OPINION | Friendship in Black, White, and Color: A Women's History Month Seattle Love Letter

by Rozella Kennedy

When I moved here from Oakland in 2022, everyone warned me that coming to such a "white" city would disappoint and even shock me. Incredibly, I still find myself blessed with the most diverse group of friends (with gals and some guys) that I've ever had, and I grew up in New York City and spent a decade in the East Bay! One friend, herself a transport from the Bay, told me it's because "we Black women find each other and cleave to each other," which I certainly have experienced. (It's like a Waiting to Exhale moment without the excessive, #SoftLife consumerism.) But what's been pleasantly surprising is the quantity and quality of intercultural friendships I've been able to forge: Like the focus of my book Our Brave Foremothers, and my platform Brave Sis Project, my posse is Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous.

Facts: My friend circle also includes a healthy representation of white women, gals who are living pluralistic, intersectional-minded and even pro-Black, and OK-with-being-a-work-in-progress lives. These folks are not just sitting around virtue signaling with flaccid slogans and worn-out hashtags, and (as!) they are actively versed in anti-racism as a way of life. (They've read the books, but also go further than just patting themselves on the back for reading the books.)

Contrast this to the '80s and '90s — the Token Black Friend era. Having grown up in mostly white spaces among New York City's elite (through school; I'm from working-class stock), my educational rearing was within the context of racial "don't ask, don't tell." I'm not saying my schoolmates were completely racially and culturally inept (it was New York, after all), but there were just mountains of topics we never touched. Such were the times: The Cosby Show is to Insecure what Sounder is to Get Out, and what Lionel Richie and Huey Lewis locking arms and singing "We Are the World" is to Beyonc having the number one song on the country charts.

In short: Society moved. The death of Sandra Bland, the obscene abuse wreaked upon Michelle Obama (our Shelly!), the number of white women who voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 its whole self, and the post-pandemic emergence has thrust us all into a whole new World for We to Be. There's just a lot less energy for "letting it slide" when we BIPOC, particularly Black women, are faced with white not-knowingness. We have less desire to buffet white comfort and white silence over Black perspectives.

Let me share an example out of our so-called collective history: Many of us were raised praising the Suffragists, but did you know Alice Paul tried to make Ida B. Wells march at the back of a 1910s suffrage parade, a classic Jim Crow move? Or that Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, whom many lionize as a goddess of reproductive rights, advanced eugenicist policies, such as the "Negro Project," aiming to eliminate people of "defective stock"? These kinds of offenses have been diluted into the default whiteness narratives of our society (alongside the glory of the Founding Fathers, Westward Ho!, etc.). These stories (a word old folks used to use instead of "lies") had a lot of us deluded or at least complacent for far too long. But now we're uncovering and sharing our truths.

I've found my own strong truth-telling, thanks to the ancestors — by this I mean the "Foremother Spirit" who visited me on Christmas morning in 2019 instructing me to "tell our story." This mystical invitation led to my creating Brave Sis Project, a journal/day planner, social commentary space, and educational platform (#SistoryLessons) that broadens the narrative about representation, visibility, and who in our history gets to be celebrated as a role model or "she-ro."

In 2023, my book, Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History, was released by Workman/Hachette, and by that time, working in a DEI-adjacent space in my employment, I was emerging as a compassionate but shoot-from-the-hip thought leader and advocate for truth and honesty around race relations, particularly those between white women and Women of Color, and, more precisely, between white and Black women.

So, this was why everyone was so worried about my moving to Seattle.

Soon after our arrival in Seattle, another fellow Bay Area transplant (who happens to be white) suggested I should start a women's group among my burgeoning circle of friends. I launched a monthly conversation group at St. Mark's Cathedral that I named after the great civil rights lawyer, poet, educator, and Episcopal saint Pauli Murray (one of the 100 she-roes I honor in my book). This was a culturally diverse Girls Super Group, composed of women in professional and creative careers, where we'd discuss some of the women in history who had been unfairly erased (such as the great Ella Baker and the lesser-known Iupiat woman Ada Blackjack, referred to as the "Robinson Crusoe of the Arctic"). We'd relate their stories and unfair treatment to our own struggles as women*, mothers, daughters, partners, divorcees, empaths, thinkers, writers, and friends.

Because our lens focused on BIPOC foremothers (many of whom are not household names), we were able to "talk story" and evoke history far away from the white gaze. Thinking about DEI-related issues and the persistent divide that exists today between white women (particularly those afflicted with the dreaded malady called "diversity fatigue") and the swells of Black and Brown women who are no longer interested in being anyone's token anything, I invited the women in this Girls Super Group to be Brave Sises themselves, and put their questions, answers, visions, complaints, and dreams on the table for dissecting and collectively reconstructing.

Talking together in a caring and supportive space, with yummy potluck and good wine, we built something kind of holy (appropriate, since it was hosted in a cathedral!): a joyful, Beloved Community space where we were allowed to admit imperfection (for, as we recall, theorist Tema Okun describes rigid perfectionism as one of the key tenets of white supremacist culture), a space where we could laugh, cry, dance (that was me), and admit that we are all still trying to figure it out.

Over our time together, we were able to assert not only that we really care about each other, but also what cross-cultural care means in the 2020s. We solidified our rejection of the one (white) narrative concept of Americana, and we asserted our collective ability to take this long-haul flight. It was even safe for us BIPOC women to evoke Audre Lorde and admit aloud that racism and discrimination are "masters' tools" we sometimes have to struggle with, and overcome, ourselves.

In May 2023, when I emceed Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, authors of White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better, for a screening of their film Deconstructing Karen at the Gates Discovery Center, I saw legions of earnest, chastened white women in the audience, so ardently wanting to be allies. (I assert a person cannot deem themself an ally; it is a conveyance bestowed upon one by the people they wish to live in service to and in community with. Meaning: You gotta work and earn it.)

In the spirit of what the very great Toni Morrison once told me (yes, I was outlandishly fortunate to be able to interview her when I was in my 20s and living in Paris), "I don't educate anyone who is not buying my books or paying tuition." Ms. Morrison was giving me permission to create boundaries and frameworks around how I help shepherd women into a space of true allyship.

So, I have found and created a diverse community in this city. But since Seattle is still so overwhelmingly white, I want to dole out a few free tips to close out this Women's History Month message: Shift your mindset. Address your blind spots. Decenter whiteness as the so-called norm of all of society. Don't consider friendships with BIPOC women to be a notch on your wokeness belt. Share your authentic, messy self and invite others to do the same: emotional spa day for all!

And to my Girls Super Group, of all cultures: Keep on celebrating ourselves and each other!

Have a happy Women's History Month. Keep it intersectional.

*The Brave Sis community is comprised of women, femmes, and gender-expansive people. Brave Bros are also a real thing.

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Rozella Kennedy is an author and content creator; a strategic, creative, and community adviser; and an equity specialist focusing on intersectional women's history and storytelling as a tool for social change. She is the author of Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History (Workman/Hachette, 2023). Her publications and social media platforms have reached thousands of readers and engagers in over a dozen countries on six continents. She also serves as director of impact and equity for global strategic advisory firm Camber Collective, guiding internal Impact, Equity, and Belonging work as well as the external practice supporting the humanitarian, development, philanthropic, and social impact sectors. Learn more on her LinkedIn.

📸 Featured Image: Photo via Southworks/Shutterstock.com