Monday's Opening Thought: November 29, 2021 — The Official Website of Pharoah Bolding

This week’s opening thought: In my work, I regularly encounter white people and people of color with adjacency to white privilege and power. They share with me that they are distraught, upset, sometimes even shocked by the machinations of racism and white supremacy. We inevitably talk about accountability during these conversations, of white people and people with privilege being actively engaged and doing their individual and collective work to evolve and unlearn. I bring up how we all have to call in and call out racism, white supremacy, and oppression in every space, system, and institution we find ourselves in. At this point in the conversation, like clockwork, many white people and people of color with privilege utter the line that often signals we’ve hit their discomfort threshold:

“We have got to do better.”

Um. OK?

I only have one response for that statement to people who go there with me: what does “better” mean? Better yet, what does “better” mean to you? Because often, this sentence is thrown out there for camaraderie, not action or accountability, and not self-accountability or self-action. It’s the kind of statement that allows someone to feel like a decent, caring person, to show a semblance of care and concern without taking tangible steps actually to be better. That is the danger of hollow statements: They sound nice, but they contribute to nothing but the good/bad binary of the person saying them.

Sure, we need to do better. Of course, we do. On multiple fronts. The question is, what are YOU going to do to “do better”? What is your responsibility to yourself, your friends and family, the children in your life, the community you live in? How are you going to take accountability for your actions and unlearn a lifetime of white supremacist ideology? Where are you going to start with your self-work? When are you going to start your self-work?

“Do better” sounds nice. It’s a sentiment with which we can all agree. Being better, though? Being better in a concerted way that supports marginalized communities? That supports Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities? That supports AAPI communities? That forces systems to evolve and change and calls in and calls out people for their harmful words and actions? That’s putting YOUR words into action.

Live a life of action verbs.