Shame is a silencer. It drapes itself over our histories, our conversations, our families, and stops us from looking too closely at the truths that make us uncomfortable. Sandra’s words echo in my mind: “Shame is debilitating—for everyone.” She told me about her grandmother, a woman who went to her grave carrying untold stories, truths buried so deep that even her closest family couldn’t unearth them. When Sandra tried to ask questions, tried to understand the legacy that shaped her, her grandmother would shut her down. “Why are you bringing that up?” But Sandra wanted to know. She needed to know.
And then there’s the brutal reality that the truth, once uncovered, can break your heart. Sandra exists because her great-great-grandmother was raped by the white man she worked for. He was her enslaver. His wife—the white woman of the house—was complicit. This isn’t an isolated story. It’s one thread in a tapestry of violence and silence that spans generations. Sandra’s white cousins, connected to her through DNA, wanted to sweep it all under the rug, to treat their connection as a kumbaya moment of unity. But Sandra knew better. “Family is more than DNA,” she told me. “I wanted to have a real conversation, and they weren’t willing to go there.”
This is America’s problem. It isn’t just Sandra’s family. It’s all of us. We haven’t reckoned with our history. Germany has—Sandra pointed that out, too. They confronted the Holocaust, owned their role in that atrocity, and worked to make amends. America, by contrast, buries its shame. We’ve built our foundations on rotten roots, and until we dig them up, we can’t grow anything healthy.
That’s where the real work is. And it’s work that white people, in particular, need to do. Sandra said it plainly: “We’re already talking about this as Black people. White people need to go home and have these conversations.” She’s right. Black history is American history. And yet, the narratives of Black and Brown exploitation—enslavement, displacement, exclusion—are treated as uncomfortable footnotes instead of the foundations of this nation’s wealth and power.
It’s not enough to acknowledge privilege. It’s not enough to feel discomfort. The work requires white families to sit at their dinner tables and say, “Grandpa was a racist. Grandma benefited from slavery.” And when Grandma storms out of the room? Let her. Because someone else will stay. Someone else will listen.
Sandra’s frustration hits me like a wave. “We’re talking to each other as Black people,” she said, “but the message isn’t getting to the people who need to hear it.” And she’s not wrong. Too often, these conversations about race and privilege are contained within echo chambers. The people who need to hear the truth, who need to reckon with it, are insulated by their own ignorance—or their refusal to engage.
And yet, this insulation doesn’t negate the work that needs to be done. Whiteness, as Sandra and I discussed, is more than just a racial category. It’s a framework of privilege, an unspoken infrastructure that grants access, opportunity, and benefit to those who resemble the dominant visual construct. It allows for myths like the bootstrap narrative, myths that ignore the ways systemic privilege has shaped every opportunity.
Take Jeff Bezos. His story of rising from nothing is one that resonates with so many Americans, but it leaves out the invisible scaffolding of whiteness that made his ascent possible. Sandra and I wondered aloud if Germany’s reconciliation with the Holocaust would have looked the same if the Jewish people hadn’t been able to pass as white. Would there have been the same moral imperative to make amends if the victims had been dark-skinned, nappy-haired, broad-nosed?
Even here, in the United States, we see the power of that visual construct. Barack Obama became president, but would he have been elected if he were darker-skinned? Probably not. That’s the truth we’re reckoning with: how privilege isn’t just about wealth or opportunity. It’s about proximity to whiteness. It’s about appearance. It’s about a system that has been built to value some lives more than others before a word is even spoken.
The challenge Sandra laid out is both simple and monumental: white allies need to take these truths into their own communities. It’s not enough to march in protests or post hashtags on social media. The work requires vulnerability. It requires uncomfortable conversations at dinner tables, in living rooms, and among those who are most resistant to hearing it.
Because the truth is this: silence perpetuates harm. Ignorance isn’t innocence. And shame, no matter how deeply buried, will continue to rot the foundations of our families, our communities, and our nation until it’s finally unearthed.
Sandra said it best: “Only then can we grow something better.”
3 replies on “Digging Up Rot: It’s Written All Over Your Face”
“Too often, these conversations about race and privilege are contained within echo chambers. The people who need to hear the truth, who need to reckon with it, are insulated by their own ignorance—or their refusal to engage.” Too often there is isolation, especially in the church arena where I am a pastor of a Caucasian church. Just ask me how I feel – I hear you, but do you really hear me.
That question right there!!!! We know all too well the art of the “weave”. We can teach master classes on it. Thank you for touching this space!!
Thank you for creating space for these conversations.