It has been almost 11 years since I decided to take the position of executive director of an anti-racism organization. A move that I hoped would be more aligned with my values and allow me the opportunity to have a more direct impact on dismantling systemic and structural racism. Naively, I also thought it would mean working with people whose commitment to fighting racism and social ills would create a more stress-free work environment for myself. At least compared to my previous position as executive director of a youth development agency serving an almost entirely white population in a white town—a job so stressful and rife with microaggressions that one day, I came home from a board meeting and poured a glass of wine and picked up a dining room chair and hurled it against the wall.
As someone who had grown up at the intersections of working class and poor, I enjoyed creating opportunities for underserved, low-income youth but I can honestly say that between the parents, the board, funders, and community members, it took a toll on me. Which was why when the opportunity to apply for my current position came up, I was cautiously optimistic that I might at least get an interview. I did even better than that, and after two months and meetings with the board of directors and the staff, I was eventually offered the position, apparently beating out people with deep ties to the organization and to the anti-racism community in Boston where the organization was based—unknowingly creating tensions before I even started the position.
The first few months on the job were good, despite the grueling two-and-a-half hour commute each way from my home in Maine to downtown Boston. I had a supportive multiracial board and staff, all committed to anti-racism work. This was the dream. None of those pesky microaggressions I had encountered in my other positions. Oh boy, I had no idea.
In my first year, donors started pulling out because they were furious over my hiring. CCI is an anti-racism organization with a focus on working with white people and, well, I am not white. I was the first non-white director and people thought that my hiring would shift our direction. I survived the donor pullout thanks to a public plea on my part within our larger anti-racism ecosystem to stay the course and give me a chance.
As I started to bring new board members on in my early years, I started to realize something: Some of the people I was dealing with were well-versed in speaking the language of anti-racism but when it came to breaking out of their white circle jerks, it was microaggressions again for me at a different level—ones that were frankly more cutting and hurtful because they were wrapped in the appearance of care. At least in explicitly non-anti-racist spaces, I could understand where the microaggressions were coming from. But microaggressions from white people in explicitly anti-racism spaces are tantamount to gaslighting because when you attempt to address them, things are turned around and you become the problem. It’s somehow your aggression; it’s literally being portrayed as an angry Black woman by people who should know better. It was at times tiptoeing around the feelings of people who say they are aware of their privilege, even as they hold power and access to resources that I needed to keep the organization afloat and subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) used that privilege against me.
In addition to learning to navigate around white feelings in anti-racism spaces, I learned a couple of years into my position that it was not uncommon to encounter BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and other people of color) organizers and activists who were every bit if not more toxic and harmful than white folks in anti-racism work. At times they would come to the work with unhealed trauma around white people and white supremacy culture looking to exact revenge and wield power rather than working on our shared humanity and collective liberation.
Since 2016 and the first Trump presidency, social media has played a major role in elevating different voices as the faces of anti-racism work. The more popular you are online with a large following, the more knowledgeable it is assumed you are—when the reality is that it is not uncommon for some online BIPOC activists and organizers to have little in the way of local communities of accountability. Or deep roots in the work, for that matter.
There is no specific degree or training to be an anti-racism trainer. Literally anyone can do it and if you are Black or Brown, there is an immediate assumption of expertise. The cult of personality has become a factor in our work, too, where the more personable and sometimes biting you are, the more successful you are. I have long joked that I would be more successful if I could harness my inner bitch online and take it out on guilty white people.
To be clear, there are a lot of amazing people with online platforms doing this work, but there are some who are causing more harm than good and, well, some of what has been known in the shadows was recently revealed in public.
A few days ago, on Threads, several Black anti-racism authors, activists, and educators who I follow came out and shared that Saira Rao, an Indian-American activist and author, had engaged in some harmful behavior and was also engaging in anti-Blackness. If you have followed my work, you may know of Saira, because I recommended the book she co-authored, White Women, when it was released a few years ago. In the past, I had a personal relationship (I use that word loosely) with Saira, in that she took a few coaching sessions with me and she also interviewed me for her book—my interview appears in the book. We even met a few years ago, when she was visiting Maine.
Saira’s online work style is not something I would do; I find it dehumanizing and frankly harmful. Telling your primarily white female audience things such as white women actually annoy you isn’t my jam. I don’t believe that we must be nasty to people in this work. in a world that disregards my humanity, I have no interest in intentionally mistreating anyone and then calling it good work. I am here for collective liberation, not to trade places.
Over the last year, Saira has become passionately outspoken about the genocide in Gaza, and a few days ago she made the statement online that she was going to be glad when Kamala Harris lost the election. The tenor of her post was almost one of glee, and did not recognize the fact that if Harris loses, that means harm to many marginalized people, including the very Black women she purports to be in coalition with—and a Trump win would most certainly not better the plight of the Palestinians.
The genocide has become a dividing issue in many anti-racism and activist spaces. Even in my own professional circles, there are those who are vocal that they cannot in good conscience support either major party candidate. I disagree with that stance because I take a harm-reduction approach when it comes to voting, but I don’t know anyone who is actually rooting for Harris to lose. I can respect those who feel they truly cannot vote for the “lesser of the two evils” even if their choice saddens me and stresses me out. Movement work doesn’t mean we always move the same way, even when we want the same outcomes . Part of working in these spaces is about the respect we carry for one another. To hold multiple truths without denigrating one another.
Which is why I suspect Saira’s words struck a chord. Based on what I had seen in her postings before unfollowing her several months ago, I felt there was a lack of care and concern for people in this country and a lack of recognition that many Black and Brown women in this country will suffer greatly under another Trump term.
Several Black women started to speak out on Threads about what they saw as Saira’s anti-Blackness (not voting for Harris is not anti-Black, but as an anti-racist activist, to hold no care for Black women in this country is anti-Black and at odds with her stated goals in her work). As more Black women spoke out, a pattern started to emerge of Black women who had, at best, unsettling encounters with Saira—encounters that had a pattern of anti-Blackness. My own experiences with Saira, while not overtly anti-Black, felt more transactional than relational and are at odds with the way I choose to operate in this work.
To do anti-racism work that is effective and long-lasting, I believe there must be trust. We literally build at the speed of trust and in a mutual or group project, even with online platforms, does your audience trust you? Do you trust yourself? Part of building trust is a willingness to be accountable and to have a community that holds you accountable. When we build trust, we can build accountability.
Which also gets to the point of asking: What kinds of relationships are we engaging in? Are we engaging to build with others or are we engaging to pick their brains and extract knowledge? Are we looking to build brands or build up comrades in the greater struggle? It gets tricky because many of us, me included, do charge or seek compensation for our labor, but we can still build together.
For the last three years, I have worked in small groups in my Beloved Community groups. While participants pay a small fee, I try to cultivate a vibe far beyond our official sessions. I see members of the community as members of my community, and I hope it is mutually beneficial. As I tell participants, we work together in small groups on race to model how to be in the larger world.
It is also important in this work to know your “why.” That is, why are you doing the work? While that is a question I often pose to white people, I think it is equally as important for Black and Brown folks to know their why. The truth is many of us have been harmed repeatedly by white people and the culture of whiteness. Many of us carry deep racial trauma and wounds, including the generational wounds of our parents and grandparents, and if you come to this work without addressing those wounds, there is a greater likelihood that you will cause harm.
So many BIPOC activists who I see that lash out at white folks as part of their work are carrying heavy racial wounds that need to be worked out in therapy. Also, for white people, many come to this work carrying the baggage and wounds of whiteness and possibly even their own racist ancestors, feeling unsteady and, in many ways, they are setting themselves up to engage in ways that dehumanize them but because of the shame and heaviness of their whiteness. So, if they are treated badly by BIPOC people, they assume it is okay.
None of us asked to be in these racialized bodies. We were born into them and while these bodies carry histories that were written long before our arrival, we can choose ways of being. But we will fuck it up at times, because we are all swimming in the white supremacy stew. So, trying to be an explicitly anti-racist white person doesn’t give anyone the right to treat you like shit.
Are white people annoying? Are white women extra annoying at times? Yeah, but all people are annoying and anyone who is sincerely in this work should know that it takes white people real time and intentionality to grow, learn, and ground in this work. A white friend in recovery likens her anti-racism journey to her recovery journey—lifetime commitment with a high probability of fucking up but you keep at it.
Speaking of fucking up, no one in anti-racism work is immune from fucking up, including Black and Brown people. I have made mistakes. Sometimes I refused to examine my own role in a situation and realized sometimes it’s not about race; sometimes I am the asshole, and I have had to own it.
To do this work is to understand grace, to understand when to extend it, and to know that you will also need it at some point.
If several people tell you that you caused them harm, reflection is paramount. I think sometimes as Black and Brown people it can be harder to examine ourselves in this work because of the unfair expectation that we are somehow experts—but that is just white supremacy culture playing in our minds and puffing us up.
Dismantling racism should be about creating systemic and structural change. It should be about creating new ways of being that honor our mutual and shared humanity that allows for growth and operating freely without the shackles of racism denying or limiting us. It should not be about trading places and making BIPOC folks the oppressors and white people the oppressed.
The unspoken reality is that our social justice spaces are filled with unhealed people who often come to the work seeking to create a more perfect world without realizing that part of creating that better world is to work on themselves as well.
Too often, our spaces give home and refuge to people who are deeply harmful and problematic. Sadly, it is not uncommon to find abusers in our communities and because of the kindness of the people who gravitate to social change work, unhealed abusive people are often left alone, creating mayhem and havoc and disrupting our movements.
Calling out people for their mistreatment is often hard because no one wants to disrupt the work, especially in critical times. There is also a fear that in calling out harm, you will be seen as the disruptor. Our movements, though, are only as healthy and strong as the people in them and in a country where almost half the populace seems okay with fascism and bigotry and we are fighting the forces that want to dismantle our work, we need to show up as our best selves. Calling out harmful behavior is sometimes a great act of love and care that will move us all closer to our collective liberation.
If this piece resonated with you, please consider a tip, or become a monthly patron, if you aren’t already. I offer my work freely, to ensure that it is accessible to all but if you have the means to support it, please do so. Remember, I do work with groups and organizations, if you want to work with me, please reach out for details.
