The Question I Couldn’t Dodge
How one conversation reshaped my understanding of responsibility
I had gotten very comfortable with secondary and supportive.
After years of wrestling with race, justice, vocation, and my own location as a white man, I felt like I had answered the question, “What do I do?” I had found a lane that felt both faithful and sustainable. I had the privilege of co-creating meaningful work on teams led by people of color. I had thriving relationships. I was learning. I was contributing. I was not centering myself.
It felt like I had discerned the sweet spot of my vocation. When it came to culture work, I could bring my full self, talents, and gifts to the table working secondary and supportive to those most impacted by the issues they were addressing.
The language came from Dr. King’s insistence that, “white liberals must be prepared to accept a transformation for their role. Whereas they have been in the past the primary and spokesman for the Negro, they must now be the secondary and supportive.”
For me, that was not abstract. It meant stepping away from the assumption that my voice should lead when culture and justice were at stake. But it also meant I could not opt out. There was integrity in it. There was cost in it. There was also relief. I did not have to be the one driving. I did not have to be the one teaching. I could use my skills, my networks, my institutional fluency in ways that strengthened leadership that was not my own.
Then, early in 2020, a colleague asked me a question.
He is a Latino leader I was growing close to during the pandemic. We were talking about my work, about this idea of being secondary and supportive, about how it had changed me and clarified my calling. I explained how freeing it had been. How it had reshaped my imagination. How it had cost me and formed me.
He listened. Then he said, “Have you ever thought about just working with white people? Helping them come to some conclusions?”
It was one of those moments where you know the answer you are about to give is not your best one, but you cannot find a better one in time. I said, “No. I don’t really want to work with white people.”
Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were thin.
I felt good about the conclusions I had come to. I felt good about the relationships I had built. I felt good about the spaces I was occupying. If I am honest, I had no interest in trying to help white folks understand race and culture better. It felt exhausting. It felt thankless. It felt like going backward.
But that answer has haunted me. What I slowly realized was that he was not challenging my integrity. He was pressing on my responsibility.
That is fine for you, he was implying, to feel like you have done your work. I am glad you can sleep at night. But for those of us still dealing with culturally underdeveloped white people every day, it would be helpful if some of you felt an obligation toward your own.
I did not love the question. And my answer felt evasive. That conversation has been deeply formative for Project 2045.
I no longer see culture work as something that simply settles my own conscience. I no longer see secondary and supportive as the final destination. It was necessary. It shaped me. It remains part of who I am. But it cannot be the whole story.
Because exposure changes you. I do this work not because I have some expertise but because I have had some exposure. I do this work not because I want to be a teacher but because BIPOC friends, colleagues, and mentors have confronted me, nurtured me, and refused to let me stay shallow. I do this work because someone asked me a question I did not want to answer.
“Have you ever thought about working with white people?”
I have come to believe that love creates responsibility. Project 2045 is not about correcting white people. It is about refusing to outsource white formation to people who are already carrying too much. It is about inviting us into the world we are already living in, a country moving toward 2045 whether we are ready or not.
I was loved into a larger world. And that love now requires something of me.
Project 2045 is my attempt to stand beside my own, not as an expert and not as a hero, but as someone who has been exposed, confronted, and changed. These biography essays exist because I was asked to tell my story. And telling it has made something clear.
We have been exposed to too much to pretend we do not know.
We see the world as it is. We feel the ache. We are already raising children and grandchildren in a country that will be more multicultural, not less. There are powerful forces betting that we cannot thrive together.
I am betting that we can.
But the road to that future runs through our growth.
Some of this growth belongs to us.
Coming to this conclusion is different than doing the work. Check back for our final article in this racial autobiography that details the stories of doing white-on-white culture work.