This episode featured an excerpt from an essay about romance by Kamala Puligandla.
Music you heard in this episode: “Beanbag Fight” and “We Win” by Scanglobe, “Les Fleurs” by Minnie Riperton & “I’ve Got it Bad (and that Ain’t Good)” performed by Nina Simone.
Below is a list of texts & resources that helped Phoebe shape the ideas articulated in this series, which takes its name from the ‘90s journal edited by John Garvey & Noel Ignatiev. Many Race Traitor contributors now work on Hard Crackers.
The book Whites, Jews & Us by Houria Bouteldja, described aptly as a “polemical call for a militant antiracism grounded in the concept of revolutionary love.”
Survey for White Artists by Latham Zearfoss & Ruby T, which compiles white artists’ (very smart) responses to questions like Where do you locate whiteness within your work? What is the effect of your white identity on your practice?
The entire body of work of Mandy Harris Williams a.k.a. @idealblackfemale, a theorist, multimedia conceptual artist, writer, educator, radio host and internet/community academic who investigates the connections between white supremacy and desirability, and lovingly/brilliantly calls out all kinds of bullshit including racist algorithms.
Eula Biss’s essay White Debt in the New York Times, which talks about raising white children and responds to Claudia Rankine’s essay The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning by purporting that the condition of white life in America might be complacency, complicity, debt or forgotten debt.
The book Memoir of a Race Traitor by Mab Segrest.
The podcast/series Seeing White by John Biewen featuring Chenjerai Kumanyika is an excellent primer on the “buried” history of whiteness.
Chenjerai & Sandhya Dirks’ lecture All Stories Are Stories About Power has been extremely influential in my thinking about journalism. So has Lewis Wallace’s series (and book) The View From Somewhere, which breaks down the white supremacist construct of objectivity.
Sara Ahmed on whiteness. Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White by James Baldwin. Margaret Hagerman’s research on how white children are raised in the book White Kids. The 8 White Identities by Barnor Hesse. Tamara K. Nopper on white anti-racists. The characteristics of white supremacy culture, which were written by Tema Okun & Kenneth Jones for the workbook Dismantling Racism. The essay White People, You Have a Lying Problem by Talynn Kel. This essay by Kim McLarin on the possibility of friendships between Black & white women.
Lastly, Phoebe wants to acknowledge that this work is not in itself an anti-racist action. It is meant only to describe her experience. She made this in the hope that it would be useful for other people confronting white culture in themselves, their communities or the world, where there’s plenty of it.
She invites white people to join *actual* collective movement against white supremacy. Check out Community Ready Corps Allies & Accomplices and Make Yourself Useful. Wanna redistribute your generational wealth? Maybe start with Resource Generation. Give reparations to Black & Indigenous people.
transcript
Kaitlin Prest:
From Mermaid Palace and Radiotopia, welcome to The Heart.
[light drum beat like a heart beat]
I'm Kaitlin Prest and this is Race Traitor, a Mini Season. This is episode two: Can We Be Friends?
If you haven't listened to episode one, you should go back and start from the beginning. So last time Phoebe introduced herself and took us through her white upbringing, Phoebe feels behind or late to many realizations about herself as a white person. Many of her friends who aren't white are reluctant experts in detecting white bullshit. In this episode, Phoebe asks them some questions. Here's Phoebe. [theme music fades out]
Phoebe:
[narrating] A lot of my friends don't particularly want to be friends with white people.
[Phoebe laughs while talking to Kamala] You said there are a lot of white women in your life, your time changed, your priorities changed. You were kind of looking at your life and you were like, these are the people that are not really, like, adding that much value to my life.
Kamala:
That was it. And I wasn't befriending white women because I didn't think that they were going to help me with my personal growth and who I wanted to become. That was the main reason.
Phoebe:
[narrating] This is my fearless writer friend, Kamala. When people meet Kamala, they’re first taken with her jet-black mohawk, and then she speaks and they're taken with how self-possessed she is.
Kamala:
It wasn't just because I experienced them as like a resource and time-suck, which I did. But it was like beyond like whatever negative effects they had… they just, I just saw that they didn't have any of the, like, aspirational qualities that I like, had for myself.
Phoebe:
Yeah, but then. But I was different?
Kamala:
Yeah. I mean, you're still different.
I feel like you were different. You were different because I felt like you were on the same tip and you were like, oh yeah, like white people aren't going to be the ones who help me arrive at my, like, best self. And that, like, I thought that you were maybe even ahead of me in certain things. I think when I met you, I was like, oh, Phoebe's prepared to live the radical politics that everyone else just talks and that, like, you seemed fully, like, not afraid of what you would have to do to be the white person who is allowed in these spaces.
Phoebe:
[narrating] If you're excited to see how I won't live up to this rosy picture. Kamala has of me… we'll get there. Don't worry, the bubble of the exceptional white will be burst. But first, what do you have to do to be a white person allowed in these spaces? ‘
[upbeat synth rock Race Traitor theme begins]
Phoebe:
I'm talking to my friend NK about a gathering she had.
NK:
I only invited, there was only one white person there. And it's like if that white person gets to be there, because I like 100 percent trust that I know they're not going to say anything out of pocket. Like I know that. I don't have to worry about them. I don't have to worry about them feeling uncomfortable or making anyone else uncomfortable. Most of my friends, I think, know not to say anything, but it's more like how are they going to, like, move through the space and how are they going to, like, center themselves or not center themselves?
Phoebe:
[narrating] I like to think of myself as the kind of person NK could invite to a party like this.
NK:
It's like I have allowed you into my intimate — literal, intimate space or theoretical or ideological space, like we shared intellectual space or whatever.
Phoebe:
[narrating] My relationship with the NK is really important to me.
We've been making radio together for several years.
NK:
[playful archival tape from a begone recording sesh] I'm NK.
Phoebe:
She's NK
NK:
She's Phoebe.
Phoebe:
I'm Phoebe. [NK and Phoebe laugh]
Phoebe:
[narrating] And we've become good friends in the process.
[an excerpt from NK & Phoebe's podcast bitchface plays in the background, Phoebe says: We love you, NK says: stay punk]
Phoebe:
I want to know what she really thinks of me and how she feels around me, because I don't want to be someone who causes her grief.
[to NK] I guess I'm curious if there's times when you've been like mehhhh. I'm not so sure. Like where it's been. Kind of like we're moving toward like a deeper something, and you're kind of like considering whether or not I can go there with you.
NK:
I think, Yeah. I mean, I have thought that, yeah. Umm, You know, I don't know, in the last like couple years. I guess as I've gotten just more critical of the white people around me, I feel like I'm definitely like more critical of you and some of the things that you do or say especially as I feel like a lot of people have this experience where some of the things that are most like charming about you and are fun and funny. Are also, like, inextricably linked to, like, your being a white woman. And...
Phoebe:
I'll tell you what NK is talking about. She's talking about these sort of outrageous things that I do, and it's not necessarily even the fact that I do them. It's the way I brag about them afterwards.
[dancey music begins]
Like the time I keyed an egregiously heterosexual engaged couples’ Audi at the beach and then came to a gathering of friends at a bar and showed them pictures. The way I will antagonize a bro at a bar, like make fun of him to his face. But he usually thinks I'm just flirting with him and I can just like, eviscerate his terrible personality, and he just stands there and takes it. My habit of stealing expensive triple creme cheeses from Whole Foods. The time friends and I drunkenly confronted a white woman wearing a native headdress at a diner at four a.m. and started a fight that escalated to me squirting her with ketchup. The time I said fuck off to an off duty cop at a Christmas party.
[narrating] OK, you get it, confrontational, bad girl antagonism, that I'm able to get away with because I am white. It is fueled by genuine rage. And it's not just a hollow ploy for social acceptance in radical spaces, but it does stem from the fact that as a white person, I know I'll never truly be edgy or punk. So I'm louder and showier about the ways I say fuck you to oppressive norms. And for my Black and Brown friends who would face far greater consequences for getting caught doing these things, it reveals my lack of self-awareness. It's a time when they have to be like, do we tell her, if we're not telling her? Are we responsible for condoning this behavior? [music stops]
And then there are these other things, things that in NK's other friendships might be totally innocuous or just inconvenient. But because I'm white, It gets complicated. Careless things, [bassey synth music starts] or things I do when I'm not totally paying attention: being late, interrupting. They have the potential to take on this other meaning that I don't value her time, or I don't see her, or I see her as less than.
It's related to the historical power dynamics between Black and white women that live in the shadows of our friendship. When someone comes up to both of us at a work event and only addresses me or when white people we're working with assume I'm the leader. These are the kinds of situations we figured out how to navigate over the years. Involving things NK always notices and has to think about that I am now very aware of too. But even so, it's generally hard for her to trust me.
NK:
[to Phoebe] I think that there's been like a sort of shift in how like we, we like meaning the group of people that we share and like have like traveled with or have spent time together. I think, like the conversations that like we have had about our white friend who is you, have, like, have also changed.
Phoebe:
[narrating] I focus on making sure my face muscles aren't letting on how my stomach just dropped when she says this, that sometimes she and Kamala or other friends talk about the ways it can be stressful being my friend. NK has a recording lying around of one of these conversations she once had with Kamala.
[bar sounds, music and talking in the background]
Kamala:
[to NK] So I don't always trust what she says either, and we have a history of her saying a thing and then it not happening. Her being unable to do it, it not being or it being like a half assed version of the thing and like her wanting credit for having tried. And I feel like that also is this. I don't know why I feel like that it's tied up in whiteness but I don't know that it could be entirely...
NK:
[to Phoebe]…because I think that like because we all are friends and like want to continue to be friends. The ideal scenario is not like, oh, we just all decide not to be friends with Phoebe. But it becomes like a conversation of like what kind of like labor are we willing to do for, like, this particular white person?
[bar sounds, music and people talking]
NK:
[to Kamala] I feel like she has to be like held accountable.
Kamala:
[to NK] That's how I feel too!
NK:
[to Kamala] When we see, like, these things occurring and...
Phoebe:
[narrating] I'm wary of asking NK to do more labor for me in this very conversation. But I want to know where is that line for her with me?
NK:
[to Phoebe] I mean, I guess I'll admit to you like, like I said, like, I have dropped white people from my life, and I feel like in our relationship it's more like I observe you doing or not doing certain things or not seeing certain things that I am seeing. And sometimes I tell you about it and, we can talk about it.
And other times I just —
Adjust my expectations, [NK inhales] which does have an effect on like how intimate it can be or how deep it can go.
But the alternative is, doing an amount of labor that I don't feel that I should have to do or that I just don't want to do anymore. Like It's not only about caring about you or not caring about you or our friendship. It's more just about like self-preservation. Like I’m just reserving my energy after, like, many years of catering to white people and centering whiteness.
Like, I just can't do that anymore. And then I also like have to be friends with, like I also. I can't do that anymore. And I also like choose to be friends with you. [NK laughs]
Phoebe:
It's hard for me to hear NK explicitly state this barrier to our intimacy. It's not cruel of her at all. It's actually really reasonable. And I support her not catering to white people. Adjusting expectations is what we do all the time with friends. But it feels hard to know that I might do something I don't even really notice. And it sends her calculating and making adjustments. I don't want there to be this obstacle. I don't want my behavior to be an obstacle to our closeness. [lo-fi rock race traitor theme begins].
And I do wonder if it's possible to overcome this. [music plays and then slowly fades]
I am in a relationship where we tried this, removing this barrier.
[now in conversation with Kamala] When you met me, you were like not trying to date white women?
Kamala:
Yeah. No, I wasn't.
Phoebe:
But you felt like it was...
[narrating] I should acknowledge that the historical racial power dynamics in my friendship with Kamala are different than those between NK and I.
One of the first times Kamala and I hung out. We bonded over our grandmothers’ imprisonment during World War Two. Hers in a Japanese internment camp in Utah and mine in Auschwitz. This isn't to downplay our differences. There are so many ways that our subjectivities were formed differently. But her distrust in white women is based in different experiences than NK's. There was another thing that was different about my friendship with Kamala. When we first met…
[warbling synth starts to pulse]
I was deeply attracted to her. I was also baby queer and hadn't dated a woman before. And I was terrified of just saying, I like you. So I did all kinds of ridiculous things to show her that I was into her, like sending her a folder of nudes attached to an email where I pretended I was her boss, which she never responded to, and boldly making out with her at a drunken daytime dance party.
But eventually... we fell in love.
Kamala is a very talented writer of love stories, so I'll let her tell you what finally won her over. [throbbing techno fades out and the sound of waves and wind fades in]
Kamala:
[reading] It wasn't until we were at a residency on the foggy cliffs of the Mendocino Coast and I saw her quiet private side, the one that makes beautiful drawings in her journal, reads all day in bed and thoughtfully builds a fire or makes breakfast for her companions that I began to think of her as a real person, the kind I could feel romance with. Somehow those sides of Phoebe combined into a mythologically amazing woman, we both couldn't resist. Her vision of me was equally inspiring. [tinkling piano keys begin to play a harmonious melody] She treated me like the preeminent writer and thinker I've always felt I was destined to be. Plus, she was unintimidated by the idea of providing love and pleasure to me, a woman seven years her senior with high standards and stringent tastes in everything from bar company to text diction.
[jazzy piano fades out]
Phoebe:
And as we began our relationship, we agreed that Kamala was going to do the labor of telling me things that I did that she saw, that maybe I didn't notice this white behavior. We committed to this level of work and honesty because we were going to be each other's homes. And the intimacy would make it worth it. I wanted to decenter my perspective and consider how Kamala saw me and my life. I didn't want to get defensive. I wanted to fully internalize the idea that these kinds of critiques come from a place of love. I trusted that Kamala's feedback about me was necessary for her to feel seen in our relationship. I wasn't delusional enough to think we could remove whiteness from the equation entirely.
[lo-fi rock theme of race traitor begins]
I just wanted us to be close.
Kaitlin Prest:
Please forgive this brief interruption. We'll be right back.
[lo-fi rock theme fades out]
Phoebe:
[narrating] So here we were in love and embarking on an exciting romance.
[to Kamala] But then, as time went on and we got closer, you felt like you saw that I wasn't actually ready to live the radical politics that I espoused.
Kamala:
I think that, it wasn't that you weren't ready, it was that you didn't know what some of those things were.
Phoebe:
[narrating] Our ideas of what living these radical politics looked like were different.
One of the first times I bring Kamala around other people in my life that we don't share. It's this dinner party on my friend's rooftop.
Kamala:
That time you invited me to that Seder was the first time I realized that, like you spent a lot of time with and were very close with a group of friends who were white, and I didn't know that. Which is a weird thing for me to not know. But it was also a thing that I think you maybe hadn't thought to like, reveal or like tell. And that's exactly what I mean by, like, the ways that whiteness like functions as like a certain kind of normalcy.
Phoebe:
At this pretty large dinner party, Kamala is one of like two people of color. [deep bass begins to pulse]
She doesn't know anyone besides me and everyone's talking about their religious upbringings, which fit neatly into two categories, Jews and Catholics. [throbbing bass continues] And Kamala is the only one not saying anything. And there's this moment where everyone kind of gets quiet and someone's like, well, what about you? To her. And she's like, totally put on the spot to explain her ethnic and religious background.
Kamala felt blindsided because I had represented myself as someone who didn't have friends like this.
Kamala:
You don't have to like come out as white. Right. And so you didn't. And so I didn't know. Not to say I didn't know you were white, but like I didn't know that you had, like, culturally white, like close friends.
Phoebe:
[to Kamala] Well, and then, what is complicated and what. I don't think I can get into in this time of this story is that like. Then I dumped all those friends. And so, like I do kind of feel like...
[narrating] It wasn't just that one dinner party. There were other things, these friends were unwilling to confront the idea that they were centering themselves at the expense of Kamala's comfort. And what that said about them. I laugh about it now, but at the time it felt like a big shift. Giving up friendships with people I'd been close to for years and processing multiple friend breakups at once. But I also kind of dealt with it like they were an infestation, like getting rid of them would rid me of the problems Kamala had with my white behavior. But that wasn't the case. When Kamala's critiques were actually about me, it was a lot harder to take. [throbbing bassey music begins] Like, this one night that we reference all the time where we were out on a walk and Kamala kept asking me over and over again the same question, what did I want to do in this relationship?
Kamala:
[to Phoebe] Yeah, I wanted to know what you want to get out of it or like what you wanted to do with me, specifically with me.
Phoebe:
[to Kamala] Right. And I like kept avoiding your question. And then we got to your apartment. And I remember it was really hot. [Kamala laughs]
Kamala:
It was always really hot in that apartment
Phoebe:
I immediately like took off all of my clothes and laid down on your green couch that I love.
Kamala:
I mean, that was like your regular move, was you would come into my apartment. You'd like throw your shit on the floor, take off all your clothes and lie down on the couch.
Phoebe:
Yes, I was hogging the whole couch and you couldn't even sit on it. And then you asked me the question again, what did I want out of the relationship?
[bassey music continues]
Kamala:
You were like "I'm just going to, you know, like, you want an answer, I'm going to give you an answer." And you're like: "I want to do whatever I want to."
[music stops]
Phoebe:
I want to know, like, how you felt in that moment.
Kamala:
Well, in the moment, I felt like you did not have to ask permission for anything, that you felt very entitled to my life, to my stuff, to me, and that you wouldn’t need to, like, earn any of it. Like, I kind of felt like you thought that I was just like this open resource for you to, like, climb into and grab the things you need when you wanted to. And it's just available, I mean, especially when you're just, like, naked on my couch. Like, chilling.
Phoebe:
Yeah. It was not a good look for me.
Kamala:
I mean, I thought it was hilarious. I remember laughing because I thought that that was like, like what a lack of self-awareness to be like to be in this position, [laughing] to be like, [echoes] "I'm going to do whatever I want to."
Phoebe:
Had you encountered that in someone who wasn't white… would it have been a problem?
Kamala:
I think it would have felt really different if it were someone who weren't white. I would be like, oh, this person is giving themselves… they're empowering themselves to not shut down their options, which is the thing that, like, you were probably in some way, if you're a person of color raised to do and you were probably raised to like kill some of your own hopes so someone else doesn't do it for you. And also, like, pick the route that you think is going to have the least resistance so that you can get it. And that doesn't cause you immense pain because you just want to get it. You don't want to have to, like, build a new way to do it every single time.
So I think if it were a person of color, I'd been like, there's something else going on here. Let's find out what it is. But it felt sort of impenetrable with you because there wasn't necessarily, I think that you thought you were in that position, too, is what I'm saying. So I think that you also thought you were empowering yourself as a woman, to like, not be controlled by a relationship and to like not shut down hopes and desires that you wanted and like not be confined or constrained by other people as you felt that you had been before. So, like, I think that you thought you were in that position and like. I recognize that. And then also I'm like, but that's coming from a very different place. You're not like throwing off the same kinds of like social expectations or treatment that other people who are people of color are.
[starry synth music begins]
Phoebe:
Let's talk about shame.
A lot of shame comes up working through all this, acknowledging the ways I did perpetuate white supremacy culture in my relationship with Kamala, that I didn't live up to her idea of how I had said it would be dating me.
I said I had confronted a lot of this shit already and I thought I had because I had worked through it intellectually and understood how certain actions reflect white supremacy. But I hadn't studied the nuanced ways this lives in me.
[starry synth fades out]
My experience of shame is connected to a larger narrative of white shame and white guilt. I know people see white guilt and white shame as the source of white people's malaise. But I think it's important to sit with guilt and shame if your white to not avoid it, feeling shame has led me to investigate things like why it's so easy for me to feel confident or why I expect to get what I want in a culture that constantly affirms my behavior.
I'm ashamed of being like this.
And then I'm ashamed of being ashamed because I know my shame takes up oxygen in a room. It only makes my white offenses more burdensome to my Black and Brown friends. But I know I need to confront my shame so I can move through it. And this feels complicated too, because moving through shame feels like a project of self acceptance. And I'm unsure of how to do that without diminishing the source of the shame, the injustices that continue to provide benefits to me and other white people.
NKL
…Self acceptance as a goal for white people doesn't interest me at all. Like, that feels like so privileged. Just to want that or expect that when like. I mean, you know you know, you're like intimately acquainted with, I think, like my own, the struggles for self acceptance. That like I feel or that people of color feel it just sort of like it just seems like that shouldn't even be on the table like. You know...
Phoebe:
Like that it should be the goal is like something more, is like not that is like something different than that.
NK:
One of the things we're talking about as far as like what we want from white people is like lifelong discomfort, you know, like I don't think you should ever get to, like, feel comfortable. And I don't. I wish that, people who claim to care about anti-racist work were actually putting more of their energy towards that work versus like towards them themselves. And that like accepting that like feeling uncomfortable all the time is like how you should be feeling. And if you're not feeling uncomfortable, then you're probably not doing enough. I just like most people, no ones. I don't feel like anyone's really doing that.
Phoebe:
Yeah, I know, And I don't. I don't feel like I, I don't feel like I always am. I don't. I don't know that there. What is enough? I think that's like defined by a community and like...
NK:
But I mean enough, Okay. So sure. So I'll say for my definition like enough would mean like are you doing enough like I said, that you feel a sense of loss, a sense of lack, a sense of discomfort or a sense of...do you know what I mean, like have you done? Have you given up something that felt difficult to give up? That felt like it had consequences, material consequences for you that were maybe, were detrimental to your scenario but that, like, directly impacted someone else's or even theoretically impacted someone else's.
You know, like that could be like turning down a job or turning down a platform or it's like there's lots of things like that, you know.
Phoebe:
Yeah. No, I have I have thought about that a lot…
[narrating] I came into this conversation wanting to know what I could do to have my friends feel comfortable around me.
But the work ahead is actually much bigger than that. Because the symbiosis of my relationship with NK depends on what I'm doing to make a world that centers her comfort, her safety, her health and well-being and happiness, not mine. And they're not the same.
The world we currently live in was built for me in a lot of ways it wasn't for NK and for Kamala.
The world that is for NK and for Kamala is a world I want to exist.
But in order for that to happen, I have a responsibility to help build that world, knowing it's not for me. I have to sacrifice my comfort, my inheritance, my built in stability.
I have to give something up. Kamala and I used to talk about this a lot. The giving up part, how it's often framed like that, but that even though it can and probably should feel like a personal loss, it's also an expansion of what is personally yours. [rocky music fades in]
It's a dissolution of the individualism that is foundational to white supremacy. Leaving behind the supposed protections of whiteness also means joining the rest of the world. So next time on Race Traitor, I'm getting into it with the deeper source of my white behavior. The arbiter of my inheritance, the white woman whose womb I came out of.
My mom.
Ellen Murphy, Phoebe’s Mom:
I didn't say that there is not a white value system, but I don't belong to it. Is what I'm trying to tell you.
Phoebe:
Well, you know, how the fuck did I get then? How the fuck do I belong to it? If you don't?
Ellen:
Because you want to be. Maybe you want to belong to it?
Phoebe:
No.
Phoebe:
Uhhh [phoebe exhales] I feel like I can never lay on your couch.
Kamala:
You can.
Phoebe:
No, I'm like, I can take up one square.
Kamala:
No, phoebe, it's like it's totally fine. [laughing] [Heart theme fades in]
Kaitlin Prest:
Race Traitor is a serialized mini season of the heart produced by Phoebe Unter. Sharon Mashihi edited the series with additional editorial support from Nicole Kelly, Me, Kaitlin Prest and Kamala Puligandla. The Heart is Nicole Kelly, Phoebe under Sharon Mashihi and me, Kaitlin Prest. It is a production of Mermaid Palace and is distributed by Radiotopia. The Heart is now a more than 10 years old queer and feminist institution that once in the long past went by the name of Audio Smut. If you like this show, tell your friends, reviewers and itunes. We need listeners to keep the show alive. And I think that there's a lot of people out there who would like this show that don't know about it yet.
So tell someone, send it to them. Send them this episode.
Follow us on Instagram at The Heart radio. If you love this work and you want to support it with your cash dollars, we would greatly appreciate it. You can donate at the heart radio talk. The Heart is a proud member of Radiotopia.
