Racial Justice on White Terms

A Racial Autobiography Part 6

I entered my early career already convinced that racial inequity was real. I had read enough. I had listened enough to know that the stories I had been taught about fairness and equal opportunity did not match reality. I felt a deep moral urgency about injustice, particularly racial injustice. I was not neutral. I cared. I wanted to be helpful.

What I did not yet understand was how easily care can center itself.

I had passion before I had skill. Conviction before I had formation. And, through a combination of education, institutional access, and whiteness, I had a platform that arrived far earlier than my maturity. People listened to me. I was invited into rooms. I was asked to speak, facilitate, and represent “the work.” I took those invitations seriously. I believed I was doing something good.

I was also doing it largely on my own terms. On white terms.

My version of help moved quickly. It favored clarity over complexity and solutions over story. I had frameworks, language, and a growing confidence in my ability to name what was wrong with the world. What I lacked were deep, ongoing relationships with People of Color who could interrupt me, redirect me, or tell me when my certainty was outpacing my understanding.

At the time, I didn’t experience this as arrogance. I experienced it as urgency.

I wanted things to change. I wanted institutions to do better. I wanted to use whatever access I had to move the needle. And in many ways, I believed the most responsible thing to do was to step forward, speak clearly, and act decisively. Silence felt like complicity. Hesitation felt like cowardice.

What I could not yet see was that urgency, when ungrounded in relationship, can become another way of taking control. I was trying to do racial justice work in public without being accountable to People of Color.

I spoke about communities I was not embedded in. I advocated for people who were not shaping the work. I interpreted harm through frameworks that had little testing of proximity. I assumed that because my intentions were good, my impact would be as well.

It rarely is that simple.

Looking back, I see how often my helpfulness was defined by my own comfort, imagination, and what is shameful to name – my desire to be the hero. I set the pace. I decided the language. I determined what progress looked like. Even when I was advocating for change, I was still centered in the story. The work moved forward in ways that made sense to me, in timelines that felt reasonable to me, with outcomes that allowed me to feel effective.

I did not yet understand how often “help” can become a more socially acceptable form of control. I also didn’t yet understand the difference between confidence and credibility.

Confidence came easily. I had been trained to speak, to lead discussions, to organize ideas. I knew how to sound composed in front of a room. Credibility, however, is something else entirely. In racial work, credibility is not earned through articulation alone. It is relational. It is cumulative. It grows slowly, through listening, correction, and the willingness to be led.

I had not apprenticed myself to anyone. I had not placed myself under the authority of People of Color whose lives were shaped daily by the realities I was naming. I had allies and mentors, but not accountability in the way that costs you something. No one could meaningfully tell me no. No one could ask me to slow down and expect that I would listen.

This does not mean everything I did was wrong. Some things were helpful. Some doors opened. Some conversations shifted. But the deeper formation had not yet happened. And without that formation, my work carried blind spots I could not see from the inside.

The most humbling realization of that season is this: I believed I was there to bring something, when what was most needed was for me to receive. Even more insidious, I must admit, I was doing all of this while wanting to be the hero. White savior complex had taken full control. I thought because I wanted to bring good into the world that it would happen.

Over time, further proximity began to change me. Relationships deepened. I stayed long enough to be confused, corrected, and disappointed in myself. I learned what it meant to follow rather than initiate, to listen without preparing my response, to let go of being seen as “one of the good ones.”

Project 2045 exists, in part, because I no longer trust passion by itself. I trust relationships. I trust time. I trust being shaped by people I once believed I was there to help. I still care deeply about justice. That has not changed. What has changed is where I locate myself in the work.

I am more suspicious now of certainty, especially my own. I ask different questions. Who is shaping this? Who is missing? Who gets to say no to me? Who bears the cost if I am wrong?

This chapter of my life did not end with clarity. It ended with humility. And the work that followed has been slower, quieter, and far more demanding. It asks not just what I believe, but who I am accountable to. And that question continues to shape who I am becoming.