Tweets

Person A: Did y'all know that a lot of white people don't have the cultural concept of "real talk"?  You know where you stop saying the dipolomatic thing and tell people what's really going on.  They just don't have it.  You try to have a moment of "real talk" and they freak the fuck out.  It's one of the things that makes it difficult for PoC, and Black people especially, to form real trust relationships with white people.  Y'all don't know what's going on because no one tells you.  And no one tells you because you can't actually handle the truth.

Person A: I've come to understand that white people have their own seemingly convoluted way that they decide what's going on and what to do about it.  I have a really hard time navigating those rituals.  I think a lot of us do.  And it damages our ability to be successful in white spaces.

Person B: Yup.  I've been noodling on this and the amount of communications misses that happen because of it.  If you violate the "no discussions about conflicts" rule, you have to go.  On the flip, Black folks expect real talk and never get it, which ends up putting us at a disadvantage.  If WASP culture is that you don't publicly discuss *ANYTHING* that could be the source of conflict (no politics or religion at the dinner table), when conflicts are brought up in the workplace, the cultural standard is to ignore them vs. discuss them.

Person A: Right.  Even those of us who have been relatively successful so far in figuring out how to move in white spaces can eventually run up against this.  Failing to figure it out can put a hard limit on PoC's upward mobility.

Person C: This is true, and white women are tasked with sensing that "real talk" might be on the horizon, and "smoothing things over" to keep it from happening.  Many of us have internalized the notion that we are responsible for other people arguing to the point that we cry when we're unable to keep the peace.  it's out of a genuine and completely misplaced sense of failure, but it also serves the purpose of redirecting peoples' from whatever they were "fighting" about.  This is also known as "white women's tears."  We need to stop it.

Person A: Oh shit.  I've definitely experienced this, but I don't think I connected it in this way.  If white women are tasked with keeping the peace, it explains a lot about why Black folks so often end up being "intimidating" or "aggressive" in their minds.