A racist quandary in a whiff of smoke

Years ago, I became aware of my white privilege as both a blessing and a curse. The unearned privileges have become well known, sparked by Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 article “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.”

But the curse of white privilege is not so well explored. One aspect of it for many of us raised to be “good white girls” is the avoidance of conflict: to not say anything at all if you can’t say something nice. Robin DiAngelo has set out the ways we have been conditioned as too fragile to withstand even talking about racism. A sort of “ladylike silence” around race has been a white norm.

In recent years, as part of inner work to combat racism, as Layla F. Saad advocates in her book, Me and White Supremacy, I recognize myself “staying silent by choosing not to engage in any conversations about race because of [my] white fragility” (56). Saad goes on to note that people can use writing to “disrupt white supremacy” (59) and that is my aim in these articles.

Three years ago, I was called out as a cruel racist by a man I had considered my loved brother-in-law. His honesty about his perception of our interactions, which I had seen as warm and friendly, set me on a path of listening for, making conscious, and writing out my inner truth. Some of my…