What to Do About White People?
For much of this podcast we’ve been focusing on elevating the voices of BIPOC and progressive leaders who understand the daunting but worthwhile task of striving for an equitable society. Given our limited time and resources, and the near constant battle against exhaustion and dismay, it is justifiable to focus one’s energy on the people who already understand what needs to be done and leave the people on the other side or who couldn’t care less one way or another to their own devices. It is also unfair for BIPOC people, who for so long have shouldered more than their share of the burden in the fight for racial equality to have to endure convincing white people why this is a vital priority for our society.
That all being said, we just experienced an election which was a referendum on the direction our country was headed under Trump, and a bewildering 77 million+ people for four more years of his leadership despite all we’ve seen during this administration. The overwhelming majority of those people are white, and in fact the majority of white people voted for what can arguably be called an unprecedented regression into a divisive, racist and anti-equality America the likes of which we hoped not to see again.
What to do? While it is tempting to write those people off as lost causes who don’t deserve our time, it is very difficult to imagine a country or a world that has embraced the changes many of us consider essential while so many of us continue to ignore and fight against an appropriate recognition of these issues. Going further, if we want to create a world without racism it is simply impossible to do this without white people being at the center of this transformation. It is very difficult to admit, but there needs to be a significant and successful effort to bring people together, across a seemingly uncrossable chasm of mistrust and disdain, if we have any hope of seeing a better world.
To discuss this we invited Aja Davis and Molly Ola Pinney, co founders of the Facebook group White People Doing Something. The interracial couple began the group to engage white people in productive conversations around race and engagement after the George Floyd murder, and it has grown into a very robust group of 40,000 doing daily actions around engaging white people in difficult conversations and giving them the tools to create change in their communities. They discuss their philosophy with host Tre Borden in this week’s episode that gives us some food for thought about the many approaches that are necessary to create a world where racism does not exist.
