Racial Justice Requires Social Guts

Fear of speaking up in a group is rooted in a fear of exile. During my time at Princeton—a 45-month-long tour of social awkwardness—I often flashed back to growing up as a child of Ghanaian immigrants in a racially homogenous white suburb near Scranton, Pa. As my peers appreciated the meaning of my skin color, I struggled more and more to fit in as the painfully shy, dark-skinned Black kid seemingly unlike “other Black people on TV.” I lacked confidence to raise my voice loud enough to be heard, and waves of shame often followed.

I could never ride those waves to find my voice until my racial awakening made me realize being Black meant, many times, automatic social rejection. Subconsciously understanding the relationship between my race and my social death liberated my voice from fear. As a Black adolescent unsuccessfully seeking white acceptance, I learned a racist self-hatred that poisoned my self-worth and sterilized my social life.Only after my social death—and the birth of my self-worth apart from white acceptance—could Blackness fortify my gut against exile. Learning for Leadership rendered the risk explicit: Speaking up meant risking social rejection. It requires social guts.

Fear of speaking on racism is rooted in fear of being called racist. Many white people stay silent about racism for fear of public shame and rejection. One poorly crafted statement here, another fumbled phrase there, and with one concerted decree—“Racist!”—comes exile, so the story goes. And yes, we all fear exile. To this day, it still gives me pause. Prospective social marginalization can silence any pro-social human: The risk is real.

But like most of our society’s punishments, the severity of exile correlates with race. The very real pain for white people of being “canceled,” called racist, or unfriended on social media seems minor compared with the surreal, life-canceling racism that spent 8 minutes and 46 seconds lynching George Floyd or the disproportionate COVID-19 burden exposing systemic racism in health and health care over the last eight months.

Giving in to the fear and pain of white exile selfishly rationalizes and thereby enables silence about racism. For white people, silence about racism means perpetuating actual loss of Black life to racism. For white physicians, silence about racism violates medicine’s responsibility to do no harm. For white psychiatrists, silence about racism prevents rebirth into the anti-racist clinical practice our patients deserve.