Black & White: a Q-and-A on race and privilege with author Stephen Dorsey

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

For many of us, the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a police officer, who is white, represented a reckoning on systemic racism in our society and a desire to learn. It also inspired Toronto’s Stephen Dorsey to pen the book, Black & White:  An Intimate, Multicultural Perspective on ‘White Advantage’ and Paths to Change. He was born to a white mother and a Black father and then raised by a racist white stepfather when his mother remarried. Dorsey talks about his own experiences with systemic racism growing up and in the workplace, backing it up with research and analysis.

John Ackermann:  Stephen, I mentioned George Floyd in my introduction because his death was such a watershed moment.  But, really, these are thoughts you have had for a very long time.  Why did it take this to get you to write the book?

Stephen Dorsey:  All of a sudden, I found myself at the center of the story, if you will, in my neighbourhood and amongst my white friends. I joke about it, but I was like the Black Lives Matter hotline for them. And they were calling and for all the good reasons, asking me if I was okay and how I was feeling and what they should be feeling and what they should say. Should they put a black box on their social media and so on. So really, all of this came together. I’m a professional communicator and strategist and I’ve been writing a lot, in the last 10 years specifically, and all of this kind of converged. I’m [thinking] maybe I’m the one that can maybe bridge the divides by telling and communicating what this systemic racism and this global reckoning means, and do it in a personal [way] and also from a perspective of looking at society. And that’s what I did.

Ackermann:  When we say white advantage as opposed to white privilege, are they the same? Are they different?

Dorsey:  Well, they’re the same, you know. Again, I’m a communicator. So words matter. And in many of the conversations I was just discussing, people, my white friends, and white people I knew, and people in my neighborhood were saying, “Stephen, I come from modest means, my family came from nothing, and I’m not privileged. I worked hard, and I built this business from the ground up, and I bought my house.” I go, “No, no, I get it. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about advantage.” We’re talking about the advantage that white people have had in this country and in the US, simply because you’re white. You may be even unconscious that you have these advantages, but they exist. And if you’re a person of colour, a Black person, an Indigenous person in this country, you know what those disadvantages are simply by the fact of your race and your culture. And so once I explained that and I was able to put some meat on the bones of what that meant, I found people were much less defensive and much more receptive to having greater, deeper conversations.

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Ackermann:  There’s a great line in the book where you write, “To be an ally, you need to understand that not everyone has had the same experience as you and your ancestors. Acknowledging these truths doesn’t mean you love your country any less.” How do you get that point across? As you just said, many folks tend to get their back up about this kind of concept.

Dorsey:  I think all of us, including myself, we have to actually want to go with purpose, towards understanding. You have to want to do your own work. And so I learned a lot by writing my book. So, the information is there and a lot of the stuff, obviously, we weren’t taught in schools. But some people are surprised about residential schools. And I’m saying, the Indigenous people of this country have been telling us this forever. We haven’t really been fully listening properly. So now, I guess what I’m saying is, we all need to go look at the heritage, the past, the history, and look at the truth of what actually happened. And yes, it may make you uncomfortable because this is actually what happened. It was government mandated, a lot of the stuff that happened in regards to Black people and Indigenous people and others who were discriminated and disadvantaged.

Ackermann:  So, where do we go from here?  The last chapter is titled, “Be Better, Do Better, Live Better, Together.” How do we do that?

Dorsey:  That’s at the core of what drove me to write the book. So, I think on the “be better” we’re talking about, and that includes all of us, including myself, we need to be much more aware. You know, I’m a glass half full kind of guy. So I think we have moved to a greater awareness globally on systemic racism. So I think that’s good. From there, I’m hoping that individuals will get to their own place of awakening and go wow, “I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.” How many times have I heard that? “I never knew.” Well, now you know. So think about that. Reflect about it. Have your conversations. And then, y’all need to do something, little things, big stuff. That’s where the “do better” comes in. And I detail, in my book, different ways that people who have different means or abilities or capacity to contribute. And that it’s going to take a lot of work. And of course, the big lift will be the reforms. Where we all come together to look at all the systems, take them apart, put them back together, so that they’re more equal. And if we do that, maybe hopefully, as quickly as possible, and within a generation, we should hopefully get to a place where we do live better together in a society that’s more equal and just for all Canadians.

Black & White:  An Intimate, Multicultural Perspective on ‘White Advantage’ and Paths to Change is available from Nimbus Publishing.