My dear white friend,
What happens when the person who says or does something racist isn’t an anonymous stranger online or a politician on television, but someone you love? the Racist is someone you love?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what happens when prejudice comes right into our immediate social circles – when racism comes from someone you love. It is one thing to notice racism when it is far away, attached to someone we already dislike or can easily distance ourselves from. But what happens when it is spoken over Sunday dinner by the parent who raised you?
When it comes from your partner, your oldest friend, a sibling, a colleague you respect, or someone who has stood beside you through some of the most difficult moments of your life?
That is different. Sometimes, in that fraction of a second after something is said, your body seems to register the shock before your mind has decided what to do with it. Did they really just say that? You hesitate. You look around the room. Perhaps someone laughs. Perhaps nobody does. Perhaps you find yourself searching almost immediately for another explanation.
And my dear white friend, this is where things become psychologically complicated. You see, the problem is we have constructed a very comfortable story about racism: racists are bad people. Racists are hateful people. Racists are monsters. And because the people we love are not monsters, because we know their kindness, their humour, their tenderness and generosity, it can become extraordinarily difficult to hold two truths at the same time: this person loves me, and what they just said was racist.
Perhaps you are thinking, You don’t know my dad. And you’re right. I don’t. I don’t know the father who sat beside your hospital bed. I don’t know the mother who sacrificed things you may only fully understand now that you are older. I don’t know the friend who came when nobody else did, the colleague who believed in you when your own confidence had disappeared, or the partner who has held you when your world felt as though it was falling apart. You know those things, and perhaps that is precisely what makes this so difficult.
My dear white friend, recognising racism in someone you love can feel as though you are being asked to reject everything else you know about them. But you are not. Human beings do not have to be monsters to cause harm. Recognising that someone you love has said or done something racist does not require you to erase every act of kindness they have ever shown you. Yet sometimes, without even noticing it, love becomes an alibi.
We use what we know about someone’s goodness as evidence against their capacity to cause harm. “They didn’t mean it like that.” “She’s from a different generation.” “He was only joking.” “You know what Dad’s like.” “She’s actually a really good person.” But notice what has happened. The question was about what was said or done, and suddenly we are answering a completely different question: is this person a good person or a bad person?
I remember once being at my daughter’s school after she had won the science prize for Year 6. Like any parent, I was feeling enormously proud of her, and I had joined the other parents on the lawn after the presentation. I had just picked up a glass of prosecco when one of the other children’s grandparents came over and introduced himself. “You must be very proud,” he said, and then he talked about his granddaughter and how she too was good at science. It was an ordinary, pleasant conversation. Then there was a pause, and as I was about to move away he asked me, “Tell me, how do you manage the fees at the school?”
I remember being taken aback. I cannot remember my precise words now, but I said something to the effect of, “Like everyone else here, I work very hard.”
Later, his daughter came over to me. What struck me was that she seemed to know what had happened before I had really said very much. She began explaining that this was simply how her father was and talked about his experiences and the colonial past. And I remember thinking afterwards that she already knew. She knew something about the kinds of assumptions her father could make or the kinds of things he might say. I was the one who had been left to encounter them.
I confess, my dear white friend, that afterwards, with a mixture of disbelief and dark humour, I found myself wondering whether some people should come with a warning label: likely to make a racist or derogatory comment — proceed with caution. Of course, if we did that, we might discover that rather a lot of labels were needed. But beneath the humour sits a serious question about psychological safety. If you already know this about someone you love, what responsibility do you have towards the people who don’t?
And perhaps that is where another uncomfortable question enters the room: what happens when you already know?When this is not the first comment. When nobody in the family is surprised. When “that’s just Dad” is not an explanation at all, but evidence that everybody has known for years. At what point does knowing create responsibility?
My dear white friend, what if the good-person/bad-person question is the wrong question? What if racism does not require us first to establish that somebody is morally irredeemable before we are allowed to name what happened? Racist assumptions can be learned, inherited, absorbed, reinforced and acted upon. They can also be questioned, unlearned, interrupted and changed. So perhaps we do not need to decide whether somebody is a monster. Perhaps we need to become more willing to look at what they are doing. And perhaps we also need to look at what we do next.
Because there is another question sitting quietly underneath all of this. What happens when loyalty starts to feel like silence? It can feel deeply disloyal to challenge someone you love. You may be challenging not only a comment, but childhood authority, family rules, old patterns, the need for approval, the fear of being mocked, or the fear of being told that you’ve become “too sensitive”, “too political” or “too woke”. Sometimes what is at stake is belonging itself.
You know that challenging what was said may change the atmosphere around the dinner table. It may create tension. It may mean somebody becomes angry with you. It may mean you are accused of ruining the evening. And so you stay quiet. But I wonder whether we sometimes misunderstand what loyalty asks of us. Is loyalty protecting someone from ever having to experience discomfort? Is it helping them remain comfortable in behaviour that harms others? Or might love sometimes ask something more difficult of us? Might love sometimes mean being willing to say, “I love you, and I need to tell you that what you just said wasn’t okay”?
This reminds me of a Black woman who once told me that when her white husband was with his family, they would make monkey noises and tell racial jokes. What she could not understand was why he never said anything to them. What stayed with me was that her pain was not only about what his family were doing. It was also about what he wasn’t doing.
He knew these were people he loved. They were his family. But she needed to know whether, in that moment, being his wife mattered enough for him to tolerate the discomfort of challenging them. That is the difficult place where loyalties can collide. When speaking up risks disturbing one relationship, but remaining silent leaves another person carrying the harm, which relationship are you protecting?
And I suppose that raises another rather uncomfortable question. If we find it difficult to speak up even for someone we say we love when doing so might put us in conflict with other people we love, what happens when the person being harmed is someone we don’t know? How likely are we to speak up for the Black child in the playground when we witness racist behaviour? How likely are we to notice and intervene when a Black mother on a maternity ward is telling us that something is wrong and her concerns are being dismissed? How likely are we to speak up for the Black colleague who is repeatedly undermined, interrupted or ignored in meetings? If belonging, awkwardness and the fear of conflict can silence us with the people closest to us, what will move us to act when there is no relationship compelling us to care?
There is something else I want us to notice. When somebody makes a racist comment and everyone immediately rushes to explain, minimise or reassure, the discomfort does not disappear. It moves. Someone still has to carry it. So when everyone around the table is protecting the person who made the comment from feeling embarrassed or uncomfortable, who is left carrying the discomfort instead? Who is being asked to absorb what happened so that everybody else can continue enjoying dinner? Whose humanity are we protecting, and whose might we be overlooking?
In the situation at my daughter’s school, I was the one left carrying the discomfort. What I was left with was the implication that our presence there somehow required explanation. Here was my daughter being publicly recognised for her achievement in science, and yet within minutes the conversation had somehow moved to whether we could afford to belong there. I found myself wondering: was our presence unexpected? Was her success unexpected too? I cannot know precisely what was in that man’s mind, but I do know what I was left carrying away from the interaction.
Sometimes we ask the person who has been harmed to understand. You know what she’s like. He didn’t mean anything by it. Please don’t make a big thing of this. In other words, please carry this quietly so that the rest of us do not have to feel uncomfortable. That isn’t neutrality. It is a choice about whose comfort matters most.
And this is where the Six Stages Framework makes me think about these moments differently. The person you love does not need to be standing at the most extreme end of the continuum for racism to be operating. They may dismiss what happened. They may minimise it. They may become hostile when challenged. They may blame the person who raised the issue. Or they may experience discomfort. They may begin to listen. They may become curious about why something they believed to be harmless was experienced differently. They may reflect. They may change.
The important question is not simply, “Are they racist?” It is also: what happens when racism enters the relationship, and where do they go next?
But, my dear white friend, I think there is another SSF question that may be even more uncomfortable. Where do you go? What stage do you move into when the person you love says something racist? Do you become dismissive on their behalf? Do you minimise because acknowledging what happened threatens your image of them? Do you blame the person who objected for creating tension? Do you retreat because belonging feels more important than speaking? What state do you enter in order to remain comfortable in that relationship?
And perhaps we need to ask another question too: what stage are you helping someone else remain in? If every time Dad says something racist somebody explains him, laughs nervously, changes the subject or asks the person harmed not to make a fuss, the family is not simply observing where he is on the continuum. The environment around him may be helping him stay there.
You see, to me that matters too. Because silence does not only tell us something about the person speaking. Sometimes it tells us something about the environment surrounding them. And environments teach. Children watch what adults laugh at. They notice what goes unchallenged. They learn which comments create consequences and which ones disappear beneath the familiar reassurance, “That’s just how he is.” They learn what belonging requires.
And none of this means that every response has to become a dramatic confrontation. Sometimes courage is quieter. Sometimes it is simply not laughing. Sometimes it is asking, “What do you mean by that?” Sometimes it is refusing to join the nods of agreement around the table. Sometimes it is saying quietly, “Dad, I don’t think that’s okay.” Sometimes it is coming back later, when everyone else has gone home, and saying, “I didn’t want to embarrass you earlier, but I need to talk to you about what you said.” And sometimes the most important intervention is refusing to allow “that’s just how she is” to become the end of the conversation.
I am not suggesting any of this is easy. Taking someone you love off a pedestal can be painful. Seeing a parent differently can be disorienting. Challenging a lifelong friend can make a relationship feel less secure. Speaking when the whole room would prefer silence can feel lonely. But environments in which prejudice is continually excused eventually teach people that prejudice is safe there. Things that once shocked us can slowly become ordinary.
And racism does not survive only because of openly hostile people somewhere “out there”. Sometimes it survives because it is given a comfortable chair at the family table. Because everybody knows what Uncle John is like. Because Mum comes from another generation — that’s why she doesn’t want a Black carer. But notice how quickly “that’s just how she is” moves from explaining an attitude to accommodating discrimination. Because your friend has always made those jokes. Because the people you have a drink with on a Friday night make racial slurs and jokes — but that’s just the way they are. Because challenging it would make things awkward. Because love, loyalty and belonging have quietly become reasons not to look too closely.
My dear white friend, perhaps the real test was never whether you could recognise racism in someone you despise. Perhaps the harder test is whether you can recognise it in someone you love, without turning them into a monster, and without allowing your love for them to become the reason you look away.
Because love and accountability are not opposites. Sometimes accountability is one of the most difficult things love asks of us.
So I want to leave you with some questions. When someone you love says something degrading about another group, what happens inside you? What are you protecting in that moment: their dignity, your relationship, the atmosphere in the room, your own sense of who they are, or your belonging? And perhaps most importantly, what happens to who you are becoming when keeping the peace repeatedly requires you to remain silent?
My dear white friend, what habits and choices are you putting in place now to help you remain the person you say you want to be when racism doesn’t arrive wearing the face of a stranger, but the face of someone you love?
Yours,
Shungu
If this letter has prompted you to think more deeply about accountability, you may also want to read Letter Six: The States We Believe We Would Never Inhabit, which explores unconscious bias, accountability and the environments that shape who we become. Read Letter Six sixstagesframework.com
You can also explore the Six Stages Framework and how it supports reflection on attitudes, behaviours, relationships and movement towards greater awareness and accountability. Explore the Six Stages Framework sixstagesframework.com
My Dear White Friend is a reflective letter series by Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah, founder of the Six Stages Framework. The series explores racism, bias, belonging, accountability and human behaviour through psychology, lived experience and the SSF lens.
Same questions. A brighter tomorrow.
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