How do we create a conversation about racism with white people?

What works well for you while you have an interest in inviting white people to discuss racism? How do you begin the discussion and invite white people to consider the privilege of not discussing about it? In a single sentence what works for me is when I can meet a people where she is in that time, as opposed to where I would like her to be or where I think she ought to be.

Everyone is an individual. And as well: everyone is a part of a group. Whites don’t like to discuss what they’ve always had and didn’t realize, privilege. The key problem to invite majority race (white-people in US) to discuss racism is they try to become politically correct. As for the minority (non-whites in US) lot of the people get satisfaction ignoring the racist aspect they are experiencing so I always have difficulty to talk about racism.

This sentence has a lot of meaning for me, including the general mindset that I don’t want to talk to white people about their own privilege and racism unless they are ready to have such a conversation.  I do talk about my own privilege (when its relevant and when I’m aware of it), both because doing so allows me to live in the world with integrity and because it’s important to me to try to model white anti-racism to the best of my ability.

Apart from the above, I usually leave people alone unless they communicate to me that this is a conversation they want to have, in which case I’m usually happy to participate.  I take this approach because if someone doesn’t want to talk about it with me, he is probably not open to anything I say anyway, which makes my trying to have it counterproductive.  Better, I figure, to wait until people are ready to engage than scare them away by approaching them before they’re ready. 

When someone does initiate a conversation about privilege or racism, I try to ally with the person, so it’s the other person and me against privilege. That is, I assume and behave as though the person wants to interact with the world as an anti-racist, even though he may not yet be there. Basically, I try to be supportive, rather than confrontational.

When I teach my race class, I do mostly the same thing, except that I do sometimes provide students with gentle feedback about their own privilege, usually by asking exploratory questions. I do this because I assume that their deciding to take my class means that they’re, at least on some level, ready to have this kind of conversation.  Again, I try to ally with the students against racism. I use a variety of strategies to communicate this, but as just one example: I never label a person as racist. Instead I may talk about specific behaviors that "some people perceive as racist" and explain why they’re perceived that way.  This makes it less threatening, which, in turn, makes it more likely that they can hear (and internalize) what I’m saying.

When I first started teaching the race class, I used to be more direct and straightforward in class.  I liked the response I got, particularly when Black students came up to me after class and said things like "I really like that you tell it how it is". The problem was that I was loosing a bunch of white students in the process. They’d stop coming to class or they’d come but pretty much tune me out because they decided that I couldn’t relate to them. Over time, I shifted to what I described here.

Currently, I occasionally have Black college students ask me "Why do you hold their hand rather than just telling it like it is?" And I answer by expressing appreciation for the silent compliment and then explain that I am doing my best to tell it like it is, only I’m attempting to do it in a way of the fact that the white students can actually hear. I’m not under the illusion that I am successful 99% of the time, but I can see the diversity and feel more effective in school than I used to.

As I think, a schoolteacher might go to the trouble to click on the link to the class before recommending that students not take it. The class is not about white privilege, though I do waste one day discussing about it. The class is about the psychology of race and ethnicity and focuses on racial characteristics, acculturation, stereotype and prejudice decrease, and the role of race in a variety of domains like education and criminal justice.