Despite the outpouring of support I received after my first attempt to wrestle with the topic of race (THANK YOU, by the way, to all of you who read, shared, and responded to my thoughts), a part of me still questioned if I was qualified to insert myself into this crucial conversation. Do I really know what I’m talking about? Is my voice helpful or unintentionally harmful? Do I have a right to talk about being black in America? Is it my whiteness that has convinced me that my voice matters here?
These questions were on my heart before my last piece and have continued to plague me since writing. I don’t want to put words in people’s mouths and I’m uncomfortable speaking about things I don’t fully understand. But then about two weeks ago I watched political strategist Angela Rye on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. At the end of her segment Rye explained to Noah why she believes that what our world needs is not for people to “stay woke” but instead to “work woke.” Staying woke,1 Rye told Noah, is not enough anymore. If you are woke but don’t work for justice, can you really claim to be woke at all? “What do you do after you read?” she challenged. “What do you do after you know all? How are you putting what you know into action?”
And then Rye did something that warmed my Theology teacher heart, she spoke about faith, explaining that to her, “faith without works is dead faith.” All of a sudden I recognized God’s fingerprints. When I talk to students about what it means to be a follower of Christ, I always tell them that “being Catholic” is an action and not a state of being. If I say I am Catholic but am not doing anything about it, I challenge them, can I really call myself Catholic? If I am not working to create the world God dreams of, haven’t I, in some way, fallen short of my call? This moment returned me to the question from the examen, how am I being called to respond now? The answer: work woke. Anchored in this truth, I’m pushing forward this week to share my experiences once again.
Currently in my senior Theology class, my students are split into social justice “book clubs.” They meet once a week to discuss their reactions to the text (among other things). The other day during one of these meetings, I sat with the students who are reading Ta’Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. While I explained to them my current obsession (to put in mildly) with this book, one of the young women in the group pointed out that although she was enjoying it and found it valuable, it seemed to her like a book “white people needed to read.” When I asked her to elaborate, she explained that she, a young black woman, already knew many of the ideas I had learned or the realities I found so fascinating in the text. What seemed important, she believed, was for white Americans to hear these stories about what it was like to be black in America. This humbled me. I wondered if all the books I had chosen were books that “white people needed to read.” This moment of humility, however, prompted me to recognize God’s fingerprints once again. Perhaps, in an unexpected way, I had just been provided with an opportunity to “work woke.”In his newest book, Barking to the Choir, Father Greg Boyle, SJ describes the impact that the homies he’s worked with over the past 30 years have had on his life. He says the homies “have pointed the way” for him and proclaims that “to sit at their feet has been nothing short of salvific.” On a daily basis, I have the chance to sit at the feet of my students and simply listen. The example above is one of these moments. Although I talked in my last post about several non-classroom encounters that allowed me to catch a glimpse of what it might be like to be black in America, most of my deeper understanding has come from my students themselves. These personal encounters have been nothing short of salvific. I’ve learned how to be a kinder and more compassionate human being than I could have become on my own. I’ve had the chance to build kinship with young black men and women every single day. I’ve been blessed to work toward the world God has in mind.
And I have come to realize more and more that this experience is a privilege in the very best sense of the word.2 Every day I get a glimpse into the lives of my students that is real and personal and direct. And while I can certainly never fully understand what it is like to be black in America, I can begin to take steps toward kinship. Not every white person has this particular privilege. But even if you are a white American who lives, works, or learns far from integrated communities of kinship, there are small constructive ways you can start to enter the conversation.
To help you do this (and in an attempt to embrace the challenge of working woke), I’ve put together a list of the most formative books, articles, movies, TV shows, and podcasts that helped me first explore the experience of being black in America. These stories helped me to begin to understand race before I was blessed to sit at the feet of my students and hear their own stories. Nothing can replace true relationship, but these books, etc. have given me a base understanding from which to engage my students further.
My list is certainly not exhaustive. Each resource I have listed below is one that I myself have read, watched, or listened to. While there are several (okay probably A LOT) more sitting on my bookshelf, bookmarked on my computer, or saved in my Netflix queue that I just haven’t yet had the chance to get to (reading student writing seems to take up most of my life), if I haven’t read or watched them myself, I’ve left them off the list for now. I intentionally only included resources that have shaped my experience and helped me personally to “get woke.”
My list will take you more than a few afternoons to get through. I hope you don’t let that intimidate you. Or better yet, I hope you feel a little intimidated but choose to engage anyway. Here’s story that I hope explains why:
In an attempt to be helpful in a recent conversation about Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, I shared with my students how I believed it was okay if they sometimes felt overwhelmed by the conversations surrounding racial justice in the United States and needed or wanted to take a break. I told them that I, too, often found myself exhausted and that I sometimes just needed to step away before diving back in. An earnest student challenged me in this moment. “But Ms. Conway,” she said, “when you look like me, you don’t have that choice. It follows you everywhere.”
So yes, white people, it’s uncomfortable to get woke. And yes, it takes a lot of time and effort. Being woke and working woke is, quite fittingly, exhausting. But the choice to disengage from this conversation is ultimately a sign of white privilege. So I hope you choose dig in and work to create, in the words of Father Greg Boyle, a world “such that God might recognize it.”
Books (and Articles, Movies, & Podcasts) All White People Should Read (or watch, or listen to)
Between the World and Me, Ta’Nehisi CoatesThe Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Jeff Hobbs
You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain, Phoebe Robinson
Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
Tattoos on the Heart, Father Greg Boyle, SJ 3
Are You a Social Sinner? by Rev. Bryan Massingale
Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City, by Nikole Hannah Jones
13th
I Am Not Your Negro
Selma
Dear White People
On Being, Michelle Alexander: Who We Want to Become - Beyond the New Jim Crow
On Being, Ruby Sales: Where does it hurt?
On Being, John Lewis: Love in Action
On Being, W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul
1 For those who are unfamiliar, to “stay woke” means (according to Urban Dictionary) “to keep informed of the shitstorm going on around you in terms of turmoil and conflict, specifically on occasions when the media is being heavily filtered.”
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2 Here I use privilege as a synonym for honor or blessing. I intentionally chose this term to contrast with the often used idea of “white privilege” which refers to the preference for whiteness that saturates our society and the advantages white people receive without earning them.↩
3 I include this book not because it taught me anything about what it means to be black in America, but because it defines my own Theology, and has taught me why kinship is important and how I can work toward it.↩
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