The Unfinished Chapter

Martin Luther King's dream of freedom still seems unattainable. When the U.S. finally elected a Black president, so many of us naïvely thought racism was over. It is  incomprehensible that on May 25, 2020, we witnessed a Black man being slowly and deliberately murdered by a white man right before our eyes. Bystanders recorded the incident and posted it on social media. It was quickly picked up across news outlets for all the world to see. In a grotesque, tragic display we watched George Floyd pinned to the ground while people surrounding the hideous scene pleaded for mercy. The white man, police officer Derek Chauvin, kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, ignoring his repeated cries that he couldn't breathe. George Floyd died face down on a busy street corner in broad daylight. His last words—“I can’t breathe.”

Surely anyone would hope that after witnessing a murder, essentially on live TV, our society would change in the twinkling of an eye. But we did not. Five years later, we are witnessing the dismantling of decades of work to promote racial reconciliation. 

See Supplement: 2025 Rollback of Racial Justice Initiatives

Sadly, but not surprising, most of this unraveling is being driven by right-leaning white politicians who are targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, civil rights protections, and affirmative action. At both state and federal levels, policies are being rolled back under the banner of “fairness” and “colorblindness.” It is an affront to those who have worked tirelessly for decades. 

Not everyone who questions DEI or affirmative action is acting out of racism. Some people—Black, brown, and white—have real concerns about how these programs work, whether they actually help, and if they sometimes create new problems. Honest debate is healthy. What’s dangerous is when those concerns are used as excuses to shut down the fight for racial justice altogether. 

While these flagrant political developments are recent, my personal commitment to understand racism began several years ago. In the aftermath of both the George Floyd murder and my personal racial confrontation, I knew I needed to seriously reconsider what I thought I knew about America's racial history.

Following the neighborhood incident with Jason I walled myself off from almost all social contact for well over a year.  After some deep introspection and positive life changes, I took an intensive two-day course from an organization called the Racial Equity Institute (REI). The program is specifically designed to educate people on the actual history of the United States as it pertains to slavery and to treatment of Black people after slavery, including current day inequalities. At the end of the seminar and in subsequent meetings, I heard an echoing refrain from fellow white people. "I didn't know any of this. This is not the American history I was taught in school.” From what I’ve heard (and experienced myself), most white people leave the training with a dire need to do something. The trainers prepared us for this and encouraged us to take a beat to process the sheer volume of information we absorbed for two days. They warned that rushing to act without fully examining and integrating our new understanding could do more damage than good. By unintentionally barreling into Black-led spaces in a genuine desire to help (white savior), we would be inflicting yet more harm by not recognizing the history of power dynamics. We cannot fix this, or them. They do not need fixing! We must fix ourselves by listening, learning, and owning, with brutal honesty, our participation in perpetuating the system of white privilege and supremacy.  

Luckily for me, there is an organization in Durham, North Carolina that provides an outlet for people who complete REI training. For the past two years I've been attending a gathering of white people (a white caucus). We meet once a month to discuss our whiteness and systemic racism. We help each other with book suggestions; we attend movies/documentaries, lectures and important race-related events. This has all been vital to my development as a white person seeking to unravel my privileged conditioning.

I also took a class on Critical Race Theory (CRT) offered by Duke University through their continuing education program. Our Instructor was a wise and lovely lady, Dr. Zoila Airall. The classroom was jam-packed with white students, many of whom were fairly well-informed and eager to learn more. Zoila had a flair for weaving an edge-of-your-seat vivid tale. One story she shared was particularly poignant.

As the daughter of a successful dentist, Zoila’s family was affluent. I imagine some white people might immediately feel relieved to know this about her, thinking it meant she was not subjected to the same discrimination that other, less affluent, Black people endure. But ask just about any affluent Black person. It’s simply not true. 

Zoila was a highly accomplished classically trained musician. She told a story of how she once auditioned at a prominent church with a large white congregation. They were seeking a new pipe organist. Zoila felt confident that she would land on the short list of candidates. When she arrived she was immediately given the runaround, quite literally, to several different entrances to the church. It was clear that they tried to shoo her away with a slew of excuses before she could even get her foot in the door (several doors in this instance). She persisted until one of the gatekeepers finally gushed, "We don't do gospel music." Stoned-faced, her response: "Neither do I." With no more excuses to help them wiggle out of giving a Black woman an opportunity, they conceded. 

Zoila gave a stunning performance that left the handful of listeners speechless. The church leadership, weak-kneed in their decision, ultimately admitted that although she gave a flawless audition, they could not hire her because it would cause too much disruption in the congregation. 

Too-much-disruption-in-the-congregation…

Well hallelujah thank you Jesus…  How's that for christian love and unity? I know that may be brash, but the audacity of their disclosure was jaw-dropping. A well-off, well-educated, classically trained virtuoso who nails an audition to perfection isn’t hired because of melanin? We were stupefied—frozen in our chairs as she recounted the story. 

That's just one of many stories Zoila told us. Our class took place during a time when Critical Race Theory was being smeared across “news” outlets. White teachers, lawmakers, government workers, church leaders, and everyday citizens were ranting about something most had never actually studied or even read an honest article about. I'd venture to say that most people of any color don't fully understand what CRT is. Here is a simplified, condensed version:

Critical Race Theory is an academic legal framework that examines how racism is embedded in our laws and institutions, not just individual prejudice. It emerged from law schools in the 1970s and considers the lived experiences of people of color alongside traditional legal analysis to understand how America's history of racism continues to shape society today.

Critical Race Theory is not a curriculum designed to indoctrinate schoolchildren. It is not a tool to make white Americans feel guilty about their racial identity. Nor is it an attempt to terrorize or marginalize white people. It is a rigorous, intellectual, legal theory that helps us understand how racial inequality persists within neutral laws, and how we might make meaningful changes to those laws. 

While people of all races can face poverty, lack of opportunity, and systemic barriers, CRT examines how racism was systemized into laws and institutions, creating unique disadvantages for people of color across generations. The point isn't to excuse behavior but to understand its full context.

See Supplement: Examples of CRT in Action 

I've come a long way, with the help of courageous white friends who have been doing anti-racist work much longer than I have. In one of my first interactions with them, I was relieved to be able to share the embarrassing neighborhood encounter I had with Jason. There is no question that it was a pivotal moment in my journey. 

Even though Jason’s house has been sold and another family now lives there, I still turn and look in that direction every time I walk or drive past. The events of that day and the resulting interactions (or lack thereof, to be precise) remain vivid in my mind. Was that racial confrontation merely an unfortunate occurrence that went nowhere? Well, yes and no. Yes, because I have no way of knowing if Jason ever thinks about that day or what he might have done with the recording. It remains unresolved in that respect, which is the worst outcome in this context. No, because regardless of his perspective, that encounter pushed me to examine my assumptions and my behavior more deeply. It revealed my white fragility that had so readily surfaced when my good intentions weren't received as I expected them to be. I’ve come to realize that reading and intellectual understanding, while valuable, fall short in well-meaning intention. Not considering the emotional component only invites false humility and virtue signaling—a bas relief to what lurks beneath.

These days, I sometimes feel an angsty restlessness that keeps me up at night. It’s a persistent yearning for positive, permanent change—changes that will honor the memories of people like Nanny, Miss Rosier, and Shelly. I was only one of millions of kids who were taught to laugh at, make fun of, or be afraid of people who look different. How many of us have begun to peel ourselves away from the safety of our warm, white cocoons? I cannot for one second see an old clip from a minstrel show, or watch Gone With The Wind (which my wife and I recently and intentionally did), without my skin crawling. I think about what is going on in schools now, especially across the South where I’m from. Each time I see a family move into my neighborhood that isn’t white I feel relieved, not concerned about diminishing property values. I have changed. I got here late, but I got here. 

In my lesser moments I stumble. “I’m 64 years old. Let someone who is younger, has more energy and is better educated take up the cause. I’m too late to the party.” But when a good friend who is also about my age, a white guy doing anti-racist work, recently lamented, “The hardest thing I had to accept was when a veteran of this work told me that I won’t see the end of racism in my lifetime. That was hard for me to hear,” I felt the same anguish as soon as he said it and knew I could still do my part. So I “keep on keepin’ on” as Curtis Mayfield once said when our Black brothers and sisters were fighting for civil rights. We must never forget how often people of color have put themselves and their very lives at risk in their efforts to educate us white folks about the real history of the United States (and Britain for that matter), and how systemic racism is still chugging along nicely.

Tracking the timeline and evolution of my own racial bias laid the groundwork for Little White Lives. It has been an incredibly rewarding and illuminating experience and I recommend it to anyone willing to try. The person I was in the early chapters had good intentions, but I still grew into and accepted the role I was trained to perform. The next time I’m tempted to defend my intentions, as I did with Jason, I hope I’ll remember what I have learned and will be able to sit with my discomfort rather than rely on white fragility to rescue me with the timeworn excuse of guilt and shame. I was already on the road to unpacking these biases about race. The journey just got a whole lot clearer and put my feet to marching.