Waking up from woke

Some resources that helped me, and might help others

“Dreams feel real while we’re in them; it’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.”

“Woke” is a term that’s used disparagingly more than seriously, but from the first time I heard it up through the height of my anti-racist fervor last fall, it genuinely resonated with me. It was a visceral description of the shift in worldview I experienced in college 20 years ago when my friends informed me, in a friendly way, like you would tell someone they have something stuck in their teeth, that all white people were racist. It was as if they were letting me in on a secret the entire black community knew, and only occasionally revealed to trusted outsiders; as the only white person in the circle, I felt sort of special to have made the cut. Suddenly you saw things you’d always overlooked: Anti-black racial stereotypes in all forms of media. Coded second meanings of political statements. Microaggressions hidden in seemingly innocuous compliments. Over the decades, being a white person in this world came with more and more conditions (not from my friends, but from the authors, pundits, and social media influencers who steered the online conversation in recent years). Lack of deference to a black person’s perspective on a racial issue was a form of white supremacy. Seeking to find “solutions” was a form of white supremacy. Feeling uncomfortable or defensive in response to blanket statements about white people was a form of white supremacy. Daring to feel anything but a near-permanent state of despair or rage while marginalized people were dying was a form of white supremacy. Like water dripping on a rock over decades, this stream of thinking gradually wore away at my inclination to think critically about anything related to race except to further the narrative; I was too busy suppressing my latent inner white supremacist.

Needless to say, the process of waking up again from this state was Earth-shattering. I had not realized just how much of my sense of self was tied up in this worldview. I couldn’t sleep for days. I wondered if I was losing my mind. This shared view of the world was the bedrock of all of my closest friendships (thankfully, not my marriage—my husband was relieved when I finally went through this shift and asked me something like, “Were you not listening to me this whole time?”). If it was hard for me as a white person, I suspect it could be impossible for a person of color if they, their parents, their grandparents and so on have had traumatizing experiences with racism. David French describes extremely well what it felt like for me going through this transition when he describes reaching QAnon conspiracy theorists (again, French with the parallels!):

Let’s think this through for a moment. Let’s suppose that you forward to your Aunt Edna the absolutely perfect fact check—in 900 words, her commitment to “stop the steal” crumbles into ash. Where does that leave her in her friendships? Where does that leave her in her sense of political purpose? Does it leave her disconnected from her friends in her Bible study? Does it impact her relationship with her husband? What about the online community that’s embraced her and helped her through the loneliness of the pandemic?

This is not a world someone is willing to take a step out of lightly. Entertaining challenging outside perspectives is often literally referred to as “dangerous.” For me, it took a huge leap of faith in my own ability to withstand the potential vortex of anti-blackness to spend some time even entertaining other ideas. What finally made things click for me was when I realized that my worldview was making everything I cared about worse. It was increasing polarization, it was increasing racism, it was increasing the feelings of oppression experienced by minorities. I never gave up on my goals, but I had to let go of my ideology.

So, you have a woke friend, co-worker, or family member. They seem nearly consumed by this worldview. They are actively proselytizing on social media and in real life. Is there any way to reach them? I will be honest—if you are a straight, white, and cis-gender, especially male, it will be tough. Any link you send or resource you share will likely be filtered through the preconceived notion that you are simply unaware of your own racial biases, that you are resisting their message because you want to preserve your own privilege, and that the resources you came across are either equally biased or just in it for fame or fortune. It will be nearly impossible to break through via email or social media. If you know them well enough to have a phone call or meet up in person, it’s worth trying. You will need to start by acknowledging that you likely have some biases about race. Listen to them speak about what they care about and why. Let them know which concerns of theirs you share. Let them know you genuinely want to fight racism too, and you have different ideas about how best to do it. Then you may be able to share this list of resources that helped me along the way.

I hope that it helps others explore the topic of race in America in new and enlightening ways.

Breaking up the Black Monolith

One of the ironic aspects of anti-racism is that the phrase “black people are not a monolith!” is thrown around quite often, but then it is taken for granted that “the black community” has a single, shared perspective on issues of race (rooted in “moral clarity”). One critical mental block for me was that mainstream anti-racism was simply understanding “the black perspective” on racism, as if there were such a singular thing. Conservative contrarians like Candace Owens, Tim Scott, and Diamond & Silk were seduced by white supremacy and/or just in it for the fame and power; all reasonable black people agreed about how the world actually worked. However, encountering some black, liberal perspectives on race that broke the mold absolutely shattered many of the ideas I had taken as simple “reality.”

And even more critically, it made me realize that a white person “disagreeing with the black perspective” was not an act of white supremacy because there is no such thing as “the” black perspective. One could argue it was racist to ever think there was.

Chloe Valdary, Theory of Enchantment

I found Chloe Valdary’s Theory of Enchantment when Trump’s Executive Order banning Critical Race Theory-based diversity training at government contractors put the clamp down on some of the DEI initiatives I was supporting at work. I was literally dumbstruck—how else could you fight racism other than convincing all white people to realize they were racist? Valdary’s three principals stopped me in my tracks, especially the first one:

1. Treat people like human beings, not political abstractions.

2. Criticize to uplift and empower, never to tear down, never to destroy.

3. Root everything you do in love and compassion.

I realized in an instant that I was not actually listening to a single concern that had ever been raised by a white person or a conservative on the issue of racism, because I was so certain they were ignorant or malignant. Her program is based on the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin, along with pop culture references. Valdary’s Twitter feed was also full of thought-provoking parallels between the pain and anger felt by liberals and conservatives alike.

Coleman Hughes, Parable of the Pedestrian

I was predisposed to mistrust Coleman Hughes because several white male conservatives had recommended his posts to me. But having taken Chloe Valdary’s first principal to heart, I decided to read this piece with an open mind, not making assumptions about him or his biases in advance. (Knowing he supported Joe Biden helped too, I’ll be honest.) It has stuck with me for several reasons, one being that it’s one of the first pieces on race I can recall where I read it and let myself disagree with parts, but still find valuable insights in others; in the past I would dismiss an entire piece based on one or two points of disagreement. Also, his Parable of the Pedestrian really made me think:

A reckless driver runs a stop light and hits a pedestrian, injuring her spine. Doctors inform the pedestrian that if she ever wants to walk again she’ll have to spend many painstaking years in physical therapy. Clearly, she bears no responsibility for her injury; she was victimized by the reckless driver. Yet the driver cannot make her whole. He might pay for her medical bills, for instance, but he cannot make her attend her tedious physical therapy sessions; only she can do that. Still, she might resist. She might write historical accounts detailing precisely how and why the driver injured her. When her physical therapists demand more of her, she might accuse them of blaming the victim. She might wallow in the unfairness of it all. But this will change nothing. The nature of her injury precludes the possibility of anyone besides her healing it.

My initial recap of the impact this parable had on my thinking was fairly critiqued by a friend.¹ It has triggered a lot of re-thinking, and I think highlights the issue with not just this allegory, but the allegories that are all too common in social justice advocacy as well. I was very used to stories that featured individual characters representing not just entire racial groups, but entire racial groups that span all of history. It’s a common trope that leads to an inevitable trap—it oversimplifies human complexity and is inevitably insulting to people who don’t identify with the way they’ve been painted.

What this “parable” did for me initially, however, was cause me to realize that I had, in a way, been thinking of white people, collectively, as the perpetrators of violent crime against minority groups, collectively. I was thinking that justice required white people, collectively, to do the work of repairing the damage they’d wrought, and that the only way to repair the damage was to listen to the loudest voices speaking on behalf of the victim, the ones who portrayed the injuries in the most serious way possible. But even if the collective groups over time could be represented by single people, some damage can never be erased, no matter how much the perpetrator owns their crimes and wishes for repair. Some damage is so radical that it changes both parties and bonds them together forever. Working on healing is absolutely worth the effort, and it’s wrong to suggest people of all backgrounds haven’t been working on it for centuries. Healing absolutely involves listening, sacrificing, collaborating, learning and growing. It also involves looking back to see how much progress has been made, giving credit where credit is due, and celebrating the wins. This celebration of growth and collaboration was something I’d cynically forgotten to appreciate, assuming instead that my role as a white person required constant vigilance against complacency.

John McWhorter, Anti-Racism as a Religion

This piece hit me hard. After the death of George Floyd, I felt a moral obligation, a nearly religious urge to proselytize about anti-racism to friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. In my efforts at work, I encountered white conservatives who rebuked everything about the approach I and several hundred others were taking to the topic. “It’s fine to oppose racism, but not like that!” “Why don’t you read some Thomas Sowell?” It bugged me to no end. I did not know why they were inserting themselves at all, why they were critiquing an approach to a topic they did not seem to genuinely care about themselves. I literally thought to myself, how would they feel if I showed up at their bible study group and started asking why they don’t read some Richard Dawkins? But that analogy bothered me; certainly, we weren’t a religion, we were all about facts! McWhorter’s piece painted a pretty clear picture of my own fanaticism from the outside. He’s written many other things that have stuck with me, including critiques of Kendi and DiAngelo, as well as releasing excerpts from his forthcoming book, The Elect, but it will always be this one that really got my gears turning.

Kmele Foster and Van Lathan’s discussion on the Fifth Column Podcast

Kmele Foster is a Libertarian man of African descent who prefers not to self-identify as “black”—a truly radical choice. On an appearance on Bill Maher, Foster openly challenged the narrative about racial equity and whether racism was a factor in Covid disparities.

Needless to say, he pissed off a lot of people on Twitter. Van Lathan, a commentator from Louisiana who’d been a previous guest on Foster’s podcast, The Fifth Column, reached out and proposed a conversation. It’s an hour and a half long, but it’s truly remarkable for the open way the two men discussed and disagreed on typically toxic topics, but with understanding. “That’s true,” “I don’t agree, but I understand it,” “I hear you,” “Interesting, fascinating”… These were the ways the men found fruitful ground to learn from each other. In the end, neither converted the other, but they both left the discussion with a greater appreciation for the complexity of the topics they both care about—and critically, with a desire to actually collaborate on future efforts.

Thomas Chatterton Williams, Self-Portrait in Black and White

When I first encountered Thomas Chatterton Williams and read that he was suggesting race was a fiction we should all move past, I scoffed and thought to myself, “Easy for a man who could pass for white to say!” (Yes, I am white. Yes, I was being a judgmental asshole.) It was only after my woke castle had already crumbled that I came back around to his book, Self-Portrait in Black and White—and I am so glad I did. Williams is privileged in many ways, no doubt, but he acknowledges this throughout the book. Blackness was a huge part of his identity well into his adulthood, and he expresses poignantly what it meant to him, his father and his brother, and what it means to so many others; to de-emphasize his own blackness would be akin to rejecting the struggles of not just your ancestors, but anyone who ever suffered under racist oppression. But when Williams’ first daughter was born with blue eyes and blonde hair, he questioned what it even means to be black. Why should the ignorance or bigotry of others become a defining feature of who one is? Williams reflects that if his identity were defined by the way he is perceived by others, in his adopted home of Paris, he would effectively be an Arab (which he is most commonly mistaken for). He does not deny the realities of racism, but he does reject racial essentialism as a counter-measure. He instead argues that the only effective way to defeat the ugly lie of race is to stop reinforcing it.

(Side note, I read this book immediately after finishing Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime.” It makes for an interesting pairing. Noah’s portrait of life in Apartheid South Africa makes the ridiculousness of race as a social construct, and the racism that creates it, absurdly clear. And yet Noah, in the end, claims that given the racialized world we live in, folks like him must eventually pick a team. Williams agrees to disagree.)

Erec Smith, Heterodox Academy

Erec Smith is a professor of Rhetoric and Composition, and his most prominent work is critiquing the mainstream anti-racist discourse in academia (in the “uplift and empower” spirit of Theory of Enchantment). His talk below for the Heterodox Academy is full of academic jargon—in truth, I had to watch it twice—but he systematically breaks apart how psychologically detrimental and “disempowering” the ideology of anti-racism has become.

I just want an anti-racism that does not require a feeling of victimization or, at times, infantilization and learned helplessness in people of color. I want an empowering anti-racism that provides and maintains racial dignity while encouraging deliberative engagement with the social and material realities of American society. Unfortunately, most contemporary anti-racism suffers from a primacy of identity that consists of four parts: a narcissistic embrace of lived experience as its primary ethos and epistemology, a tendency to essentialize people based on race, a demonization of critical inquiry (let alone blunt disagreement), and a neglect of fundamental aspects of rhetoric like context and audience consideration. (From his Quillette piece that closely follows his talk.)

This is a powerful assertion. Smith is making the case that racial essentialism and the primacy of identity are understandable responses to the experience of racism, and yet by reinforcing what is essentially a survival mode reaction, we are linking people’s primary form of self-esteem and empowerment to their own oppression. This is a cyclical trap of disempowerment that becomes extremely difficult to escape, especially when paired with “demonization of critical inquiry.” Heavy stuff.

Briahna Joy Gray, Beware the Race Reductionist

Briahna Joy Gray, a veteran of the Bernie Sanders campaign, comes out swinging against most of the mainstream liberal anti-racist policy positions in this piece for The Intercept. As a former Clintonista myself, I was quite wary of Bernie for many reasons—I was skeptical of the political viability of socialism (and its actual viability), and I found the Bernie Bro vibe to be sexist and often racist. I instinctively rejected “it’s not about race, it’s about class” arguments because they usually came from white men who I assumed were not attuned to the racial challenges faced by minorities across the income spectrum. Gray lays out in painstaking fashion how nearly all of most damning racial disparities we see in our country can be better explained by structural economic classism, hurting poor whites right alongside poor blacks. One is left wondering if “systemic racism” is a helpful concept at all. Given that I am still skeptical of socialism as a cure for all economic ills, I did not leave her piece convinced of all of her proposed solutions, but I definitely left less enthusiastic than I was about the standard neoliberal ones.

Ayishat Akanbi’s Twitter

This woman just drops wisdom bombs all. damn. day. Definitely looking forward to her forthcoming book.

Ayishat Akanbi @Ayishat_Akanbi

Compassionate people aren’t morally superior. More often than not, they have tasted the depths of their own darkness which makes it harder to judge, for they realise they would only be judging themselves.

Free Black Thought

There are many other black voices I’ve come across in my attempts to broaden my understanding, and luckily for all of us, someone is taking the time to collect the best of them. “There are black conservatives and liberals, socialists and free-marketeers, traditionalists and radicals, theists and atheists, everything in between, and more besides. FREE BLACK THOUGHT seeks to represent the rich diversity of black thought beyond the relatively narrow spectrum of views promoted by mainstream outlets as defining ‘the black perspective.’ You'll find the thinkers represented here to be frequently non-conforming, often provocative, sometimes contrarian, but always enriching.” Their Compendium of Black Thought is a group-sourced list of the best authors and pieces; their Twitter list can help diversify your feed. Not by coincidence, there is a lot of overlap with this list.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Philosophy of Non-Violence

Confession time: like most woke millennials, I’ve never actually read any of MLK’s books; just a few of his letters and speeches. Around MLK Day this year, I took the time to read just a summary of his non-violence philosophy. To hear modern day activists describe it, his philosophy was “too soft” and not up to our modern challenges; too appealing to conservatives because it calls us to be “nice” to them and condones their calls for “colorblindness.” But to read it and reflect is to see just how far we’ve all drifted. King preached a radical brotherly love, agape love, for one’s opponents. He advocated for truly understanding them, attempting to form friendships, resisting cynicism and the temptation to dehumanize one’s enemies. It becomes clear why this movement was so successful where others were not. By giving one’s opponents the benefit of the doubt and challenging them to live up to shared moral values instead of demonizing them, you pave the way for progress and reconciliation; as King called it, the Beloved Community.

Depolarizing Within

Reconciling with our opponents? Unfathomable to me. Somewhere along the way, I came to the jarring realization that maybe conservatives were not evil incarnate. Actually engaging in open-minded conversations with real life conservatives certainly helped. But I think we would have talked right past each other if I hadn’t had a few other a-ha moments along the way. It is crazy that this is a controversial statement, but my biggest, most earth-shattering realization was that most conservatives aren’t actually motivated by their own racism. Crazy, right?? Article after article after article (I could literally go on all day) tells us they are! I spent all four years under Trump swimming in these articles that explained to me that Trump voters’ unbridled bigotry was the only logical explanation for their inane electoral choice. And 74 million Trump voters was all the proof we need that racism is alive and well, right Dr. Ibram?

Ibram X. Kendi @DrIbram

Americans are deeply divided—and we’re deeply divided over why we’re deeply divided. To be antiracist is to recognize and challenge racism as the source of the racial divide. To be racist is to deny racism and frame those challenging racism as the source of the racial divide.

Not my picture, but a real yard sign I saw in 2020

Opening up to the possibility that most conservatives might be primarily motivated by something other than being racist led me to a few resources that, though they were written by white men, well, at least they were liberals!

Carney and Enos, Conservatism and Fairness in Contemporary Politics: Unpacking the Psychological Underpinnings of Modern Racism

This figure in this paper had a profound impact on me:

I can’t tell you how many articles I’d read that summarized how “racial resentment” was a predictor of Trump support, and each of those articles just fed my smug certainty that all Trump voters were racists (or okay with racism, which is no different than being racist). I’d never stopped to read any of the papers to find out what the hell “racial resentment” even was. It turns out it is the way in which a subject responds to the following statements:

1. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.

2. Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.

3. It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

4. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.

The researchers suspected the questions, which were developed in the 1970s, might be conflating prejudices about blacks specifically with traditional notions of work ethic. They asked subjects the same first three questions, but with “some whites” or “Americans” or one of 15 other ethnic groups (“Maltese,” “Guyanese,” etc.) in place of blacks. Their finding was that conservatives harbor the same level of “resentment” about both blacks and whites; their response is a race-neutral reflection of their “up by your bootstraps” value system. Liberals, meanwhile, harbor significantly more resentment about whites than blacks.

This paper really shook me. I suddenly realized—here I was, reading all these media reports that fed my biases, leading me to feel smug and judgmental, yet these stories were based on academic studies that had anti-conservative biases baked in. All at once, I realized a few jarring things: Conservative accusations that liberals were “racist against white people” weren’t total bullshit. Their concerns that academia was hopelessly biased and their distrust of all the studies I showed them “proving” racism was based in reasonable skepticism. My media diet was no better than someone watching Fox News all day.

And craziest of all—maybe most of them weren’t actually all that biased against black people?? This was a major point of cognitive dissonance with my “lived experience.” I encountered endless amounts of vitriol online and from conservative pundits about BLM, affirmative action, policing and crime, systemic racism, family structure, public support for the poor, you name it. What else could explain this level of bitter rage if not their hatred of non-white people? I had to take a look in the mirror. If I was being fair, my own circle of friends, family, and social media follows were spouting constant, bitter rage and vitriol towards them. But our rage was righteous! It was against their bigotry! … I began to see the circular logic of our two party rage feedback loop. Each side justified their hatred by the seemingly unjustified hatred coming from the other side. Each side was filtering out evidence to the contrary and focusing on the evidence that proved the other side was out of their GD minds. The anger I’d coded as “racism” could often just as easily be framed as polarization. Maybe they were just operating with a totally different, but not inherently immoral, social and political framework?

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

I just cannot recommend The Righteous Mind enough. I think I will write an entire post on this book one day soon, so I will keep my recap short for now. Haidt describes our minds like a rider on an elephant; the elephant is our intuition, the rider our sense of reason, but the rider works to serve the elephant. He goes on to explain that our intuition is guided by our moral sense of right and wrong. Without reflection, we assume our morals are universal, and we are repulsed by those who violate our morals. What makes this book really eye-opening is the way he describes the evolutionary origins of both liberal and conservative moral perspectives on the world. His objective description of the society-building benefits of traditionally conservative moral values like patriotism, religious faith, and skepticism of outsiders and freeloaders helped me realize it was unfair of me to judge them as morally repugnant.

The book was written in 2012, a rather different world, and unfortunately he does not talk much about the divergent moral views on racism. I believe if he were writing the book today, he could have dedicated a chapter to the two groups’ different, but not opposing, perspectives on racism—each carrying the moral weight of the sin of slavery and Jim Crow. For the left, racism is hierarchical, the product of elevating white people or norms over other groups. For the right, racism is the process of judging, hating, mistrusting, or setting standards of behavior based on race—any race. To us, they’re racist; to them, we’re racist! One can start to see why we really butt heads about it so often.

Ken Stern, Republican Like Me

Part of the foundation of the “voting Republican is racist” worldview is based on the assumption that Democratic policies are obviously more caring and more effective at helping the poor. The only reason one would vote Republican is out of pure selfishness, clearly. Republican Like Me disabused me of this notion. Stern, a former NPR executive, leaves his D.C. liberal bubble to meet and listen to a wide range of Republican voters. He learns the admittedly reasonable and compassionate reasons why conservatives eschew welfare programs, are skeptical of climate change, and “cling to their guns.” Ken didn’t switch party registration and neither did I, but I certainly left humbled about the idea that Democrats know what the hell they’re doing, either.

Amy Chua, Political Tribes

In this excerpt from her book Political Tribes, Amy Chua lays out a damning description of the net effect of identity politics on American society.

For decades, the Right has claimed to be a bastion of individualism, a place where those who rejected the divisive identity politics of the Left found a home.

For this reason, conservatives typically paint the emergence of white identity as having been forced on them by the tactics of the Left. As one political commentator puts it, “feeling as though they are under perpetual attack for the color of their skin, many on the right have become defiant of their whiteness, allowing it into their individual politics in ways they have not for generations”.

At its core, the problem is simple but fundamental. While black Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jewish Americans, and many others are allowed – indeed, encouraged – to feel solidarity and take pride in their racial or ethnic identity, white Americans have for the last several decades been told they must never, ever do so.

People want to see their own tribe as exceptional, as something to be deeply proud of; that’s what the tribal instinct is all about. For decades now, nonwhites in the United States have been encouraged to indulge their tribal instincts in just this way, but, at least publicly, American whites have not.

On the contrary, if anything, they have been told that their white identity is something no one should take pride in. “I get it,” says Christian Lander, creator of the popular satirical blog Stuff White People Like, “as a straight white male, I’m the worst thing on Earth.”

But the tribal instinct is not so easy to suppress. As Vassar professor Hua Hsu put it in an Atlantic essay called “The End of White America?” the “result is a racial pride that dares not speak its name, and that defines itself through cultural cues instead.”

In combination with the profound demographic transformation now taking place in America, this suppressed urge on the part of many white Americans – to feel solidarity and pride in their group identity, as others are allowed to do – has created an especially fraught set of tribal dynamics in the United States today.

Just after the 2016 election, a former Never Trumper explained his change of heart in the Atlantic: “My college-age daughter constantly hears talk of white privilege and racial identity, of separate dorms for separate races (somewhere in heaven Martin Luther King Jr is hanging his head and crying) … I hate identity politics, [but] when everything is about identity politics, is the left really surprised that on Tuesday millions of white Americans … voted as ‘white’? If you want identity politics, identity politics is what you will get.”

Well, fuck.

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A Long Road Back

For most dedicated anti-racists, they reached their current state through years of conversation, bonding with friends, reading, social media influence, films and television viewing, diversity training sessions, and overall emotional investment. They feel as confident about their perception of the society as they are that the Earth is round and traveling around the sun. Exposure to alternative ideas will often trigger a vigorous denial or defense response. There are a few factors that have to align to make opening up possible. It helps if the message is coming from a friendly, non-judgmental source who does not deny the realities of racism. They will absolutely need to decide for themselves that re-evaluating things won’t set back the cause of racial equity. But most importantly, it helps if the person has started to realize something is off. Maybe they are frustrated by pushback they’re getting at work. Maybe someone pointed out they are being hypocritical, and it’s sticking with them. Maybe their compulsion to determine everyone else’s race before they can process how to interact with them is starting to feel weird. Maybe they noticed their social media is a toxic soup. Maybe they are tired of feeling miserable all the time. Maybe they are noticing that the goalposts seem to keep moving, and they are wondering if it will ever be possible to reach their goals. Whatever the sticking point is, this their “elephant” second guessing its path. And getting the elephant to turn around is a gargantuan task, but it starts with the elephant wondering where the hell it is and how it got there.

1. I changed this section long after I initially published this post based on feedback from a friend, who rightly pointed out that my prior phrasing was offensive and untrue. The previous version could be read as suggesting that non-white people, collectively, did not want racial healing and/or had not been actively invested in achieving it for many years/decades/centuries, which is clearly untrue. My initial intent was to point out that there are some activists in this space, ones who often suggest that they speak on behalf of entire racial groups, who object when people spend time appreciating how much progress has been made, suggesting it is a distraction from the initial injury or modern injuries.