“Calling In” Our White Male Colleagues

A few years ago we, two white women, were leading an hour-long workshop at a conference. About 20 minutes in, we asked participants to turn and talk to a person sitting next to them. Instead of turning to his partner, a white man sitting in the front row walked over to us and said, “Folks are getting pretty restless. You may want to have us take a break.” We just nodded and went back to our planned agenda. But we were frustrated. Not only was this “let me help you understand how to run your workshop” comment annoying and unhelpful, it was also not the first time something like this had happened. We have been facilitating these kinds of groups for over two decades. Participant responses have been overwhelmingly positive. Yet at almost every presentation or workshop we do there is a white man who feels the need within the first 15-20 minutes to make a comment about our skills, style, or curriculum.

So now we find ourselves wondering what could we have said to help this man (1) understand the impact of his unsolicited commentary and (2) keep him engaged in the antiracist work at hand?

These questions have been nagging us for a while, but seem increasingly important today — as matters of race and racism intensify in schools and society. In particular, we want to find ways to effectively engage more white male educators in the work. According to USA Today, men make up 25% of K-12 teachers and 54% of superintendents and principals (if you look at just grades 6-12, that number goes up to 67%). In our workshops, however, men make up about 10% of the participants.

While their low numbers are challenging enough, the white men who do show up tend to be disruptive or disengaged. They often respond to our questions defensively or ask questions that challenge our leadership. They are also more likely to give us unsolicited and unhelpful feedback similar to the situation above.

Their behavior follows a familiar pattern. When white folks — but especially white men — get uncomfortable with our content, whether consciously or unconsciously, they often start to focus on our process as opposed to thinking about their own behavior and practices. When we ask them to talk with the person sitting next to them about issues of whiteness, many white men suddenly need to go to the bathroom or they step aside to check their phones. In short, when we are asking for engagement with matters of race and racism, their discomfort often leads them to find ways to disengage, to avoid deep conversation.  

Sometimes this resistance shows up as non-verbal behavior. On Zoom, for instance, we had a white administrator who sat back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk with his hands behind his head as we asked participants to engage in a writing reflection. In an in-person event, we had a participant who kept leaving the room and then coming back 5-10 minutes later. At the end of the session, he explained that he had some “very important work” he had to attend to. Some white men will sit in the back of the room with arms crossed staring out the window. Other times, men will talk over us when we ask them to move on to another exercise or come back to the group. Or they will try to shift the dialogue: “I just wanna play devil’s advocate for a minute….” Some are just  flat-out unwilling to participate, saying, “I don’t recognize any of the behaviors you are describing.” Or they will say that antiracist work has no relevance to their job, or claim that it is exclusive of them as white men. As one white man put it,

A lot of how you present assumes a particular flavor of racism. I grew up in the UK, and we certainly have significant problems of racism there but the onus and the background have profoundly different roots — Indian, Pakistani, Caribbean but without the slavery background which hovers over all the black racism in the US. A lot of what you present doesn’t resonate, or at least doesn't pick up on my roots of awareness of racism... it feels slightly excluding, and I know that is not your intent, but that is nonetheless the feeling.

The consistency and familiarity of these responses lets us know that there is a pattern of resistance at work here. While white women certainly exhibit some of these same behaviors, it’s usually far less obvious and confrontational. They may hesitate to participate, but they don’t usually tell us they’re not going to participate. There seems to be something else happening for our white male participants. And while we are certainly open to feedback, and solicit it frequently, so much of what we experience with white men doesn't feel like it’s intended to improve our work; it feels like a challenge, a distraction, or simply a way to remind us to stay in our place.

Because we believe that the engagement of all white educators in antiracist work matters — and because we know many white men who are engaged with the work and are making an impact — we find ourselves wondering what we can do to encourage more white men to participate in antiracist workshops, and to do so with open hearts and minds. To that end, we are seeking input from our white male colleagues: Is anything we’ve described here familiar to you? Do you have your own examples of white men — yourself or others — resisting or interrupting antiracist workshops? And if you have demonstrated any of these behaviors, how did you shift from resistance to engagement? What changed for you?

Our goal is to bring more white men into practicing antiracism. We hope that by exploring these patterns via the lens of both race and gender, we can increase our effectiveness and challenge the resistance as it emerges. But we need your help. In the coming months, we will be sharing the responses from a number of our white male colleagues. We are excited to engage in this cross-gender dialogue — and encourage others to contribute. 

Returning to the first example we shared about the white man who gave us feedback on our facilitation skills, we want to let you know what happened after our session. We thought about what we could have said and realized how frustrated we were in the moment that we didn’t respond. As luck would have it, we saw our participant out in the lobby a couple of hours later. We decided to continue the conversation with him. We approached and asked, “Could we give you some feedback on the interaction we had?” He said sure, adding how much he had enjoyed the workshop. We offered, “So, what made you believe you needed to tell us about our facilitation skills at that moment?” He immediately knew what we were referring to and apologized, “Oh, wow, yeah, that was pretty arrogant of me.” We told him how other white men often do the same thing and what the impact is for us. He listened carefully and took full responsibility for his behavior. It actually seemed kind of familiar to him as well. He thanked us and we moved on.

Looking back, we see now that this conversation was a great example of how we can address these issues together when we take the opportunity to engage in difficult conversations.

So, to our white male colleagues, we look forward to hearing from you. What keeps you engaged in the work? Submissions can be sent to us here.