Author: Deborah Plummer

The concept of edutainment, entertainment with an educational aspect, is not new. I am old enough to remember screaming in delight when “Miss Barbara” Plummer Cleveland’s Romper Room host went to the Magic Mirror and said, “I see Debbie.”

Because we shared the same last name (it didn’t matter that she was White and I was Black; we were family) I felt like she saw me and thought that of all the kids out there in television land, I was special to Miss Barbara.

Through the Romper Room games, exercises, songs, storytelling, I learned the Pledge of Allegiance, proper behavior, and can still recite “God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food. Amen,” as a prayer before meals. It was learning that lasts.

Defining Edutainment

Other children’s television shows such as Sesame Street are considered contemporary examples of edutainment programming. Video games, theater, dance, movies that provide both education and entertainment can also be considered edutainment. Many forms of entertainment provide passive education and could be labeled edutainment. The definition is broad and often puts the emphasis on the entertaining aspects without the associated standard learning measurements — knowledge, understanding, application, and analysis.

However, effective edutainment is intentional about moving from passive to active learning. Its goal is to educate while attracting and holding attention by engaging an audience both cognitively and emotionally.

About DEIB Edutainment

I began experimenting with edutainment in the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging space in 2015 with a symposium on eliminating health disparities. We used dance, music, and comedy to engage researchers, patients and communities in changing conditions that impede health and limit participation in research. It was an overly ambitious attempt and the programming didn’t always connect the dots of the entertainment to the educational goals of the symposium. Still, it underscored that powerful potential that the arts held for teaching multicultural competencies.

Why DEIB Edutainment?

Having the competencies necessary to successfully navigate our increasingly multicultural, multiracial society is imperative in places where we work, live, and socialize. In our polarized society, our ability to shape a positive future will be determined not only by how we support, trust, and collaborate with those with whom we agree…but by how we understand, treat, and work with those with whom we disagree. Learning multicultural competencies requires unraveling complex issues, fostering life-long learning, and is best done in community. DEIB edutainment meets these requirements.

DEIB edutainment teaches multicultural living competencies or Me to We skillsets through the transformative power of visual media and theater arts. It aims to sharpen our thinking, challenge our assumptions, expand our world views, enlighten and inspire each other to create a society that works for everyone.

Using Theater as DEIB Edutainement

Recognizing that not everyone best learns through reading and with a strong desire to get my relational model for managing human differences out to the widest audience possible, I decided to transform three of my essays — I Wish I had a Black Friend. How Can I Get One?, A Message From Your Safe Black Friends, and To My White Friends Who Know Me into a three-act play.

As DEIB edutainment, To My White Friends Who Know Me, expands and deepens theater’s transformative nature to enhance our shared humanity and build greater human connectivity while teaching four diversity competencies — holding multiple realities, perspectives, and identities; moving from certainty to curiosity; marrying intention and impact; and using social privilege for mutual benefit. Essential to each performance is the post-show discussion designed to go deeper on the themes presented in each act.

All five of the debut performances at Karamu House, the nation’s oldest producing African American theater, sold out within 24 hours of individual tickets going on sale and received generous support from corporate and community sponsors. I was buoyed by the response and humbled by the praise for the performance as DEIB edutainment that swiftly followed:

“amazing- very thought provoking and yes, at times uncomfortable- in a meaningful way! I laughed, I cried, I listened, and I learned.”

“personal, impactful, moving”

“OUTSTANDING”

“a wonderful and meaningful performance!”

“extremely thought provoking and engaging”

“A must see”

“A very meaningful experience and one I hope to extend through more dialogue and interaction”

“breathtaking play!… fantastic, thought provoking, and powerful.”

“a way of thinking and talking about racism that was specific, empathetic, wise, and very real”

Measuring the DEIB Edutainment Impact

To My White Friends Who Know Me was described as an innovative community event that aimed to enhance social trust as foundational to building cultures of belonging and an informed citizenry invested in racial equity. We included in the playbill the performance goals:

1. Enhanced social trust as a foundational aspect of a culture of belonging and an informed citizenry invested in racial equity.
2. A social trust movement for fresh, forward-moving, enlightened conversations about race relations…conversations that inspire new ways of knowing, and that enhance performance and innovation in our work, learning, and home environments.
3. An establishment of a cadre of individuals with agency and confidence to lead with enthusiasm and optimism across racial lines to create peaceful, transformative communities as influencers within their circle of co-workers, colleagues, students, family, and friends.
4. An interruption in the current narratives about race relations that begins a shift in social media and other media outlets to a message of solidarity in support of racial equity.

We encouraged the audience to continue the conversation with their organization, university, neighborhood group, faith-based community, and social networks and provided a QR Code to a printable pdf guide of conversation starters, exercises, and a glossary of terms to continue learning, growing, and building social trust.

We also included a QR Code for an impact evaluation designed to provide data to assess attainment of the performance goals. Some results of Impact Evaluation include:

68% reported increased feeling of benevolence and caring after the performance

71% reported enhanced human connectivity

72% reported enhanced commitment to work on racial equity

The Power of DEIB Edutainment

My hope in transforming my essays into a three-act play was that they would strengthen our advocacy of “we” in places where we live, work, worship, serve, and play. Each act of the play invited the audience to join in creating a world where minds are open and human interaction is about making ourselves and each other better friends, family, neighbors, and citizens — better humans.

Since the production of To My White Friends Who Know Me, we have included three more plays in our DEIB Edutainment portfolio with Beauty Shop, an examination of women’s dialogue about race across generations; The God I Know , an exploration of religion and personal identity; and All The Women in My Family Sing! celebrating women and gender solidarity.

We have also created a documentary, Trust in Black and White, that delves deep into elusive dynamics of social trust between Black and White women, offering a raw and transformative cinematic experience and launched the Amazing Amazing Inclusion & Belonging Edutainment Experience, a professional and personal development conference using the transformative nature of the arts.

DEIB Edutainment builds social trust in a polarized society by fostering a Me to We Mindset and developing Me to We Skillsets that strengthen our shared humanity. Those are skills that cannot be AI generated or outsourced, as they allow us to build greater human connectivity in places where we work, serve, live, socialize, and worship.

And Other Distressing Emotions Associated with Learning about Race and Racial Identity

Behind every discomfort, there’s learning… if we stay with the discomfort long enough. There is no other way to learn the skill sets necessary to manage the dynamics of human differences without challenging our assumptions and moving out of our comfort zones.

Discomfort is a natural aspect of any learning process. Even geniuses, gurus, star athletes, great musicians, top artists, saints, prophets, and pretty much everyone learns this way. No discomfort, no learning.

In race education, the discomfort stems from the interruption of our culturally encapsulated living patterns and our culturally myopic thinking. Especially in the current politically charged zeitgeist, staying with discomfort long enough to eke out kernels of truth about race has become increasingly challenging.

Race Education: Encouraged, Prickly, or Taboo Subject?

Race education is a sought after learning experience for some, a prickly subject for others, and a taboo issue for many state lawmakers and education policymakers. Whether it’s examining the historical context for race in laws, policies, and practices, or exploring racial identity in human development, or learning competencies to successfully navigate our multiracial society, race education is causing psychological distress for many, especially White Americans.

In fact, the primary objection given by those who want to ban race education is that it stirs up painful emotions such as guilt and shame and causes an alleged experience of reverse racial discrimination, albeit without any evidence of disparate treatment or life-threatening consequences.

As a result of this emotional distress, they purport that race education should be eliminated from every K-Higher Ed classroom and from every professional development training session in public institutions. We should simply just eliminate race education and pretend that without it, we are no worse off than not knowing the identities and history of the various canonical incarnations of the characters of Star Trek.

Indeed, race education is complex, nuanced, and layered. Under the direction of incompetent educators, trainers and facilitators, race education can become explosive. Under the direction of dogmatic educators, trainers or facilitators, race education becomes divisive.

Yet, even the most seasoned, skilled, reputable race educator would not be able to eliminate the discomfort associated with learning the full and accurate record of American history, learning about racial identity development, and learning about the historical and ongoing manifestations of racial inequalities.

Banning the formal teaching of race education does nothing to reduce the discomfort. In fact, it only amplifies the discomfort associated with the many informal lessons that occur simply by growing up and living in a multiracial society.

There isn’t a cause-effect relationship between eliminating the idea of systemic racism and strengthening “the public and private bonds that create trust and allow for civic engagement.” A color-blind and race-neutral society isn’t achieved by abolishing CRT in schools, workplaces and the entertainment sector. Anti-racist cultures are realized by shared and accurate historical facts, enlightened, forward-moving conversations about race, and learning the competencies necessary to effectively manage the dynamics of human differences.

Preparing for Race Education

If you were having surgery, and the surgeon simply told you, “I’m the best in the field. You are in great hands in a world-class hospital,” those words would do little to actually prepare you for that surgery. In fact, you might find yourself feeling even more anxious despite those reassurances.

After surgery, being “in good hands in the best hospital” wouldn’t help to reduce the pain or support the healing process. A competent physician would prepare you by explaining exactly what will happen during the surgery and what to expect during the healing process. Understanding that process and knowing what to expect would reduce your anxiety and enhance trust.

Similarly, if race education consist of simply declaring, “As Americans we live in the best country ever. We are not a racist country!” the emotional process associated with learning about race and racial identity would not be in sync with our lived reality and do nothing to change that reality.

When learning is not aligned with we know and experience in our everyday lives, there’s little hope for creating the “best country ever” and one that is anti-racist. Race education helps us to understand how we got to the current state and what we need to do to get to the desired state. Feelings of discomfort, guilt, fear, and embarrassment associated with race education are to be expected and worth exploring.

This Makes Me Feel Uncomfortable

The purpose of race education is to heighten awareness of what we don’t know, help us to unravel the complexities of a racialized society, and provide us with the skills to successfully navigate our increasingly multiracial society. The unease and awkwardness associated with this learning is a simple form of anxiety that is natural, predictable, and controllable.

Not unlike the surgeon who can support you to manage anxiety associated with having surgery, competent race educators can manage the anxiety associated with race education with clear learning guidelines and a focused agenda with specific behavioral objectives that can be achieved within the allotted timeframe. Without these conditions, learners feel like they are participating in a bad TV reality show.

This Makes Me Feel Guilty

Healthy guilt is a function of our conscience that lets us know that we have done something wrong. If you have participated in racially discriminatory housing practices, or participated in White flight when Blacks and Brown move into the neighborhood; hired Whites based on aptitude or potential while only hiring BIPOC on proven demonstrated achievement and competencies; designed or taught racist curricula and employed racially-motivated disciplinary practices in education; denied access to and mistreated BIPOC patients in healthcare; engaged in making racial or anti-Semitic slurs or derogatory remarks based on race; hold membership in a White Supremacy group, White nationalist group, or Whites-only clubs; designed and supported practices that suppress the voting rights of BIPOC; voted for elected officials with racist beliefs and behaviors; denied loans or credit to qualified BIPOC or created policies that make it difficult for BIPOC to climb the economic ladder or that limit BIPOC intergenerational wealth; determined that BIPOC are guilty of a crime and deserved to be punished solely because of their racial identity while assuming innocence or less culpability for Whites; or physically or psychologically harmed someone because of their race; or have attitudes that promote the superiority of one race over another, then guilt is an appropriate feeling and your conscience is working.

Unhealthy guilt is a function of self-esteem and lets you know that in that particular situation, you don’t have a way to feel good about yourself. If you experience unhealthy guilt as a result of race education, it’s a signal that you should do something to gain control of those feelings and engage in activities that will support you to feel better.

Learn more about your racial identity and its impact on your behavior and thinking. Read books, articles, watch films, join discussions that support learning about race and racial identity. Demonstrate cultural humility and apologize for unintended microagressions. Encourage and engage in honest and difficult conversations about race with those who do not share your racial identity. Engage in multiracial living by where you choose to live, who you buy services from, who you vote for, what you vote for, what organizations you support and promote, who you have in your circle of influence, who you receive information from, and who and what you choose to believe.

This Makes Me Feel Unsafe

Feeling unsafe stems from real or perceived fear that is externally or internally driven and deeply rooted in one’s personal experiences. Conservative political agendas have shrouded race education with negative emotional tags that attach to our thoughts and experiences stored in our memories. Treating racial differences as threats to be feared sets the stage for individuals to feel unsafe while learning about race and racial identity.

Take away the wrappings of threat and race education becomes no more fearful than learning math. Math can be challenging and hard and lead to feelings of incompetence, especially if you have little aptitude for it. However, this does not mean that we should ban math education. Security emerges even from learning basic math and greatly increases with tools like calculators and math apps. Race education needs to be approached with similar sensibilities to math education. It can be challenging and hard for a lot of people, but we have the competencies and tools to master at least the basics.

In race education, moderate risk taking and emotional resilience are the necessary tools for learning hard truths. Gentle bumping is required.

There are many individuals, including some Whites, who believe that race education should not be gentle. They believe that people need a decent emotional punch to reach profound insights about social privilege, dismantling systemic racism, and erasing the social loadings that perpetuate racism. In theory, this may be true for how some individuals need to learn race education (not unlike those who need a fire and brimstone Jesus to get their lives together). Pedagogically, this approach only sets off the automatic physiological reaction of fight or flight, with a lot of fighting by those with dogged adherence to White nationalism and a lot of fleeing for those with low racial stamina.

Gentle bumping occurs in learning environments where people know that others care about their well-being and respect their right to express their opinions even if they demonstrate ignorance, miseducation, or are contrary to popular thinking but are beliefs that do not fall in the category of falsehoods, conspiracy theories, or propaganda.

Gentle bumping is effective when there are shared facts, shared reality, and an openness to learning from all parties. Gentle bumping recognizes that when there isn’t capacity to be influenced or for any party to take in new or different information, it becomes necessary to move on with grace and in a civil manner. Doing so, supports self-care for all parties and can offer the opportunity to reflect and learn independently.

This Makes Me Feel Ashamed

Feelings of shame stem from a negative evaluation of oneself. Being ashamed of behaviors that are unethical or harmful to others is an appropriate emotion. Formal or informal race education that stirs up shame for someone who has engaged in past or current behaviors that were discriminatory can happen.

Consider Derek Black, former White supremacist, the son of Don Black, founder of the Stormfront racist online hate community, and godson of former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, whose interactions with a diverse group of friends radically changed the racist position firmly embedded in his upbringing. Derek told me in an interview, “I think I wrote in my original letter in 2013 denouncing White nationalism that I couldn’t get my head around chatting with an African American friend about their summer plans, but simultaneously advocating for an ideology that thought it would be better if they weren’t in the country.” Feeling ashamed about his behavior and thinking patterns led to new ways of knowing, healthier relationships, and a better quality of life for Derek.

Feeling ashamed about your behavior or thinking differs from feeling ashamed about your personhood. Identity-based shame results from feeling bad about who you are as a human being or about some immutable aspect of your humanity.

Identity-based shaming has no place in race education. Period.

From Discomfort to Learning

Racism is a toxic phenomenon that exists like a cancerous tumor in our environment. It affects the quality of all of our lives. It threatens our existence and erodes our capacity to develop and grow. Race education is the antidote.

If you experience discomfort when learning about race and racial identity, examine the source and distinguish it from other kinds of emotional distress that may or may not be tied to what you are learning. Challenge yourself to to stay with the emotion and discover its root cause. Gain the emotional resilience and racial stamina necessary to continue to grow and learn.

Yes, if you are White, there’s discomfort realizing that you share the same racial ancestry that historically created structures and systems of racial disparities that persist to current day. Despite your good intentions, you might even be complicit in perpetuating racial disparities. And yes, if you are BIPOC, there’s great discomfort as we struggle with the residual impact of America’s racist history, experience racial disparities, and battle this toxicity in our everyday lives; and, yes, some of us, may even be complicit in perpetuating racist practices and behaviors.

Yet, for all of us, learning through the discomfort is the only pathway toward that more perfect union. No discomfort, no progress.

#GettingToWe

Do We Need a Form of Couples Therapy to Achieve Racial Equity?

As a young psychologist facilitating couples therapy, I quickly learned that it was easy to become the enemy of one partner simply by agreeing with the other partner. This pattern would set up a dynamic of “therapist volleyball” where I was tossed as the enemy between one or the other partner in any given session based on which partner I appeared to be favoring with my response.

As a seasoned psychologist, I learned to ward off this volleying and cries of “you always agree with her or him,” by creating an imaginary fourth person in the room called Goal. In our initial session, I would work with the couple to clearly define the goal (repairing the relationship or amicably ending the relationship, or getting clarity on what direction was needed, are examples). Once the goal was determined, I assured them that if I appeared to favor one partner over the other, it was because what that partner was saying or doing was in service of the goal. I really wasn’t an enemy to either of them. I was just in agreement with Goal, the invisible fourth person in the room.

The Women’s Marches, #MeToo Movement, and “New Class of Badasses in Congress,” and the 2016 and 2020 voting patterns have exposed both the unifying and dividing factors between White women and Women of Color. It has further deepened the historical divide between White and Black women, the top and bottom of America’s hidden caste system, necessitating a kind of group couples therapy.

In our group identities as Black and White women we have to intentionally decide how to repair our relationship, or choose if we will just tolerate each others’ existence in a civil manner until the end of time.

Black and White women enjoy many wonderful cross-racial friendships that are characterized by trust. Yet, that trust remains on an interpersonal level and doesn’t necessarily get transferred to the group identity level, especially when it comes to Black women trusting White women. How interpersonal trust gets transferred to social group identity is a mix of many factors: confidence in institutional government, age, race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic factors, education, to name a few.

No matter what the presenting concerns are that bring a couple to therapy, trust becomes a key factor to explore. Similarly, in our group identities, enhancing social trust is a critical factor to lessening the historical divide between Black and White women. There are a number of reasons why social trust doesn’t exist between Black and White women and why relationship building is necessary to make significant progress toward racial equity. Because of that, social trust among Black and White women is worth exploring.

What is Social Trust?

In our project to enhance social trust among Black and White women, we’ve defined social trust as both an emotion and a choice. As an emotion, it is a feeling of benevolence, compassion, and caring for each other in our racial identity groups. As a choice, it is a belief that the other racial group is honest and fair and that they will show up for us and have our back in a consistent manner on issues that matter.

Black women report that a high level of trust they may hold with an individual White woman friend does not transfer to White women in general. White women, as a group, are not trusted by Black women. White women bosses rank as the least trustworthy.

White women report that their high levels of trust with a Black woman friend does better position them to collectively trust all Black women, but they do so with caution. This caution, in some cases, came after learning an embarrassing but enlightening lesson about white racial identity.

Reasons for Lack of Social Trust

A root cause analysis of social mistrust between Black and White women leads to many factors. Each factor is an essay (or book) on its own, but I will just list them here:

• Historical Baggage (slavery, Jim Crow)
• Current Day Racial Discrimination (wealth, health, voting rights, education, housing segregation, criminal justice system)
• Stereotypes and Controlling Images in the Media (Karens vs. Angry Black Women tropes)
• Disparate Racial Treatment of Gender Discrimination and Harassment by Men
• White identity that allows White women to choose racial privilege over gender solidarity
• Family Socialization Process, especially when socioeconomic class is considered
• Faith Traditions/ Religious Beliefs that promote systemic racism
• Competition Over Sex/Love Partners

As with many couples, especially those in a long-term relationship, one partner may be acutely aware that the relationship is falling apart while the other partner happily lives in the land of clueless. That is the case for the historical and present-day relationship between Black and White women. Especially over the past several years, Black women report that when it comes to importance of racial equity, they are the explainers, arbitrators, comforters, problem solvers, and solution implementers, while many White women are just responding to their wake up call, some do not even hear the phone ringing, and some have conveniently placed themselves no where near their phones.

Goal

Vanessa Whiting, who is Black, poignantly states in a Listening Circle that building social trust among Black and White women is important because “Women are the keepers of the culture and racism is in the culture, so we have to do something about it if we are going to eradicate racism.”

Anne McCollum, a host for another Listening Circle who is White, shares her triumph in losing the desired weight to get into her jeans that she is wearing. We chuckle as she outlines all the steps she took to lose the weight, and then she makes her point. “We have to approach achieving racial equity with the same intention and with the same effort as I did this week to get into my jeans.”

Our shared goal is to enhance social trust as a foundational aspect of an informed citizenry of Black and White women invested in racial equity. The collective work has different focal points for each racial group. For White women, it’s expanding gender solidarity and using racial privilege to achieve racial equity. For Black women, it’s expanding racial solidarity to include gender solidarity in the quest for racial equity.

It isn’t easy work, but the collective power of women will take us from mere advocacy for racial equity to transformative culture change.

My friends cross racial lines and so parties I host are often racially mixed gatherings. The tone of these parties are not radically different from same-race social activities. The usual topics come up — family, money, weight gain, politics, work, and what’s good on Netflix, all of these topics peppered with jokes — but I know the energy is different in racially mixed social settings, a bit guarded with a different flavor of expression. I’ve witnessed some Black friends become introverts in the presence of White people and act as if they’re at work rather than a party. I’ve witnessed some White friends struggle with words in the presence of Blacks trying to use all of their brain energy to overcome the social loadings of racism and bias and not be considered even remotely offensive. At times, the party reflects a high school cafeteria in a racially mixed school where students, no longer in forced classroom integration, socialize within their own racial groups at lunchtime. BIPOC guests in one room and White guests in another and me, as host, mingling among each group.

By definition, our social lives and leisure activities are not governed by equal opportunity laws as with corporations and school systems. In our leisure time, no one is mandated to make one’s social circles racially diverse. Yet, the spirit of post-reconstruction Jim Crow laws still exist in our leisure activities. In some public places of leisure — beaches, clubs, resorts, parks — there are unwritten racial boundaries employed by participants, and, as a result, these places are segregated. It is not the structure but our choosing that keeps these institutions segregated. As adults, we would rather only play with those who share our same racial identity.

In the last analysis, do we self-segregate because of free choice and because people simply enjoy doing things with folks racially and culturally similar to them? Or do our parallel leisure activities represent exclusionary practices resulting from covert racism and unconscious bias that lead people to feel excluded and that they do not belong in certain public places such as beaches, clubs, resorts, and parks?

The Town Beach in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard has been called the “Inkwell” since the late nineteenth century. The term, first used by Whites as a racial slur for the part of the beach frequently visited by Blacks, continues to be used by Blacks as a symbol of pride for the popular beach along the Atlantic seaboard.

The comedic video Funny or Die where a Black hiker, played by actor Blair Underwood, is stopped by a White couple while in one of America’s national parks, illustrates how many parks remain racially segregated. “Are you…are you lost? The White couple gently asks.

Separate but Equal Socializing

Perhaps our racially segregated leisure activities are simply a by-product of American’s hidden caste system described in Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

In the professional world, it is common and even acceptable for parallel organizations to exist. As a psychologist, I joined the American Psychological Association and the Association of Black Psychologists. Black physicians are members of American Medical Association, the largest association of physicians, and the National Medical Association, which promotes the collective interests of physicians and patients of African descent. There are race-specific organizations like these in almost every profession. Why is this so?

These organizations offer racial affinity group forums where racial identity can be fortified, where networks can be established, and where they can collectively forward an agenda of interest to their racial group. The fact that these parallel organizations continue to exist demonstrates that inclusive and representative practices are not fully present in the organizations where there is a large membership by the majority race. These organizations are still perceived to be White organizations.

Similarly, there appear to be leisure activities more associated with Whites and those associated with other racial groups. The data supports this phenomenon. Whites are more prevalent participants of hockey, downhill skiing, fly-fishing, travel, race car driving, visiting national parks, and in general, physical activities. Blacks are participants in sporting activities, like basketball and track, dancing and socializing in clubs, engaging in cooking activities like barbecuing and grilling, and attending church functions. Data shows Latinx people enjoy soccer, picnicking, cooking and large multigenerational family gatherings. The research on Asian North Americans’ leisure activities is limited with the two most studied groups being Chinese and Korean. Traditional Chinese leisure activities find involvement in a range of passive leisure activities including the tile-based strategy game mahjong, reading, walking, watching television, gardening, and sewing, to modern Chinese leisure activities that embrace physical activities. Korean North Americans generally identified with more passive activities as compared to other racial groups and prefer doing leisure in groups.

From my interviews with leisure researchers Monika Stodolska and Kimberly Shinew, I learned that there’s an overlap in the choices of leisure activity that we tend to do, but we tend to do them in parallel worlds. This made sense to me. I recall the group of Black women who remained after Sunday Mass at our Black Catholic parish to play the Chinese tile-based strategy game mahjong.

Many racially exclusive social groups exist across the United States. Not surprisingly as sociologists tell us “similarity breeds connection,” and personal networks are homogenous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and interpersonal characteristics. Race-based, invitation-only social groups have existed in the Black community for decades. As a member of two invitation-only Black women’s organizations, I know the power of these groups — personally in satisfying the basic human need of belonging, and professionally, in establishing networks for enrichment and advancement. Black social organizations have long histories dating back to 1927. All of these groups were born at a time of rigid segregation, overt racism, and racially encapsulated societies. In present day, the rationale for race-based membership for these organizations has only strengthened over the last several years. Black social groups, as with other People of Color social groups, provide psychological protection and self-defense, a sense of belonging and a sense of group identity not afforded within the larger society.

Empirically, it is hard to determine if racial groups are not engaging together in certain social activities due to free will or because they do not feel welcomed to participate. There are those who would argue that racial groups continue to self-segregate for leisure activities largely due to free will. They purport that increased efforts have been made to eradicate racism in recreational settings. If that is so, then it begs the question, if leisure is governed by free choice, should it matter if people self-segregate in parks, concerts, book groups, sporting events, clubs and other social activities?

I think it does.

I have been a chief diversity officer and diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant for practically all of my professional life. Because of this experience, I was very much convinced that our racial divide would heal through coming together in our work lives. In most organizations, we experience diverse populations and in these organizations working collectively to achieve a mission and forward business objectives reminds us of our common identity as humans.

I no longer believe that our work settings offer the best forums for achieving racial equity.

Until we change what we do outside of our work lives, we won’t move the mountains of racism. Systemic racism is deeply embedded in many organizational policies and practices, and employee bases are reflective of our racially confused, unevenly informed, and racially incompetent society. When people structures are composed of bosses, supervisors, administrators and co-workers with interdependent financial livelihoods, it is challenging to form egalitarian friendships across racial lines. Racial differences in the workplace are often treated as threats to be feared, and become a source of competition in the race for achieving the American dream. Organizational climates that are not culturally and racially competent only breed mistrust between racial groups.

The Cost for Same-Race Socializing as a Way of Life

Same-race socializing will remain the predominant way for how we spend our leisure time, providing us with a sense of belonging and an ease of expression characteristic of how one interacts in social settings. Melanie, a thirty-one year-old Black woman, states it this way: “When I want to go quick and deep, I go with my Black friends.” Going quick and deep with those friends who share our same race implies that friendships across racial lines take time and are a lot of work to establish and nurture. So true.

Even before contentious populist politics, a pandemic, and civil racial unrest, there’s been little appetite to forge friendships across racial lines and socialize in racially diverse settings. Over time, these feelings have only intensified.

Yet, if we don’t socialize across racial lines in egalitarian relationships, how will we gain the level of social trust necessary to create high-performing, inclusive organizations, and an economically stable, civil society characterized by an informed citizenry? If we socialize only with those who share our same race, how do we remove fear and develop a belief in the honesty, integrity, and reliability of others who are racially different from us? If we socialize only with those who share our same race, how do we learn empathy that pulls us out of the kind of ethnocentric and racially myopic thinking that leads to dehumanizing others?

If our socializing patterns are central to understanding culture, identity, postmodernism, and globalization, then socializing across racial lines is critical for understanding of our collective identity and what it takes to move us from separate and unequal to together and equal.

Socializing across racial lines for enjoyment and renewal holds the power to build the kind of trust necessary to advance racial equity and become better humans in this world that we share.

I am still a bit exasperated with Ellie McGinty. Ellie is a fictional character in The Daughters of Erietown, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Connie Schultz’s novel about four generations of women in a working class family set over several decades. Even though Ellie is a fictional character, she lives in the personalities of many White women I know.

Two different book clubs that I belong to choose The Daughters of Erietown for our monthly discussion. Both members in each book club found Ellie to be very relatable. They applauded her courage in working to define herself outside of the constraints of being trapped as a housewife in a complicated marriage. In their reading, my friends experienced Ellie as insightful, while I had turned pages frustrated by how weak and passive she seemed to be. Sometimes while reading the book, I even rolled my eyes and said out loud, “Girl, please!”

My fellow book club members, all White women in attendance, discussed Ellie’s identity development and the actions she took to align her behaviors with her authentic self. I had written in my notes that Ellie may have gotten a job and made plans to move but those were just external changes; she hadn’t really changed at all. I was frustrated with how Ellie handled just about every aspect of her life and my fellow book clubs members (and hundreds of other reviewers of the book, by the way) found her inspiring.

I listened to these book discussions and was clearly the outlier in how I experienced Ellie. Overall, one fact that we could agree on was that Schultz’s masterful writing style had made this character very real. Real for me meant that she was a stereotypic White woman.

What I’ve Learned About Trusting White Women

I grew up learning that it wasn’t wise to trust White women. They had a long history of using their passivity and victimhood against Blacks, particularly Black men. I was warned not to be friends with White women because sooner or later the race thing would get in the way and they wouldn’t have your back.

In the workplace, I had witnessed White women vocally espouse women’s rights, but then not speak up in a meeting when a microaggression was hurled at a Woman of Color. I also knew that White men understood White women better than Women of Color; after all, they shared the same race as their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. These personal relationships with White women in their everyday lives rendered White men more comfortable with mentoring and supporting White women more so than Women of Color, particularly Black women who were often perceived to be outspoken, angry, or aggressive. As a result, White women could curry favor with White men for salary information and other important tips for promotional opportunities and gaining positional power. Most often, this information was not shared with anyone, or only shared with trusted White women colleagues. Even in inclusive organizations, White women are reportedly experienced as not being supportive of Women of Color. Racial identity always seems to trump gender solidarity.

Until these positional differences are acknowledged, we will never be able to meaningfully connect with one another as Women of Color and White Women. We have been trying to meaningfully connect for centuries and somehow it is like we are still getting introduced to each other, or maybe we just want to remain acquaintances.

Especially today, White women and Women of Color need to meaningfully connect. In our divided society where preserving Whiteness is pitted against the loss of traditional values, a peaceful, prosperous lifestyle, and all things good and wonderful, White women can be tempted to focus only on our gender commonalities rather than our racial differences. However, the work is to find synergy in our commonalities and in our differences, otherwise the cement of racial and gender inequities will continue to harden. We need to be reintroduced to each other and move beyond acquaintances to trusted friends.

Over time, I have learned that you could trust those White women who understood that the best way for us to connect is by honoring the nuanced racial dynamics of how White Women and Women of Color are experienced and treated in the larger society. You could trust White women who acknowledged the impact of the long history of racial injustices and who recognized the inequity patterns that exist today in housing segregation, wealth creation, education, healthcare, voting rights, and in the criminal justice system.

In Conversation with Ellie McGinty

If Ellie were a real person, I would get to know her and blow past all the White women stereotypes that I hold. I would let her know what behaviors I thought dropped her into my “White women stereotype bucket,” and talk about the impact on my life from what was in that bucket. I would want her to experience me fully as a Black woman, and acknowledge the conscious and unconscious racial biases that she holds. I would ask her to tell me about how she perceives me as a Black woman. I would remain curious about what informed her perceptions.

In further conversations, we would explore the differences between how Whites and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) are treated. We would talk about how racism makes it easier for her family to survive as working class than for BIPOC working class families. We would talk about how racial bias enters the hiring process and how organizations tend to hire for cultural fit which makes it more challenging for BIPOC individuals who are not viewed as the organizational prototype. We would talk about the makeup of our neighborhoods and how they weren’t segregated simply because everyone liked to be with their own kind. We would talk about voter suppression as opposed to the myth of voter fraud and how White folks are reacting with fear to the changing demographics and a time when they will no longer be the majority race. We would share our experiences with access to healthcare and discuss the different treatment and outcomes we’ve received. We would talk about police brutality and how if affects Black men and women. We would talk about differences in prison sentencing for the same crimes for Blacks and Whites. We would talk about the education curricula and the differences in disciplinary practices for Black children.

Ellie would react to these inequities and disparities not with tears or sympathy, but would turn that emotional energy into racial stamina that would fuel her commitment as an antiracist. Ellie would use her racial privilege not as a power grab or as a one up over Women of Color, but she would leverage her privilege for mutual benefit. She would recognize and interrupt derogatory racial remarks especially when BIPOC individuals weren’t present. She would ask questions, check sources, read and learn about history in its full accuracy so that she could unravel assumptions about contemporary race issues.

Ellie would understand systemic racism and enter conversations about racism with courage and accountability. She might feel, at first, that there was little she could do to eliminate racial inequities, but over time she would understand the power of White influence and her capacity to affect other White people and sway negative opinions of BIPOC that were based solely on racial bias. She would use her White influence often enough that others would clearly know that she is antiracist.

Ellie and I would talk about skin color and hair and delight in the many shades and textures of beauty. We would talk about how we are not defined as women by any gender role boundaries. We would share the excitement of determining what success means in our lives. We would share the joy of laughing together. We would speak and act out of our core identity as humans and become better humans for each other.

We would have long conversations about our power as women. I would share with her that because of racism, Black women have had to dig deep within ourselves to find that power and how that has made us both fiercely independent and lovingly dependent on other Black women. We would share our stories as women of power and become even more powerful. As White women and Women of Color, we would tap into the power of our sisterhood and rule the world.

Moving Forward

Let’s keep the conversation going! Here’s a 20-minute video of a conversation on the intersectionality of race and gender that I had with my trusted friend and fellow psychologist, Lori Stevic-Rust. You can use this conversation starter with your friends or in your work settings. #GettingToWe

I have a lot of White friends. Obviously, they have always known that I am Black. The amount of melanin in my skin hasn’t changed. I haven’t changed in my expression of my Black culture. I still talk the same way, like the same kind of books, movies, plays, art, and enjoy the same kinds of leisure activities. I still care about the same things and react to social issues in the same way. I have always been and remain a strong advocate for racial equity. It’s been my life’s work as a psychologist and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging professional. I have always named and worked to eradicate racism in organizations and school systems. I have always called out and continue to call out religious institutions for their racism and their hypocrisy. They have known me to talk about the joys of being Black. They have heard me tell stories of Blacks as a people of deep racial consciousness and high race esteem rooted in agility, creativity, wonder and stamina. They have claimed me as their Black friend.

Yet, during this time of aggressive push for racial equity, most of my White friends are now just seeing and experiencing me as a Black person. Having witnessed a startling, violent 8 minutes and 46 seconds of video, they now see me and other Blacks as the recipients of systemic racism. They understand that the murder of George Floyd represents the weight of how Blacks in the United States have been treated for decades, and they struggle not to see themselves as participants in anything vicariously related to what Derek Chauvin did.

My White friends are now on an emotional roller coaster as they read Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste. They are making personal racial equity to-do lists and signing up for accountability partners after reading Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be An Antiracist. They take the Antiracist Style Indicator (ASI) and do a happy dance when they yield a functioning antiracist score and post it on their Facebook page with pride. They send me emails of screen shots of their functioning antiracist scores as if it they were winning million dollar lottery tickets. They apologize to me if their ASI results yield a score of a underfunctioning antiracist and share their plan for doing better.

They know, acknowledge, and make no excuses for the fact that Trump is racist and are genuinely horrified by his long history of racism. They know that race is strongly correlated with voting preferences and that the vast majority of Trump supporters are White. They are afraid of the disparate impact on me and other BIPOC if Trump is reelected and are actively working to prevent that from happening.

My White friends are apologizing to me for things they said, might have said, or could have possibly said that did, could have, or might have smacked of racism. They are doing mental rewinds of situations where they showed me support and writing mini memoirs sent to me in emails as proof that they really are and have been antiracist pre-George Floyd. Some of their stories I vividly remember, and some stories I do not recall at all. For example, someone told me she cried in my lap when we were in high school on the day Martin Luther King was shot. I take her word for it. As the only Black student in my class, that day was pretty much a blur for me. She obviously needs to hold on to that memory as a catalyst for being antiracist more than I have a need to refute it.

When I share with my White friends how frustrated and tired I am of White people, they understand and leave me alone. They’ve figured out that they are White and what Whiteness can represent to a Black person during these times. They try to be supportive. Most of the time they are being supportive, but sometimes they miss the mark and say things like, “Please don’t take responsibility for confronting the racism of the world!” They bounce back and practice emotional resilience when I correct them. I tell them that I am not taking responsibility, but that I am dealing with the impact of those who do not take responsibility for racism and those that should take responsibility. In some cases, they even understand that I am referring to them. They thank me and state that they have learned something and the round of apologies start again.

They want to learn, but don’t expect me to teach them. They’ve heard me say countless times that that I can’t do their racial identity resolution work. White friends who know me well and who practice healthy racial identity resolution have courageous conversations with me about race and aren’t afraid to disagree with me. After all, they have known me to be wrong at least a few times in our long friendship and they understand the complexity of racial dynamics and that there can be multiple realities. When I ignore racism or normalize it as “just the way things are,” they call it out. Those are the times when I know that I have more than just an ally. I have a true friend who is White, fighting to denormalize racism.

To my White friends who know me and who are stumbling along the path to achieve racial equity, who are in the ring fighting for racial justice even with one hand tied behind their back and one hand swinging, who go to bed angry over the state of race relations and depressed about any part they may have had in contributing to systemic racism, yet wake up every morning with a vision for a better future and the commitment to make that vision a reality, I share this quote from Richard Rohr:

“The work of solidarity is to close the distance these systems have put between us by joining and accepting others as fully human — in our struggles and gifts alike. This work requires a commitment to relational accompaniment. What is needed, according to Paulo Freire, is for us to ‘stop making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures, and risk an act of love.’”

Thank you for these acts of love.

Having White friends can be exhausting, here’s ten things Whites can do to gain racial stamina and forward more enlightened conversations

Mia is a savvy young black woman who startles me in her wisdom. Though she has many friends of many races, her overall assessment of whether or not her cross-racial friendships will change race relations is negative.

“I am my white friends’ one black friend, and it is not going to make a difference to advance race relations,” she tells me in one of my focus groups exploring race relations through the lens of friendship.

“They think Mia is safe, which is why I am their friend. They like to stay in their bubble and be safe.”

It was in that moment that I realized I have a long history of being a “safe” black friend to many of my white friends. I collude in their safety by not being emotionally honest in our conversations when something they’ve said holds a bit of racial sting. I’m their safe black friend when I let a racially insensitive remark fly because I’m wondering if I’m the one who is being too sensitive.

Or if I’m concerned that I will be experienced as an angry Black woman, I’ll wait to point out that a White co-worker was quick to name something a Black staff person did as incompetence while naming that same behavior a “growth opportunity” for his White counterpart. It takes a little time for me to shape my anger into a teachable moment, and in the meantime, they’ve moved on. I’ve let these kinds of comments go so often that now, for sure, I am that angry Black woman. They, on the other hand, probably don’t even remember what they said.

I’ll hold my tongue and give my White friends the benefit of the doubt because something they’ve said or done was born out of all the social loadings for “othering” Blacks. These negative social loadings are known as unconscious bias and are a by-product of how the brain works. Such reframing of racist thinking and behavior to “unconscious bias” makes it even easier for whites not to be accountable for their actions. As a psychologist, I understand this process. So, I end up taking long, deep sighs trying to figure out how to make the unconscious, conscious to them, especially in a manner that will inspire and educate rather than offend.

In an effort to find common ground that leads to shared understanding, I’m their safe Black friend when I agree on one minor aspect of their assessment of a racially charged incident and tone down a forceful voice of disagreement on the many major aspects. In doing so, I protect their encapsulated worldview and avoid having to deal with their defensiveness.

Or sometimes my White friends say something simply ignorant about our not-so-shared American history. I remain their safe Black friend when I don’t deal with their ignorance because there just isn’t enough time during that hallway conversation after the meeting. Or because we are at a social gathering where I am the only Black person in our group, and I wonder if it is worth shifting the topic from the upbeat conversation about Netflix bingeing favorites to correcting their version of American history; by doing so, I will unwittingly turn a party into a classroom course to which they did not enroll and to which they would never dream of enrolling. Once again, I choose to be the safe Black friend.

Having White friends can be exhausting. It takes a lot of effort to monitor oneself and not do their racial identity work while still maintaining one’s racial integrity and authenticity. My friendship with Whites is a complicated dance, and we have memorized the moves in order not to step on each other’s toes. My friendship with Whites is not unique: there are many such friendships on the dance floor doing the same awkward dance. The dance steps have been carefully choreographed by Whites, unconsciously and sometimes consciously, so that they always take the lead.

Making and maintaining friendships is enough work without adding racial differences into the mix. When friendships are complicated by differences in how one views and experiences the world, or when one’s race evokes or solicits different reactions from the environment, it interrupts the natural flow we expect from a friendship. As a result, many Blacks, consciously or unconsciously, in these friendships choose not to make the effort to be fully authentic and become “safe friends.” This safety facilitates a more comfortable interaction and what researchers have termed the “façade of liking.”

Most Whites do not have cross-racial friendships, and as a result, remain racially encapsulated in their worldviews and inexperienced in managing racial dynamics. As a result, they lack the language, emotional resilience, group-dynamic skills, historical context, fortitude, and the thick skin that characterizes racial stamina and one’s ability to successfully navigate a multiracial society.

A young Black male in a focus group tells me that he is the first Black friend of many of his White college friends. He says that when he goes to their weddings, he never has to be introduced. People come up to him and say, “You must be Victor!”

“How did you know that?” he jokingly responds.

When comedian and SNL co-host of Weekend Update, Michael Che called Boston “the most racist city,” Bostonians fired back on social media. Che responded to one angry White woman: “Talk to your closest Black friend and ask them to explain it to you.” To which she responded: “Touché.”

Given this moment in history and its aggressive and necessary push for racial equity, whites should no longer rely on their safe Black friends to bear the heavy psychological lifting it takes to have more enlightened, forward-moving conversations about race. Personally I, like many of my Black friends, have released our commitment to White friend comfort and expect and demand that they demonstrate the kind of racial stamina that is critical for achieving racial equity.

So, here’s a loving message to Whites from one recovering safe Black friend:

1. Commit to continual examination of expressions of racial privilege in your own life. Use that privilege as a life skill for gaining the competencies necessary to demonstrate multiracial living patterns by where you choose to live, who you buy services from, how you vote, what organizations you support and promote, who you have within your circle of influence, who you receive your information from, and who and what you choose to believe.

2. Engage in systems thinking. Understand your group-membership identity. Go around for one day thinking about yourself as a White person. Understand that just the fact the you need to heighten your awareness about whiteness is significant.

3. When you feel yourself getting defensive in conversations about race, take a deep breath and count to ten. Own your reality of America, while at the same time find room in your thinking to acknowledge and accept a different reality. Know that America’s democracy is characterized by a duality around race that has existed since its founding. America is both racist in its practice and postracial only in its aspirations. Live in the reality of a racist America and do your part to achieve liberty and justice for all.

4. Release the need to be right. Support and encourage dialogues that hold multiple realities.

5. Challenge your assumptions. Do not believe everything that you were taught. Just because it was written in a textbook doesn’t mean it is true. Re-educate yourself about our nation’s history.

6. Stop whining. You may not personally experience racial privilege afforded to you because of individual traits, but simply by being White you have historically been afforded opportunities and treated more fairly than other racial groups.

7. Create spaces of psychological safety at home and work where race can be discussed without fear of shaming and blaming. Present yourself as a learner who is not afraid to be vulnerable about what you don’t know. Be honest about any racist thinking or behaviors in which you have engaged.

8. Do not rely on your good intentions to lessen a negative impact. Acknowledge that someone could have experienced something negatively, based on experience and history, regardless of your intention. Own that you might have contributed to that impact, despite your good intentions.

9. Become racially facile and emotionally resilient. Stay engaged during racial clashes. Do not be afraid to bring up a racial topic again and again until you are familiar with the script of multiracial living.

10. Embrace Whiteness. You are who you are, and you will wake up White every day. Being White is not synonymous with being an oppressor or racist. Learn to understand, develop and foster a positive White identity that fully and completely acts out of one’s core as a human being who engages in multiracial living, understands the universal nature of joy and sorrow, uses one’s intellectual faculties to stimulate curiosity, practices appreciation, and who uses social privilege for mutual benefit and advancement and not as a power grab.