If You Don’t Know, You Know

I keep deleting the opening line to this newsletter but am letting this one stand.

I have to start somewhere, even when I am writing about what I don’t know — what we don’t know.

What we don’t know is the most basic truth: how so many people we care about are doing.

I had another column written that can wait for next week. This week, I keep thinking about the Salon video chat Serial Marketers just had with Marie Roker-Jones, co-founder and co-CEO of Essteem which organizes Equalithon hackathons.

A lot about the session moved me. A lot about it got to me.

What bothered me most was when Marie described how much energy she has to spend preparing herself to operate in a non-inclusive world.

That involves how to act, how to speak, how to dress — how to represent herself, and so much more than herself.

I don’t have to think about this. I’m a member of a minority, but an assimilated group within a white minority, and that makes a big difference in terms of which challenges I have to face on a daily basis.

When I hear stories like Marie’s — and I know these are the most common of stories —  I think about how so much of that energy is wasted.

It could be spent on people’s jobs. On their families. On their passions. On their self-care.

But they have to spend all this time managing people’s perceptions.

It is such a waste, and it is such an important reason why so many of us — myself included — must do better.

Another exchange during the conversation with Marie got to me.

A friend of mine attended, someone I know pretty well.

She’s white and talked about her recent interactions with her grown Asian-American daughter.

I know my friend has talked to me about this daughter before. She talks about her daughter often. I know she mentioned race in the past.

It never registered before today though.

In part, it’s because I can be oblivious and forgetful.

But in a good way, until this reference, it didn’t matter. In a good way, my reaction to something like that in the past was, “So what?”

So what if a white friend has a black son?

So what if a Hispanic friend has a non-Hispanic white dad?

Nice to know. If subjects around race or culture come up, I’m curious to hear more. Often, those subjects don’t materialize.

Often, all that comes up is that the friend is visiting their dad, or their kid got into college, or their brother (whether half-brother or step-brother) had a kid.

And yet, the friend I mentioned above had to deal with more than she’s usually dealt with.

I’d have loved to have the presence to check in and ask her how she was doing.

I joined a Clubhouse room recently with my friend Jeremiah Owyang, and I asked him a bunch of questions about his experience as being Asian in America. He shared personal stories that were painful to hear, and he and others (including black Americans) could discuss their opinions on the differences between #StopAsianHate and #BlackLivesMatter.

So, yes, race is top of mind. I noted during the Salon with Marie about how when Jeremiah was my guest on the very first Salon in March 2020, race didn’t come up. I never would have thought to bring it up. Now, it comes up all the time. I’ve had to learn a lot about how not to be scared of bringing it up.

While I know how little I know about race, it’s more jarring to think about how little I know about what friends are experiencing.

It’s a reminder for me, and I hope it’s a useful reminder for you.

We just don’t know how some of our closer friends are doing, let alone distant contacts.

It’s a reason to ask, “How are you?” instead of assuming, “Hope all’s well.”

All isn’t always well.

Sometimes, our friends will need to tell us that.

What we may have forgotten about our friends could be precisely what is keeping them up at night.

We might not know who else we need to check in with, but at the very least, we can do what we can to be there for them anyway.

Thank you to Marie, Jeremiah, and everyone else doing so much to shorten the learning curve while many of us grapple with trying to understand how our peers are really doing.

David

• Time’s Up Pubs: Start Talking To Your Users NOW by Rob Beeler
• From Restaurant Worker to Instagram Restaurant Owner by Patricia Cobe
• Anti-Asian Racism Takes Devastating Toll on Community by Sandra Silva Casabianca
• First TV Series Financed By & Set In World Of Crypto Currencyby Peter White
• 5 Education Marketing Strategies with Examples by Kristen Johnson

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