Reflective letters on race, relationship, belonging and the difficult work of looking inward
My Dear White Friend is a series of reflective letters exploring what can happen when conversations about racism move beyond intellectual understanding and become personal.
My Dear White Friend – reflective letters on race, relationship, belonging and the difficult work of looking inward.
The letters explore race, White privilege, belonging, bias, friendship and anti-racism — particularly what happens when the lens turns inward.
They are not intended to provide simple answers. They create space for questions.
Read. Listen. Reflect.
Start Here: The Anatomy of a Broken Conversation
Why do some conversations about race become so difficult to stay in?
The Anatomy of a Broken Conversation introduces the psychological territory explored throughout My Dear White Friend.
Sometimes a conversation begins with two people trying to understand one another. Then something changes.
A question feels personal.
An experience is heard as an accusation.
The need to protect our identity becomes stronger than our capacity to remain curious.
And what began as a conversation about race can become a conversation about whether someone is a “good” or “bad” person.
This short orientation film asks us to look more closely at that breaking point.
What happens when scrutiny feels like threat?
What happens when one person is trying to describe an experience while the other is trying to protect an identity?
And what might help us remain in the conversation long enough to understand something we had not previously been able — or willing — to see?
This is the territory of My Dear White Friend.
Read. Listen. Reflect.
Read the Letters
Letter One: When Understanding Racism Becomes Personal
What happens when understanding racism intellectually is no longer enough?
Letter One reflects on friendship, White privilege, adultification bias, anti-racism and the difficult questions that can emerge when a conversation about race begins to feel personal. HM Inspectorate of Probation highlights the relationship between adultification bias, racialised discrimination and safeguarding. (HM Inspectorate of Probation)
At its heart is one unresolved question:
What became so difficult that losing the friendship became easier than remaining in the conversation?
[Read Letter One →]
My Dear White Friend
More letters will be added to this collection as the series develops. Video and Audio formats (YouTube and Spotify) are added a few days after publication of each letter.
New letters are published weekly.
[Read Letter Two →]
Letter Two: The Discomfort of Looking Within
[Read Letter Three →]
My Dear White Friend – Letter Three: When Bias Arrives Before You Do
From Understanding to Scrutiny
Understanding racism intellectually matters.
Understanding White privilege matters.
Learning the language of bias, inequality and race discrimination matters. The Equality and Human Rights Commission provides further guidance on how race discrimination can occur, including through individual treatment, rules and policies. (Equality and Human Rights Commission)
But knowledge alone does not necessarily lead to transformation.
The more difficult work often begins when the lens turns inward.
It asks us to consider not only what we believe, but what we have learned to regard as normal.
Not only what we oppose in others, but what we may still need to examine within ourselves.
Not only whether we are inclusive, but how willing we are to remain in the conversation when inclusion asks something difficult of us.
Sometimes the very things we use as evidence of our inclusivity can unintentionally protect us from further scrutiny:
I have Black friends.
I have a Black partner.
I have raised Black children.
I work with Black colleagues.
I do anti-racism work.
I consider myself an ally.
These things may all be genuinely true.
But none of them makes any of us immune from bias.
The American Psychological Association describes implicit bias as attitudes that may operate outside conscious awareness. (APA)
Perhaps the more useful question is:
What have these relationships and experiences helped me to examine — and what might they have allowed me not to examine?
This also connects with one of the central ideas within the Six Stages Framework Key Concepts: meaningful change involves becoming willing to recognise and challenge our own assumptions, prejudices and responses rather than locating the problem only in other people. (sixstagesframework.com)
Why Letters?
There are some conversations that need a slower space.
A letter allows us to stay with a question rather than rush towards an answer.
It allows us to wonder.
To revisit.
To notice our discomfort.
To consider what may be at stake when deeply held beliefs about ourselves, our relationships or the world around us are challenged.
The letters in this series therefore do not seek to accuse or diagnose.
They invite reflection.
They ask what might be happening psychologically when conversations about race become difficult, when defensiveness appears, when relationships are strained, or when something that once felt comfortably understood suddenly becomes less certain.
Through the Six Stages Framework Lens
The Six Stages Framework provides an underlying psychological lens for the series. It is designed to help individuals and organisations explore human behaviour, relationships, systems and responses to difference. (sixstagesframework.com)
The framework recognises that awareness is not the same as transformation.
Movement requires curiosity, reflection and the capacity to remain present when new information unsettles what we previously believed.
The letters explore some of those moments.
The moments when discomfort might lead us towards deeper understanding — or away from it.
The moments when we have a choice between protecting an existing story and becoming curious about what else might be true.
This reflects the wider SSF emphasis on reflection, dialogue and growth. (sixstagesframework.com)
The question is no longer simply:
“Do I understand racism?”
but:
“What happens inside me when understanding racism asks me to examine myself?”
A Note About the Series
My Dear White Friend draws upon lived experience, memory and reflective inquiry.
Identifying details are changed, generalised or omitted.
While individual experiences may prompt particular reflections, the “White friend” across the series should not be understood as one person.
The letters may draw upon different relationships, encounters, conversations and questions that have emerged over many years.
The purpose is not to expose individuals.
It is to explore the psychological and relational questions that difficult conversations about race can reveal.
An Invitation to Reflect
My Dear White Friend is not only about conversations between Black and White people.
It is also an invitation to consider the wider psychological challenge of examining our own assumptions.
Whoever we are, whatever identities we hold, whatever work we do, none of us reaches a point where reflection is complete.
Perhaps the deeper question is not whether we have biases.
Perhaps it is:
Can we remain curious enough to notice them when something — or someone — asks us to look again?
You can explore further reflections on behaviour, relationships, systems and social issues in Through the SSF Lens. sixstagesframework.com
Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah
Founder, Six Stages Framework
