It is one thing to learn about race. It is another to figure out what to do when a conversation about race is happening right in front of you.
Someone says something that makes you uncomfortable. A friend tells a story that reveals a perspective you hadn’t considered. A colleague makes a comment that seems off, but you aren’t quite sure how to respond. You want to say something, but you don’t know what. You wonder whether speaking up will help, make things worse, or simply leave everyone feeling awkward.
And sometimes, by the time you’ve figured out what you wish you had said, the moment has passed.
These are the kinds of situations the Project 2045 Skill-building cohort explored together. Rather than staying at the level of concepts and definitions, participants worked through a real-life case study involving a participant from his work that week. The exercise gave them an opportunity to consider what they might do in a situation where the right response wasn’t immediately obvious.
The questions that emerged were familiar ones. What do you do when the risk of speaking up feels too high? What happens when you want to intervene but don’t feel able to? How do you respond when you miss the mark or let someone down?
These aren’t abstract questions. They are the moments in which our intentions meet the complicated reality of relationships.
Practice before the moment arrives
One of the challenges of learning to talk about race is that the most consequential moments rarely arrive when we’re prepared for them. We may understand a concept in a discussion and still struggle to apply it when a family member, friend, or colleague says something unexpected.
Practicing with a real-life situation creates a dynamic relationship between learning and action. Participants can consider different responses, talk through their hesitations, and recognize the competing concerns without having to navigate all of the consequences in real time.
That practice doesn’t guarantee we’ll know what to do the next time a difficult conversation arises. But it can help us become more attentive to what’s happening and more prepared to respond.
It can also help us recognize that there is a difference between not knowing what to do and deciding that there is nothing to learn.
Learning to stay in the conversation
The goal isn’t to become the person who always has the perfect response. That person doesn’t exist.
The goal is to become more capable of engaging when race enters our everyday lives. To notice what is happening. To consider the people affected. To take responsibility for our choices. And, when we get something wrong, to remain willing to learn.
For white Americans in particular, that work can involve resisting two familiar impulses: the urge to jump in with an answer before we’ve understood the situation, and the urge to withdraw because we’re afraid of getting it wrong.
Neither impulse helps us become more capable of participating in difficult conversations.
The Project 2045 cohort offered participants a place to practice something more demanding: taking the questions seriously without pretending that every situation has an easy answer.
We will still have moments when we hesitate. We will still misread a situation or wish we’d responded differently. But we can get better at recognizing those moments, reflecting on them, and choosing how to move forward.
We don’t need to know exactly what to say in every situation before we begin. We do need to be willing to keep learning how to show up.