Dear Paula Deen: Having ‘black friends’ is not enough
OPINION - What makes people racist is their unwillingness to acknowledge it in the first place combined with an unwillingness to take action to change—exactly what you keep doing...
We write this open letter to you today as a Black and a White woman living in the south to express our shared deep pain, disbelief, and mixed reactions to your admitted use of racial slurs and all that has happened since. We’re also professional social workers committed to anti-racism education, who believe in the deep and beautiful transformational power of racial healing and reconciliation.
We want to say up front that we would love to forgive you for using the N word — not that you need or want our forgiveness. We applaud your courage and respect your decision to disclose circumstances in which you have used language that is widely considered offensive. We know that this era of “political correctness” makes it extremely difficult for all of us to grow and learn when we’re not allowed to be messy complicated human beings in a culture that has very little tolerance for contradictions. Our own President, despite is unique position, can’t talk about race without it being used a political weapon against him.
We also know from personal experiences how hard it is to bring up issues of race or share our anxieties about it with one another without it triggering a lot of pain and distrust.
We get it. That said, we want to be perfectly clear with you that what most people are angry and hurt about is not that you used the N word earlier in your life — we can get over that. What’s harder to get over is your unwillingness to take responsibility for it. Despite your visible agony, you appear to be in agony only for yourself, while overlooking the broader context and consequences of your comments, particularly as they relate to systemic racism and your unexamined white privilege.
You also don’t have to keep reminding us that you are a “good person.” We believe you. This is why we don’t buy it when you say, “I is what I is and I am not changing.” Didn’t you once suffer from the debilitating mental illness of agoraphobia? We admire that you didn’t give in and give up to mental illness. You got help and healed.
Racism is debilitating too, and it won’t go away or get better without a willingness to face it. If you are not willing to change, we must all assume that you are unwilling to look at the workplace racism for which you are accused. We must also assume that you are unwilling to ensure that you provide the best working conditions possible, free from racist and sexist practices. We hope this is not true. You have access to enormous resources and power that most do not. You can use your access to transform culture.
To be honest, we write to you because we believe that you are a “good person.” As Rev. Jesse Jackson said, you are not to blame for racial intolerance. However, as two women with southern roots too, one born and educated in a rural southern community, we are troubled with the perceptions you have presented to the world that to be southern is to be racist. It’s more complicated than that.
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