a black jedi in the prequels, which technically predated the original trilogy, because that storyline didn’t even exist when I was a kid, so sit down), no female jedis, and definitely no black female jedis. My imagination filled in the gaps in what I saw in the world. And, eventually, the world began to catch up with me. But what does it say that I didn’t even identify this as a problem? That I just considered it normal to never see faces that looked like mine represented in the media I consumed and loved?

I say it all the time and, despite the repetition, it’s never any less true:

Representation matters.

I have no idea what eight year old me might have thought at the sight of a little black girl or boy walking into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Who knows how I might have reacted at the appearance of a black jedi as the central character in one of the original three Star Wars movies or, hell, just a black female fighter jet pilot rallying with the rest of the resistance fighters. And if there were fewer movies and cartoons where the long and short of the female lead’s life revolved around pleasing a man or finding a husband, by any means necessary, what then?

Seeing myself reflected in more of what I watched and read as a child might have changed the way I thought of the world and my place in it. It might have expanded my idea of what was possible. I’ll never know, because I didn’t have that wealth of representation as a girl, but it’s encouraging to see more of it for the kids coming up today. When we know better, we do better.

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Racism 101: Time is Magical!

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We’ve all heard the old cliche that time heals all wounds. But does it, though? Really?

I think we need to debunk this bullshit idea that time is somehow magical, and that if we only let enough of it pass us by, we’ll forget the wrongs done, and the consequences of those wrongs — if left unaddressed — will also magically evaporate like a stagnant puddle on a hot day.

I’ve had a variation of the following conversation on more than a dozen occasions:

Me: Systemic racism exists and the consequences of it are far reaching and multifaceted.

White Person: I’m not racist. I voted for Obama. Twice.

Me: That comment is problematic in and of itself, but I’m talking about the way our institutions were built and how they work to hold some people back and give others advantages, all based on skin color. This isn’t really about individual racists.

WP: Slavery was a long time ago. Get over it.

Me: *gets over the conversation instead* Next.

There are white folks who honestly believe that just because slavery is no longer legal in the United States that racial equality has been achieved. For them, it’s as though the years 1865 to 1965 (and beyond to the present day, if we’re being absolutely honest) just didn’t exist, and we’ve all been living in a post-racial paradise. As evidence, they like to cite the presidency of Barack Obama. How could he be elected (TWICE!!) if racism was still a problem? As though the whitelash of Donald Trump’s election didn’t rise up and smack us back to the harsh reality of what this country is and how we all play into a system of oppression and advantage based on race.

Despite the oft mentioned cliche, time does not heal all wounds. Slavery isn’t like your dog dying, y’all. Time does heal that wound, because you learn to live without Skippy or Fido, or whatever your dear sweet furbaby’s name was. Time brings peace because it separates you from whatever tragic way you lost that pet, and it eventually gives you the space to think fondly of the times you spent with Skippy, Fido, etc. You never stop missing the pet, but you do stop disintegrating into a puddle of tears every time you think about her/him.

That personal tragedy is quite different from a system of oppression, based on the color of a person’s skin, in which one group of people owned another group of people for hundreds of years. And then, after the actual ownership ended, that group of people in charge of everything — who had been able to build power and wealth for hundreds of years on the backs of members of the other group, who toiled for free as inferior human livestock — created laws and crafted institutions that would serve as roadblocks to the newly ‘freed’ group of former slaves to keep them and their descendants from ever achieving power, wealth, or true freedom. This ruling group had the advantage of education, land ownership, existing wealth, and monopoly over every governmental office.

We only have to look to history to see how everything unfolded. Even the thoroughly whitewashed versions of the American story tell most of the tale through its obtuse avoidance of the abject brutality of what occurred.

If I get to set up a contest in the exact way that suits me best, and I also get to set the conditions in which you get to challenge me (or if you get to challenge me), it makes it extremely difficult for you to succeed, especially since I’ve kept you from practicing whatever skills you’ll need to use in order to win the contest. Now imagine me and people who look like me doing this for 400+ years using varying methods, all with an aim to purposely handicap you and block your success. And the minute you say, wow, this contest is set up for me to fail, I respond with, maybe you just need to work harder. Everyone had the same opportunities. Quit bitching and just learn to compete better.

Bullshit, right?

Because, for centuries, people like me have made sure people like you are at a perpetual disadvantage. Telling you to get your shit together is worse than dismissive. It’s indicative of my refusal to understand history and how the last few centuries have helped me rise, on the backs of people like you. Maybe neither one of us were born into slavery, but because some of your ancestors were owned by people who looked like me, that leaves you a few hundred miles back in a race I’m currently ‘winning’ because I was born way ahead of you to begin with, based on the color of my skin, and perhaps on the combination of my gender, sexual preference, etc.

So, let’s talk about history, and why time isn’t really the answer to how we heal something as far reaching and insidious as systemic racism. Because this was no accident. This system was purposefully put in place by white folks to keep black folks under their bootheels. And it’s still working like gangbusters.

Let’s take a quick walk through the last few hundred years:

The first Africans arrive in colonial Virginia in chains in 1619. Welcome to what will one day become America! The land of the free, but not for y’all, of course!

In 1808, the slave trade officially ends, but black folks are still property of their white masters, and there are thousands upon thousands of them in chains.

In 1865, the Civil War ends, the 13th Amendment becomes a thing, and black folks are essentially free after more than 200 years of enslavement in North America. Hello Reconstruction! Oh, and also hello Black Codes! These are laws passed by southern states to restrict the rights of newly freed black slaves and to make sure they are still providing cheap or unpaid labor. Black Codes are mostly crushed by federal troops during Reconstruction, but, like a bad racist penny, they turn up again…

In 1877, Reconstruction ends (meaning federal troops hightail it out of the south, leaving black folks to fend for themselves in the not-too-happy-and-even-less-friendly south), and the Black Codes are back with a vengeance, this time wearing the visage of Jim Crow. Enter codified segregation, obstacles to black folks voting (oftentimes deadly), and laws that make certain activities illegal for blacks in order to put them back under lock and key or working on farms and chain gangs as free labor reminiscent of the antebellum south. Jim Crow laws stay in place for nearly a century, y’all. And defying these laws means beatings and death for black Americans.

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act passes, putting a legal end to the Jim Crow Era, meaning segregation on the basis of race is technically no longer allowed, but, of course, we all know that simply passing a law doesn’t change the culture. Because redlining exists. Targeting of black communities by law enforcement, both in the south and north, although southern law enforcement also has wide scale entwinement with the KKK. The rise of the Law and Order Era (thanks, Nixon!) that eventually leads to the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, which has resulted in more black folks being under lock and key than were ever slaves.

But let’s pretend that everything has been hunky dory since the Emancipation Proclamation, y’all. Let’s act like black folks and other POCs are on equal footing with white folks, who have been running shit since the 1600s when black people arrived in chains via an involuntary transatlantic cruise from hell.

Do you see? Can you understand that time can’t heal anything when there has been a centuries’ long plan in place to keep one race from achieving life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all to benefit members of the ruling race?

Let’s stop pretending that time is magical, and that if enough of it passes, everything will come out okay in the end and we’ll be absolved of doing any of the hard work to dismantle widespread systems of oppression. Time belongs to whoever wields power. It’s a tool, same as the narrative we’ve gotten into the habit of calling our history, same as everything else that matters.

Before you tell a black person that slavery was a long time ago, educate yourself on the full dirty, terrifying, and ugly thing that is the history of this country. Slavery is one part of a story that is still being written today. And that inequality was hardwired into the plot by authors we pretend had everyone’s best interests at heart. That inequality takes a hit and rises again, stronger than ever. From slavery, to black codes, to Jim Crow, to the prison industrial complex.

It. Just. Keeps. Coming.

And its greatest trick lies in our collective refusal to admit that it exists. We play nice and pretend that some of us aren’t being purposely crushed in a wheel of oppression that has been turning since the 1600s.

I get it. This is some heavy shit. There are times I hang my head and want to lie flat on the ground from the weight of the knowledge that everything about this country was constructed so folks who are my color and gender would not succeed. America was not built for me, though it was built by people who looked like me. I was never meant to enjoy the fruits of this nation, and yet I’m here. Time won’t heal this shit. Only action will.

Don’t tell me to get over slavery. Don’t tell me we’re on equal footing. There are people who toiled, bled, wept, and died to get me where I am today. There are still people toiling, bleeding, weeping, and dying. I act to honor them, to lift them up. My skin color doesn’t give me a choice.

And if you’re ashamed of history, of what people who looked like you did, then get in this fight. Act. Do something besides pretending that everything is fine. Nothing changes by staying willfully ignorant. Wake up. Stand up. Goddamn it, do something.

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Democrats: We Can Do Better

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I know the official Black History Month celebration is drawing to a close in a few days, but I make a point to revel in black excellence and black achievement 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There’s so much out there that we weren’t taught in schools. Immerse yourselves, y’all.

2019 marks 400 years since black folks arrived on the North American continent in chains. And though the month of February is often used to lightly touch on a few of our most famous black citizens, I’m not writing this with an aim to play along and sugarcoat things with inspiring tales of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

This Black History Month has been a little rough for us, fellow Democrats. I can’t think of a time when blackface was more of a thing than when blackface was actually a thing. But, as with all trying times, this absolute dumpster fire of a crisis presents us with the space to take our own inventory, as well as with an opportunity to grow as a party.

Last year about this time, I spoke to my local Democratic Party about the need to enthusiastically celebrate black folks outside of the 28 day confines of the month of February because we’re your base voters. We turn out. We don’t vote against our own interests or let a single issue derail our ability to see the bigger electoral picture. We have a deep understanding of the historical disadvantages of our skin color and how our only path forward involves the tag team of mindful legislation and judicial intervention. For us, voting is survival. Going backwards could cost us our lives, and standing still isn’t an option. So, we hitch our wagons to the Democratic Party and keep on trucking in the direction of the Promised Land.

Yet, racism within the Democratic Party still thrives, and we don’t deal openly with it. Most of the time, we don’t even admit that it exists. We’re happy to take a detailed inventory of the Republican Party, manufacturing outrage, enthusiastically pointing fingers, and calling for swift action whenever a member of the GOP marches into racist territory. But I’m less concerned with the bigotry festering within the opposing team than I am dismayed and frustrated by the racism going unchecked and unacknowledged in my own.

What I’m suggesting we do as a party is take a long, hard, critical look in the mirror. Because the racist actions and rhetoric that we see on the other side of the aisle exist in our ranks as well, and it’s more prevalent than we care to admit.

Fixing a problem means first admitting that there is a problem.

This trouble goes deeper than black people holding pitifully few positions of substantive leadership within the Party. It goes beyond not placing issues that disproportionately affect people of color at the center of our collective efforts. This problem is the stubborn refusal to see the Party for what it is and, further, to see how we each uphold systems of oppression in word, deed, and intention.

Slavery is America’s original sin, and it has tainted everything from the 1600s to the present day, like an insidious soundtrack underscoring every aspect of our day to day lives. This music goes mostly unheard, but we march along to that rhythm nonetheless.

If you want to see the evidence of institutional racism, you only have to choose to really look:

The ongoing environmental crisis in Flint, Michigan.

The massive disenfranchisement of black voters in Georgia during the 2018 elections.

The radically different approaches to the crack epidemic in inner city ghettos versus the opioid crisis in rural, white America.

The fact that it took the State of Florida this long to finally shed the last enduring vestige of the Jim Crow era by voting down the lifetime disenfranchisement of former felons.

I’ve been told many times by fellow Democrats that issues directly impacting people of color need to be set aside so we can focus on more ‘important’ matters. When bringing up issues surrounding the intersection of race and gender, I’ve repeatedly heard that so-called ‘identity politics’ is a cancer that makes meaningful political discourse impossible. I’ve spoken with Democrats who proudly fly, wear, and display the confederate flag, and these conversations have not gone well once I pointed out their symbol’s inherent racism.

It’s heritage, they argue. It’s history.

On that point, we agree.

It’s a reminder of a time when people who looked like you owned people who looked like me. To pretend otherwise is to attempt to rewrite history, much as was done during the Jim Crow Era when so many statues honoring confederate soldiers were erected in public spaces to remind black folks that the chains that once dehumanized them haven’t disappeared. They’ve merely transformed from literal to figurative.

The 35 car pile up that’s currently ongoing in Virginia is a national embarrassment for our party, and for us as Americans. But it speaks to a deeper problem. This kind of racism is everywhere. Governor Northam isn’t an outlier. Nor is Attorney General Herring. They are simply visible reminders of what normally remains invisible.

Black people stand before white judges who hold racist beliefs.

They see white doctors who hold racist beliefs.

They get stopped by police officers with itchy trigger fingers who hold racist beliefs.

They send their little black children to school to be taught by white teachers who hold racist beliefs.

They join progressive causes and organizations that refuse to prioritize issues directly affecting their communities, all in the name of unity.

These racists tendencies are latent. They don’t reveal themselves draped in white Klan hoods. They don’t march down the street, proudly announcing their presence. These tendencies are sneaky, and they work by infecting our interactions, our thoughts, our institutions.

As Democrats, we need to do the hard work to understand this. We need to center the voices of marginalized groups in order to begin the hard work of dismantling systems of oppression.

We are the big tent party. We are the ones demanding equality for all, but we can’t even come close to achieving that goal until we deal with the skeletons in our own walk in closets.

This isn’t just work for Black History Month. This is an undertaking to which we must commit the remainder of our lives.

First, look within, and only then move to hold your neighbor accountable.

True change is intentional. It’s labor intensive. And it means spending less time pointing fingers at others and more time reflecting on ways that you can make things better for everyone. Black people are telling you what’s wrong. You just have to listen.

**This is adapted from a speech I gave to my local Democratic Party

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