We’ve been catching up on old episodes of The Unicorn and the one we watched last night profoundly impressed me.
This was episode 3 (season 2) “It’s the Thought That Counts” and they actually played out that very awkward conversation when the white friend realizes he has been insensitive to his black friend. They walked through the whole thing—the white guilt, the black person explaining that you can’t put the burden of making you feel better on me, the constant vigilance that being black in America requires, the frustration on the one side, the blindness on the other and finally… What can I do?
“You really want to know what you can do? Listen. And believe us.”
The black friend went on to say, “We get told we’re imagining things when we talk about our own experiences. Or, that when we protest, we shouldn’t. Or that we’re doing it wrong. Even though that’s the only way anything has ever changed for us.”
Listen.