Colorblindness has become a frequently used lens to discuss racial difference by many white Americans, and despite the overwhelming research that suggests that colorblind ideology further perpetuates white supremacy, some are having a hard time letting it go.

Don’t question our experiences. You’ll never understand them because you don’t walk through the world with black or brown skin. Just sit there and listen.

“The premise of the question[s] typically [asked]: I am scared to speak up, and I need to know how to overcome my fear… You are afraid that you will fall out of the good graces of those with power. You are afraid that you will be labeled “the problem,” the person who is “not a team player,” the one who is going to ruin a good time. You are afraid of not being invited, of not being favored, of not being liked, because [of the benefits you receive from being invited, favored, and liked]…”

Let me get this out of the way first: People of color don’t owe you any type of conversation about race. But if you find someone actually willing to discuss race and white supremacy, make sure you’re entering that conversation with the real intention of being a less racist, better white person.

Don’t question our experiences. You’ll never understand them because you don’t walk through the world with black or brown skin. Just sit there and listen.

Here’s what doesn’t help: taking on the mantle of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color’s rage and tearing down well-intentioned but ignorant white folks on our behalf. Our anger isn’t yours. It doesn’t belong to you.
Here’s what doesn’t help: taking on the mantle of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color’s rage and tearing down well-intentioned but ignorant white folks on our behalf. Our anger isn’t yours. It doesn’t belong to you.

“Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it’s required your ignorance… while I, and just about any person of color who has spent their lives in a white supremacist society, know enough about white culture to write a book or two on whiteness and option the bestseller movie rights, y’all know almost nothing about us and even less about yourselves…”

0ne of my friends…, a white male journalist, told me that I was trying to “shut down white voices.” Towards the end of our exchange, … he admitted he was worried he was eventually going to lose his job to a person of colour… His views sound extreme, especially for someone who works for a mainstream media organization. But he’s not alone. It seems the more we talk about racism, the stronger another narrative becomes—one that paints white people as the ones who are truly oppressed.

Do not merely quote words that make you feel good and do not challenge your thinking and actions. Do not tweet quotes that are nothing more than a Twitter performance when in actuality you have done nothing to support the causes that impact Black America. Do not use Dr. King’s quotes as a way to “check” Black America. Do not ask Black America, “What would Martin Luther King Jr. do?”… be reminded that Dr. King said: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”… When you tell Black America, “Well, it’s the law,” be reminded that Dr. King said, “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal.”

Forgiveness without repentance is what theologian Dietrich Bonhoefer, quoting Adam Clayton Powell, called cheap grace. It lets us believe we are off the hook for our evil without demanding any real change on our part. In the case of the murder of Botham Jean cheap grace lets us white people maintain our sense of innocence and goodness without first facing up to the role we all play, knowingly or not, in maintaining systemic racism.