Anti-racism work means checking our egos at the door

After posting my own black square last Tuesday, I was confronted with the realization that I had consulted exactly zero people of colour about my choice to “go silent.” A friend sent me an Instagram story from a woman of colour in America who had argued that our black squares were actually silencing Black voices.

In posting our black squares, we were actually hindering the content of the Black Lives Matter movement, fully flipping an algorithm that had been helpful in holding protesters and law enforcement accountable and disseminating valuable and time-sensitive information to those on the front lines of the fight against racism in the United States and Canada.

At first, I was a little bit offended that my act of solidarity was received with such indignation, but I checked my ego and did a little more digging. After only 10 minutes of research, I had found dozens of prominent Black leaders begging us white folks to remove our posts immediately and replace them with the voice of someone other than ourselves. I realized that my “silence” was no more than me standing on a platform with a megaphone screaming into a crowd “I am being silent!” and my white friends doing nothing but the same. Simply put, we were screaming our silence together, and ultimately quieting down the voice of the Black folks we so desperately need to be listening to.

I realize that this is no new story in the work of anti-racism: white woman tries to do her best, and fails quite miserably, but her heart was in the right place. We comfort ourselves with tropes about how the intention was what mattered, and how it’s the thought that counts, but this needs to stop. My heart was in the right place but that didn’t make it OK. What really counts right now is not our thoughts or our intentions as much as our actions, our words and our efforts.

This is a time for white folks to realize we are going to make mistakes, and it will, at times, be humiliating, embarrassing, imperfect and shameful.

We will stand on our soapboxes and say the wrong thing. What we need to do is be able to get off of our soap boxes and sit in the humility of being wrong, learning together and listening to our neighbours when they tell us what they need to say. Before posting, we need to listen; expand our social media feeds to look and sound more like the diverse community of North America versus folks who look, act and think just like us. Had I looked to see what the Black community felt about the movement, I would have known how my very unwelcome screaming silence would hurt a cause I so deeply want to help.

Part of the white experience is that we are used to being correct, and we don’t love being corrected. But this is not the posture we need to assume in these days; we need to stand corrected and be quick to apologize and admit our wrongdoing.

This is going to be humbling work. We’re going to need to be embarrassed. In fact, I think if we don’t face embarrassment, humility and ask for forgiveness from folks of colour on a regular basis, we might be doing it wrong.

I believe our posture needs to change. We need to be prepared to change our minds, to admit our wrong. Anti-racism is work so many of us are committed to doing, but it needs to start with an ego, checked quietly at the door.

What really counts right now is not our thoughts or our intentions as much as our actions, our words and our efforts