I refer to myself as a recovering racist. I don’t even know where all the racism is that is inside me. I haven’t rooted it all out yet. But I do know that it’s all gotta go.
I have taken the step of ceasing to ask people of colour about their experiences as people of colour, or to explain stuff to me. I no longer police POC arguments by objecting to tone, since it looks like they’re already getting all of the police they can stomach. It’s racism 101, and it’s all, every last bit of it, ready to be looked for on the internet by anyone who takes the time to see.
No matter what a black or native person says to me, and I’ve triggered some beauts, it’s not my job to return the rhetorical tennis ball across an imaginary line. It’s my job to learn to be a better ally, and that mostly means shutting up unless white people are enacting racism in front of me; then I get to speak, and feel the shame I ’cause’ in other people, and the shame I have inside for the decades I’ve been silent.
