Prioritizing White Comfort Over Black Pain: One Year Later

Today, is exactly a year to the date that we all bore witness to the murder of George Floyd. In the months that immediately followed there seemed to be a sense of urgency by white people to lean into learning about systemic racism, including leaning into the work of anti-racism.

However, on this anniversary, there is a growing sentiment of an aversion when discussing race and racism, reverting to old patterns of “business as usual”: sweeping the systemic problems under the rug, and choosing to not address the proverbial elephant in the room.

And, the most recent discourse that has weaponized CRT (Critical Race Theory), with politicians introducing laws to ban CRT, even though they do not know what it is, speaks to what has always been the formula in America and what I call the process of prioritizing white comfort over Black pain.

So, what do I mean when I say prioritizing white comfort? It is the familiar denial that race and racism exist, followed by the transfer of blame onto those who are directly impacted by racism, followed by gaslighting of their experiences as truth, followed by making excuses to dodge accountability, followed by the ban or suppression of voices that seek justice and liberation.