Make It Right: In Depth
- Things White People Should Never Say
- Share

Photo by Lolostock/Shutterstock.
Things White People Should Never Say
Letās start with āIām not racist., but ..."
I am white, and the woman Iām meeting is black. I have lived in Austin, Texas, for more than two decades, and she recently moved here. We bumped into each other at an event and learned we have similar political interests. I invited her to coffee to talk about local organizing, and after introductions the first thing I say is, āDonāt worry, Iām not going to ask you to join a nonprofit board.ā
Thankfully, she laughs at my attempt at white self-deprecation. Non-white people in progressive politics are used to being asked to join boards or speak at events to diversify an otherwise all-white group. Such invitations often come too early, before people have worked together long enough to know if the invitation makes sense. Sometimes, as my joke suggested, the invitation comes right after the coffee is poured.
How do I know about this problem? Because Iāve been part of it. In my first organizing efforts in the anti-war movement in the 1990s, I sometimes found myself in meetings with other white people, looking around the room and saying, āThere are no people of color here. Where can we find some?ā But if cross-racial alliances donāt already exist, last-minute efforts to find a non-white speaker for the rally or a non-white committee member are not only transparent tokenism but corrosive to creating meaningful connections.
So, my first rule for myself as a white person is: Avoid tokenism. No matter what the issue, think about the question of racial justice at the start of a project, not when itās too late to create a real coalition.
Hereās my second rule. Listen up homies. Donāt sprinkle āstreetā terms picked up from movies or songs into conversations in an attempt to sound hip.
OK, enough rules. There are lots of guidelines for white people that cover everything from complex tasks in building cross-racial solidarity to simple reminders about avoiding racialized rudeness. For instance:
āTwelve Ways to Be a White Ally to Black Peopleā in The Root, āGuidelines for Being Strong White Alliesā on author Paul Kivelās website, āCode of Ethics for Antiracist White Alliesā on author JLove Calderónās website, and ā11 Rules for New Anti-Racist Alliesā at Forward Progressives.
Such guides can be helpful, but Iām skeptical of checklists, fearing that having rules to follow can replace the endless struggle to be strategic while remaining a decent person.
So, rather than a list, I want to offer two phrases that white people should never utter.
The first: āIām not racist, but ā¦ā Whatever follows is almost guaranteed to be racist; if a statement isnāt, thereās no need to announce its non-racism. If you hear yourself forming that phrase, shut up and think about what you intended to say and why.
The second: āI know Iām a racist, and ā¦ā This is a different evasion, a more subtle attempt at inoculation. Yes, itās true enough that virtually all white people are socialized into some kind of white-supremacist thinking (myself included) and that the struggle to unlearn those lessons is not simple and never completed (again, personal experience here). And all white people, even those who might legitimately claim to have purged all that racist training, still retain the advantages that come with being white.
But invoking the āI know Iām a racistā trope is dangerous. Instead of suggesting you have transcended white supremacy, you confess immersion in it, as if the confession is evidence of clarity and therefore whatever comes next is beyond challenge, given your heightened level of white self-awareness. But the āconfessionā is disingenuous; if we cannot distinguish between progressive white people working to achieve racial justice and members of the Klanāif all white people truly are āracistāāthen the word has no meaning. Itās dishonest for progressive white people to claim to be beyond racism, but itās counterproductive to pretend that none of us have made meaningful progress.
As long as Iām focused on words to avoid, let me nominate two more phrases: āwhite allyā and ādoing the work.ā
If one is white, being an ally to non-white people in a white-supremacist society is a good thing. But āwhite allyā too often becomes a merit badge to mark that one is on the right side. No matter how much we remain critically self-reflective, merit badges tend to lead us to think of ourselves as superior to those without the badge. That leads, understandably, to people of color being wary of self-proclaimed white allies.
āDoing the workā feels plain self-righteous to me. What exactly is the work that needs constant marking? Often the most effective white people in a community organization simply model anti-racist behavior without trumpeting it. Iāve seen the phrase misused enough that I shy away from it
Checklists can remind us of important rules. But the main rule is to cultivate the instinct for critical self-reflectionāwhich we too often suppress because it can be painfulāso that we believe in ourselves enough to be honest with others. Instead of striving to be white allies doing the work, we can do our best to avoid the many traps white supremacy lays for us and struggle to be fully human. We white folks cannot expect others to treat us as if we are fully human until we believe it about ourselves.