I feel like I have learned an enormous amount from the RaceFail posts. I have not engaged, except to occasionally thank people, because as I have watched other people make mistakes I would have made and be quite rightly corrected, I was able to understand the importance of just sitting back and listening, Of learning without burdening others with my slow steps.

But I face a dilemma. I am an academic, a grad student anthropologist, and I am writing papers and presenting at conferences. I have a responsibility to incorporate racism. I simply cannot sit back and listen, my career depends on me speaking up. And the big reason that this IS my career is because I WANT to speak up and make change.

That means that I'm going to try to make my slow steps public. It means that I'm going to try to benefit, professionally, from attempting to be anti-racist. And even though I am certainly not a white person whose social network is made up exclusively (or even predominantly) of white people, and even though there are WoC who write and work on issues related to racism who are helping me check my work, I am still painfully aware of how much of a novice I am in recognizing my privilege.

My problem is by no means a new one. Even though I'm not trying to speak for others so much as for myself and the world I want to live in, my failure, because of my privilege, will hurt others more than me. I am going to f* up, and I am going to hurt people in the process. And it is a fact of my privilege that I will be able to do this and it probably won't hurt my career. But the alternative, making my career about something else, is much worse. I feel called to educate. I feel called to make change for social justice. And I believe that it is my moral obligation (as a human being, as a Christian, as a future-mother of future-children of color, as well as my personal calling that I am morally obliged to follow) to make my life about this.

So, I am uncomfortable. As I should be. Discomfort is not fun.

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P.S. Feel free to pat me on the back, this is MY lj, after all. However, if you're going to suggest that it's not a big deal that I'm going to hurt people, or that I shouldn't worry so much about my privilege, please refrain and read some of the amazing stuff by brilliant people on why that is not the case.

ETA: also feel free to disagree with me. Duh.