Am I good?

Reflections from a reverend on the Virtuous White Woman

One of the central journeys of my book, and of this newsletter no doubt, is trying to understand how to live in such a broken world in a wholesome way. Sometimes I trip all over myself. Sometimes I manage to trip right onto something beautiful and true. I’m grateful you come along with me.

As has Rev. Lindsey Franklin, a reader who reached out with this tremendous reflection that I just had to share with you. Please leave her comments, complications, and confirmations. This is so thoughtful…

I am a longtime reader of your work. Your writing over the years has kept me company as I made a pretty dramatic turn from working with startups in the Bay Area to becoming a pastor in Richmond, Virginia, seeking what you call the “elusive White moral life.”

I loved this book. I love your self-examination, your clarity, and your struggle. I also appreciate that you recognize the paradox of looking directly at Whiteness in a world where Whiteness is already, problematically, centered, but do it anyway to better understand it and (hopefully! someday!) dismantle it. And struggle through that paradox with so much thoughtfulness. 

It also made me think of what I’ve been calling in my head the Virtuous White Woman— a myth, or trope even, that imagines White women as good.

If I’m honest, so often the question I’ve asked in my life — perhaps my response to this myth — is this: am I good?

I’ve decided that question might not be the right one.  

It is a question particularly fraught for White women. We White women have gained substantial political, cultural, and economic power by a myth that says we are good and virtuous and pure, even as the lines between “goodness” and “virtue” and “purity” blur in a way that cannot imagine us to have complex moral lives. The myth of the Virtuous White Woman encourages White saviorism. It also demands White women’s goodness and virtuousness and purity to be protected at all costs, often at the violent — deadly— expense of people of color, in general, and Black men in particular. 

For me, the desire to be good can also lead to the desire to perform goodness— ever-apparent in the virtue-signaling of progressive culture that you so acutely describe in your book.

Chasing my own goodness can then lead me on a pendulum swing between self-deprecation and self-righteousness, always trying to find that elusive sweet spot of the White moral life. 

The problem with the question am I good?— and the pendulum swing that follows— is that it centers on the self. 

Last summer, when protests broke out here in Richmond, Virginia, where I live, I was still new to the city, new even to the South. I was a new pastor, not yet ordained, still trying to find my path with a faith still tender, still figuring out Richmond’s fluctuating racial and political landscape. I remember this one particular moment sitting on the hill overlooking the city, next to the monastery where I work, trying to grapple with my role in this moment. I suddenly realized that much of my angst and confusion was coming from this ever-present question— am I good?Am I good in a world where George Floyd was murdered by a White police officer? Am I good if I go to this protest, or that one? Am I good if I hold this sign or preach this sermon? Am I good?

Sitting on that hill— I remember it was Pentecost Sunday— I suddenly realized the utter ridiculousness of that question. Here I was, in the midst of a powerful racial reckoning, a foundation-shifting spiritual revolution with so much at stake, and I was concerned about my own goodness, my own moral life. 

As a person of faith, facing this absurdity gave way to an acceptance that God is good, and perhaps my role as a human being is to pay attention to the glimmers of the divine in the world. That subtle shift—from paying attention to my own goodness to God’s goodness— was profound. At that particular moment in Richmond, Virginia, God was everywhere. All I had to do was pay attention. 

I wonder if this shift works, too, in an atheistic or agnostic frame.

Instead of focusing on our own goodness, or even our own White moral life, what if we seek out the good within and outside ourselves, trusting it exists, and pay attention to it?

An idea I first heard from adrienne maree brown suggests that “what we pay attention to grows,” which is actually one of my favorite articulations of how to think about prayer.

Continuously asking ourselves if we are good leads to the temptation to defend our goodness with our fragile White woman egos. Instead, paying attention to those glimmers of goodness that are both inside and outside ourselves grows them. 

Turning our gaze from our own goodness also allows us to see ourselves and our world more fully— recognizing that the goodness we seek exists inside us alongside those places where we are not very good, where we are broken or confused, where we perpetuate harm. It exists outside of us, too— in other people, in things seen and unseen, alongside the not very good, the broken and confusing, the harmful. This shift takes the focus away from the self while still leaving room for the search for morality in a complex world. 

This is what I see you doing with Emerson Elementary— paying attention to the good you see in a community that Whiteness tells White people is not worthy enough for their children. 

And that, I think, is a worthy endeavor. 

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Rev. Lindsey Franklin is a pastor in Richmond, Virginia. After beginning her career in the Bay Area working at the intersection of technology and social change, a call to ministry led her to Harvard Divinity School and then to ordination as a minister in the United Church of Christ. She currently serves as Associate Pastor for Development at Richmond Hill, an ecumenical Christian monastery and retreat center focused on prayer, hospitality, racial reconciliation, and spiritual development.

We will be donating to Richmond Hill, where Lindsey works, in honor of her labor. Richmond Hill is an ecumenical Christian monastery with a mission to seek God's healing of metropolitan Richmond through prayer, hospitality, racial reconciliation, and spiritual development.

*BTW, finally got to the bottom of the Amazon review confusion. It turns out, Amazon won’t let you all review my book unless you bought the book there (monopoly much?). But GoodReads will. Thanks for continuing to spread the word!