A Letter to White Women from a Woman of Color

Photo by Kat Stokes on Unsplash

Dear White Women,

I am writing this open and honest letter to you because it is my hope that given the heightened racial awareness many of you are experiencing at this time, that you will take a moment from your busy schedules and listen to a woman of color.

I should start by saying that I am not writing this letter on behalf of all women of color, that would be inappropriate. I write this letter on my behalf and from my perspective. It is my hope that other women of color would agree with my letter’s content, but certainly they would omit and add based on their own experiences.

Although I’ve been working with white women for years, it still has not become an easy task, even now with their awakened racial consciousness. Given a major job change, from academics to working at a nonprofit as a full-time executive director, I am suddenly the boss of several staff, many who are white women. This means that I now have to continuously interact and supervise white women and white men on a daily basis. Over the past several months that I’ve been in my new position, as a woman of color leader in the mostly white nonprofit sector, my thinking about the role white women play in maintaining privilege and how they wield their power especially in work spaces, has significantly increased.

Although the white men I supervise are challenging in their own ways with their silence-as-resistance tactics, it is the white women who are creating the most strife for me on the day-to-day.

As a way of venting and also encouraging dialogue, I write this letter with the intent that it will invite white women to think more about their positions of power, their privilege, their roles in this whole racist mess we’re still in, and to especially create more learning, growth, and instigate change. Most importantly, I write this letter to ask white women to be more conscious of how they act and interact with women of color. If you want to achieve a greater level of consciousness, then it requires copious amounts of humility, respect, and commitment.

Here is some advice to white women especially during this time of racial reckoning.

Awareness is the first step, but it’s not enough.