Discussing race can be difficult for everyone involved, but it’s very much a necessary conversation, which has been the focus of “The Handle: Living While Black.” One of the things that makes it such a hard conversation is the fact that it can be really difficult to comprehend a situation or an experience you don’t, and can’t, fully understand.
In this week’s episode, you’ll hear Karah Gilbert, founder of Solidarity Isn’t Silent, talk about how, as a white person, it’s impossible to understand the experience of a Black person. She’s exactly right. As a white person, I can do my best to listen, research and learn about what it’s like to be Black, but I can never truly understand because I can’t live that experience, and I will never be able to live that experience. That’s what makes having these discussions that much more important, so we can learn as much as possible.
It can be easy to see these conversations as an attack on white people and take a defensive stance. It’s easy to think “Oh, I’m not racist,” and dismiss the subject as something you don’t necessarily need to pay attention to. Truthfully, that isn’t the case. It isn’t an attack on white people. It isn’t a bad thing to be white. But everyone has their own implicit biases that they may or may not be aware of, or take time to identify and work through. Until we can have conversations about our differences and open our minds to try and understand the experiences others have, we can’t move forward as a society.
That’s what “The Handle: Living While Black,” aims to start: a conversation, a local conversation, about what it’s like to exist as a person of color. The last full episode airs this week, and I hope that you’ve been following along and will continue to do so. We will continue to release content on our social media channels as well as our website, because this discussion is far from over.
