The one who practices racial truth-telling affects others by sharing “as directly as possible what he actually believes.” Racial truth-telling assumes the speaking person owns their words and intends for those words to re-create the worlds we inhabit. Without a readiness to own the consequences of our words, truth-telling bounces across space and time absent of its most essential qualifier, a relationship with truth. Reparative intercession as racial parrhesia elects a dutiful path of frank, risk-inclined, critical truth-telling.
We significantly dial down white noise by reaching for a higher octave of engagement; honest, consistent, collective speech. We need a language for human belonging that snatches the veil off the life that is race. Racism props itself up on the lie that race is biological and carries inherent meaning. Police brutality, education inequity, and the race-gender wealth gap make clear that we’re long overdue for massive truth-telling concerning race, the omnipresence of racism in US history and institutions, and the ways each community bears responsibility for curating tomorrow.
From “Silencing White Noise: Six Practices to Overcome Our Inaction on Race” by Willie Dwayne Francois III – Brazos Press