A growing number of women are paying to confront their privilege – and racism – at dinners that cost $2,500.
Freshly made pasta is drying on the wooden bannisters lining the hall of a beautiful home in Denver, Colorado. Fox-hunting photos decorate the walls in a room full of books. A fire is burning. And downstairs, a group of liberal white women have gathered around a long wooden table to admit how racist they are.
This is Race to Dinner. A white woman volunteers to host a dinner in her home for seven other white women – often strangers, perhaps acquaintances. (Each dinner costs $2,500, which can be covered by a generous host or divided among guests.) A frank discussion is led by co-founders Regina Jackson, who is black, and Saira Rao, who identifies as Indian American. They started Race to Dinner to challenge liberal white women to accept their racism, however subconscious,
“If you did this in a conference room, they’d leave,” Rao says. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”
Rao and Jackson believe white, liberal women are the most receptive audience because they are open to changing their behavior. They don’t bother with the 53% of white women who voted for Trump. White men, they feel, are similarly a lost cause.
“White men are never going to change anything. If they were, they would have done it by now,” Jackson says.
It seems unlikely anyone would voluntarily go to a dinner party in which they’d be asked, one by one, “What was a racist thing you did recently?” by two women of color, before appetizers are served. But Jackson and Rao have hardly been able to take a break since they started these dinners in the spring of 2019. So far, 15 dinners have been held in big cities across the US.
The women who sign up for these dinners are not who most would see as racist. They are well-read and well-meaning. They are mostly Democrats. Some have adopted black children, many have partners who are people of color, some have been doing work towards inclusivity and diversity for decades. But they acknowledge they also have unchecked biases. They are there because they “feel [they] are part of the problem, and want to be part of the solution,” as host Jess Campbell-Swanson says before dinner starts.
Campbell-Swanson comes across as an overly keen college student applying for a prestigious internship. She can go on for days about her work as a political consultant, but when it comes to talking about racism, she chokes.
“I want to hire people of color. Not because I want to be … a white savior. I have explored my need for validation … I’m working through that … Yeah. Um … I’m struggling,” she stutters, before finally giving up.
Across from Campbell-Swanson, Morgan Richards admits she recently did nothing when someone patronizingly commended her for adopting her two black children, as though she had saved them. “What I went through to be a mother, I didn’t care if they were black,” she says, opening a window for Rao to challenge her: “So, you admit it is stooping low to adopt a black child?” And Richards accepts that the undertone of her statement is racist.
As more confessions like this are revealed, Rao and Jackson seem to press those they think can take it, while empathizing with those who can’t. “Well done for recognizing that,” Jackson says, to soothe one woman. “We are all part of the problem. We have to get comfortable with that to become part of the solution.”
Food is heaped on to plates, and a sense of self-righteousness seems to wash over the eight white women. They’ve shown up, admitted their wrongdoing and are willing to change. Don’t they deserve a little pat on the back?
Erika Righter raises her tattooed forearm to her face, in despair of all of the racism she’s witnessed as a social worker, then laments how a white friend always ends phone calls with “Love you long time”.
“And what is your racism, Erika?” Rao interrupts, refusing to let her off the hook. The mood becomes tense. Another woman adds: “I don’t know you, Erika. But you strike me as being really in your head. Everything I’m hearing is from the neck up.”
Righter, a single mother, retreats before defending herself: “I haven’t read all the books. I’m new to this.” The books she is referring to are,
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race.
White Fragility
Saira Rao
“The American flag makes me sick,” read a recent tweet of hers. Another: “White folks – before telling me that your Indian husband or wife or friend or colleague doesn’t agree with anything I say about racism or thinks I’m crazy, please Google ‘token,’ ‘internalized oppression’ and ‘gaslighting’.” And another: “White people have done everything to make my life miserable. Yet I'm supposed to not hate white people?”
She wasn’t always this confrontational, she says. Her “awakening” began recently.
After Rao’s mother died unexpectedly a few years ago, she moved to Denver from New York to be around her best friends – a group of mostly white women from college. She wasn’t new to being the only person of color, but she was surprised to notice how they would distance themselves whenever she’d start taking about race.
Then, fuelled by anger at Trump’s election after she’d campaigned tirelessly for Hillary Clinton, Rao ran for Congress in 2018 against a Democratic incumbent on an anti-racist manifesto, and criticized the “pink-hat-wearing” women of the Democratic party. It was during this campaign Rao met Jackson, who works in real estate. Jackson recalls her initial impressions of Rao as “honest, and willing to call a thing a thing”.
It’s that brashness that led to Race for Dinner. Rao is done with affability. She now hosts $2500 dinners to help white people discover their white privilege and intrinsic racism. It shouldn’t be too hard. Here’s a short list of things that were proclaimed racist by the left in 2019. If you are guilty of any of them, and a have a spare $2500, you could be free.
Things That are Now ‘Racist’
The Betsy Ross flag
The American flag
The National Anthem
White people (in general)
White people who don’t vote left (in particular)
Anyone who supports Federal Immigration Law
The 1969 Moon Landing
People who don’t support reparations
Speaking proper English
People who don’t like rap music
Soon it will be racist to not have a tattoo. We will be watching this trending development.
Friends, there are two kinds of guilt. Don’t fall for this false guilt,
Genuine guilt. This is when the Holy Spirit convicts you that you have transgressed God’s Law. The solution is to repent, and renounce your sin.
False guilt. This is when other people try to make you feel guilty of things you are not guilty of. False guilt has nothing to do with what's true and accurate, nor is it related to true repentance. Rather, it is usually the fear of disapproval in disguise; it is unreasonable and inappropriate, such as blaming people for the color of their skin (be it white or black). God made you who you are. Accept it and be thankful for His Creation.
True guilt can be resolved through repentance.
False guilt should be confronted with truth and discarded.
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“For You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God” (Revelation 5:9).
