2 years ago I attended a big conference called the White Privilege Conference. One of the workshops was titled: You Can’t Unfriend Everybody.

On the other hand, during a plenary session, the leader of the group said the pithy line: “There are some pancakes that just cannot be flipped.”

White allies are precious resources who need to be be husbanded, including by themselves. An important consideration is that you do not spend too much of your energy on people who cannot be reached no matter how much and well you try. On the other hand, most allies are not using best practices in compassion to try to reach people — instead they are using the same old confrontational tactics and getting the same old non-results.

The point of the article is that the resistance of these folks needs to looked at as a spiritual opportunity for the ally; working through your impediments to using best practices methods in compassion is good for you.

Of course, there are enough people with racially problematic attitudes for you to not forever focus on people who cannot be moved. But let’s face the truth that the bigger error now is not people spending too much time using best practices with the wrong people and not moving on soon enough; the bigger error is people not using these methods at all.

Writing people off does not move the needle.