It’s baking season in our household.
A few months ago I made a batch of banana bread and my roommate Joy has been obsessed ever since. She’s taken over the baking and has perfected our recipe, sprinkling the chocolate chips carefully on top.
She makes it with love.
My baking style is a bit more reckless. I’ve been known to toss all the chocolate chips in, essentially making it more of a chocolate cake than banana bread. I lick the spoon and the bowl and sometimes a lot more batter “accidentally” finds its way into my mouth before the pan goes in the oven.
I do not pay particular attention when I bake. I read the recipe, sure, but measurements seem more like suggestions to me.
I once left the paper tags on some baking pans and almost set my apartment on fire. After hearing this story, my childhood friend took a Crock-Pot out of her Amazon cart that she was going to buy me for my birthday because she “no longer trusted me with such high-tech cookware.”
Despite my recklessness, I used to make my students brownies at the end of the year. My “Brownie Point” board kept track of good deeds and whichever student in each class had the most by the end of the year would get a whole batch of brownies. They were in high school, by the way. But boy did they want those homemade brownies!
One batch was particularly traumatic as I mistakenly bought garlic-flavored cooking oil. As you might expect, they tasted like shit.
Why am I spending so much time on this metaphor? Be patient. You’ll see.
I made a new batch but brought along the garlic-flavored brownies to my students as a joke. Like “hey look how much of a shit baker I am, try these toxic squares if you dare!”
A few of the kids tried them. And to my shock, one kid wanted to take the whole batch off my hands. We laughed. A few of us gagged. It was all fun.
When I think about baking I also think about race in America, which is much less fun to talk about.
I’m going to talk to white people for a minute. It’s fine if you’re not white and want to keep reading, but this message is particularly for my Caucasians in the crowd. So when I say “we” I am referring to white people.
Alright, let’s turn the oven to 350 degrees.
If you are a shit baker like me, you’ve probably burned a few breads, crusted a few cookies, and garlicked a few brownies. The natural response when discovering this mistake is usually “OH SHIT.” We haphazardly pull the smoking and unrecognizable items out of the oven and get really pissed off, maybe even a little sad.
Our roommates behind us shed a single chocolate chip-shaped tear.
We start going through our stages of grief:
Denial: “But I set a timer and everything!”
Anger: *throws smoking thing out the window*
Bargaining: “Maybe I can just cover it with icing and nobody will notice?”
Depression: “I should have just bought a damn cake at the store!”
Acceptance: “This is what I get for not reading the recipe closely enough. I will do better next time.”
As we are processing these stages, the oven is still fucking smoking. It’s actually caught fully on fire but we haven’t noticed whatsoever. But if we did, we would also be victimized by this fire. It might even harm us, or destroy our home.
Are you starting to get it now?
The oven caught on fire is racism in America, OK. It’s been hot this whole time, and now it’s actually bursting in flames. It’s hurting people. And we don’t even like touching the thing with oven mitts when it’s not on fire.
I’m not going to apologize here: White people, stop being so fucking fragile and put out the fire already. Step away from your burnt cookies and grab the fire extinguisher.
To be clear, fragile things do not like to be broken.
I’m still unsure why lightbulbs come in little paper sleeves with no ends, but maybe we’ll never know. White people are fragile because we must be “handled with care” as our bright red labels imply.
Unfortunately, the only way things become less fragile is for them to be broken and rebuilt with stronger material. If you are a survivor of trauma, sexual abuse, or health issues, you may have an idea of what it feels like to be broken and built again. But the fact remains: many white people are so layered in privilege that we truly have no idea what it would feel like to be a black person at the center of this fire.
Let me give you a non-baking anecdote.
A few years ago Joy and I went out in Brooklyn. We took the subway to the movie theater, filled up on popcorn, and settled in for a nice rom-com. After the movie, we thought we’d get a drink or two. We didn’t live in this area of Brooklyn so we wanted to check out a cool spot nearby. It was a Karaoke Bar.
I am a quintessential basic white girl when it comes to Karaoke Bars. It’s almost like I sniff them out or something. And once I step inside of them, it’s nearly impossible to get me to leave. I immediately put our names in a bucket to sing.
While I was doing that, Joy attempted to order us a drink. But when I got back the drinks were not there. She had a pretty good spot at the bar and the bartender was right there.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
Joy pulled me off the bar. She’d been trying to get the bartender’s attention for over five minutes. First with eye contact, then verbally.
I kid you not, the second I rolled up, this woman looked at me and asked if I’d been helped.
Oh, yes, Joy is Kenyan.
The two of us together make an odd pair, some might say. But we joke that we are a married couple. She is as her name suggests, unbelievably joyful. We don’t always agree on dishes, but she occupies a large space in my heart.
In this crowded bar, it had not gotten past me that Joy is the only black person there. I think I even mentioned it when we came in like “Woah, gentrified much!”
I’m peeved about the bartender, that’s the word, peeved. It is a mere annoyance for me. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it has ruined Joy’s night.
We have our drink. Joy doesn’t want another one. In fact, she wants to leave as soon as is physically possible.
“But what if they call our names to sing?” I plead with her.
Again, what the hell is my deal with Karaoke Bars?
We go outside to get some air for a bit but it’s raining. Joy feels trapped and I am trapping her. We huddle up under the awning as the rain pours around us. We meet a nice tattooed white girl ironically named “Brooklyn” who is from Australia. We like her and her accent. She’s smoking a cigarette and looks cool.
I take the liberty of talking shit about the bartender. I don’t know how we arrived at the next bit, but Brooklyn tells us she’s basically never met a black person before.
I’m far too amused that her name is “Brooklyn.”
“Wait, how is that possible?” I ask.
She tells us about her small town, which I don’t remember the name of. She’s here on a student visa. Her eyes are doing something weird but I’m getting kind of drunk since all we had for dinner was popcorn.
Suddenly I hear my name being called by the DJ who has earlobes the size of coffee filters.
“JOY! OH MY GOD! THEY CALLED MY NAME! LET’S STAY. JUST ONE SONG!” I yank her away from Brooklyn and inside without waiting to hear her rebuttal.
Inside DJ Coffee Filter starts playing Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz except it’s a very weird remix that I don’t recognize and I botch the lyrics anyway. I make Joy capture my moment on my phone.
Finally, I let us leave. We wave goodbye to Brooklyn who is still on the stoop and hop in an Uber home. Because Joy is Joy, she politely continued to joke with me about how “weird the night was.”
My privilege allows me to see it as nothing more than that. A “weird night.” Thinking back on it now, this was a missed opportunity to put my fragile self aside and to take care of someone else.
I cannot speak to what I do not know, but I can put out the fucking fire.
Our shock as white people at the death of George Floyd is honestly an insult. Like I said before, this has been going on forever. I taught my students about Emmett Till, the 14-year old black boy lynched in Mississippi after a white woman accused him of flirting with her in 1955. I did not have time to teach them about the countless others that lost their lives for being black at the hands of white people like me. I don’t even think I could teach that if I had an entire school year at my disposal. There are just too many.
It’s uncomfortable. And I’m asking you to get over it. Black people are tired of waiting around for us whites to deal with our own shit.
Look, I’m not here to shame you or make you feel bad. I’m not accusing you of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, OK. But it’s time. Time for us to sit in our uncomfortability and have the hard conversations so that actual change can occur.
Does rioting make you uncomfortable? Ask yourself why.
Does black anger make you uncomfortable? Ask yourself why.
In what ways have you seen racism? Did you speak out against it?
And for god sake do not make a black person walk you through this process, please god. They are so tired, you guys. They are so tired.
Once you’ve had these reckonings with yourself (and please do so quickly, remember that the fucking house is on fire), it’s time to do the work. Here is what you, a white person, can do to fight racism:
1. Get on Google and do some research. What are the local laws in place for the police department nearest to you? Are they required to wear body cams? Are they trained in de-escalation training? Find out. Write to your city or town government. Their info is really easy to find.
2. Like social media? Try sharing something! Share and retweet stories of racial injustice, protestor heroism, or just the work of black people you admire.
3. Consume art, books, and music by black people. Also, there are many books about racism that can help educate you and have the tough conversations with yourself. Untamed by Glennon Doyle has a great chapter on racism.
4. Sign petitions.
5. Donate your money.
6. Do some more research.
7. Listen.
8. Take notes.
9. Sit in yourself for a while and resist the urge to squirm away.
10. Don’t get defensive. You’re not the one on fire.
I thought about continuing this list, but seriously, just Google something and you will find it. The internet is fascinating that way. You’re going to have to do this on your own.
But I believe in you.
Now go and get the fire extinguisher.
Your Fellow White Person,
Mimi