Rebecca, Not Becky by Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene

Author:Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2023-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Today, 4:22 PM

Rebecca

No-go on the posters for tomorrow. Delay at the printers.

Today, 4:23 PM

Harita

Don’t worry about the posters! I’ll get the kids to make some tonight. I say we stick to the plan for getting signatures tomorrow.

Rebecca thought about it for a minute. She guessed Harita was right. Things were still prickly between them (for instance, Harita had insisted on being co-chair. Why did she always need to be in charge of everything?), but the statue had given them a common enemy.

Now that she didn’t have to run to the printer, Rebecca had time to kill. She checked off “posters” on her app, then opened Twitter. She pulled up @WeWoke, the account for Woke Yet? author Braxton Walsh. His daily threads were usually pretty informative.

@wewoke: White people! Stop telling people of color’s stories for them. Tell your own stories.

@whi.te.man.walking: I thought you didn’t want to hear us talk. Which is it?

@ytforblm: @whi.te.man.walking There you go again. Are you actually curious or just here to troll?

@whi.te.man.walking: @ytforblm @wewoke The real question is are you here to actually teach or just try to indoctrinate more sheep into your Woke Culture?

She recognized the @whi.te.man.walking account. That guy was bad news. But—and she’d never admit this publicly—she was sort of wondering the same thing he was. What did “tell your own stories” mean? Why would she talk about being white? What people really needed to hear about were all the horrible things happening to people of color. Like racial profiling. And that there were still so many Confederate statues throughout the country!

She went back to Google and typed the question she wasn’t sure she wanted an honest answer to: “Can white and Black women really be friends?”

A lot of links turned up. One, in particular, caught her eye:

Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts for White Women—From the Black Best Friend You’ll Probably Never Have

She clicked on it, hopeful, but also prepared for yet another headline that oversold the contents of the article. She scrolled past the two intro paragraphs to get directly to the list. Okay, these were pretty good. Actual, practical advice. She wasn’t seeing anything groundbreaking, but it felt good to get confirmation that she was getting some stuff right.

#1 DO: Believe people of color when they say something is about race. DON’T: Assume all people of color agree.

#2 DO: Listen first in multiracial conversations. DON’T: Put the burden of your education on people of color.

Check. Check, Rebecca mentally noted for herself as she skimmed. Then, toward the end of the article, she paused.

DO: Speak up when racist incidents occur. DON’T: Share violent videos.

Rebecca was confused. How was she supposed to speak up about incidents without sharing the videos? Without videos, people never believed these things were happening.

She continued clicking through more articles. In one—“Stop Saying ‘But I Have Black Friends’”—terms like “objectification” and “exotification” glared at her. It even mentioned “model minority.” Oh! That’s what Jenny was talking about. She took a couple of screenshots and nearly texted them to Jenny before stopping herself.

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