How to Talk to Your White Uncle

Once again, I did the thing that I tell other White people not to do. It took a day or two for my words to come back at me, to understand them.

My Black friend told me about a situation that made me unhappy. It was a situation where she was being treated a certain way apart from the rest of the crowd. But she was more upset by a mutual friend: she felt he'd made excuses for the way she was treated.

I told her that her perspective resonated with me, and then I made excuses for my old White uncle.

He thinks he's teaching.

He's looking at it from a legal perspective.

He's from a different era.

He's not really racist.

This is not Uncle Jim Bob who spits on the factory floor & talks about the good graces of PBR, but a professional in many industries. I didn't realize right away what I was doing. In this case, my Black friend and I both know our Uncle is an ally. But, perhaps unintentionally, he's either defending the system or conveying that it can't be fought.

I'm not sure which. So I have to ask him.

I have to talk to my White uncle because that's what I tell other White people to do. And I have to own that I'm programmed to make excuses for my soft spots, just like he's making excuses for the system that's worked for him.

I have to understand first of all, while that list of excuses is true, I'm not doing him any favors in his desire to be an ally if I don't point out how his behavior looks from the outside.

I, too, did not give my Black friend's perception the space of validity. And I'll do it again, and I won't mean it that way next time, either. We don't usually recognize when we're defending the system we grew up in, whether it served us or not.

And like we all should do, stop talking when we get to the "...but..."

Even if he thinks giving someone information to help navigate a future situation, those things don't need to be said while your Black friend is telling you HOW IT WAS on their side. When someone reports to you how it was, it's very important to not try and soften the blow by explaining away the pain. This is what I told our uncle.

Challenging what's ingrained from childhood can feel like a personal attack. Compare it to someone who grew up as the 3rd or 4th generation taught that they were excluded from regular society.

It doesn't matter what you think somebody was doing when they hurt your friend. Your friend is not wrong, and that's the only message that's appropriate in the moment. Any explanation you have can wait.

I will talk to my White Uncle and ask for his perception. And then I'll stop talking and wait for him to process his feelings, because he deserves that respect, too.