When You’re Not the Center Anymore

One of the tools we will need for a more multiracial future is the ability to loosen our grip on our own way—our convictions, preferences, instincts, and even our understanding of what is right.

For most of my life, I have moved through spaces where the basic assumptions made sense to me. The way meetings worked. The way decisions got made. What counted as professional. What made something fair. How disagreement was supposed to happen. What constituted a reasonable response. None of these things felt particularly cultural to me. They mostly just felt normal.

That is one of the strange things about being white in the United States. Your cultural instincts can spend a lot of time masquerading as common sense.

Of course, I know intellectually that my way of seeing the world is only one way of seeing it. I’ve written about this. I’ve taught about it. I’ve spent years in diverse spaces with people whose experiences and cultural frameworks are different from mine.

But knowing something and experiencing it are two different things.

And the experience can be irritating.

When the Center Moves

There is a difference between welcoming different people into a space and allowing their presence to change the space.

The first is relatively easy to imagine. Come in. Join us. We want you here. Pull up a chair.

But underneath that welcome can be an assumption that the basic architecture will remain intact. The meeting will still work like a meeting. Leadership will still look like leadership. Decisions will still get made the way good decisions get made. Fairness will still mean what reasonable people know fairness means.

Except reasonable people don’t always agree. Neither do cultures.

When people with different histories and experiences genuinely share a space, the result isn’t simply greater diversity. The center of gravity begins to move.

Things that once seemed obvious become negotiable or disregarded.

Ways of communicating that once felt normal become one option among several. Expectations about time, leadership, conflict, expertise, relationship, accountability, urgency, and decision-making bump into other expectations. And suddenly my instincts aren’t the instincts anymore and my way forward might not be right way forward.

Because it means that there are also times when I don’t get what I want.

If I am accustomed to spaces generally making sense according to my cultural expectations, a space that doesn’t can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. If my perspective doesn’t carry the weight I expect it to carry, I can experience that as not being heard. If a decision is made differently than I would have made it, I can experience that as unreasonable. If my understanding of fairness doesn’t prevail, I can experience the result as unfair.

And sometimes maybe it is. That’s what makes this difficult. The goal isn’t to distrust every instinct I have because I’m white. Nor is it to assume that someone from another racial or cultural background automatically has the better read on every situation.

My perspective still matters. It just isn’t the measuring stick. There is a difference between having a voice and expecting my voice to set the terms. There is a difference between participating and expecting the results to be my preconceived decision.

There is a difference between being disregarded and simply not being centered.

The Loss of Certainty

We often talk about racial change in terms of power. Who has it? Who doesn’t? Who needs to share it? Those are important questions.

But I wonder if one of the quieter things white people have to give up is certainty. The certainty that the way I experienced something tells me what actually happened. The certainty that what feels reasonable to me is objectively reasonable. The certainty that what feels fair to me is fair. The certainty that if something makes me uncomfortable, somebody must be doing something wrong.

That doesn’t mean abandoning judgment. It means holding my judgment differently. I can think something should have gone another way and remain curious about why it didn’t. I can disagree with a decision without immediately assuming the process failed. I can believe my perspective has something important to contribute without believing it should settle the question.

I can even be right and not get my way.

Let that sink in. That can be a great challenge. But sharing life with people who see the world differently requires more flexibility than that. Sometimes the world isn’t going to bend toward me.

The Work Is to Stay

The temptation when our convictions, preferences, and instincts no longer carry the weight we expect is to pull away. To decide the process is broken. To find another space where things make more sense. Or simply to stay physically present while quietly concluding that everyone else has gotten it wrong.

The work is to stay.

To stay engaged when we don’t get our way. To remain curious when something that feels obvious to us isn’t obvious to everyone else. To notice the frustration that rises when a decision doesn’t reflect what we believe is best. To keep listening when our instinct is to make our case one more time, a little more clearly, because surely then everyone will understand.

This isn’t about becoming passive. It isn’t about abandoning our convictions, withholding our perspective, or pretending we agree when we don’t. Sometimes we should push back. Sometimes the process really is bad. Sometimes we may actually be right.

The work is learning to hold all of that without requiring our way of seeing things to become the center.

And if we can stay there, something more than multiracial community becomes possible.

We change.

Because this isn’t only something white people need to do so that people of different races and cultures can flourish around us. We need it for ourselves. We need experiences that expose the limits of our own instincts. We need to discover that what feels normal to us is not necessarily neutral, that what feels obvious is not universally obvious, and that what feels right may still be shaped by a lifetime of having our cultural assumptions reinforced.

That can be uncomfortable. It can also make our world bigger.

We become more curious. More flexible. Less certain that our first interpretation is the only interpretation. Better able to listen without immediately translating someone else’s experience into our own categories. More capable of being changed by people rather than merely making room for them.

Maybe that’s ultimately what it means to move ourselves from the center: not thinking less of ourselves, but no longer needing ourselves to be the reference point.

And we may discover that life is richer from there.

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One of the most predictable moments in conversations about race comes when conflict enters the picture.

A disagreement at work.
A tense interaction on the street.
A difficult conversation between neighbors.
A misunderstanding between coworkers.

If the people involved come from different racial or cultural backgrounds, someone will almost always say:

“This isn’t about race.”

Sometimes they’re right. The disagreement may not have started because of race. It may genuinely be about a missed deadline, a poor decision, different expectations, or conflicting personalities.

But that doesn’t mean race isn’t part of the equation. Race doesn’t have to be the cause of a conflict to shape the way people experience it.

We know that our experiences form the assumptions we carry into every interaction. We know that people are often judged differently for the same behavior. We know that some perspectives are treated as more “normal” or “objective” than others. None of this requires conscious intent. It’s simply part of living in the world we’ve inherited.

When racial difference is present, race becomes one of the variables.

Think about gender.

If a conflict arises between a man and a woman in the workplace, it would be naïve to insist that gender has absolutely nothing to do with how each person experiences the situation. The disagreement may not be about gender, but decades of workplace expectations, power, communication patterns, and lived experience inevitably shape how both people interpret what is happening.

Race works much the same way. It isn’t always the headline. But it is almost always in the room.

The challenge is that those of us whose experiences are most consistently reflected back to us by our world often have the hardest time noticing this. When society regularly confirms your perspective, it begins to feel like reality itself rather than one perspective among many.

That’s why “It’s not about race” often feels true to one person and incomplete to another.

One person is describing the subject of the disagreement. The other is describing the environment in which the disagreement is unfolding. Those are not the same thing.

Here’s the twist that has become increasingly important for me. Race is still a variable even when everyone involved shares the same racial identity.

Because race isn’t only something that exists between people. It also shapes the stories we inherit, the expectations we carry, the institutions we trust, and the ways we understand ourselves.

Two white coworkers may both assume that a system should work in a particular way because they’ve been formed by similar cultural expectations. Two Black men may read a moment of respect, dignity, or dismissal through shared experiences that have shaped their lives.Two Latino neighbors may carry common assumptions about family, authority, or belonging. None of this determines how people will respond. But it helps explain why we respond the way they do.

Race is always doing formative work because race is always present. Recognizing that doesn’t mean every disagreement becomes a conversation about race. It simply means we stop pretending race disappears the moment we stop talking about it.

Maturity isn’t insisting race explains everything. Neither is pretending it explains nothing. Maturity is learning to ask, with curiosity rather than defensiveness:

How might race be one of the variables here?

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Many of us can acknowledge that people or the way society is structured has opened doors for us by virtue of the neighborhoods we grew up in, the schools we attended, the financial stability we inherited, the mentors who believed in us, or the institutions that generally worked in our favor. Recognizing those advantages can be uncomfortable, but it is necessary.

It is also only the beginning.

What we call privilege is the accumulated effect of opportunities, assumptions, and systems that make life easier for some people than for others. Privilege doesn’t simply shape the lives we live. It shapes the way we imagine the world.

The harder question isn’t, What advantages have I received?

The harder question is, What assumptions have those advantages taught me to make?

That is a much more difficult question because privilege doesn’t just give us opportunities. It quietly forms our worldview. It teaches us what feels normal, what feels fair, what feels safe, and what feels true. And like all good teachers, it is most effective when we don’t realize it is teaching us anything at all.

· If I have generally been treated with dignity by institutions, I naturally come to trust institutions.

· If people who look like me have regularly occupied positions of leadership, leadership begins to look like people who look like me.

· If my race has rarely complicated an interaction, I may conclude that race rarely complicates anyone else’s experience.

· If my culture has been reflected in classrooms, churches, media, and public life, I stop seeing it as my culture. It simply becomes “normal.”

None of these conclusions require prejudice or bad intentions. They are simply the worldview that privilege quietly constructs over a lifetime.

This is where implicit bias becomes especially important.

We often think of implicit bias as hidden prejudice, but I think it is broader than that. It is the collection of assumptions we carry into every interaction before we’ve consciously thought about it.

· When someone tells us about discrimination, what is our first instinct? To believe them? To question them? To explain it another way?

· When we see unequal outcomes between groups, what explanation immediately comes to mind? Personal choices? Cultural differences? Historical systems? Bad luck?

· When someone responds differently than we would, do we assume they are overreacting? Or do we wonder what experiences have taught them to respond that way?

Those first reactions don’t come out of nowhere. They have been formed over years of living within a particular story.

This is why conversations about race can feel so frustrating. Two people can witness the same event and honestly arrive at different conclusions—not necessarily because one is lying, but because each has been trained by different experiences to notice different things.

Privilege doesn’t simply influence our answers. It influences the questions we think to ask. For much of my life, there were questions I never thought to ask because the world generally worked the way I expected it to.

Who designed this system? Who benefits from it? Who has to adapt? Whose culture is assumed? Whose stories are missing?

Those questions weren’t hidden from me. They simply weren’t necessary for me to navigate my daily life. That may be one of privilege’s greatest powers. It allows us to mistake our experience for reality itself.

My worldview doesn’t simply shape how I interpret the world; it shapes the world I help create. If my thinking has been formed by privilege and I never stop to examine it, I will inevitably make decisions that reflect an incomplete picture of reality. Those decisions may feel fair, reasonable, or even generous to me, but they can still disadvantage others because they are built on assumptions that fail to account for experiences outside my own.

This is how broken ways of seeing become broken ways of living. They don’t survive because people intentionally defend them. They survive because people like me continue to recreate them from unexamined assumptions about what is normal, necessary, and true. Every time I fail to question the worldview privilege has given me, I risk reinforcing patterns that exclude, burden, or diminish others. Privilege isn’t the only problem. Believing my privileged perspective is simply reality is

This, I believe, is the deeper work of Project 2045.

Our goal isn’t to produce white people who can recite the definition of privilege or reluctantly admit they have benefited from it.

Our goal is to become people who recognize that every one of us sees the world through lenses shaped by our experiences. The invitation is not to throw those lenses away, but to discover that they are lenses in the first place.

When we begin to see that, we can finally ask one of the most important questions of all:

What parts of the world have I never noticed because privilege taught me I didn’t need to?

That isn’t a question of shame. It’s a question of growth.

And growth may be one of the only tool we have for becoming the kind of neighbors the future will require.

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The one thing I can’t always tell white people is that I do not fully trust them when push comes to shove.

Not because I believe every white person means harm. Not because I think every white person is secretly cruel, consciously hateful, or incapable of love. Many white people I know would describe themselves as affirming, compassionate, justice-minded, and committed to the flourishing of Black people, queer people, and other marginalized communities. Some have done real work. Some have told the truth about racism. Some have wept over the violence of this country. Some have given their time, money, and bodies to movements for justice.

And still, I do not always trust what will happen when the cost becomes personal.

Because whiteness is not merely an attitude. It is not only a set of conscious beliefs or explicit prejudices. Whiteness is a formation. It shapes what people fear, what they expect from reality, what they assume they are owed, what futures they imagine, what threats they perceive, and what their bodies interpret as danger. It teaches people how to predict the world. It trains the nervous system. It tells some bodies that they are neutral, innocent, rational, and entitled to comfort, while telling other bodies that they are suspicious, excessive, dangerous, or disposable.

I am never unaware of this.

I am never unaware that the subconscious architecture of this country has been designed against the Black body. And more specifically, it has been designed against the Black queer body in ways that are often so deep, so ordinary, and so well-disguised that even people who would call themselves loving may not recognize the reflexes moving through them. Anti-Blackness does not always announce itself as hatred. Sometimes it sounds like concern. Sometimes it calls itself “discernment.” Sometimes it appears as hesitation, suspicion, distance, correction, tone-policing, or the sudden need to “slow down” when Black people name what is true.

This is what makes it so hard to talk about. The danger is not only in the people who know they hate us. The danger is also in the people who believe they love us but have not yet interrogated what their love requires them to surrender.

There is a difference between affection and solidarity. There is a difference between being moved by Black suffering and being willing to be changed by Black truth. There is a difference between admiring Black brilliance and trusting Black perception. There is a difference between celebrating Black culture and relinquishing the assumptions that make whiteness feel like safety.

What I often cannot say plainly is that I do not trust white people to stay with it when the going gets tough.

I do not trust, without evidence, that they will remain present when the conversation stops being inspiring and starts becoming indicting. I do not trust that they will stay when anti-racism is no longer a value statement but a rupture in their relationships, their institutions, their theology, their careers, their family systems, or their sense of self. I do not trust that they will choose truth when

truth costs them belonging. I do not trust that they will keep listening when their bodies begin to experience accountability as annihilation.

Because whiteness has taught people to confuse discomfort with danger.

It has taught them that ease is a birthright. It has taught them that convenience is normal. It has taught them that they should be able to move through the world without being deeply interrupted, without having to work too hard to be understood, without having to constantly translate themselves, defend themselves, or prove their humanity. Whiteness forms people to expect that reality will bend toward their comfort. So when that comfort is challenged, the challenge can feel existential.

This is why the work of uprooting whiteness is so difficult. It is not simply a matter of learning new language or adopting better politics. It is not accomplished by reading a few books, attending a workshop, or knowing how to say the right words in public. It requires a kind of death. It requires the unraveling of an identity that has been mistaken for personhood. It requires the loss of innocence, the loss of centrality, the loss of presumed authority, the loss of being able to narrate oneself as good without also being accountable to the harm one has inherited and perpetuated.

And many people do not want that kind of loss.

Even when they say they want justice, they may not want the grief that justice requires. Even when they say they want liberation, they may not want to confront the ways their own belonging has been built on someone else’s exclusion. Even when they say they love Black people, they may not want to give up the internal arrangements that make Black truth feel threatening.

So they cling.

They cling to whiteness because whiteness has offered them a name, a place, a shield, a story, a hierarchy, a way to feel secure in a world that is otherwise terrifyingly uncertain. They cling because losing whiteness can feel like losing the self, even though what is being lost is not the self but a false arrangement of power. They cling because they have been told, in a thousand subtle and overt ways, that without whiteness they will be nothing, or unsafe, or unmoored.

And when people are afraid of losing an identity, they will often choose violence before they choose transformation.

They may cling to anti-Blackness not because they have consciously decided to hate Black people, but because anti-Blackness stabilizes the world whiteness built for them. It gives them somewhere to put their fear. It gives them someone to suspect. It gives them a way to avoid the abyss of not knowing who they are without superiority, innocence, or control.

That is the part I cannot always say.

That I know the love may be real, but I am watching for what happens under pressure.

I am watching what happens when Black grief is inconvenient. I am watching what happens when Black anger is not eloquent. I am watching what happens when Black queer embodiment refuses to be palatable. I am watching what happens when the room does not center white processing. I am watching what happens when repair requires more than apology. I am watching what happens when the question is no longer, “Do you care?” but “What are you willing to lose?”

Because care without cost is not yet trust.

Trust is built in the places where whiteness usually retreats. Trust is built when white people resist the urge to defend themselves before they understand the harm. Trust is built when they stay in the room without demanding comfort from the people they have wounded. Trust is built when they believe Black perception, even when it disrupts their preferred version of events. Trust is built when they stop treating their intentions as more important than impact. Trust is built when they do not make Black people responsible for managing the emotional fallout of white awakening.

Trust is built when white people choose accountability over innocence, solidarity over reputation, truth over ease.

I want a world where trust can be possible. I want relationships where truth does not have to be rationed according to what whiteness can tolerate. I want communities where Black queer bodies are not treated as problems to be managed, symbols to be celebrated, or threats to be contained, but as sacred bearers of wisdom, beauty, desire, grief, and divine image. I want white people to be free, too — not centered, not excused, not coddled, but free from the death-dealing lie that their humanity depends on domination.

But freedom requires a reckoning.

____________________________

We are grateful to our guest writer for illuminating this dynamic in What I Can’t Say With White People in the Room. Project 2045 will periodically publish reflections—many anonymous—on this topic from Writers of Color

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One of the things I hear most often from white people is a desire to do something.

What should I read? What should I do? How do I help? They are good questions. But underneath them is another question we don’t ask very often:

What am I willing to give?

Most forms of growth require some kind of investment. We understand this in nearly every area of life. We don’t expect to get physically healthy without giving time to exercise. We don’t expect to become experts in our profession without years of learning and practice. We don’t expect to build strong relationships without investing time, attention, and care. We don’t expect to become financially secure without planning, discipline, and sacrifice. We don’t expect to master a craft without practice, feedback, and persistence.

Growth costs something. Yet when it comes to racial growth, many white people seem surprised by the cost. We often approach this work hoping it can fit conveniently into our lives. We want a book recommendation, a podcast episode, or a documentary that will help us understand what we need to understand so we can move on to the next thing. We want awareness without disruption.

But meaningful growth rarely works that way.

If white people are going to prepare for the world of 2045, we will need to take responsibility for our own development. We cannot expect people of color to carry the burden of our education. We cannot expect understanding to simply appear because we have good intentions. Like every other important area of growth, this one requires investment.

The first cost is time. Many of us have spent years learning our professions, studying our hobbies, deepening our faith, or following things that interest us. We have devoted thousands of hours to becoming the people we want to be. Yet when it comes to understanding race, culture, and the systems that have shaped our society, we often expect a shortcut.

There isn’t one. Understanding takes time. Listening takes time. Building relationships takes time. Learning histories that many of us were never taught takes time. None of this is unusual. It is simply how growth works.

The second cost is money. This may feel uncomfortable to say, but we spend money on the things we value.

We pay for gym memberships because health matters. We pay for conferences because professional growth matters. We pay for therapy because emotional health matters. We buy books, take classes, hire coaches, and invest in experiences that help us become who we want to be.

If becoming culturally mature matters, then it should not surprise us that it may cost money as well.

Money has a way of revealing what we truly value. Most of us can point to things we willingly spend money on because they matter to us—club sports for our kids, a new kitchen, concert tickets, streaming subscriptions, weekend getaways, charitable causes, or saving for retirement. None of those things are wrong. But if we believe preparing for a diverse and equitable future matters, then it is worth asking whether any of our resources are directed toward that future as well. Supporting local entrepreneurs, funding educational opportunities, investing in community organizations, or helping expand opportunities for others are all ways our financial choices can begin to reflect our stated values.

But the deepest cost is neither time nor money.

The deepest cost is identity.

Most white people I know think of themselves as good people. I certainly do. We try to be fair. We try to treat people well. We try to live according to our values. The challenge is that growth often asks us to question stories we have long believed about ourselves.

We may discover that our understanding of history was incomplete. We may learn that opportunities we assumed were simply the result of hard work were also influenced by systems that benefited some groups more than others. We may realize that experiences we considered universal were actually shaped by culture.

None of this makes us bad people. But it can make us uncomfortable people. And discomfort is often the price of growth.

In some ways, racial development asks white people to let go of a simpler version of ourselves. It asks us to move beyond the idea that being a good person is enough. It invites us to become more curious, more aware, and more willing to see ourselves as participants in a much larger story.

That process can feel costly because it is. But every meaningful transformation costs something.

The question is not whether growth will require an investment. The question is whether we believe the investment is worth making.

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One of the core beliefs behind Project 2045 is that we cannot learn our way into a new future alone. We need spaces where we can practice together, ask better questions, listen more deeply, and be honest about where we are still growing.

Over the past several months, I have had the privilege of piloting our first Skill Building Cohort with a group of people willing to give their time, attention, and stories to this work. We are practicing being white people who are doing our own work. It is hard to put into words what an honor it has been.

When we first started imagining this cohort, we knew we wanted it to be different from many of the conversations people have experienced around race and culture. We were not trying to create a space where people simply consumed more information or learned the “right answers.” We wanted to create a space to practice. A space where we could build the muscles required to have honest conversations. A space where we could learn how to stay present with ourselves and one another.

And that is exactly what this group has done.

We have laughed together, including plenty of moments laughing at my own mistakes, experiments, and places where the pilot process was still very much a pilot. We have adjusted together and learned together.

We have made room for our own stories and the stories of others. We have slowed down enough to ask not only what we think about issues of race, culture, and belonging, but how our own experiences have shaped the way we see the world.

We have also made space for lament.

One person in the cohort described the experience of wrestling with these conversations as realizing they could not simply go back and live the same way. They used words like “sad,” “confused,” and “a reckoning.” That moment has stayed with me because I think it captures something important about this work.

Growth is not always the immediate excitement of discovering something new. Sometimes growth is the difficult realization that there are things we can no longer ignore. Sometimes it is looking honestly at the ways our society has been formed and asking new questions about how race and culture have shaped the world we inherited.

That kind of reflection takes courage.

Throughout the cohort, we have talked honestly about moments when we found that courage. Moments when we stepped into a conversation, asked a question, listened differently, or chose not to avoid discomfort. And we have also talked about the moments when we did not have that courage.

Those conversations may have been some of the most important ones because they remind us that this work is not about perfection. It is about practice. It is about becoming the kind of people who can keep showing up.

Maybe the most encouraging thing we have discovered together is that we can do this.

The conversations we are practicing are not as dangerous as we have often been told they are. They can be uncomfortable. They can challenge us. They can reveal things we have not seen before. But when entered with curiosity, humility, and care, they can also create connection, understanding, and possibility.

As we reach the halfway point of this first cohort, I find myself incredibly grateful and deeply mindful of the work ahead. Each person has recognized places where they are growing. Each person has also begun to see the work that remains unfinished—not just individually, but for all of us collectively.

That is the gift this first group has given Project 2045. They have not simply participated in a program. They have helped shape what this work can become as we are in conversation about two other fall cohorts.

I could not be more proud of the courage, honesty, and openness this group has brought. And I could not feel more responsibility for what we continue to learn together as we move into the second half of this journey.

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White is a culture. Many white Americans struggle to see white culture because we have spent most of our lives swimming in it. Like fish in water, what surrounds us can become invisible. I also suggested that white culture has values, stories, assumptions, and expectations that have shaped American institutions and public life.

But there is another side to that conversation.

While white functions as a culture, it is not a cultural background.

For most of us, our cultural background comes from somewhere else.

For most of my life, I thought white or American was my cultural background. If someone asked about my ancestry, I would usually shrug and say I was generic white. A mutt. I didn’t know much beyond that.

My family’s mythology was that we were Norwegian and probably more Native American than our racist grandfathers were willing to admit. Like many family stories, those claims floated around without much evidence. They were simply part of the narrative.

Several years ago, I took one of those DNA ancestry tests. To be honest, I only took it because of the medical information. Knowing my ancestry meant so little to me that when the results came back, I didn’t even bother looking at them for almost a year.

When I finally opened the report, I learned something surprising.

The racist grandfathers were apparently correct.

But it turns out I am mostly British and Irish not Norwegian. So I now joke that I am basically a beer-drinking colonist. The results fit better than I expected.

Later I mentioned this to a historian friend of mine. He laughed and said, “That makes sense.”

Then he started telling me my story.

He explained that many Irish peasants fled to London looking for work during times of famine and economic hardship. Later, many of those same families crossed the Atlantic looking for opportunity in America. He said, “I would bet that’s your family.”

Now there may be a way to prove that theory right or wrong, but I will probably never spend the time to find out. Still, hearing it changed something for me. Suddenly I wasn’t just generic white anymore. I could begin to imagine actual people. People who struggled. People who migrated. People who hoped for something better. People whose decisions eventually made my life possible.

The experience made me think differently about ancestry.

Not long after that, I attended a work conference where I was placed in a small discussion group. There were seven of us. Everyone in the group was a woman of color except for one Black man and me.

We became instant friends.

At one point we skipped a session and spent our time talking honestly about the conference, our jobs, race, society, and life. It was one of those conversations that felt more valuable than anything happening on the official schedule.

At some point I made a joke about being generic white and not really knowing my ancestry.

The group got quiet.

One of them finally responded.

“That’s one of the problems with white people.”

I laughed.

She wasn’t joking.

“You’ll never grow and heal unless you do your own ancestry work.”

At the time, ancestry work sounded a little new-agey and woo-woo to me. It wasn’t language I would have chosen for myself. But one conviction I have developed over the years is that People of Color often understand whiteness better than white people do.

After all, I have spent most of my life living inside the fishbowl. Many people of color have spent their entire lives learning how to navigate it.

So I listened.

Over time, I have become convinced they were right. White may function as a culture, but it is not a cultural background.

My cultural story did not begin with America. It began with people whose names I do not know. People who lived in places I have never seen. People who carried hopes, fears, traditions, and dreams long before they became part of the American story.

Part of learning how to navigate a multicultural society is learning who we are. Not just as Americans. Not just as white people. But as people whose stories started somewhere before America.

For many white Americans, something was lost when our ancestors became white. This was an intentional strategy of the American experience. Distinct histories were folded into a broader category. Irish became white eventually but not fully embraced at the beginning for concerns over economics of immigration. Italians became white. Germans became white. Poles became white. Over time, many of us forgot where our stories began.

Recovering those stories does not solve everything. It does not erase racism. It does not automatically make us more culturally aware.

But it does give us roots.

As one of the women at that conference told me, “You are still the dream fulfilled of someone in your family who came before you. Someone who made a cross-continental journey and hoped for a better life.”

I think about that often. Not because it makes me proud. Because it makes me grateful.

And because it reminds me that before I was white, my family had a story.

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One of the most common responses I hear when talking about race is some version of, “I don’t really have a culture.” Sometimes people will say, “I’m just American,” or “My family is pretty normal.” What they usually mean is that they do not have a culture that feels particularly visible to them.

That is often how culture works when you are surrounded by it.

Imagine a fish swimming through water. If you asked the fish to describe water, it might struggle. Water is not something the fish visits. It is the environment in which the fish lives. It is so constant that it becomes invisible. Culture often works the same way. We tend to notice other people’s cultures much more easily than our own.

For many white Americans, culture can feel invisible because many of the assumptions, values, and norms associated with white culture have become the default settings of American society. We are taught in schools, reinforced in workplaces, reflected in media, and built into many of our institutions. When something is treated as normal for long enough, it can stop looking like culture and start looking like reality itself.

This is why I believe it is important to say something that can sound surprising at first: white is a culture.

To be clear, I am not saying all white people think alike, vote alike, or share the same experiences. Nor am I suggesting that white culture is the only culture in America. I am saying that there are patterns, values, assumptions, and ways of seeing the world that have historically shaped white American culture and continue to influence our way of life today.

White culture is difficult to define precisely because it is so broad and because it contains diversity within it. Yet there are several values that are often associated with dominant white American culture. These include a strong emphasis on punctuality and time management, productivity and efficiency, individual achievement, future planning, direct communication, competition, personal responsibility, and the belief that hard work should lead to success.

None of these values are inherently bad. The point is to recognize them as cultural values rather than universal truths. Every culture emphasizes certain things and downplays others. What feels obvious or natural to one group may feel strange or even unhealthy to another.

The challenge comes when one culture becomes dominant. A dominant culture tends to assume that its values are simply the way things are supposed to be. Its stories become the stories everyone learns. Its heroes become the heroes everyone studies. Its holidays become the holidays everyone recognizes. Its expectations become the expectations that schools, businesses, and institutions reward.

This is not unique to white culture. Any dominant culture tends to work this way. Throughout history, dominant cultures have rewarded those who understand their rules, reinforced the values that support them, and worked to preserve the systems that benefit them. That is simply how power operates.

The United States has been shaped primarily by white cultural norms for much of its history. As a result, many Americans of every race have learned to navigate those norms because they are the norms that often determine success in schools, workplaces, and public life.

At the same time, America has never been made up of only one culture. People bring different histories, traditions, values, and ways of understanding the world. Some cultures place greater emphasis on community than individual achievement. Some value relationships more than schedules. Some understand success through the lens of family obligation rather than personal accomplishment. Some prioritize harmony where others prioritize directness.

As our country becomes increasingly diverse, we have a choice. We can continue assuming that one cultural framework should define public life for everyone, or we can learn how to make room for multiple ways of being human. We do not have to pretend to abandon white culture because we cannot do it. But we do have to recognize that white culture is a culture. And learn that, while a dominant white culture has often pushed others to flex to it, our job is to learn to flex our cultural values to those outside of the dominant.

That means recognizing that our way is not the only way. It means learning to listen before assuming, adapting before demanding, and becoming curious about how others experience the world. In a nation where no single group will hold a majority, the future will belong to people who can move comfortably between cultures while building bonds across cultural differences. The first step in that journey is recognizing that white is a culture. It is the fishbowl we are swimming in.

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Next week, I am attending a webinar from Faith 250 on Frederick Douglass’s famous speech, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

In that landmark 1852 address, Douglass challenged the nation to confront the contradiction between its celebration of liberty and the ongoing reality of slavery. Rather than rejecting the ideals of the Fourth of July, Douglass called America to live up to its own promises of freedom, justice, and human dignity for all people.

Thinking about the webinar has inspired me to ask a different question:

What to a white person is Juneteenth?

Before answering that question, it helps to remember what Juneteenth is.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day enslaved people in Texas learned they were free, more than two years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. On that day, Union troops arrived in Galveston and announced the end of slavery, marking a significant moment in the nation’s long journey toward freedom. Over time, Juneteenth became a celebration of Black resilience, culture, community, and the ongoing pursuit of justice and equality. In 2021, Juneteenth was officially recognized as a federal holiday in the United States, inviting all Americans to reflect on both the progress made and the work that remains.

Three times in the last few years I have visited Galveston, Texas, the birthplace of Juneteenth. I have stood before the incredible mural that tells the story. I have visited the art gallery housed in the historic building. I have listened to the Sam Collins II, Professor Juneteenth, explain the significance of the site and the history it preserves.

What stands out to me every time is the power of public history.

The space itself tells a story. Across the street stands one of the largest slave auction sites in Texas. The distance between those two places is measured in steps, but it represents generations of struggle, suffering, courage, and change. The experience reminded me that history is not just something we read in books. History lives in places. It lives in stories. It lives in what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget.

That is one of the gifts of Juneteenth. It makes history accessible. It invites us into stories that many of us were never taught. It helps us understand not only what happened, but why it matters.

When Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, some rightly questioned whether symbolic recognition was enough. The critique was familiar and important. Malcolm X once warned, “The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.”

That critique remains a necessary measure of our justice efforts. Symbolic victories alone are not enough.

And yet, I find myself increasingly grateful for Juneteenth. Not because a holiday solves injustice, but because remembrance matters.

In a moment when we are seeing active efforts to erase, minimize, and inaccurately rewrite parts of our nation’s history around race and racism, spaces of public memory become even more important. This very week, a federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration can replace slavery-related exhibits at Philadelphia’s President’s House site in advance of the celebration of the nations 250^th birthday.

What we remember shapes who we become. What we forget shapes us as well.

So what, to a white person, is Juneteenth?

It is an opportunity to celebrate freedom. It is an opportunity to lament the long delay between emancipation declared and emancipation experienced. It is an opportunity to tell the truth about our shared history. It is an opportunity to honor the resilience, courage, and contributions of Black Americans.

And perhaps most importantly, it is an opportunity to practice remembering. Because a people who cannot tell the truth about their past will struggle to imagine a more just future.

Juneteenth reminds us that freedom is worth celebrating, truth is worth preserving, and history is worth telling.

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There are things I do not say when white people are in the room. Not because I lack words. I just wonder, if it is worth it.

Is it worth the energy I’ll expend calculating how honest I can be before somebody becomes defensive? Is it worth the time I’ll take to choose my words carefully so that we avoid exposing someone’s fragility? Is it worth the relational capital I’ll spend naming what just happened and possibly derailing the entire room? There’s an emotional cost to explaining, contextualizing, reassuring, clarifying, comforting, and educating - and some days that cost feels very expensive.

So sometimes I just let things go.

I let somebody interrupt me.
I let somebody explain my own experience back to me.
I let somebody assume agreement instead of asking for it.
I let comments slide that I would absolutely push back on in another setting.

Because sometimes getting through the meeting matters more than honesty. And that is the part many white people do not understand. They think silence means agreement. They think professionalism means comfort. They think the meeting “went well” because nobody openly challenged anything.

Meanwhile, I am sitting there making real-time decisions about whether honesty is emotionally safe, strategically useful, or simply too expensive.

Sometimes I disengage completely. Not visibly. I know how to stay in the room. I know how to nod. I know how to participate enough. I know how to survive professionally. But internally, I may have already left the room. When there’s no time for honesty, curiosity, slowness, or accountability; when everything has to move quickly, stay productive, and stay on schedule, I begin to question whether I should bring my full self into the meeting.

My white colleagues often say they want honesty, but honesty takes time. It’s taken me years to realize it, but when everything has to stay fast, efficient, polished, and on schedule, it’s an indication that honesty is probably not a priority. And all the things that emerge with and on the other side of honesty takes time. Real listening takes time. Repair takes time. Accountability takes time. True relationship takes time.

A lot of white people say they want honesty, but what they really want is confirmation delivered through a different voice. They want a Black or brown person to echo what they already think in language that feels just challenging enough to be interesting but not disruptive enough to require change. And often what white institutions want is diversity without disruption. They want my presence. They do not always want my perspective.

My honesty is disruptive. And I’m not going to apologize for it. I know it’s not always welcome. I know it’s inconvenient and slows things down. And I know that I am not always right. I also know, more times than not, my feedback and perspective is helpful.

So I’ll hold back. I’ll measure my responses. I’ll choose my words. I’ll do a ton of work to avoid telling my colleagues the truth. Cuz no one likes the black contrarian. Truth is, when I avoid the cost of being honest, it actually costs my white colleagues more. When I can’t bring my honesty, I can’t be in true relationship with you.

I was thinking recently about my brother who passed away a few years ago. One of the things I miss most about him is our fights. The wrestling. The arguing. The times when the honesty led to anger. Pushing each other. The intensity.

We loved each other enough to be honest, and that honesty led to conflict. But the conflict was never meant to destroy each other. The conflict was the mechanism that would lead to resolution. Without the conflict, boundaries were never addressed. Without relational rupture, we would never have learned accountability and repair. Without pushing back, we would not know each other’s vulnerabilities and be able to respond with care. We fought because we were real with each other.

And honestly, that is part of what I sometimes want with white people too. Not politeness or diplomacy. Certainly, not careful corporate language.

Realness.

Sometimes I say “whiteness” sharply because I want to see if you can stay in the conversation. Sometimes I push because I want to know whether you can handle honesty without collapsing into defensiveness or guilt or withdrawal.

Because the truth is: The people I love, I fight. The people I trust, are the people I feel safest push back on. When I believe in you, I risk honesty with you. And sometimes what whiteness, institutions, and racial systems have stolen from us is the ability to actually struggle honestly with one another without treating conflict itself as failure.

Some white people experience any discomfort as rejection, hostility, or unfairness. But many of us learned long ago how to lose small things every day and keep functioning. We learned how to stay at the table without being centered. We learned how to absorb discomfort without making it everybody else’s emergency.

Sometimes I want white people to learn that too.

I want them to lose an argument and survive it.
I want them to be uncomfortable and survive it.
I want them to not be centered for a moment and survive it.

Because maybe then we could finally become real with each other. And honestly, I think many of us are starving for relationships where we no longer have to manage white comfort in order to tell the truth.

—————————————————————————————

We are grateful to our guest writer for illuminating this dynamic in What I Can’t Say With White People in the Room. Project 2045 will periodically publish reflections—many anonymous—on this topic from Writers of Color

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One thing I have been trying to do lately is learn about race, repair, community, and responsibility from traditions outside the narrow Western frameworks I inherited.

Not because Western traditions have nothing to offer. They do. But because I am increasingly aware that many of the assumptions I absorbed about individuality, urgency, success, ownership, and progress are not universal truths. They are cultural inheritances. And like all inheritances, they shape what we can and cannot easily see.

One idea that has stayed with me is often called the Seventh Generation Principle. Many people know the phrase vaguely now, mostly because of the cleaning supply company, but the underlying idea is far more demanding than a marketing slogan.

The principle asks communities to consider how today’s decisions will affect people seven generations into the future.

Not seven months.
Not the next election cycle.
Not next quarter’s numbers.
Seven generations.

I find myself stopped in my tracks by that. Because one of the easiest things to do in moments of social tension is to convince ourselves that delay is neutral. That waiting costs nothing. That if conversations about race, inequity, segregation, distrust, or historical harm feel complicated or uncomfortable, we can simply postpone them until society becomes calmer or more prepared.

But postponement has consequences too.

Every year we fail to build a better world has a cost. Every year communities remain isolated from one another shapes the imagination of children growing up inside those divisions. Every year we avoid difficult conversations about history, belonging, fear, and repair leaves future generations to inherit tensions we were unwilling to address ourselves.

In many Western traditions, we do not spend much time thinking about ancestors. At least not in the active sense. We might research genealogy or preserve family photos, but we do not often ask ourselves what obligations we hold toward those who came before us or those who will come after us. We do not usually organize our lives around becoming worthy ancestors someday.

That language used to feel distant to me. Maybe even overly romantic. But recently someone asked me a question I have not been able to shake:

What kind of ancestor do you want to be? Not what kind of career do you want? Not what kind of brand do you want? Not what kind of online identity do you want? What kind of ancestor do you want to be?

I do not hear that question as pressure to become some heroic figure. Honestly, I hear it more as an invitation toward responsibility and humility. Because I am increasingly aware that future generations will live inside worlds shaped partly by what we normalize now.

· They will inherit the conversations we avoided.

· The fears we fed.

· The communities we neglected.

· The courage we practiced.

· The bridges we built.

· The stories we chose to tell about one another.

And if I am honest, I think part of why Project 2045 matters to me is because I am trying to internalize the urgency of that reality that really isn’t in a future space of the year 2045. It is absolutely here now. The demographic changes happening in America are not theoretical anymore. They are already reshaping schools, neighborhoods, churches, politics, friendships, and public life. We can respond to those changes with fear, denial, competition, nostalgia, or resentment. Many people already are.

Or we can begin practicing another way of being together now, before polarization becomes, as one political commentator suggests, calcification.

I do not think this work asks us to become perfect, performative, or self-righteous people. If anything, it asks us to become more honest ones. Honest enough to have slower conversations in a culture obsessed with speed and reaction. Honest enough to stay present when discomfort appears instead of immediately retreating into defensiveness or avoidance. Honest enough to believe that shared futures are still possible, even in a society increasingly shaped by fragmentation, suspicion, and isolation.

I do not think this work is only about being “good” people. I think it is about deciding what kind of inheritance we want to leave behind.

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One of the more unsurprising discoveries from our first Project 2045 pilot cohort was how many people carried the same implicit message about race from childhood:

This is dangerous territory.

Not necessarily because someone sat us down and said those exact words. In many cases, nobody had to. The lesson was communicated indirectly through tension, avoidance, silence, warnings, jokes, sudden changes in tone, or the visible discomfort of adults whenever race emerged in conversation.

For many of us, race became associated with volatility long before we developed the language to describe what we were experiencing. We learned that these conversations could rupture relationships, embarrass families, expose ignorance, provoke conflict, or get someone labeled as racist, angry, divisive, naïve, or oversensitive. So many people internalized the same basic instinct: better to avoid it.

And avoidance makes sense when your nervous system has learned something is unsafe.

One of the problems with conversations about race is that many people think the primary challenge is intellectual disagreement. Sometimes it is. But often the deeper challenge is physiological before it is ideological.

Our bodies react before our carefully constructed thoughts do.

We can feel it happen in ourselves in real time if we are paying attention. Our breathing changes. Our shoulders tighten. Our faces grow warm. Our heart rate increases. Our thoughts begin speeding up and we quietly stop listening as carefully as we were a moment before. Instead of curiosity, we begin preparing defenses, explanations, rebuttals, or escape routes. Sometimes we become argumentative. Sometimes we shut down completely. Sometimes we overexplain, rush toward reassurance, or become hyperaware of possible judgment or rejection. Much of the time, we think we are simply having a conversation, when in reality our nervous systems have already started responding as if we are under threat.

In other words, many of us are not just having conversations. We are managing perceived threats. And if we do not understand that dynamic, we often moralize reactions that are at least partially physiological.

This does not mean every feeling should govern the conversation. It does not mean discomfort is inherently harmful. It does not mean accountability disappears. But it does mean that understanding our nervous systems matters if we actually want better conversations instead of endlessly repeated cycles of fear and defensiveness.

Part of maturity is learning to notice what is happening inside us without immediately obeying it. That is harder than it sounds. Especially because many of us inherited almost no tools for staying grounded in difficult conversations. We inherited either avoidance or escalation. Silence or explosion. Performative certainty or total withdrawal.

Very few people were taught how to remain regulated while discussing subjects tied to identity, history, morality, belonging, or pain. And yet that capacity may become increasingly necessary in the years ahead.

The demographic and cultural changes happening in America are not slowing down. We are going to live, work, worship, vote, raise children, and build communities alongside people with different histories, assumptions, experiences, and fears. If our nervous systems interpret every difficult conversation as existential danger, we will continue retreating into smaller and smaller tribes where we feel temporarily safe and permanently disconnected.

This is part of why slowing down matters.

Not because slowing down magically solves conflict, but because speed often intensifies nervous system reactions. Fast conversations reward certainty, performance, and reaction. Slow conversations create more room to notice what is happening internally before we immediately externalize it onto everyone else.

Sometimes growth begins with something as simple as recognizing what is happening inside us in the middle of a conversation. We notice that our chest tightened when a certain topic came up. We realize we suddenly became defensive or stopped listening carefully. Maybe we felt embarrassed, wanted to escape, wanted to win the conversation, or wanted reassurance that we were still a good person. Those observations may seem small, but they are often the beginning of self-awareness instead of automatic reaction.

Those observations may sound small, but they are often the beginning of self-awareness instead of automatic reaction.

And honestly, I think many of us need permission to realize that struggling in these conversations does not automatically mean we are bad people. It may simply mean we are human beings attempting to unlearn years of fear, avoidance, tribal conditioning, and inherited anxiety around subjects we were rarely taught how to navigate well.

The goal is not becoming emotionless. The goal is becoming more aware, more grounded, and more capable of staying present long enough for real understanding to emerge.

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White people often feel anxious entering conversations about race because many of us are trying to answer the wrong question.

We ask ourselves: What should I say? How do I avoid messing up? How do I prove I care?

But maybe a better question is simpler: How do I show up well?

Most of us already understand what healthy showing up looks like in everyday life. If a friend is going through a divorce, we do not usually walk in with a ten-step strategy for fixing their life. We listen. We check in consistently. We resist making their pain about our own discomfort. We understand that support sometimes means being present without needing control.

Or imagine visiting someone else’s hometown for the first time. Most healthy people naturally become more observant. We ask questions. We pay attention to local customs. We recognize that the people who live there understand certain things better than we do because they have lived them.

Race conversations can require a similar posture.

For many white people, especially those raised to avoid conversations about race altogether, it can feel tempting to either withdraw completely or overcompensate by trying to sound exceptionally informed. But neither response builds real relationship. Real growth often begins with curiosity, consistency, humility, and the willingness to stay engaged even when conversations become uncomfortable.

Sometimes showing up well means listening carefully to experiences we have never personally had instead of immediately comparing them to our own. Sometimes it means asking thoughtful questions instead of rushing toward debate. Sometimes it means noticing who gets interrupted, dismissed, doubted, or exhausted in conversations and adjusting our behavior accordingly.

And sometimes showing up simply means staying. Staying when conversations feel awkward. Staying when we realize we still have things to learn. Staying when the cultural momentum shifts and talking about race becomes unpopular again.

Because that is part of the challenge of the current moment.

A few years ago, many institutions openly encouraged conversations about race and equity. Now some of those same conversations are being scaled back, defunded, politicized, or avoided altogether. Many people feel uncertain about what can safely be said in workplaces, schools, churches, or public spaces.

Our present moment is not simply pushing back on institutional commitments to racial equity or making these conversations less fashionable. The consequences are landing on real people. Some have lost jobs connected to diversity and equity work. Some finally believed new opportunities, mentorship pipelines, scholarships, or leadership pathways might actually become available, only to watch those doors quietly close again. Others are carrying the exhaustion of feeling newly vulnerable in workplaces, schools, churches, and communities where the social climate has shifted dramatically in just a few years.

So the question for white people becomes more concrete and relational: how do we show up when these realities stop being abstract debates and start affecting the actual lives of people around us? Not by rushing to rescue or centering our own guilt, but by remaining present. By refusing to disappear when pushing in becomes inconvenient. By listening carefully, checking in when helpful, using whatever influence or stability we have to support others, and recognizing that this moment has real costs. Real people suffer when justice work stops being culturally rewarded.

In moments like this, it becomes easier to quietly disengage. To decide that the tension is not worth it. To convince ourselves that the problems are too complicated or too divisive to keep talking about. But relationships do not deepen because conversations are easy. They deepen because people remain present through difficulty.

Showing up today may look less dramatic than people imagined. It may look like sustained friendships across difference. Reading and learning without needing praise for it. Speaking up when something harmful is said in a room where silence would be easier. Raising children who are comfortable with difference rather than afraid of it. Supporting communities and organizations doing long-term work, even when there is no social reward attached to it.

The future probably will not be shaped primarily by people who mastered the right language online. It will be shaped by ordinary people willing to practice humility, curiosity, courage, and sustained presence over long periods of time. None of this requires perfection, but it does require a thoughtful approach to showing up.

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We already understand repair
What happens when the harm is larger than any one person

One of the strange things about growing up is realizing that “making things right” becomes far more complicated the older we get.

When we are children, the moral universe often feels relatively clear. If you hurt someone, you apologize. If you break something, you try to fix it. If an entire class mistreats a substitute teacher, sometimes everyone loses recess because everyone participated in creating the environment where the harm happened. Even as kids, we understand instinctively that responsibility is not always purely individual. Sometimes we are part of something larger than ourselves, for good or for harm.

Most of us learned this before we could even fully explain it. But adulthood introduces a harder reality. The systems we participate in become bigger, more layered, and far more difficult to untangle.

We begin to realize that many of the comforts we enjoy are connected to suffering somewhere else. Cheap clothes often come from underpaid labor. Fast shipping depends upon exhausting warehouse conditions and transportation systems that strain both people and the planet. Entire industries operate because consumers like us benefit from convenience, affordability, and distance from the consequences.

As we mature, many of us learn to hold two truths at once: I may not have personally created the problem, and I still participate in a world shaped by it.

Race works this way too.

For many people, conversations about racial inequality become difficult the moment they feel personally accused. We instinctively move into defense mode. I did not own slaves. I did not create segregation. I did not design discriminatory housing policies or unequal school systems or hiring disparities or mass incarceration.

And for many people, that statement is true.

But the deeper question is not only, “Did I personally create this?” The deeper question is, “What does it mean to live inside something that still shapes all of us?”

Because racial inequity was never only about individual prejudice. It became embedded into neighborhoods, wealth accumulation, education systems, infrastructure, policing, healthcare access, and generational opportunity. Like many large systems, it compounded over time. Advantages accumulated in some communities while barriers accumulated in others.

That does not mean every individual life is simple or easy. It does not mean every white person has lived without struggle. It does not mean every person of color has experienced the same realities. Human lives are always more complicated than slogans.

But it does mean we inherited a society that was uneven long before we arrived. And eventually every society and its individuals have to decide what it means to repair what has been damaged.

Some forms of repair happen at levels far beyond my direct influence. Policies. Investments. Schools. Housing. Healthcare. Criminal justice reform. Economic opportunity. Those decisions involve governments, institutions, corporations, and civic systems much larger than any individual person.

But that does not mean ordinary people are powerless. Repair won’t happen if those who have benefited don’t get involved.

Repair also happens through the kind of people we become as long as there are tangible outcomes.

It happens when we listen instead of immediately defending ourselves. It happens when we learn history we were never taught. It happens when we notice who has access to opportunity and who consistently does not. It happens when employers examine hiring practices. When organizations examine leadership representation. When schools examine disciplinary disparities. When neighborhoods ask why some communities have resources that others never received.

Repair can look like investment. Advocacy. Shared relationships. Supporting businesses and organizations that have historically lacked access to capital. Staying in hard conversations instead of retreating from them. Raising children who know how to talk honestly about culture and history without shame or hostility.

None of these actions “solve” hundreds of years of inequity overnight. Large societal wounds rarely heal that way. But this is also true: ignoring damage has never repaired anything.

One of the great temptations in conversations about race is believing that because the problem is enormous, nothing meaningful can be done at all. But most repair throughout human history has happened through ordinary people deciding they did not want to pass unresolved harm endlessly into the future.

We understood this instinctively as children.

If something is broken, we should try to make it right.

The older we get, the more complicated that becomes. But perhaps maturity is not abandoning that instinct. Perhaps maturity is learning how to live it out in a world where the damage is larger than any one person alone can fix and, at the same time, finding our role in the repair.

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One of the first instincts many white people have when they begin to recognize racialized dynamics in society is a good one. We want perspective from people whose experiences differ from their own. We realize that if race and culture shape experience, then listening to people who are not white may help us understand what we have not had to see before. That instinct is not wrong. In many ways, it is necessary.

But there is a complication here that often goes unnoticed.

When white people rely primarily on friends, coworkers, neighbors, or acquaintances of color to explain race to us, process our confusion, answer our questions, and help us understand the world, the burden of white development gets placed onto the very people navigating those dynamics themselves. Many of us begin our learning journey assuming that other people will educate us, often without realizing that this expectation carries its own cost.

What we are asking for in those moments is not small. We are asking people to spend their time helping us process questions we could have begun exploring ourselves. We are asking them to revisit experiences that may be painful, frustrating, or deeply personal in order to make them legible to us.

We are asking them to translate cultural realities they navigate intuitively into language we can understand, often while managing our defensiveness, confusion, or need for reassurance along the way. Even when offered generously, that is emotional labor, intellectual labor, and relational labor. And when it happens repeatedly, the cumulative effect is that People of Color are asked not only to survive racialized dynamics, but to teach others about them too.

While many people of color generously do make space for those conversations, we should be honest about what that asks of them. Whatever the goodwill present in those conversations, that is not a sustainable or just model for formation.

If we want to grow in cultural competence, we have to do our own work. That means reading the books, listening to the podcasts, watching the documentaries, studying the history, learning the frameworks, and taking advantage of the many resources already available to us. It means committing ourselves to education rather than waiting for education to come to us through relationship.

But here is the part we often miss. Doing your own work does not only mean consuming content created by experts. It also means talking honestly with other white people. Whether we admit it or not, we know our own cultural dynamics. We know the assumptions, habits, anxieties, coded language, avoidance patterns, and inherited narratives that shape many white communities. We know how race is discussed, and just as importantly, how often it is not discussed, in the rooms we come from. Part of doing our own work is helping one another examine that honestly.

Step one – read, listen, study the stuff

Step two – find another white person to talk about the stuff with

This does not mean retreating into all-white conversations and calling that growth. We do not become culturally competent in isolation, nor do we mature without real relationships across difference. Friendships, partnerships, and communities that stretch beyond our own experience remain essential to growth.

However, when we do our own work first, we show up to those relationships differently and hopefully better. We show up less dependent on others to do our homework for us. We show up with more context, more humility, and more awareness of the complexity of the conversation we are entering. We become better friends, better coworkers, and better conversation partners because we have done the work.

There is, however, another danger worth naming. Some people begin doing the educational work and assume that knowledge itself is the goal. We read enough books, learn enough vocabulary, and understand enough theory that we begin to believe we are now competent.

We are not.

Reading about race is not the same as building meaningful relationships across cultural difference. Understanding anti-racism conceptually is not the same as learning how to navigate real human relationships with wisdom, humility, and grace. Knowledge without relationship is not maturity.

Knowledge is not the destination. It is preparation. It helps us show up better in the relationships where real growth happens, because cultural competence is not built merely by knowing the right ideas. It is built when understanding and relationship begin to shape one another.

In other words, part of becoming culturally competent is learning to do what some people call “white people work.” Not because the work belongs only to white people, but because white people cannot outsource the work of understanding whiteness.

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This past week, we kicked off the pilot cohort for the Project 2045 Skill Building Cohort. The project began last November but in some ways it felt like the real start. And aside from my awesome Bridgerton clip not working and a few opening nerves, it went really well.

That may sound like a small thing, but if I am honest, launching this cohort carried more weight for me than I expected. Project 2045 has lived for a long time as an idea, a conviction, a framework, and a hope. To finally gather people in a room and begin doing the work together felt significant.

What made the evening especially meaningful is that the room was filled with people I know to varying degrees. Friends. Colleagues. Trusted conversation partners. People willing to step into something new with me before there was much proof of concept beyond conviction and vision.

And they showed up with grace.

One of the first things we named together was something that resonated deeply across the room: many of us have not only never been taught how to talk about race and culture well, we have often been actively discouraged from doing so.

For so many people, silence was presented as politeness. Avoidance was framed as wisdom. Colorblindness was sold as virtue. But silence has not prepared us for the world we actually live in.

If anything, it has left many people anxious, underdeveloped, and unsure of how to engage across difference with honesty and courage.

That reality was present in the room. And if I am honest, I do not think I was the only one who came in a little nervous.

We also found ourselves navigating religious difference in the room almost immediately. That was not planned, but it was welcome. One of the things I hope this cohort becomes is a space where people can practice the kind of relational honesty that makes deeper conversations possible. Difference does not have to be a threat. Sometimes it is the very thing that creates the conditions for growth.

By the end of the night, we had begun moving into people’s personal experiences with race and culture, which is where the real work starts. We only scratched the surface there, and I will write more about that in a future post.

For this first session, the focus was mostly introduction, framing, and setting the table. And perhaps I set the table a little too thoroughly. I think I talked too much.

But that is part of piloting something new. You learn in public. You adjust. You refine. What matters most is this:

The room had energy.
The room had trust.
The room had curiosity.
The room had courage.

And now we get to begin the actual work of the Six Conversations.

That is where this gets exciting.

Because the goal of this cohort is not merely to help people understand ideas. It is to help people build the skills, confidence, and relational capacity to engage difficult conversations with honesty rather than performance or debate.

And apparently others are seeing the need too.

We already have two communities interested in running cohorts with us this fall and a publication of a major university ready to do an article on us.

That tells me what I have suspected for a while:

People know they need help with this.
They are hungry for frameworks.
They want spaces to practice.
They just need somewhere to begin.

This pilot cohort is that beginning. And I cannot wait to see where it goes.

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An Invitation

If these ideas resonate and you want structured support to understand them, Project 2045 is hosting Skill Building cohorts in 2026 that teach the conversation skills white people need for this moment. It is a space to build capacity, deepen self-awareness, and strengthen the muscles required for a shared multiracial future.

Check out cohort details and apply here.

Conversation and action is how change begins.

As Project 2045 begins to find a bit of momentum, I’ve noticed something unexpected. I spend a lot of time talking about the things in life that matter most. And almost none of us were ever trained to talk about them well.

That realization keeps showing up in different ways.

I think about how ineffective most of our early attempts at learning were. A sixth-grade sex ed class that barely prepared us for a deeply complex and highly sexualized world. Conversations about politics that quickly collapse into slogans or silence. The quiet shock of being handed a newborn and realizing how little anyone actually prepared you for parenting.

We are living inside some of the most formative, consequential parts of life with almost no shared language, no real practice, and very little guidance. And yet, these are the places that shape us the most.

Sex. Money. Family. Race. Culture. Politics.

These are not side topics. These are the terrain of our lives. And still, many of us were taught some version of the same rule: We don’t talk about that. Not here. Not at the table. Not in polite company.

There is something understandable about that instinct. Some experiences can only be learned by living them. No handbook can fully prepare you for everything you will face.

But I am no longer convinced that silence is the best we can do. Because there is a difference between mystery and neglect. There are parts of life that will always be complex. But there are also parts where we have simply failed to develop the skills, language, and confidence we need. And often, that failure is not accidental.

There are spoken and unspoken forces that keep us underdeveloped in these spaces.

Polite culture tells us not to make waves.
Family systems teach us to keep things looking “okay.”
Wider structures benefit when difficult conversations never happen.

Silence, in many cases, protects the status quo. And the status quo does not benefit everyone equally. So the question underneath Project 2045 is not just about race or culture, even though those are central. It is a broader question about our lives.

What would it look like for people to become competent, confident, and even fluent in the areas of life that matter most?

Not perfect. Not having all the answers.

But able to name our own story.
Able to listen to someone else’s experience without immediately reacting.
Able to stay in a conversation long enough for something real to emerge.

Because the goal is not simply to “talk about hard things.”

The goal is to build the kind of capacity that allows us to bridge across difference without collapsing into fear, performance, or avoidance. Race and culture in America are undeniably complex. No single framework is going to resolve that complexity. But that does not mean we are stuck.

We can get better.

We can learn how to locate ourselves in our own stories with honesty.
We can practice listening in ways that create space rather than shut it down.
We can develop language that helps us navigate tension instead of escaping it.

We can become people who are formed enough to engage what is actually in front of us. The alternative is what many of us have already experienced. A life where the most important conversations are the ones we never learned how to have. Project 2045 exists because that does not have to be the case.

And maybe the work in front of us is simpler than we think. Not easier. But simpler.

We start talking.
We learn how to listen.
We practice staying.

And over time, what once felt unspeakable becomes something we can carry together.

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I have been in enough rooms now to know when it is coming.

A public presentation. A conversation about race, culture, history. Often led by a Person of Color. The room leans in. Something lands. You can feel it. And then, almost on cue, a white person raises their hand and asks:

“So what do we do?”

It has become so predictable that I once leaned over to the person next to me and whispered, “Here it comes.” I counted it down in a whisper. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

Right on time, the question came. “So what do we do?”

It is, in many ways, a good question.

At some point, I hope all of us, especially those of us who are white, arrive at that moment. The moment when we realize that the world we inhabit has been shaped by forces that have harmed others and benefited us. The moment when the question becomes personal. What is my part in this? What could I do?

That question signals awakening. It signals that something has shifted.

But it is also a problematic question. And not just a little.

Often, it is directed toward the very people who have been most impacted by the problem. A white person asking a Person of Color to provide the roadmap forward. In that moment, responsibility quietly shifts. The burden of solution lands on those who have already carried the weight of harm.

Yes, those voices matter. Deeply. But it is not their job to educate white people out of something white people created. It is a problem created within white culture that has consequences far beyond it. Which means the work of understanding, of unlearning, of reimagining, cannot be outsourced.

There is another layer to the question that is harder to name.

“So what do we do?” often carries an assumption. If I care enough, if I decide this matters, if I am willing to act, then I can help fix this. It is the quiet confidence that intention leads directly to impact. That awareness leads quickly to action. That action leads to resolution.

There is a kind of cultural arrogance in that. We have been formed to believe that showing up and wanting to help is enough. That complex problems yield to good intentions. That urgency is always virtuous. But what if the first step is not action? What if the first step is grief?

Grief for what has been lost. Grief for what has been taken. Grief for the ways systems have been built that advantage some at the expense of others. Grief for the ways we have participated, knowingly or not. Grief slows us down. It interrupts the impulse to fix. It creates space to actually understand. In most areas of life, we recognize this. We do not rush into solving something we barely comprehend. We listen. We learn. We sit with complexity. We allow ourselves to be changed by what we are beginning to see.

But when it comes to race, many of us have been formed differently. We have been taught, subtly but consistently, that we should have answers. That we should move quickly. That doing something is always better than doing nothing.

Sometimes doing something too quickly is just another way of avoiding what is real.

Project 2045 is, in some ways, my response to that question. Not the answer. One answer.

And I hope it is an answer shaped not by urgency alone, but by learning, by listening, and by grief. By the recognition that whatever emerges next must be held with humility. That none of us are solving this on our own. That we are participating in something much larger than ourselves.

The question still matters. “So what do we do?” But perhaps the better question, at least at first, is this: Who are we becoming as we learn to live in the world that is already arriving?

Because 2045 is not waiting for us to be ready. The future is coming. The question is whether we will meet it with the depth, honesty, and courage it requires.

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When we first conceived of Project 2045, I thought I knew what it was.

I gathered a group of people in Portland to help advise how I would launch it. Almost everyone in the room was a person of color, along with one white guy from Arkansas. These were not random voices. These were people who had walked with me, challenged me, shaped me. People who loved me enough to tell me the truth. Many of them are described in the autobiography posts on this Substack.

I came in with a plan for the project and a plan for the day.

Version 1.0 of Project 2045 was clear in my mind. A Substack. A podcast. Six conversations that I believed all white people needed to have with each other. I imagined gathering reflections, sharing insights, maybe even building something like an online community over time.

It felt thoughtful. It felt important. It also felt, in hindsight, very controlled. What I did not expect was how quickly that plan would be expanded. Within about fifteen minutes, my plan for the day was gone. When you put brilliant people in a room who care deeply about something, you do not get polite feedback. You get clarity. You get conviction. You get truth that cuts through whatever assumptions you brought in with you.

And what they told me was simple. My plan is not enough.

Before I say more about what they said, I need to name something that has been sitting with me for a long time. I have been in countless rooms where white people say, “We need to listen to voices of people of color.” I have heard it in organizations, in churches, in leadership spaces. There is often real energy around getting those voices to the table.

But a friend pointed something out to me recently that I cannot unsee. Listening is often where it stops. The implied next step is rarely followed through, which is actually doing what those voices say.

If even a fraction of the white individuals and organizations who claim they want to listen actually acted on what they heard, our world would look different.

So I made a decision going into that room. Project 2045 would become what this group said it should be. Not what I preferred. Not what felt easiest. Not what I had already built in my head. What they said.

That commitment mattered, because what they said pushed me in directions I did not want to go at first. The first thing they told me was that I needed to tell my own story. Not just ideas. Not just frameworks. My story. My racial autobiography.

To be honest, I did not want to do that. I especially did not want to do it in front of a camera, which is what they suggested. It felt vulnerable in a way that writing about concepts never does.

But they were right.

What has become the eleven Substack articles of my racial autobiography started in that moment. And even though I resisted it, it has opened something in me and in this project that I could not see at the time.

It turns out that people do not need another white person explaining race. They need to see what it looks like for a white person to do the work honestly, imperfectly, and in public. I am still not excited about the idea of putting that story on camera. But I am convinced that I need to follow through. That conviction comes directly from that room.

The second thing they told me was just as important. Information is not enough.

I could not just tell white people what conversations to have. I could not just offer insights or frameworks and hope something changed. If Project 2045 was going to matter, it needed to be about formation. It needed to help people actually grow.

That means working with others in learning how to be present in hard conversations. Learning how to sit with grief, anger, confusion, and defensiveness without shutting down. Learning how to hold space for others without centering ourselves. Learning how to stay when everything in us wants to leave.

In other words, it needed to be about becoming a different kind of person, not just thinking different kinds of thoughts. As someone with a background as a minister, this hit something deep in me. Formation. Holding space. Walking with people through change. These are not new ideas for me. They are at the core of how I understand my work in the world. And yet somehow, in my original version of Project 2045, I had left that part of myself on the sidelines.

I had made the project smaller than who I had potential to make it. I walked into that room thinking I had a solid plan. I walked out realizing I had been playing it safe.

What I received that day was not just feedback. It was a kind of commissioning.

This group saw something in me that I had not fully embraced. They saw a connection between what the world needs and how I am uniquely wired to respond to it. And they refused to let me settle for something less.

I cried several times that day. And several times after. Not because I felt criticized, but because I felt known.

There is a kind of love that affirms you as you are. And there is a deeper kind of love that calls you into who you could become. That room held both. I was tangibly loved. Deeply believed in. And also held to a higher expectation than I had set for myself.

I will never forget that day

Every time this project feels uncertain, every time it stretches beyond my comfort, every time I wonder if this is too much, I come back to that room. Project 2045 is no longer just an idea I had. It is something shaped by community, sharpened by truth, and grounded in a commitment to actually listen and act.

And because of that, it is bigger than I imagined.

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Welcome to Project 2045. We just crossed over 100 followers on Substack, just got our 501c3, and are preparing our first cohort. Things are moving. There are a lot of new people looking in, so we just wanted to get anyone caught up who may be new… or want a refresher.

Project 2045 begins with a conviction that may feel both obvious and risky to say out loud. Many white Americans already want a future where we flourish together across difference, but we do not yet have the confidence or competence to engage that reality in public. Too often, the fear of getting it wrong pushes people into silence, especially in a climate where the loudest voices are not always working toward shared flourishing.

At the same time, racism has not only harmed communities of color, but it has also diminished all of our ability to learn, relate, and grow honestly across difference. Project 2045 exists to create spaces where the temperature is low enough for real learning, where people can build the courage and capacity to speak, listen, and practice the kind of shared future many of us already believe is possible.

Project 2045 is grounded in a simple but urgent reality. The United States is already becoming a more racially and culturally diverse society, moving toward a future where no single group holds the majority. This shift is not distant. It is visible now in younger generations, in schools, and in communities across the country. But this is more than a demographic trend. It is a defining moment that will shape how we live together.

The question is not whether this change is happening, but how we will meet it. Project 2045 exists to help people prepare for that future by building the relationships, language, and skills needed to pursue a kind of shared flourishing that is not zero-sum, but rooted in dignity, responsibility, and the understanding that our lives are bound together.

Project 2045 is not just about anticipating a demographic shift. It is about formation for a future that is already arriving. Many of us, especially white Americans, have not been prepared for the kind of presence, resilience, and responsibility that living across difference requires, even if we support it in principle. This work resists the idea that information or the right language is enough.

Instead, it focuses on the slower work of becoming through skill building, honest conversation, and repeated practice. It also insists that this responsibility cannot be outsourced. We must do our own work, in public and over time, learning how to stay present, repair harm, and grow in our capacity to live with integrity in a more diverse society.

An Invitation

So join us if you want to live in a world where difference does not automatically mean division, where our kids inherit more than our unresolved fears, and where people learn how to live together with honesty, dignity, and shared responsibility. Join us if you believe flourishing is something we practice slowly, imperfectly, and together.

Visit thisisproject2045.com to learn more. Subscribe to Project 2045 on Substack to follow the thinking as it unfolds.

Follow along on social media
https://www.instagram.com/thisisproject2045/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61584749169449

https://www.tiktok.com/@thisisproject2045

And get ready for the podcast, learning cohorts, and other ways to practice showing up for the future that is already on its way.

You can support us as we start this important work.

This is Project 2045. The future is closer than we think. Let’s become who that future needs.

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