The ‘Sour Grapes’ defense. ConTessa lost the Diana Jones Award in 2016. We lost to Eric Lang, a person of color who has an entire career of work to celebrate. I am not bitter that we didn’t win. Eric was WAY WAY overdue for his win.

The ‘don’t speak for other people’ defense. I am only speaking for myself, and my frustration, disappointment, agitation, irritation, and anger is at white people. People of color shouldn’t be the only ones calling out racism. Fuck, if I had my way, they’d never have to call out racism, ever.

White people should be calling out racism, whether it is in greater society or our smaller communities. White people should be talking to white people about the atrocious things white people do, whether intentional or not. Just like men should be calling out other men on misogyny or transphobia or sexual assault or any number of issues.

I’m a white person, myself, and writing this doesn’t mean I’ve evolved greatly or am immune to the biases I’m pointing out. Every white person came to age in a racist and biased system, whether we realize it or not. We didn’t ask to be made that way. No one is born racist. Some of us grew up with some very specific examples of racism around us, but many, many, many of us were fed a steady diet of ‘don’t be racist’ and ‘don’t see color’, and we genuinely want to do that, whole-heartedly want that to be an option. But it’s not an option, never was. The cards were stacked in our favor long before we were born, which makes our ability to resist implicit bias - to even see implicit bias - compromised at best.

If your response to that last paragraph is to get angry or defensive, take some not-so-gentle advice. Stop reading this and go unpack those feelings. Preferably in the privacy of your own head. Seriously, this isn’t me being flippant. I’ve been there. It helps no one to defend your progressive past. It doesn’t matter how great your parents or school system raised you, if you’re white, and you’ve been out in the world, you’ve benefited from privilege.

Now, let’s go back in time…

It was a couple months before Gen Con. I was in-between surgery and radiation treatment for breast cancer. My friend, and the COO of The ConTessa Foundation, Ariel, came down to visit me so we could chat about ConTessa, and also so I could hang out with someone friendly for a while, as most of my friends are scattered across the country.

She wanted to tell me about Harlem Unbound.

I’d heard of the book, vaguely knew what it was about, but honestly I hadn’t picked it up because Cthulhu was never my thing. Harlem, on the other hand, was a place of mystery and expression I’d only been partially introduced to via Luke Cage. She made me want the book more than anything else, just by looking at the expression on her face as she told me about this book she was very clearly fangirling over (and if any of you know Ariel, you know she doesn’t fangirl).

It was the look on her face that did it for me. I recognized it. I felt it. It was the same look I got on my face the first time Rey fired up her lightsaber, the look I got on my face when the new Ghostbusters came on the screen. Unfettered joy. Joy that, for once in your life, there was a thing about YOU, and this thing was about her. Very clearly.

For once, it wasn’t a white man talking about African American life from a very watered-down white perspective. For once, it had meat. It dug into history we’ve all been denied by our white ancestors. The ones who decided what would go into the history books we were taught from as we grew up. It did something different, and it was more than just a book to her. Clearly, it was a relic. A piece of literature. A portion of her history she got to reclaim. A portion of her history she was clearly hungry to reclaim.

It moved me to be in that room at that moment on that day. To my core. I’ve been fighting with myself for years on how I could best support people of color as a white person. Afraid to look too enthusiastic, afraid to be yet another white person using people of color to prove their progressivism, afraid to stand up to the racism of other white people. Chickenshit. I had the privilege to be afraid, and I leaned on that privilege. A lot.

Ariel’s reaction to Chris Spivey’s work shattered the fear into a billion pieces. I do not possess the ability to understand what it’s like to be a black person in this country. I never will. But, I do know what it feels like to see yourself represented in places you never were before. I know that rush of emotion, that uplifting joy that feels like it’s pouring out of you, there’s so much. That smile that feels like it’s going to break your face. It’s the look one gets when their daydreams come to life.

Only, there was more there than my limited experience could grasp. This wasn’t just about a wholey fictional place or character. There’s real history, real people, real research woven into the fiction of Harlem Unbound. Ghosts walk the pages, ghosts people tried to erase from history. There’s a lot of power in giving those ghosts new life in this form of fiction and gameplay. They don’t just sit in the dusty past. These ghosts get new stories from new audiences, one hundred years later.

I realized, right then, this was the passion and joy I first envisioned when I started ConTessa. At the time, I didn’t think of it as a game changer, but this is the kind of thing that breaks the dam. The kind of representation that empowers others to create similar things who then empower even more people who then empower even more, and so on and so forth…