Q

Dear Dr. Darcy,

I see you talking and posting about the BLM movement a lot and I want to ask, out of genuine curiosity and desire to understand, what does any of it have to do with relationships? I miss your relationship blogs.

A

I hear you, mama. You miss the way things were. I’m sure right now you’re missing a lot of things, us being four-months into a pandemic and such. My little blog is probably the least of it.

The thing is, I can’t find a way to hold my head up as a relationship expert without continuing this conversation…

My job is to help you understand your partner’s perspective. And to do that, I have to help you imagine yourself in your partner’s shoes, which creates empathy.

Then I have to encourage you to tap into the courage it takes to own your role in the problems within your relationship. Because if everything is someone else’s fault, you’re fucked. You’re powerless.

Basically, my job is to illuminate the blindspots in your life.

Racism is a BIG blindspot for white people.

Nope, I’m not calling you a racist, though I’d argue that denial is essentially confirmation of a problem…

I am saying that unless you’re a person of color (POC), you benefit daily from the color of your skin and from the history of systemic racism that America was built on and continues to operate within.

So, if my job is to shed light on the blindspots in your life, how can I claim to do that without talking about racism and helping you see that, if you look like me, you benefit from systemic racism?

How can I claim to help people understand different perspectives if I’m not helping you understand why POC are exhausted from unilaterally carrying the burden of fighting racism and that we white people have a debt that needs to be corrected, which we do by pulling some weight?

The skills I teach people to help them navigate difficult discussions and differing perspectives within their relationships are the same skills we need to develop to begin paying our social debt to POC.

So that’s why I’m still talking about racism.

Keep those questions coming. The only dumb question is the one you never ask.