Introduction: A Conversation that Changes Everything
The poem “A Friendship Lost” by Dr Shungu M’gadzah captures a single, painful conversation that unravels a deep connection between two friends. This analysis will walk you through the story told within the poem, exploring how a dialogue about racism escalates from a simple question into a friendship-ending conflict. By examining the dialogue, the different perspectives, and the emotional journey of the speaker, we can understand a heartbreaking truth: how a failure to listen, born from discomfort, can become more powerful than love.
Listen to the YouTube video podcast also embedded below
Listen to the podcast
https://youtu.be/2x2gjad9TxI?si=l1pyn-S08D4fb1Iz
Read the poem
https://www.sixstagesframework.com/zg9l
What do you think helps us keep the door open when conversations on race get hard?
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1. The Spark: A Gap in Understanding
The conversation begins with what seem like simple, curious questions from the friend, but they immediately reveal a profound gap in life experience and understanding between the two individuals.
The Opening Questions
The friend initiates the conversation with two foundational questions:
- “Have you ever experienced racism?”
- “What is racism?”
Unpacking the Speaker’s Reaction
The speaker’s internal reaction to these questions is telling.
- To the first question, the speaker pauses. This silence is not born from a lack of an answer, but because the answer is so immense they “didn’t know where to begin.” For the speaker, racism is not a single event but a vast and complex part of their existence.
- To the second question, the speaker has a painful realization: their friend has not meaningfully engaged with the book they had written on this very subject. The poem specifies the friend hadn’t “truly read, or wanted to read” it, suggesting not just ignorance but an active resistance to understanding the speaker’s world.
Core Insight
This initial exchange establishes the core conflict of the poem. It reveals a fundamental difference in their starting points: for the speaker, racism is a constant, lived reality, while for the friend, it is an abstract concept that requires a basic definition. The significance of this gap is immense, as it immediately places the entire burden of education on the person with lived experience, turning a potential moment of connection into an exhausting, one-sided lecture.
This initial gap in conceptual understanding soon deepens into a more personal and painful divide as the conversation turns to the speaker’s past.
2. The Turning Point: When Past Pain Meets Present Discomfort
The conversation shifts from the general topic of racism to the speaker’s personal history, a move that proves to be the conversation’s critical turning point. The friend inquires about the speaker’s life before coming to the UK, asking specifically about their “great-aunt, the one I called Grandma” and “who I was before I arrived here.” When the speaker shares their story, the emotional responses of the two friends diverge sharply.
Contrasting Perspectives
| The Speaker Shares Past Trauma | The Friend Expresses Personal Grievance |
| The speaker shares personal and likely painful memories from their past, before they moved to the UK. | The friend becomes upset, not out of empathy for the speaker’s past trauma, but because they “didn’t know” about it. |
Analyzing the Misunderstanding
The conversation turns toxic at this point, as the friend’s discomfort begins to eclipse the speaker’s pain. This self-referential reaction is crystallized in the friend’s next question: “But you were almost fully formed when you came here— why now?”
Reflecting on the conversation later, the speaker understood the question’s painful subtext was: “Surely you’d already assimilated. Surely you’d let all that go.” This is the moment the friend’s discomfort with the topic overrides their empathy. The friend seems to be asking why the speaker is bringing up a past they were expected to have moved on from, revealing a desire for the speaker’s experience to be neat, contained, and silent.
This focus on personal comfort over shared empathy leads the friend to shift from feeling uncomfortable to feeling accused.
3. The Fracture: From Inquiry to Accusation
The conversation breaks down completely as the friend moves from asking questions to making a direct accusation, fundamentally changing the dynamic between them.
The Friend’s Accusation
The friend accuses the speaker of “turning you into someone who discriminates.” The speaker, piecing it together only after the fact, comes to believe this was the friend’s way of expressing a deeper anxiety. As they reflect, “But now I think… maybe by writing about racism, I was shining a light on your biases, too.” The friend felt implicated and judged.
The poem reveals the unresolved nature of this moment, as the speaker is left with a painful, lingering silence: “Is that what you meant? Maybe I’ll never know. You’ve stopped taking my calls.”
The Speaker’s Response
In their own upset, the speaker pushes back with three pointed questions that challenge the friend’s self-centered reaction:
Why are you centring yourself in this? Why does my pain become a wound on your skin? Why do you need to feel better, instead of listening?
The Emotional Shift
This exchange marks the final, irreparable fracture. The focus has shifted entirely from a discussion about the speaker’s experience with racism to a confrontation about the friend’s feelings of being judged. The speaker acknowledges their questions were “not clever,” recognizing that this direct challenge, while honest, ended any chance of reconciliation.
This confrontational climax makes the end of the conversation—and the friendship—all but inevitable.
4. The Aftermath: A Door Closed
The confrontation leads to a swift and final conclusion. The emotional distance that has been growing throughout the conversation now becomes a physical reality.
The Final Words
The friend declares that they would “never see eye to eye” and leaves. As their footsteps retreat, the unspoken words “white fragility” echo in the room for the speaker, providing a framework to understand the friend’s inability to engage with the topic without defensiveness.
The Speaker’s Regret
The poem ends with the speaker’s painful self-reflection. They express a deep sense of irony and failure. As an expert in “The Six Stages Framework” who teaches others how to have “difficult conversations about race,” the speaker is left with a heartbreaking self-recrimination: “But surely, I should have handled it better.” Their professional motto to “Keep the door open. Don’t let it slam shut” becomes a source of personal pain as a door is slammed shut in their own life.
The Ultimate Cost
The final, devastating summary of this experience is stated plainly, leaving no room for ambiguity: “A friendship lost to racism.”
The story ends, but the poem leaves the reader with a final thought, shifting from the specific narrative to its universal implications.
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5. Conclusion: What We Can Learn from a Friendship Lost
The story of this poem is a powerful lesson in communication and empathy. The friendship did not end because of overt hatred, but because of a failure of perspective. When confronted with the speaker’s painful reality, the friend’s discomfort and defensiveness grew into a protective crouch that made empathy impossible. By “centring” their own feelings of being judged, the friend made it impossible to see, hear, and validate the speaker’s truth. The conversation became a mirror for the friend’s own insecurities rather than a window into the speaker’s life.
The poem concludes by turning its lens outward, asking us to reflect on our own lives and connections with two final, haunting questions:
What is your story? Who have you lost to racism?
Listen on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1hk47Zll1tal9jXTTy5FEo?si=_7t8hkcbTKyRGVdyJQCwLw
#Racism #AntiRacism #WhiteFragility #Empathy #Inclusion #SixStagesFramework #EmotionalIntelligence #Equity #SocialJustice #ConversationsThatMatter #Relationships
