Learning to be wrong

I was working with a group on racial reconciliation, and I felt frustrated. I mostly listened, but then every time I spoke, the words coming out of my mouth were all wrong. And I’m a type-A, liberal, PC, white woman. I don’t like to be wrong. I like to “get it” and secretly roll my eyes at other wrong people. 

I talked with a colleague about that dread of wrongness. He was a white man who had been working with African-American communities on civil rights issues for decades. I confessed that I was worried about keeping up with acceptable words, how I didn’t mean to micro-aggress, but it felt like I just would, no matter how hard I tried. “I just feel so stupid,” I said. “I’m so worried that I’m going to say the wrong thing.” I told him that I didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, but to be honest, it was more about my feelings. I didn’t want to be the un-enlightened one people would scoff at over drinks later that night.

My colleague laughed long and hard and said, “Of course you’re going to be wrong. That’s the whole point. If you want to do this work, then you’re always going to be wrong.”