(137) Work
A few years ago, a dear friend of mine started a podcast with a buddy of hers. She and her friend are both white. The target audience for this podcast was other white people. It was created solely for the purpose of highlighting examples of white privilege as they happen each and every week, as well as discussing the perpetual barrage of ongoing, unchecked, racist crime. Their tone was typically seventeen shades of shocked, angry, and impatient. They chided.
(White) people were offput. Some (all friends of hers) even told her, on her wall, and elsewhere, that her (their) tone was rude. Who was she, a white person, to talk to them that way? And my reaction to all of that was to think, “well, if the tone was different, maybe they would hear us?”
I often stress the importance of tone in communication. Tone, and phrasing, and context. And so I told her what I thought, that maybe we should pay attention to tone. I tried it, often, in my own conversations with other white people regarding racism and unchecked brutality. My friend said to me, at the time, “I don’t have time to coddle people into hearing this trauma. People are dead and they want me to say it nicely. What the hell does my being white have to do with it? They say that shit to black folks, too.”
And, eventually (because I’m stubborn and cling to my theories like a wet booger to the edge of your finger that totally didn’t just dig it out of your nose), I came to realize that the defensive reaction is not because of the tone. It’s because of the behavior that is being checked. Like when my friend called out peeps for saying ‘thug’. Or when she called out peeps for perpetuating the myth that black folks are just inherently more violent. Or when she yelled about every version of ‘All Lives Matter’. Her tone didn’t bother me; I hadn’t said any of those things. I didn’t support any of those things.
But when our own behavior is checked, that tone is riddled with attack. I felt this way during recent conversations regarding narrative in fiction. There’s been a lot of abstractly interesting and possibly helpful talk on what defines a valid narrative (good, thoughtful, respectful, and convincing were brought up regularly). People were, I think, upset with the idea that there could be restrictions on what counts as a valid narrative in a fictional story. And, conceptually, I completely agree. Why the fuck should we have limits?
Contextually, though, I think it isn’t so much the actual, specific ‘limits’ that are the issue; it is more than a conceptual debate. I think it’s that the moment, right now, isn’t about what those specific limits turn out to be (or, don’t turn out to be, depending on where you are with it). It’s that people of color spoke up about it, and explained how certain aspects of whiteness made them feel. I wanted to sit quietly with that and hear it. I wanted to cede and say, “I hear that my interpretation/creation of this character makes you question how I see and treat your people. I hear that this gives you pause, and I will pay attention.” But things got very heated and I mostly just cried because I’m a giant turkey. (Turkeys cry. Whatever your face is a turkey.)
Because, here’s the thing: people of color spoke up, just like anyone would if something bothered them, right? Why shouldn’t there be an equal discussion about what bothered them?
I hear and see a lot of my POC friends taking time for themselves today. They don’t opt out easily. I hear and see a lot of the POC that I follow (Damon Young, anyone? Awesomely Luvvie? Squeeee so good) urging white folks to do the work.
And that’s what it is for me, right now. #whitepeoplework
The onus of change is not on the oppressed. They can’t come out for us every time and teach us how to see them. We have to do the work. If we can’t hear their pain and their experience without a certain tone, without perfect grammar, without a single factual mistake anywhere in any of their pieces, then we’re essentially relying on them to convince us of racism. This feels irresponsible to me. There are hundreds of people, all with different writing styles and epic degrees of education, writing about systemic racism. We shouldn’t need a certain tone or phrasing to make us understand. A certain tone or phrasing is not what is lacking when we don’t understand.
And when POC show up to communicate with us about what our behavior does to them, how it makes them feel, the very least we can do is take a knee. Listen.
#whitepeoplework links:
