When Whiteness Makes An Otherwise Great Conversation Feel...Weird?

We're approaching two months since the streaming of "Liberatory Philosophy, Reading, Friendship, and Critical Self Reflection," the public "Part 2" of an ongoing conversation between Sean Waters and me since 2020. For some reason, which I have struggled to pinpoint in my reflections during the time in between, this conversation is sitting differently with me than the previous one we did at the end of 2021 (which we both left feeling like we were riding an exuberant high).

I know it was a good and meaningful conversation - we revisited the discussion around some of our greatest teachers, covered the importance of locating values in practice, feminist friendship, reading and writing as means for seeing and being seen in various ways, and other topics related to connection and philosophy and living a good life that are areas of deep passion for both of us - but it didn't have the same exhilarating, nearly exasperating, quality as the first one. Perhaps this difference is evident simply in what happened after the conversation ended and the recording stopped.

Neither of us shared it.

This is an odd move for two philosopher friends who are keen on creating content about why philosophy matters so much to us, respectively, and sharing it with interested and engaged public audiences. As a result of us not sharing the video, at the time of this writing, the view count is quite low.

Sean and I didn't follow up with each other afterwards and we haven't talked about this explicitly, but I have to wonder if we both experienced something...uneasy, uncomfortable, unsettling, maybe even especially vulnerable...around this particular conversation.

Nevertheless, I really appreciate the conversation, and I want people to see it. Posting and sharing this video has been on my long list of things to do for months, which has kept me wondering about what has held back my own sense of urgency to get this conversation "out there."

Even though we share really wonderful and lovely things in our dialogue, I have a hunch that what made this conversation feel different from our first is that I explicitly brought in examples of how whiteness, white supremacy, and colonizing practices can complicate and thwart our best intentions around wanting to connect across differences. Also likely is that it wasn't just through topical examples, but there were instances of that happening as our conversation played out.

Vulnerable, indeed.

I know I'm not alone in thinking this is a salient feature of the conversation; despite the limited viewership, the only person to leave a comment on the video eluded to it right away by writing, "Hard to explain my cringy [sic] feelings during the racial portion..." before going on to thoughtfully articulate reflections on parts of our discussion specifically pertaining to the "how's" of friendship.

Why is it so hard to explain such cringey feelings about "the racial portion" when it can be fairly evident we are feeling them?

Unfortunately, even among people who really care about each other, as Sean and I do, conversations about race, racism, and whiteness, in particular, can quickly become loaded with all sorts of implicit, unspoken dynamics, and sometimes even misses, that shift the energy of the conversation.

This isn't unique.

Given the sort of work I do and how I engage in my own efforts to reveal and dismantle white supremacy in myself and others every day, I'm in spaces where this literally happens all the time. Like others who have become deeply familiar with the character and quality of white supremacy in its various machinations, I know the patterns of engagement oh so painfully well.

As I continue to navigate explicit conversations with others about whiteness as a function of values, assumptions, views, beliefs, perceptions, actions, and behaviors that uphold and support white supremacy (knowingly or not), especially in more intimate and even potentially romantic relationships since this recording, I feel particularly sensitive to how difficult it is to be in the space of conversation with others when there are disconnects in our understanding, not just of each other, but of what is actually happening in the moment as a conversation about race and racism plays out.

To be clear, I really don't mean to over-emphasize how this showed up between Sean and myself in this particular conversation (especially because there are so many other highlights from our dialogue that are really compelling and important to me in singularly positive ways), but I feel inclined to name it because, I think, here we can see a relatively-less-harmful-than-possible example of how whiteness disconnects us from ourselves and each other in ways that are frequent, insidious, and often unrecognized as much as they are readily not-understood.

Ultimately, I believe the persistence of this disconnect is precisely why Lugones and Spelman and so many others, have acknowledged that it is rare, even unlikely if not at times impossible, for people to be able to form genuine, authentic, and meaningfully reciprocal relationships across differences.

Whiteness - even when it presents as a means of enacting white supremacy in and through well-intentioned efforts to relate and connect with others - will always get in the way.

As eluded to during the conversation with Sean, this was not the first time whiteness and white supremacy became topics of conversation between us and revealed specific areas where we each hold and embody different types of awareness about racism and how to move beyond it.

By the way, I think that's really important.

Because developing the skills and capacity to identify, recognize, name, challenge, disrupt, dismantle, and replace the presence and influence of white supremacy in ourselves, our relationships, our everyday lives, culture, and systems, takes time, effort, and a willingness to continue to keep doing the work of figuring out how to learn and do even better.

In order to really live a life of love and liberation, I strongly believe we all need to be doing this work, no matter our backgrounds, identities, and different experiences. And as difficult as it can be at times, it is a lot easier and more effective if we can learn from, with, and among friends so we can move each other toward the shared goal of being able to more skillfully see, support, better care for, and protect one another, together.