“Anytime a white person encounters a Black person who writes about race — or just a Black person who just happens to be Black —  the Serious Conversation About Racism (SCAR) must ensue. This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’ve been SCAR-ed before in the grocery store express aisle, between pickup hoop games at the gym, while getting a colonoscopy, and at least 82 percent of the unsolicited emails I get are drive-by SCARings.” 

This part of the article was the one that stood out to me the most when I was reading it. “Yeah, Let’s not talk about Race” is an article written by Damon Young that talks about how talking about race with a person of color has now become a new way of proving that you are not racist. He wrote about how, with the wake of the protests and outrage following the brutal deaths of many African Americans at the hands of law enforcements, anytime a white person would see him anywhere, a “Serious Conversation about Race” would inevitably follow. I really liked this article because it lead me to thinking back to another conversation I had with a group of kids from an online program a few weeks back. We had talked about whose job it was to educate others. In this particular conversation, we talked about whether it was a Black person’s job to educate a non Black person about why saying the n word is wrong or racist. Is it a gay person’s job to tell someone who isn’t a part of the LGBTQ+ community why Pride month is celebrated or why certain words shouldn’t be used because they have homophobic connotations. Or should the other person be educating themselves? When someone is born a minority, like a person of color or a woman, or comes out as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, it’s almost as if they are given automatic duties to go around carrying a big poster that says “I would like to talk to you about being oppressed.” 

Now with that being said, I don’t think that it is completely wrong to ask someone about something that you believe they would know the best about. Whether it’s a Black person about police brutality or a woman about inequality in the workplace, more often that not, they are more than happy to educate than deal with someone who has no idea what they are talking about, but please don’t think that as a minority, it is our moral duty to educate and teach you just because you don’t want to do it yourself. I believe that the best way to deal with racism, sexism or any “ism” is to have the integrity to teach yourself and not make a big show about  being this very educated, and “woke” person. In the end of the day, our standard for others shouldn’t be that low. As someone who isn’t a certain minority it is your moral duty to educate yourself on different issues, not ours.

And no, I don’t want to talk about race.