Read on Twitter
1. I used to think racism wasn't my problem. Yes, I was white, but I wasn't racist. I was a 'good' person and reasonably vocal about injustices. And that seemed enough - I didn't really think about it. I think I was one of many who are like this.
2. I organised Northern Rocks and took care to make sure that we had the "right" proportion of women and people of colour in some weird attempt to be 'balanced' but I didn't really think about it - it was tokenistic and patronising. I never took the time to think about things.
3. Then #BLM kicked off and chatting with my sons one night I said "this is terrible" and one of them said "maybe you should educate yourself and privilege other people's voices over your own." That brought me up short. He told me to read Reni Eddo-Lodge, Layla F Saad and others.
4. I could have been offended, but I wasn't. I have wise kids. So I read and learned and began to understand that racism isn't just the stuff that's obvious - names and language and violence. It's a web. Often unconscious. It's about power, upholding power, benefitting from power
5. And that in benefitting from that power I had two options. To carry on in my comfortable complacency where no-one could call me racist, but where I was actively upholding the power structures that allow it to thrive. Or to speak up and carry on learning.
6. I'm still learning and reading. Unconscious biases affect us in many ways - we'll always trip up but we need to be alert to them. If you decide to create a list of enemies and tweet out four of them and they happen to be black women (or at least you think they are) it's bias.
7. If you use terms like "passing for white" when throughout history black people have had to go through humiliating tests to 'pass' as white, you're really needing to think deeply about your language and biases. Not doubling down.
8. If someone you like/know/work with does things like this, and you pile in to defend them against the people of colour who, in the full painful knowledge of how racism affects their lives daily, you are holding up the system of power that allows racism to thrive. An enabler.
9 These things are hard. Emotionally hard. Challenging and threatening. No-one likes that mirror holding up to their faces. I don't like it either. It's not a flattering reflection.
10. But if we want a world in which people really are judged on the content of their character and not the colour of their skin, it's a mirror we need to look into. And one we need to hold up in front of the people we know, and even those we love, as my sons did for me.
11. I'm grateful to my children and especially to the women of colour who have rallied around me not to judge, but to help me on this journey; to share their stories - some of them truly heartbreaking and to take the time to help me to be better. You know who you are. 
