The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person

by Frederick Joseph

In one way or another, we all have some type of privilege or power in relation to someone else, but most of us aren’t reflecting on that. Most of us aren’t thinking about how we may be hurting someone else, how we may be ignoring someone else, how we may be oppressing someone else. It’s a difficult conversation because it requires us not only to treat others better but to hold ourselves accountable. It’s hard to see the role we play in someone else’s struggle while we are busy fighting for ourselves or our people. But we have to learn to see with new eyes, hear with new ears, and find new ways to trust other people’s words when they tell us and show us how we’re hurting them. Because doing the right thing sometimes means putting the pain of others before our own, especially if we are part of creating it.