Moving Forward as White People

My sense is that as white people — frequently — we:

1. Directly related to how much privilege we have, we tend to remain silent as long as we are in our comfort zone within our privilege,

Example: We used to only be mildly bothered by systemic racist and its persistence — either not seeing it, or seeing it as isolated incidents, or not that major things etc. and/or we had other priorities that dwarfed it.

2. When we feel discomfort taking us out of our comfort zone(s), we commonly begin delving into the new dissonance that we feel

Example: The George Floyd killing took many of us out of our comfort zone,

3. As we process and work through the discomfort many of us find a deepening (positive) challenge that contains discomfort — but also has resolve — to move forward positively — feeling the importance of what we are doing — the necessity of sustaining what we are doing.

Example: We seek additional self-education such as in this course as well as building allies doing the work, etc.

4. In seriously beginning our work we notice multiple challenges among those around us including:

a. Vested interests — opposing us: Example: The upper-class/establishment opposition,

b. Peers — who may have — for example — been “in the streets with us” — a year ago — but are “fatigued” or “moving on in their lives” and/or don’t seem to take the systemic/persistent nature of…