Affinity Support Group

I’m not comfortable talking about race. I feel this tightness in my chest and like there’s no ground beneath me. Nothing to hold onto. Like I might start freefalling at any moment.

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But I’m solid on the facts. I know what happened. I see how it affects people today and lives in our assumptions and institutions. But it’s slippery. Hard to name. Hard for us white folks to see. Easier to ignore.

 

Until something bad happens. Like the police suffocate someone on camera. Or we say something asinine that hurts the feelings of our one BIPOC friend. In that moment, we see there may be something to it.

 

But those moments are relatively rare in our little bubbles. More often it seems like somebody is complaining about race when the problem has nothing to do with race.  …right?

 

For 20 years, I was frozen. After earning a history degree focused on colonialism and economy in sub-Saharan West Africa, Latin America and the Black diaspora, and studying abroad in Ghana, I was struck dumb. It was all just too ghastly.

 

During this period, I didn’t even try to talk to Black people. I just kept my head down and beamed “I’m sorry” vibes in their general direction. A few times over the years, the dam burst and I poured my white shame all over the unfortunate BIPOC professor or facilitator who was trying to get us to think about race. I made it about me. I looked to those individuals for reassurance that I wasn’t a bad person.

 

It wasn’t until after George Floyd’s death that I began to read and hear it suggested that our white guilt isn’t helpful. We need to set it aside. Instead we should use our privilege to amplify the voices of equity-deserving folks. It’s about allyship and coalition-building. To courageously accept that it’s more helpful to acknowledge the elephant in the room than allow it to suffocate us.

 

These last 5 years I’ve kinda felt like the tin man in Oz, oiling my joints and slowly getting unstuck. Now I’m at a point where I feel strong enough to invite other white folks to join me on this journey. Make no mistake, I’m still awkward as hell. Just last night I felt myself stumbling and tongue-tied as I tried to explain this support group idea to a white friend who I’ve known for more than twenty years.

 

But I’m doing it anyway. For my own liberation and that of the white female-identifying folk who want to join me.

 

Come. Bring all your emotional baggage and awkwardness to this anonymous space. We’ll support each other, cry our tears, make it about us. Then, cleansed and renewed, we can go out into the world and be more useful.

 

Starting Fall 2025, every Sunday from 3 – 4:30pm Atlantic, I will be online to shepherd this conversation. I know it’s scary. But we’re in it together. And it will get easier the more we bring these beasts out into the light.

 

Email me at krista@rbworkplace.ca for the Teams invite.

 

I’ll be here when you’re ready.

 

~ Krista