Today’s post comes from a late night email from someone who asks:

I thought you might be a good source to ask, as I don’t have any meatspace peers that really think too much about this stuff…

Sometimes my dog likes to jump up onto the chairs at the dining room table while we’re sitting at eating. It’s super cute that he wants to sit at the table with us, but we don’t want him to do that. Sometimes I joke that he’s being “puppity.” I’ve recently started thinking that it might be problematic to even use a portmanteau of “uppity”. The definition doesn’t make the word explicitly racist, but I think I’ve only ever heard it in a racial context, so I think it might be a word that we just need to retire.

Thoughts?

On the one hand, this is a really insightful question from a white person who is obviously making an effort to examine race and racism in their lives and become less racist. So YAY! I totally applaud that effort.

On the other hand, sending this question out of the blue to (I assume), the only Black person you know because you were on a panel together one time talking about diversity stuff, is classic stage 3 behavior and highly problematic on many levels.

So let’s dig into that a little deeper.

As a white person, is it ever OK to ask a Black person (or any other POC), “Yo is this racist?” I can only answer this for myself[1], but as with everything, relationship makes a huge difference.

Generally I’m open to spontaneous conversations about race with my good, trusted friends and not too many others. And by good trusted friends, I mean maybe we dated for six months 15 years ago and have stayed close ever since. Or maybe we met in writing class a