Many of us who hold progressive values — of Inclusion, diversity, equality, equity, liberation, localization, joy, celebration, strong social impact, thriving for communities, supporting last-mile solutionists, helping frontline folks, driving broader representation and imparting dignity to every individual — are feeling pretty diminished, as if possibly our life's vision and purposes are just distraction, or literally entertainment.
But you know, as we take our rest and eventually attempt try to pick ourselves up and gird ourselves for resistance, or merely survival, I am feeling with a greater sense of “we are our only choice and our only chance.” I mean, for salvation through what's going to be a really difficult period ahead of time.
To think about the structural, economic, social, moral, and community threats that we're going to have to live with – and many of which reared their hideous heads just hours after this election was called — the fact that the way many of us have, for our entire lifetimes, conceived life to be about (not to mention the battles our Foremothers waged hoping someday we’d be the embodiment of their wildest dreams) feels like it has been summarily rejected. Rejected by a populace that evidently didn’t quite grasp what the ramifications of their choices were going to be (likely you saw a top Google search term in the days after the election was “how can I change my vote?”
People, are you truly serious?)
It’s just, yeah, a really, really dispiriting time.
What’s the Use of This, or Anything?
My first reaction was nihilism and abandonment: “Well, no one's gonna care about what Brave Sis Project stands for, no one's gonna give an eff about “what is an ‘ally’ ’how do I become a better ‘advocate’ or ‘co-conspirator,’ do I get to be a ‘friend,’ and might I even be graced with being designated as a ‘sister’?
I was definitely feeling like perhaps my course, this whole body of work is just feel-good fantasy stuff.
But then I went back to this one section in Chapter Three: “Banish Tone Policing and Stereotyping,” and specifically a section entitled “Workplace Harm and Why Can't We Be Friends?” in which I talk about issues such as “pet to threat” and blind spots and biases that may be unchecked, particularly those around hierarchies within the workplace that are predicated on race and class —
— And I realized that these considerations are exactly what we need, now more than ever.
If we're going to survive and thrive, and gain and maintain dignity, and hopefully withstand — and hopefully over time undo — some of the inexorable harm and chaos that are a’comin’ round the bend, we need to be connected. We need to be coalition-ized.
We need to learn to build trust, to uphold our shared purpose.
Tools for White Women Who Want to Do Better
Since Terrible Tuesday (and those not on the West Coast who went to sleep and woke up to Woebegone Wednesday), a lot of white women have been asking me, “Why are the Black women I thought I was close to pulling away and saying they need ‘time’ and ‘space’ separate from white women? I’m not one of them! How can our friendship be so unstable? Weren’t we better friends than that?”
My first response feels like: “Perhaps you were “co-conspirators” but not really in the “friend zone.” (That’s a common misstep I’ve seen and experienced, in progressive white women’s zeal to be seen as a good person, they overestimate the level of camaraderie and devotion that they project onto a woman of color.)
Or, I wondered (to myself): “Perhaps, in your disarray, you inadvertently displayed a level of unknowingness, privilege, or misalignment that was just too much for your melanated GF to ignore/excuse. You know your anger about reproductive rights? Compound that with the legacy of all the labor Black women have been asked/forced/expected to do to grow, maintain, or fix this country from Day One… please add the additional burden of incessant disregard and lack of respect. Sprinkle on a helping of fantastical “Magical Negress” thinking, and perhaps you can start to see why some of these women are (it’s within their right) saying ‘naw, thanks.’ (Yes, I wondered all this in about three seconds, because my inner conversationalist is feral and fast-moving. It’s not always fun, living with her!)
Let’s Talk about Magical Negress Derangement Syndrome
I was in a post Wobegone Wednesday meeting recently with many amicable white folks in the nonprofit sector and someone got the idea that one of our group, a lovely, heart-filled, and generous West African-American woman, should actually be our president. (I get it, grasping at cognitive straws, I’m looking for crampons and stakes to confront my real-world emotional Half Dome, too! A sheer and harrowing wall of discontent.)
Quickly ensued a cascade of “Yes, (Debbie) for President!” “I’d be in Debbie’s cabinet” “Can we nominate Jennifer for Minister of Culture?” etc. etc.
I couldn’t bear it. It was the same nonsense spoken upon Michelle Obama’s name — when anyone who ever listened to her actual words with even a part of an ear knew that she’d said many times she’d rather poke out both her eyes than have anything to do with politics. Stop “Oprah-izing” Black women; stop Stacey Abrams-ing us all. Stop making us bear the mantle of Nanny, Mammy, Magical Negress.
I had to call it out.
“Please,” I said, coming off mute, “we all love Debbie, but in this moment, do NOT ask Black women to do any free labor.” Not to mention everyone was breaking the cardinal rule of not telling people what they need but asking them what they need and want (to do).
But in this eternal game of Kick The Can + Hot Potato, we Black women had found ourselves being tagged “it” again. No, no, NO!
The silence was basically defeaning. I mean, no one came off mute to say “here, here!” but thankfully no one exhorted me with that passive-aggressive invitation/request of “say more.”, To be honest, I think that silence was also the discomforting sound of a hundred pairs of eyes opening. At least I hope so.
Anyway, in the course I bring up an anecdote about a Black woman I know, let’s call her Janice, who, a few years ago, rebuked my offer to hold a meeting with a third colleague in her office. If we needed to include Maryanne, which was OK by her, our meeting would have to take place in a coffee shop or park, as she no longer allowed white people in her home or office.
When I recounted Janice’s story to (other, white) colleagues and associates, the reaction, I kid you not, 85% of the time, was nervous laughter. Pro Tip: there’s nothing funny about a woman asserting her boundaries. Let me paraphrase from the course session.
“Black women, like any other human, have the right to determine what their self-care and boundaries are … I understand what my Black women associates are asserting when they deny white women entry to their own personal space. The sum of my awareness, ping-ponging, shape-shifting, and pivoting between Black spaces, mixed spaces, predominantly white spaces, etc. is humility (I hope I come across as humble and not imperial; forgive me, sometimes I get passionate) and recognition.
“I know that Janice has only a few places where she can create her own autonomy, and her home was one of them, along with that room in her literal personal sanctuary that she used as an office annex.
“She is asserting in her own individual voice, her conviction that white women can't have everything. (This is an important point that the course returns to when we examine Cultural Appropriation.)
“In a society that is polarized and still unhealed from the original sins of enslavement and racism, separation is increasingly common. And while it may be unfortunate, it’s understandable and it’s not subsiding. A 2013 Reuters Ipsos poll revealed that about 40% of white Americans had no friends of color and 25% of people of color had no friends of a different race.”
I am here to tell you that in 2025, the prognostication is not looking much better.
What Do We Do With These Unsavory Truths?
In this moment of so much pain, anger, scrambling, blame and guilt, closing in and sucking in and re-segregating and saying “the hell with them, we don't want them around” — from both sides, all sides really, because this is a multi-sided die, I think we have to be strategic about alliances.
I did not say friendship. I said alliances.
More than ever, I think, we're going to have to find ways, to stay close. If not “in love,” if not real besties, or even pseudo-besties, if not even in the outer banks of the ‘friendship zone,’ we have to stay close enough to be Collaborators For Change.
Think of these personal alliances like workplace scenarios, when you really don’t like Miranda, but you know, you’ve been assigned to a project together and you have to figure it out so you can get this deliverable done and keep your job.
Our “job” right now is to ally — for resilience and survival. Not BFF status.
This is a moment where Black women and Brown women — and Asian and Indigenous women on whatever is left of the “left” — are telling white women a thing. And that message is: “Y’all gonna have to put in active, as in “not passive,” effort to show us that you are willing and able to do the real work of anti-racism and anti-every-ism change.
“Not just the parts that feel performative and exciting and “juicy,” but the challenging inner work of examining your unchecked, hidden biases and unexamined blind spots and other types of impediments to working together building or rebuilding trust.
No one is asking you go to go MAGA Uncle Ernie and Aunt Felicity’s house over the holidays and debate with them. (You also have a right to the sanctity of your space!) but in a time such as this, you cannot sit back with a box of Kleenex and a bottle of rosé and shake your head.
“Do the work and #LearnToEarn the actual title of ‘ally.’
You don’t like being thrown in the same basket as those MAGA white ladies? You’re not one of them? Well, here’s the thing about visual stereotypiing: no one digs it.
I do not like when I’m walking down the street in, say, gardening garb (or workout garb, or any other “this is not a professional woman” attire, and I get treated like “the help,” or a person of lower station. It is annoying to have to don a Respectability Costume in order to garner a modicum of respect and human dignity when out there in those streets.
I am thinking about the time I was walking my dog and a neighbor down the way asked if I was taking other dog-walking clients (this happened last spring!) I’m also thinking about the time two summers ago when a man in a cowboy hat and pickup van made a lewd sound and chucked his chin in my direction as if to say: “climb on in, girl.” It took me half a second to understand that he thought I was a sex worker, simply because I was standing on a corner in colorful leggings — I had been gardening earlier — waiting for my ride, and it took me only one additional split second to lay a nun-screams-worthy torrent of expletives in his direction.
You (proximate progressive white women) would be well advised to understand and find ways to deal with the lived experience of “guilt” (or mistrust) by association. I can promise you, it has been going on, perhaps silently, for decades. It's a freaky, grim visual world out there.
So We Gotta Keep Going!
So yes, Brave Sis Project: the cultural celebration, the course, the popups, the advisory, all of this exists to provide convening space and encourage personal reflection practice. This is a practice, but it’s also a literal business. I am no longer taking calls from individual friends and associates asking me to help them understand and work it out: Take the course! It’s discounted by 75% with code RESISTANCE through the end of November, 2024!
These resources, along with the tools proffered by many other fine associates out there, exist to help influence all the gals feeling the displeasure of guilt-by-association, and bring them into an active and activating understanding that “shared humanity” is a multi-directional proposition.
It’s not just the performance and ego part, but the humility and the patience part, and being the bridge part. (Here, I refer to being a bridge to the majority electorate part of society, many of whom are demonstrably many steps away from/behind us. Do not ask or expect us to be the Front Line on this ideological, if not — God help us, literal — battlefield). Take the time you need, but consider becoming our “water bearer” in this ensuing struggle.
These Tools Can Be For Us Black and Other BIPOC Women Too
And for us women of color and Black women specifically, I do think this work is relevant to us as well (otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it!) if for no other reason, to help provide words, perspectives, and frames to share with the white women who are proximate to us so that they may attain fuller partnership. Without you having to play Mammy.
If you are fed up and can no longer deal with the questions and the remorse and favors, as part of your self-care plan, refer them to my work!
It is my sincere hope and prayer that, after a time, we can come together — if not “solidarity” and “friendship” — at least with” purpose.” If we can’t do that, then “they” absolutely win, for they will have destroyed feminism. Intersectional feminism as well as monocultural feminism. And that, we just can’t abide.
