Toni and I are starting our Anti Racism class tomorrow. Race and equity are never far from my brainwaves, so it’s hard to tell if I am more activated or not, but it’s nice to have a focus. I’m excited, but nervous, because I’m so much more prone to anxiety and exhaustion than I used to be. I’m hoping that I’ll continue to feel better as the days lengthen, but I’ve taken to staying at home on Wednesdays with no appointments because I’m so tired by Community Matters on Tuesday nights. I take all sorts of lessons from this– how lucky I am to be able to structure my time like this, how other people are afforded this kind of self-care, and that this is the world I want for all people. It does worry me to take on another high emotional labor event, but we shall see.

All this sets the backdrop for the fact that I have more time on Wednesdays for social media and general catching up on my computer time. Facebook pulled me into a thread about JLo and Shakira and sexuality. The conversation took its predictable twists and turns. And then we went into the land of white fragility. I know in the abstract that it exists, but I don’t encounter it much in the wild. This friend of my FB friend doubled and tripled down on how people were calling her racist, and that her feelings were hurt. Because I’m me, I had looked at her profile page– her profile picture was a picture of her and maybe her daughter wearing large pink sunhats at what was certainly the woman’s march. Her picture, her non-intersectional view of feminism and sexuality, and her fragility all was almost a caricature of white feminism.

In no order here are some takeaways and thoughts I have about this:

• I feel conflicted about my balance between calling in and calling out. It hard to tell who is worthy of engaging with. Who, if held to account, and engaged with, will become activated to become anti-racist? I have seen people transform towards equity and justice. It’s long and hard work, but to get more white people activated to be anti-racist in their personal and professional lives is worth it. At a certain point tho, I wanted to say today, are you fucking kidding me?, particularly when this woman started pulling the “people are being intolerant to me” card.
• I was reflecting on how there might be power in engaging with people at a social distance– friends of friends, rather than people in your immediate social or professional circle, but then I was blown away by my (relatively new to me) FB friend calmly and collectedly reading her own FB friend on internet protocol and social justice acceptable practices. It was a visible reminder and modeling on how to do the things.
• This work is hard. It is hard emotionally and intellectually. And it’s not harder than what Black and Brown Women and Men have to do to survive in our culture everyday.
• For me, practicing anti-racism looks like values the well-being of Black and Brown people in my life over the social constructs and constraints of the White dominant society.