Expectations were high, my performance low. I knew the subject, but somehow couldn’t articulate my ideas coherently. Delegates didn’t hold back when it came to criticism and told me afterwards that my strategy was unclear, my content muddled and that I had given them no clear direction. It would have been so easy for me to have run my presentation by Louis in the days before I gave it - but I hadn’t wanted to subject myself to negative feedback. So I’d blundered on. I felt that I’d blown it and feared being sent back home.

We don’t need carrots and sticks to incentivise people. We need those with a deep understanding of our values - that is what guides us. And if we’ve got people who are not living the values, they might have to work elsewhere.

But my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration. And the word racist, to them, conjures, if not a tobacco-spitting oaf, then something just as fantastic—an orc, troll, or gorgon.

When our stories require us to pass judgment, to inflict shame on ourselves and others, to set ourselves apart, we cause harm. Bigot, prig, the voice in my head calls me. And, I must answer honestly. I must answer yes. I want to make it not so. I have work to do on myself. I need a new story.

Was wiseness a strategy for everyone? Would people with less enfranchised identities, those occupying lesser roles in the Wilkerson play, be comfortable using it?

For these people— women, minorities, gays, white men in diversity workshops, low-income earners— hearing that they should offer “trust” in diverse settings could trigger more “remembering” than “forgetting.” And there waiting for them is a compelling argument: “How can I trust people from groups that have done bad things to my group, people who benefit from advantages won by those bad things, people who often justify those advantages with dehumanizing stereotypes of my group, people who often see my group’s progress not as a good thing, or as justice-restoring, but as a zero-sum loss? Wouldn’t being ‘wise’ just make me more vulnerable to them— women to men, Blacks to whites, gays to straights?” And their churn wouldn’t stop there. It would also ask: “Why does responsibility for building trust in these settings fall to me? Shouldn’t it be first the responsibility of the more empowered?