For the past 24 hours, my entire social media feed has been filled with messages and memes about George Floyd, anti-racism, Donald Trump, white supremacists, protests and looting.

It’s been overwhelming and uncomfortable.

But sometimes, it is good to be overwhelmed and uncomfortable.

As I keep trying to write a coherent blog post that does not make me sound like an idiot on the subject of race, I feel a sort of heat in my chest. It’s the same heat I get when I am embarrassed. Why should I feel embarrassed to write about race?

Well, I am white. I don’t think I am racist, but then again, I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood. I went to Catholic schools with mostly white students and white teachers. I read books with white characters and watched television shows with mostly white casts. What racist beliefs did I internalize along the way?

I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable to say this but: I don’t know.

I don’t know what racists ideas I might have internalized as a white woman in America because I have not spent a lot of time thinking about race, racism and anti-racism.

During my first year of law school, I took a class on constitutional law. Midway through the semester, we studied Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision about racial segregation in public schools. As we were talking about the decision, one of my classmates remarked, “Isn’t it crazy that we are talking about this case and there are no black students in this class?”

You could hear a stirring as eighty students looked over their shoulders and surveyed the classroom and then, a murmur, as eighty students collectively realized, midway through the semester, that there were no black students in the classroom.

It took me half a semester to realize that? And still, I did not see a need to consider my own beliefs about race.

Today I ordered White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo. It’s temporarily unavailable from Amazon, as are all the other books about racism and anti-racism on my radar, but that’s okay. I can order something else on audio and get started educating myself on something I wish I had done years ago.

I’m sure this post made me sound like an idiot on the subject of race and racism. Good. It’s nice to write about subjects that make me sound intelligent and enlightened, but damnit, sometimes we just need to get into the muck and admit that we are an idiot about something and that we are ready to do better. Even if that means feeling uncomfortable and overwhelmed. When it comes to the issue of race, I am no longer comfortable with hiding in my comfort zone.