Managing Interracial Friendships in a Time of Racial Unrest

Hey Danielle, I just wanted to share my thoughts about your post and interracial friendships. I've tried and what I found is that they usually don't get it. Don't want to get it. Don't care to get it or won't do anything about it. And it really being the overt and covert acts of racism faced in my everyday life and those of my family members and those of my children and those of my friends, it feels like a constant balance of being able to speak to my experience, my daily experience and or while also having to manage their white guilt, that's not what I feel is really my responsibility to manage. So I've been open to trying to have interracial friendships but I found that it just doesn't work out in the end because when things like what's happening with George Floyd happening happen, I don't find a true allyship in not only being able to voice how I feel in my experience but then them also holding their allies, their friends accountable for what's happening as well. So that's just my two cents and being able to answer your question. I hope that your listeners are able to really hear what I'm saying and I appreciate you having this as a way to be able to express how I feel. Okay. I struggled. I struggled with how to not only approach the subject but even how to start the episode. I thought maybe I'll play an audio clip from a Chris Rock stand up to light in the mood. I thought should I open with the Bible verse to show God's perspective on everything but ah what if it isolates the non-Christian listeners? I thought perhaps a personal anecdote will make it relatable and help everybody to settle in but as a coach I work really hard to remove myself from the podcast so that I can provide an objective and safe space and none of those things seem to work. None of the openings felt right. So I'll just say this. Today we're talking about race at the intersection of friendship. I am not an expert in race relations and I am not addressing things like microaggression and adultification and allyship and benevolent racism and privilege although I really want to. Today's episode is for those of us who so desperately want to understand how in the world we're supposed to navigate cross cultural friendships during a time of such racial unrest. The conversation is worth having. Why? Because on a larger scale we need each other so we can be the beginning of global racial reconciliation. Data shows that the more friends you have from a particular group the more it affects your understanding of and attitude toward that group. And that's great news right? But if I have friends from different groups yet refuse to have the conversations about the very things that make us different then do I reap the benefits of a diverse network? Have I limited my understanding of the world? Am I putting my friends in a box by only asking them to share certain parts of themselves with me? Am I contributing to an even bigger problem? It's really this simple. A friend should be able to bring her full self to the table. Don't think about race for just a moment. Just who she is as a person, her favorite music, her role as a mother, her fluctuating availability as an entrepreneur, she should not feel compelled to withhold certain parts of herself to keep her friends comfortable. And race is a lens through which we see and experience our world and to expect it to not be a conversation within an interracial friendship would be foolish. In fact I dare you to Google can why am black women be friends after this episode? I know. It's a thing. I searched it. There is actually so much new emerging research about how our world views might impact our ability to maintain meaningful cross-racial friendships. Also history is real y'all. When we have white friends who we learn later secretly voted for people whose policies we interpret as perpetuating racism, it's hard to have trust. And for white women, if we perceive that our black friends can't get past our skin color or will always associate us with other white people and racism itself, it's hard to have a conversation. But for those of you who believe it is possible, for those who believe like me that a good starting point to global healing is important conversations within our friendships, this episode is for you. So today I'm going to offer up just a few considerations, things to keep in mind as you determine what to do, how to move in your friendships, how to talk to each other, and how to better understand each other. Because there is no blueprint, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go for it. So let's do it. You're tuned in to give it a rest, the podcast, where we're giving tough love truths for the sisterhood. I'm your host Danielle Byer Jackson, certified friendship expert and author of the book Give it a Rest, the Case for Tough Love Friendships. And when it comes to misunderstandings and complications within our female friendships, I am here to help you through it. But I just want to say as a white woman, I have been re-evaluating my friendships with women of color, some of my interracial friendships during this time of racial unrest. And it's come down to the fact of I've been doing a little bit of soul searching and looking back towards my childhood and realizing that when I was a kid, this is a turn that's used negatively nowadays, I truly did not see color. And what I mean by that is, I didn't care what girls playing with me on the playground as long as we were having a good time, it didn't matter to me. And that was of my own ignorance. Growing up in the South with a very racially biased family, I will not lie. I had to unlearn behaviors that were taught to me. And I also had to learn about systemic racism, which I didn't fully realize until at least my little later years of high school into college and I'm still learning about to this day, just what it's like to be a woman of color in America. I will never fully be able to understand. But as I have developed friendships with black women, Hispanic women, other minority women in this country, I have come to learn the struggles of what it is like to go through day-to-day life and live it completely differently than I do. There are things that I know and I have to admit, things that I have done as a white woman that would have gotten me potentially killed if I were of a different skin color, which blows my mind and I don't even know where to begin that conversation with some of my friends. The reason why this is such a tough subject as a whole is because it's so tempting to spiral. It's got so many legs and it moves so quickly, it's elusive and slippery and before you know it, you're talking about something that you did not sign up for in the beginning. So I can't stress enough that we are only examining this from the intersection of race and friendship. So what I want to do is start by addressing what makes friendships so good, so beautiful, so healing because it's actually those three components that are at play when we find ourselves discouraged by the challenges that come along with interracial friendship. So there's a researcher by the name of Suzanne DeG's White and she has worked that centers around women's relationships and their developmental transitions. So she's created a framework called the 13 traits of friendships and let me say there's a lot of researchers who have created several frameworks to identify the main components of friendship, but we're going to look at this one for the purposes of today, okay? So she takes those 13 traits and breaks them up into three main chunks. I want to outline each of them and then we're going to talk about how they apply to interracial friendship specifically. So this means I am going to pause and I'm going to call out white listeners and I'm going to call out brown listeners. I'm going to do that by prompting you with questions, not necessarily telling you what to do, what to think or what to say, but I'm throwing these questions at you for you to sit with and chew on as you begin to determine what are some right moves for you moving forward in your interracial friendships, got it? Okay? So the first chunk of friendship trait have to do with trustworthiness and that sounds obvious, right? Okay? So remove race for a second. You know that trustworthiness includes things like being honest, dependable, loyal, all those things that we would all collectively agree on on any other day. Trustworthiness. So how does it apply to this conversation? Let me start with my white listeners. Can your brown friend trust that you have her back when she shares her feelings during a tense time of racial unrest? Can your brown friend trust you to try to understand without judgment? This is not just when you're having conversations with her, but it also includes when she's not around, right? So remember, think about it in any other context. If you were hanging out with a group of people and your friend's charrice isn't around, yet somebody says something negative about her or her family. As a friend, you know it's your duty to stand up for her. That's a no-brainer. You know that. You support that idea. But what about when that group says something about her race? Can she trust that you will stand up for her when she is not around? That's where race becomes an issue in interracial friendships because it really goes back to general trust in friendship. So let's just try to simplify some components of it for just a moment. Can she trust that she can be vulnerable with you concerning her very real fears for herself, for her children, for her job? Can she share that with you without hearing a defensive response? Without being slapped with a dismissive response, however unintentional, if she can't trust you with these things, something might be missing flawed or lacking on your end. Now for my women of color, and let me digress for a second, okay, when I'm talking about black women specifically, I'm going to say black women. And when I'm talking about women of color as a whole, I'm going to say women of color. And just for those of us who don't know, because we're all getting woke at our own pace, okay, everybody's awakening at their own pace and learning new things and that's how it should be, okay. But women of color is not a synonymous phrase with black women. They're two different groups with different and unique challenges and that's beautiful and each one needs its attention at certain times, okay. So right now I'm talking generally to women of color. When your white friend trusts that you won't look at her and see all white people and instead just see her for her, can she trust that you won't judge her either for her lack of understanding or judge her desire to understand and advocate? Can your white friends trust that they can ask you questions without feeling like they're going to be attacked or dismissed? Now I know what just happened there, some of you listened and thought, "Oh, I am not trying to be her educator all the time. I'm not, I know. I'm, remember I'm stripping everything back to a human to human or into friend relationship basis." As a friend, can she trust you as her girl that she can pose questions and it will be met with patients? I know we're tired of being educators, it is not the job of the oppressed to educate the oppressors. And with Google, only a few strokes away, the questions give us a new kind of labor. They task us with having to solve the very problems that have been erected against us. But she is asking, she is curious. She is taking the risk of being insulted or dismissed or feeling stupid and asking anyway, asking the steps we want white people to take toward helping us dismantle racism, find a kind way to direct her to other resources or help her how you can. Friendships demand that we create a space for vulnerability and that means showing patients and showing grace when she's conflicted about speaking up or doesn't understand the magnitude of the issue. It means showing patients when she asks us questions. Now a caveat here to my right friend, black people are not here to teach you and that's where we get a little tired of even the most well-meaning questions. Can I just speak my truth for a second? Which may be different from other black women who are listening. Remember, we are a range of people with different experiences. So even though on most of these episodes, or actually all of these episodes, I tend to isolate my personal experiences because I try to be objective and just stay to the facts and present research, I'm going to share it because it's very relevant here. Okay. If you're wondering, well, gosh, I'm just trying to ask my friend questions and ask her to help me. Here's why sometimes women of color feel exhausted by that. Every single decision, response, behavior that I used to make was managed by a certain duality. There's what I want to do and there's what I feel like I have to do just to go along and to get along. It is a constant cost-benefit analysis. When I was in corporate America, let me just do a day in the life for you, okay? I know for a lot of women of color, you're going to give it amen and for a lot of white women, it might be the first time you're hearing it. So if you haven't had these conversations with women of color, can I just kind of insert myself here for a second perhaps and be a woman of color who's your friend who's sharing her experience to give us practice with listening and empathizing, okay? When I was in corporate America, a day in the life looked like this. When I wake up, I would think, hmm, do I wear my hoop earrings or my pearls? Well, hoops might be a little too ethnic, make people think I'm a certain way when I move my neck. So they won't listen to what I'm actually saying because they'll write me off as too different. So let me just be safe and wear pearls. They're classy and generally acceptable. Then I drive to work and when I get out of my car and walk up to the building, I'm mentally prepared to smile more and to be more pleasant than I should have to be because when some people see me, I know I'm going against all of their biases and stereotypes. So I'm trying to confront this by showing them I am not who they assume I am. Perhaps if I deposit enough giggles throughout the day, then when I'm genuinely upset about something, I can make a withdrawal so they don't see me as having an attitude. Later that day, someone asked me about my hair, reaching up to rub my braids between her fingers. I have to take breaths to collect myself instead of just responding how I naturally want to. Again, suppressing my real feelings, I have to think through what I say because I don't want to sound nasty or defensive. I don't want them to think I'm sensitive. So I tolerate it and politely show that I'm uncomfortable. Then when lunchtime arrives, I go into the break room and over here somebody say they don't like "get on music" whatever that means. And then they assure me that, "Oh, I love Beyonce though." After that day, I find myself getting hungry for a snack and really want some delicious watermelon. But then I think about all the races tropes and jokes about black people eating watermelon. So I choose to go with grapes instead. And then I secretly hate myself for the rest of the day for not just eating watermelon like I wanted to. Later in our afternoon meeting, when I am the one out of everybody else who is present, I want to go make copies of the agenda, I am asked by the boss to take notes, I am asked to place the order for tomorrow's conference lunch for the partners, and I have to stifle my resistance because I don't want to be seen as not being a team player. Later when I call my friend during a break and ask her about her day, she tells me casually that her young son was running around in Target and accidentally knocked over a bunch of clothing wrecks and employee came over and helped her pick them up and they just laughed and laughed about energetic kids. But I am unable to laugh with her because I know that my son would not be able to do that. We would not laugh and laugh. He would be seen as too wild. I would be seen as negligent. When I drive home from work, I stop to get my nails done. The Vietnamese nail tech compliments my wedding ring and then ask me if my husband is black. I say, "He is black and white." And she says, "Oh, well then your kids must be beautiful." But would they be less beautiful if my husband was 100% black? Also, what if my half-white husband was hideous? You'd assume my kids are attractive just because he is not black? I mean, think on my husband's not hideous, but you know what I mean. After getting my nails done, I go to hang out with one of the mini book clubs that I'm a part of. Although I've led a book club for women of color for four years, this week's meeting is with a group that's predominantly white. After a few glasses of wine, one of the women, a blonde woman with blue eyes, tells me that yes, blacks have it bad, but she gets discriminated against too because she wasn't admitted into a club once. While I definitely set her straight and several of the other women helped to explain that the two don't compare, I still left feeling overwhelmed. For many brown women, this is a normal day. Be a friend and listen to understand. So in summary for the first point, trust is the single most ingredient in any friendship. When you express yourself and trust the other person to listen without judgment on both sides, can you listen without criticizing every point, combating every argument and just listen to her heart? I know that sounds life coachy, but seriously, woman to woman, can you be uncomfortable with each other as you navigate these strange and trying times? For many women of color, if we don't see our white friends make efforts of being an ally, speaking up, asking questions, showing tenderness, advocating, admitting when they don't understand, then we feel like we can't trust you. Instantly, the nights that we shared at the club, the prayers that we prayed together, the battles of why we drained together, they vanish. It becomes like waking up the morning after and rolling over to see who you're lying next to. I am not saying I've ever had that experience. I'm keeping it real. I don't have my Christian friends. I know this is where you like clutch your pearls. But it's a similar feeling of where am I? Who is this person? I've just woken up and I'm seeing them for their true selves. That's what a lot of women of color experience when they are friends with white women. Then something is said or done. It almost has this erasure effect where you realize, oh, she's not who I thought. Broken trust is relative. And if it's in response to something that we didn't mean to even be a major thing. But that is why it's important. We clear on communicating our definitions of trust, what is breaking trust to us, what our expectations are, what support looks like for us. You've heard it before. Talking about, you know, and marriage and in friendship, it's about communicating our expectations, communicating what hurts us. Trust is the most important factor in friendship. The second most important factor in friendship is caring. That includes compassion, empathy, listening. For my women of color, do you have empathy when you're white friend, you're girl, you're right or die, tells you that sometimes she doesn't want to talk about race because it's not comfortable or it's not positive or it's not productive. Trust me. I know how enraging and dismissive that is. I know that it only perpetuates the issues that we have with race in this country. But as her friend, are you able to pause and ask more prompting questions? Are you willing to understand why she feels that way? Are you able to demonstrate caring for someone who just told you they feel overwhelmed and hopeless and don't know what to do? And that sometimes denial or opting out is their way of dealing with it. But she came to me a couple of weeks ago crying because she felt like she was so excluded, you know, almost like people like didn't really treat her that well with respect. And even though nobody's ever been explicitly racist with her, it's almost as if people subconsciously exclude her. She came to me crying after this conversation saying, "This year the only other person I've told this to, she's trusting that I won't go and talk to other people about it, but I'm like carrying this with me and I feel like I need to do something about it, but I don't know how to best support her. I don't know, besides listening, I don't know what other steps of action that I can take." And for our white friends who are trying so very hard to be woke, which I appreciate, a lot of them are trying out their voices for the first time. They're waking up, they're speaking out, and while we sometimes want to say it's too late or what took you so long, are we asking questions about the resistance they might be experiencing in their own circles, the risk that they are taking. And again, I see my black friends face as like, "Girl, I don't care if she's uncomfortable, when we've been uncomfortable, that's all damn time." I know. But listen to me, just listen. On a friend level, human to human, we do not have tolerance for racism. And in my heart, I really believe that one of the ways we are going to burn down the entire mother-affing system is to start by building bridges of empathy and understanding on both sides, starting with our friends, the people we love. And then encouraging them, inspiring them to go and talk to those in their families and support networks who are intolerant. Let's send them into infiltrate y'all. But recognize her. Have compassion for her. Have empathy for her fear of even having the conversation. Have empathy for her discomfort. Now, white people, are you still with me? This does not mean when your black and brown friends are expressing their pain, you say things like, "I mean, what about me?" Or, "I get discriminated against too." Or, "The same way you fear for your son is how I fear for my daughter in rape culture. We're all scared for our kids. Please don't do that. Please don't do that." Is it? Listen. Ask questions. It's okay that her pain is uniquely different from yours. Now is not the time to try to bond over similarities and say, "Oh, me too. Me too." Because it detracts from her unique experience and her need for your support right now without comparison. When you respond to her pain by stacking it against some of your own, it's not only an incredible insult. It's a part of a larger system that minimizes the very unique and centuries old struggle black people have had with being heard, respected, and seen in this country. White people, when your Asian friend tells you about how people have recently been looking at her sideways when she walks by them with the mask, suspicious that she's automatically carrying coronavirus because she's Asian, you listen. You ask questions, none of which should challenge her experience. If she says it happened, it happened. If not, then she's a liar. And why are you friends with her in the first place? So you tell her you're sorry that that stuff is still happening and that people are ignorant. If she is to sit in the pain and live it every day, suppressing her rage or choosing to ignore it, then you can sit and be uncomfortable with her for a little bit. Why? Because that is what friends do. If you are fine talking about the pain of a breakup or job loss, you wouldn't dare say, this makes me uncomfortable, I can't listen to it. You wouldn't dare say, I'm sorry, I just can't relate. You wouldn't think to say, are you sure it's not just in your head? You would be a friend, you would listen. And then you would make sure you smack down any rhetoric in your all white friend circles when someone says something, even a lighthearted joke that perpetuates the very thing your friend experienced in that store because it traces back to you and your complicity. Yes, you heard me right. So a few years ago when I first became a manager, I had an associate who told me that this customer had just called her the N word and could I please take over the call? And my face got flush and I didn't exactly have the right words planned out what I was going to say to this person, but I knew that I was going to stick up for her and get rid of this person, tell them they had to take their business elsewhere that we were not welcome willing to serve them if they treated my associates like that. And there was no second chances. And she was so extraordinarily grateful for that. And she acted like it was a bonus that I had did that. And of course, every time that I told that story, I became the hero in the story. And now after much reading later, a lot more events happening in the world growing up and maturing, I just think to myself, like, how gross is it that I could paint myself as the hero in the story. And not once would one person point out, like, yeah, shouldn't that be the basic reaction that people would assume would happen? Like you shouldn't have to be a good guy to stop racism and its tracks. You should be a decent human being. And that should absolutely be expected. And it's just sort of sad to think now. How many times white people have the privilege of just staying silent, knowing that they're never going to suffer the consequences of staying silent? To anybody of any race who's not addressing injustice, racist jokes, your silence traces back directly to the experiences that people of color are having in this country. When you have a Hispanic friend that tells you about how Trump's language and policies make her feel, you may not respond with defensiveness. If you do, can I please ask not rhetorically why you're defensive? We tend to respond that way when things cut us personally. Is it possible that people in your family, your father, they voted for Trump? So when somebody denounces him, you feel the need to defend your friends and family. Is it something else? Why can't we just settle in and listen? Why can't we choke back our urge to respond with? Well I understand, but he's done a lot of good stuff too. Do you show empathy? Which means you recognize how someone is feeling. Can they communicate intimate thoughts to you and can you do the same? If not, do you see how that's just being a bad friend? And yes, it contributes to systemic racism. I'm calling it what it is. But right now I'm talking only about friendship because that's all I'm qualified to do. And I believe in staying in my lane. The third and final component of any healthy friendship is this, traits of congeniality. That means joy, humor, fun, positivity in our friendships. Every friendship needs this to survive. That's obvious, right? Think about it. Those friends who are complaining all the time are just too negative. They might be your girls. You might like have a history together, but if we're being honest, they're not necessarily at your favorite people to be around. They accept the joy out of everything. You have to enjoy each other's companies to be friends. That's basic. So for my brown friends, when it comes to congeniality in our interracial friendships, it's a matter of timing, especially in times of racial unrest. So for my brown friends, it's hard to think about joy, enlighten us in times like these. If white friends are calling you with a funny account of something that happened that day, open your mind to the possibilities of their intentions. Are they trying to lighten the mood? Is there an attempt to reclaim some normal scene your friendship and a time when they know you must be hurting? Now I know it feels insensitive. Hell it, it is insensitive. If it's an extension of their denial of the very dire situation that we're in. But measure it against what you know of her history and your friendship. I'd also like to ask you to consider ways that you can still find joyful moments in these friendships considering the climate. But I do understand if you do not feel like joking because of the trauma that is surrounding you, it is okay to communicate why you can't engage. Honestly, it's okay to not communicate that right now at all until you process and you are ready. Why? Because remember it all circles back to the basics of friendship. And the first element we talked about which was trust. There should be a safe and nothing environment that you can communicate that you have boundaries and your friendship should still withstand it anyway. To my white friends, I know that sometimes you may want to talk to your brown friend about things other than racial injustice. And if it's during a time when churches are being shot up and videos are circulating about a black man being executed, so she literally has to see it every time she scrolls on social media, then at best your outreach is toned off at worst it is a slap in the face. Remember it helps to put things in another context so that we can grasp it without defensiveness. If your friend was going through a breakup experiencing domestic violence, being sexually harassed at work or experiencing a death in the family, hopefully you would not be inconvenienced about the time it was taking her to grieve it. All of these things are very unlike systemic racism, but the same concept of reading the room applies. The same concept of sitting with somebody in their pain is exactly the same. And hopefully so is your urge to act and whatever way is possible and appropriate. I hope that we can remember these three fundamental areas of friendship and understand how they call for us to listen, to show compassion, to seek joy together as interracial friends we have to have the conversation. So for those of you who are saying, okay, yeah, I'm ready to do this. I understand the importance of trustworthiness, caring and congeniality and I understand that they're all the foundation of tough conversations in an interracial friendship. I'm ready to do the work. Let's talk about how to go about that. And again, this is assuming a context of two women who have history, they love each other, their familiarity, we're talking within that frame. So there is a book called Courageous Conversations About Race by Glenn Singleton and in it he outlines the rules, the agreements for having a conversation like this. The first is to stay engaged. So this means remaining morally, emotionally, intellectually involved in the conversation. So to stay engaged is not to let your heart and mind check out while leaving your body seated at the table. Okay, we see this from our husbands, we're talking and then it gets to a certain point in the zone out or they like emotionally withdraw even though they're still physically in front of us. I know I'm stereotyping men. Maybe I just need to talk about my own husband. Okay, stay engaged. Don't type out and then resist the natural inclination to move away from the conversation. Okay, keep going. Stay present. If it gets too much, then say that. But while you're in it, stay engaged. The second agreement is speak your truth, the one that belongs to you. So this means being absolutely honest about your thoughts and feelings, cannot speak the truth often leads to deeper confusion and mistrust. So speak your own personal truth and that allows you to fully engage and develop your racial consciousness. Okay, the third agreement is to experience discomfort. That means engaging in tough conversations that might make you uncomfortable and agreeing to experience discomfort allows you to deal with the reality of race and racism and in honest and forthright way. And this is how we quote unquote build muscle by increasing our tolerance for discomfort so that we increase our ability to address these kinds of challenges. And finally, it's really important to lean into this last agreement, which I love so much. And it's so freaking hard if I'm being honest. Expect and accept non closure. This means you're committing to an ongoing dialogue in your friendship. This means you are ruling out any possibility of discovering a quick fix. This means that there is no technical solution. As soon as these conversations come up by chance or you initiate them, if you have made up your mind that it doesn't have to end with everybody in the room saying, oh, wow, that's so interesting. I never thought of it that way. I totally understand things now. Wow, I'm so glad we're closer now for this conversation. If that's your expectation, you are going to be frustrated and you are going to be wildly disappointed in my fears that the friendship will not sustain the conversations. Okay. If you accept that it doesn't have to happen at that time, you'll be surprised what happens over time. And I feel convicted because as I'm saying this, I'm like thinking about my marriage and I'm like, oh, gosh, I really need to apply everything I'm saying with my husband. Okay, but that's for another time. That's for another time. I do want to give an example here. It's not necessarily that the conversation's wherever tense, but there is a friend in my circle and I bet she knows who she is as she's listening. I hope she's listening. And I met her through my husband's friends. My husband is biracial. He grew up in very Caucasian Sarasota. And his circle of friends reflects that, which makes sense, like basic sociology. It just makes sense, right? I met his friends, his friends' wives, and a lot of us have grown to be very close. But I noticed that race was not necessarily a topic of conversation. And it makes sense kind of to some extent, right? Because they didn't really have many brown people in their group, many, many brown people in their group. So it makes sense, right? I remember once being one-on-one with one of the wives. And I brought up the topic of worrying about my son. And this was a couple years ago because unfortunately it happened after a series of unjust murders against unarmed black men. And I talked her about my fear for my future sons because at that time I didn't have children. And I just saw her listening. She simply said, "Huh." I never really thought about that. Then the next time, this is months later, we had a conversation about something and she was like, "Man, I guess that's a conversation you would have to have with your future kids that I never would have to have with my kids." And that's it. We moved about our day. We continued having drinks. We continued hanging out and talking about nonsense. We moved on. But she engaged me in the conversation and she listened. And slowly, fast forward a couple years. She is now being vocal. She is asking questions. She is reading things. She is posting things. She is still her. But through our friendship, she has grown to understand some things. And so have I. Because we've just had the conversation. But it did not happen in one evening. I can't point to one date where we had that conversation. And we both left being woke people who understand and had this super deep friendship because of it. And often doesn't happen that way because you're combating years of a person's established worldview. If you expect non-closure and if everybody understands and accepts that waking up, fighting for change, understanding is an ongoing thing. Nobody is there. No one has a right. I'm talking even the most studied, well-versed people with tons of experiences of injustice. We're all growing and learning more and more and more. What's dangerous is when you start to think, oh, I already know. Right? Yeah, I'm already aware. I know that stuff. That's when it's dangerous. So the conversation has to happen with us within our friend groups for us to see some true meaningful change and globally some racial reconciliation. A couple notes to remember for your conversation aside from those four agreements established by Mr. Singleton is do not be defensive. Have the conversation in the right time. So not in response to freshly seeing something off of social media is probably not the right time. Try to see the woman in front of you instead of associating her with an entire race of people. Listen. Speak for just you and not everybody else. Bring your whole self to the table and I want to end with this. Lead with vulnerability. And I know you've heard that before and it's like Danielle, who do you think you are? Your nobriane brown. I know. Okay. She does not have them not believe on the word vulnerability. But I know we hear so much conversation about vulnerability and it's like, you know, that's nice. But what do I do with it? Okay. We think that's nice. I like to offer this as something to hold on to something tactical for any uncomfortable conversation, but especially a conversation about race with your friends. I want you to pause before you have the conversation and ask yourself, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? What makes you most uncomfortable? What is the worst case scenario in your mind of having this conversation? Sit with it. Think about it. And I challenge you. Whatever your response was to that question that you open your mouth and you lead with that to start the conversation. So as a brown woman, as a black woman, okay. If I feel like I'm not even going to have this conversation because she's not going to understand, she's not going to get it. It's going to end up in a full-blown argument. It's going to make me look at her differently. And I want to stay friends with her. I'm not even trying to go there. I should say that. It's almost like giving somebody access to your inner thoughts, but man, how that impacts the flow of the conversation. If I start by saying, you know what? I don't want to talk about this because I don't want to lose you as a friend. And I'm scared that you'll say something that makes me look at you differently and I don't want to do that. I know that if we don't have this conversation, it's going to breed resentment for you and I'm going to find myself solely distancing myself from you. I know that's going to happen, girl. If I don't talk to you right now, okay. Leading with vulnerability like that tends to put people at ease from the beginning and let them know I love you and we're on the same page. It does something to a conversation. It shapes it in a way. It should. Okay. It sets the tone. For my white friends, think for a second now. Notice your hesitation with initiating a conversation or what is your reason for choosing to be silent. Let's be honest. Now whatever that is, put words to it and say it to your friend. And we both agree that we are going to listen with understanding and give each other a safe space to say real true, honest things about our feelings without judgment or abandonment. Then we're good. Then we'll be good and I don't mean things will be good, things will be okay, but we're on the right path. So listen to each other. Don't make each other have to compartmentalize and only show certain parts of ourselves to sustain the friendship because what ends up happening is we never bring up that thing and the friendship can't last. If I'm just being point blank, honest, the friendship will not sustain that kind of tension. I don't know what all the perfect next steps are. I keep stressing I'm no expert in race relations, but surely you have questions. Surely there are things I've said that you disagree with. Surely you either feel like I was not radical enough and strong enough in this episode or you feel like it was too strong. You can't please everybody, but I have to stay with what I know to be true. And that is, I believe it is our duty for global racial reconciliation to have conversations with our friends for healings. I believe that. I believe that. And I believe that in heaven, we're all going to be all kinds of beautiful, different colors how we are right now. So if you're uncomfortable with it, girl, I hate to tell you when you get to the pearly gate, it's going to be, it's going to be awkward for you. Okay? So I believe it's our duty to try to bring heaven on earth right now with peace and understanding, but stop making believing that it will just happen. That's not true. You have to have the conversation. I'm tired too, even as a white person is so tiring how many times you hear racist comments, just even like whispered under the cuff implied. And then you try to point it out gently at first and then they double down on it. And you just literally don't have time in the day to explain all the ways that that particular comment was racist. But I'm going to try my best to continue to point it out and make the world a better place for my kids and yours because I see you, I hear you and I love you.