Because staying silent is no longer an option.
Dear White Women,
It’s that time of year when you’re likely spending a great deal of time planning out holiday celebrations. In addition to designing the perfect menu and choreographing the perfect table, many of you also are whispering about the greatest threat to that perfect holiday gathering: your racist dad, racist Uncle Bob, racist Aunt Nancy, or racist girlfriend of your cousin John.
Every year, it’s anyone’s guess what particular racism will come out of their mouths — you just know it’ll be something. Either about Black people or Muslims or Asians or a festive combination of all three; the specifics vary from year to year. What’s certain is what you’ll want to say, which is nothing.
After all, the only way to keep your holiday gathering intact is by being nice.
But being nice in our white supremacy culture means being silent in the face of racism and xenophobia. You call this habit something else, arguing that “it’s not polite to talk about politics at the dinner table.” Your parents taught you that rule, and you’ve proudly passed it down to your kids, who’ll no doubt keep the tradition going.
So you will say nothing. What exactly does this look like?
Aunt Nancy: This country is going to hell in a handbasket. Crime is out of control, even in our neighborhood. And I can’t find a doctor that speaks English.
You: [eyes down, long sip of Chardonnay]
Uncle Bob: Inflation’s through the roof, and now, word is that the Chinese are sending over another virus. Eating all those disgusting animals in their markets.
You: [another, longer sip of Chardonnay]
Your Husband: Honey, the stuffing is just amazing.
You: Thank you, but I think it could use more sage. You know who’s becoming quite the cook, Aunt Nancy? Lexi.
You then pivot to your unsuspecting 16-year-old daughter, Lexi, who’s been absorbing Aunt Nancy and Uncle Bob’s overt racism — and your silence — her entire life. Like everything else you’ve taught her (brush your teeth, wash your face, do your homework) she’s also learned to remain quiet in the face of racism. She’s learned to be nice, like you.
Lexi: Oh Mom, you exaggerate. I’m not that good in the kitchen.
The conversation shifts to food. The peace has been maintained. Your perfect holiday is humming along, as it always does.
In other words, your family’s “no politics” rule — white society’s rule when friction arises — enables white supremacy to remain intact year after year, generation after generation, all in the name of being polite. Being nice.
So what can you do when faced with a family member’s (or anyone’s) overt racism? How could this interaction go down differently?
The usual “How to Survive the Holiday” pieces will tell you how to glide around these conversations just to get to the end of the meal without ruffling any feathers, pissing anyone off, or hurting anyone’s feelings. In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t that piece.
We have two bits of advice that fly in the face of what you’ve been taught your entire lives:
1. The dinner table is precisely where you should be talking about politics — and deconstructing your own bigotry. Other places where you should be having these conversations? The lunchroom, the diner, the water cooler at work, book clubs, pedicures, happy hours with your friends, on the street, at the mall, and over text, email, and telephone.
2. There is absolutely one right way to approach these conversations, one magical perfect way to do it: Directly. Don’t mince words, don’t speak in code — and most importantly, don’t turn yourself into the white savior and everyone else into the villain. In other words, don’t exceptionalize yourself as the “good white person” while your guests are the “bad” ones. We have *all* been marinating in this white supremacist society. And the idea of being “colorblind”? That’s racist, too: If you don’t “see color,” you don’t see us, and you don’t see our oppression. And you fail to see how you wield your white power over us Black, Indigenous and brown folks.
So what does this look like in action?
Uncle Bob: Inflation’s through the roof, and now, word is that the Chinese are sending over another virus. Eating all those disgusting animals in their markets.
You: Aunt Bob, that sounds awfully racist. Blaming Chinese people for viruses and disparaging the kinds of food folks in China eat — it’s hateful.
Aunt Nancy: Are you calling me a racist?
You: What you said was racist and yes, you are racist — but we all are. We’ve learned to be racist our entire lives. Now all of us have to unlearn it.
Lexi: Even me. I’ve learned the same stuff you have. And Mom has. And Dad has.
What happens next with Aunt Nancy is anyone’s guess; you can’t control other people’s reaction to the truth. But you can control your role in upholding and dismantling white supremacy. And in the latter scenario, you interrupted hate in real time, refusing to be complicit in white supremacy. Beyond that, you modeled how to do so for your daughter, and gave her permission to do the same.
This isn’t easy. Having been trained to avoid these particular conversations, changing course and flipping the script is not easy. In fact, it might be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. But real anti-racism work requires white folks to do uncomfortable things — and become comfortable sitting in your discomfort. After all, isn’t unlearning racism and becoming less racist more important than hurting Uncle Bob’s feelings?
This confrontation of hatred needs to happen at every dinner, not just in the fraught, family-filled gatherings near the end of each year. Until and unless white folks start to speak up when they witness the “casual” racism that floats around their get-togethers, nothing will change.
People desperately want to be on the right side of history until they realize what that entails in the present. Speaking up in the face of hatred is step one — the most basic action to be taken by all of us, in the here and now. As Regina says, “There’s no growth without change. And there’s no change without pain.”
There’s no such thing as a perfect holiday celebration. Likewise, there’s no perfect way to undo the racist conditioning we’ve been subjected to all of our lives – but you have to start somewhere.
Let’s start by speaking up now.
With love,
Regina Jackson + Saira Rao
Regina Jackson is a Black woman and Saira Rao is a South Asian woman. They are the co-founders of Race2Dinner, a dinner experience involving themselves and 8-10 white women discussing white supremacy and racism. They are the co-authors of the New York Times Bestseller White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How To Do Better and the subjects and Executive Producers of the new documentary Deconstructing Karen.
