Me and White Supremacy - Day 24/25: Your Friends and Your Family

Resource: Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

This was a short section about the intersection of anti-racism work and friendships. People with white privilege often are reluctant to make waves with friends by calling out/in racism, or by doing it in a gentle/subtle way that is ineffective. While it is often easier to have these discussions with close friends, Saad encourages you to practice anti-racism with all of your friends/acquaintances. Just like we can influence our friends with white silence/white empathy, we also have a better possibility to engage them in anti-racism work due to our proximity and the relationships we have with them.

Reflection: How have you thought it was not worth the hassle of rocking the boat or how have you seen it as your responsibility to address it with them since you have more influence on them due to your friendship? Are there certain people you feel more comfortable speaking up to than others? Why? How do you feel about your friends who are not doing their own personal antiracism work? What efforts have you made to invite your friends into antiracism work with you?

I guess I would start out by saying that I think I know a fair amount of people, but do not have deep relationships with most people. Most of my friendships have developed from situations where we didn’t have a choice to be with each other (like work or school), which isn’t a bad thing, but once that this is over, I have trouble staying in contact with people. I think for most people, I’m a surface level friend to most people I know (and vice versa), and have just a small handful of people I would consider to have deep friendships with. The deeper the relationship I have, the easier it is to engage them in anti-racism work or to call them in. When I am with friends, even in more superficial friendships, I will call out/in racism if I recognize it - I think because I am very introverted and tend to speak the least in a group, when I do speak, my words have more weight. Where I see calling out as not worth the hassle is on social media. When people post things that are problematic, I have chosen not to engage because 1) there are only a few people I know who do, and generally I have not spoken to them in years or don’t/never really had a relationship with them and 2) I think me pushing back will only serve to reinforce their beliefs rather than question them. Also it is emotionally draining for me, but that’s probably not a good excuse. Maybe these thoughts are misguided, and perhaps I could be posting questions for them to think about rather than just calling out. Maybe practicing calling in on social media would help me with calling in people face to face. If people engaged with me on things that I posted, I think I would feel more of an obligation to respond - maybe I’m not posting in a controversial enough way. This is something I will be discussing in the anti-racist coalition I am part of this week.

Because I have trouble maintaining friendships, and didn’t really start working on actively maintaining friendships until after college, the friends who I do have the best relationships with are mostly ones who I met in grad school/AmeriCorps who are actively doing the work. I guess I’m not really in contact with anyone (like actively maintaining relationships with) who I know is not doing anti-racism work, but I’m pretty sure I have friends who do not, or who virtue signal on social media, but are not putting in the work. I can’t say for sure who or who is not doing the work (thinking about my friends who I don’t talk to often on social media), but thinking about people who post memes and don’t put in the work is frustrating (not calling anyone out because I don’t know, but if that’s you, I would recommend checking out this book - Me and White Supremacy - and starting the reflections in it!) I don’t know if this is due to algorithms on Facebook or just the people I am friends with (or maybe a mixture of both), but for the most part on my feed, I see my own opinions/values reflected back. Although this is affirming and validating, I do wonder about how that influences me.

I have tried to more passively engage people with this blog (passively, as in I put it out there, and it is their choice whether to read it or not), and sometimes like 6 people will read (or at least click on) the post (according to the data from Wix) and sometimes it's more than 20. I know some people “like” the post without reading (because I have more “likes” on the post than “views” on the blog page), and I know that some people read it without showing me online that they have. So I don’t know how many people I’m actually reaching, but I guess at least a few. I have also engaged my friends in starting an Anti Racist Coalition that meets once a week, and although I thought more people might take up the offer to join, that has been one of the highlights of the pandemic for me.

To summarize, I don’t have a lot of deep friendships and have trouble staying in contact with people, but the ones I do, I feel comfortable engaging them in anti-racism work (probably because they are already engaging themselves). I have trouble engaging people on social media, but I’m not sure that’s where I can best spend my energy. I love doing this work in community, and I wish other people would join in that way too.

Reflection: How do you feel about speaking up against racism and white supremacist actions to your family members? What racist beliefs have you internalized from your family?

Speaking up against racism in my family is really hard, mostly because my dad dominates conversations and he believes that racism in the United States does not exist anymore. It’s like talking to a wall, and it’s hard for me to talk with him about it without getting angry or frustrated which makes me inarticulate. It makes me angry just thinking about it. I’ll at least call out racism in my family when I see/hear it. It’s easier to call in and talk to my mom. My brother and I have been discussing racism more, and it’s been nice to be able to have open conversations with him. I definitely internalized colorblindness from my family.

I think this is the hardest reflection I’ve had so far. I’m at a point where I’ll engage with my family if they initiate a conversation or they say something where I need to step in and call them in/out. I feel like nothing I can actively do will greatly change them, and maybe that’s a problem. I’m having a hard time with my family for other reasons right now, and I think I’ll need to come back to this prompt in the future and do a better job of planning for how to talk with them.