Dear readers,
This will be my last Ms Understanding column and so, this week, I want to reflect on what the experience has meant to me.
Ms Understanding was conceived as an advice column about race – for anyone to ask their questions. Over time, I have come to see this column as a way of constructing a space in which it is possible to speak with urgency without being rushed. Like many of you, I often feel that the pace of the world is unrelenting. On my social media feeds, there are headlines that demand attention and photos that need to be liked or commented on. Capitalism wants us to click now and move fast; to track our every movement; to monitor everything we do and feel – down to the beating of our hearts.
There is no question that the hyper speed of the economy strains our personal relationships. There are meals to be cooked but little time to enjoy them before responsibilities intrude. There are texts to respond to but little time for sitting with the feelings contained in those tiny messages. There are countless decisions to be made as well and no space to process what they all mean. “Take away or dine-in?” “Now or later?”
This column has allowed me to think about pressing issues without caving into the tyranny of the urgent. As earnest as it sounds, I have come to regard the time between reading your letters and responding to them as sacred.
I have always loved the delay that is built into the art of letter-writing. Letters find you at your door rather than on your phone and so I imagine them as guests we invite in rather than unwelcome pings that intrude on our ability to be present with those we love. Letters are the antidote to the culture of instant gratification in which we find ourselves. A tweet takes a moment to fire off while a letter slowly finds its way to you over days and days.
When I started this column, I wanted to lean into a format that was designed to move at a slower pace than most of us are typically afforded when we are faced with racism. In real life, racism often lands at your feet when you are unprepared; before you have the time to collect your thoughts. This advice column has provided me with a medium that has allowed me to bring my best self to the questions of others.
For those of you who have commented on how considered my responses have been, please know that while I would love to take personal credit for being wise, the truth is that it is like everyone else – I find it much easier to get things right when I have time and space to think about what to say.
While the time delay built into letter-writing has been a joy, it has also been wonderful to create a space that is fully focused on the experiences of minoritised people. From the beginning, my primary audience has been Black and people of colour who are grappling with the effects of racism. When I have responded to questions from white readers, it has been because they appealed to me for their wider purpose of helping those of us affected by racism to find language that works for us.
Educating white folks has been a wonderful byproduct of the column, but it has not been my main focus. I’ve enjoyed seeing so many of you sharing my posts with your friends and sending me messages thanking me for addressing a longstanding issue that you have not had the time or emotional energy to think through on your own.
I certainly don’t have endless reserves of emotional energy for talking about racism but I have been fascinated by how many white people have contacted me over the course of the year to ask if I am OK, and check whether I have the stamina to continue to answer all these questions about racism from white people.
The labour I am undertaking when I respond to readers is not free, which means there is no equivalence between myself and the Black employee at an office who is paid to teach maths yet is constantly bombarded with questions from white colleagues about racism. That person has every right to be emotionally exhausted. I, on the other hand, am being financially compensated for responding to racism.
Over the course of the year, as I have spoken with people about the column and my experience of writing it, many people of colour said they love the fact that the column inverts the usual power dynamic. Too often in the world out there we are having to be reactive in conversations about racism. As one woman said to me, “I love that you come to these conversations from a position of power.”
She’s right. Yet, this has been hard to grasp for many of my white peers and acquaintances. When they extend me their sympathy for all the emotional labour I have to undertake I think it is because they are so used to seeing Black people as victims.
The other reaction of course is that I am a saint – that my word is the gospel truth. Here too, the root of the issue is an inability to recognise me as a smart Black person who is just good at their job. I love the compliments by the way, and I receive many that are genuine, effusive and straightforward.
But I am mindful that when I am spoken about either as a saint or as someone who doesn’t recognise how much I’m being exploited, it is because so many good white people are invested in the idea that Black people need to be rescued. This means that many find it hard to meet us where we are. In the workplace, this can look like being patronised and asked “how are you coping?” when there is no evidence that you are struggling.
It is not by accident that I decide which letters to respond to and in what timeframe. It is not a mistake that the format of this column has allowed me to respond but does not give people who wish to insult me a right of reply. This column works in a way that protects me from the harassment that so often ensues in real life when someone wants to keep arguing with us about sexism, homophobia, or racism. I have enjoyed responding to each reader who has taken the time to write to me and I am really grateful that they enter into the discussion understanding that, once their letter has received a response, the engagement is over.
When faced with these sorts of comments “in the wild”, I explain that burnout is real but, in my experience, it is almost always the result of finding myself in a situation in which I feel I have no control. With the column, in addition to being paid for my time, I have almost full control of the process. Every two weeks I am sent a set of questions that has been stripped of all the abuse, hate and sarcasm that Black people are often subjected to online when they take on roles like this one and then I decide who to respond to. Often, I go back to the beginning and chose a question that has been on my mind for a long time.
In other words, the format for this column has been carefully managed to try to avoid the fairly predictable abuse facing Black women who operate in the public domain. I am thankful for this and mindful that having a clear set of boundaries – which ought to be inherent in any paid work – has allowed me to bring my best self to this process.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and talking and writing. I hope in some small way, some of my words have helped to do what Alice Walker calls us to do. Walker asks that each of us, “Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming”.
Sisonke Msimang is a Guardian Australia columnist. She is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018)
