Find Your Motive: Why White People Must Do This Work
Updated: Aug 31
By Michelle Chalmers
One of the questions I am asked most often is, “Michelle, why do you do this work?”
People ask it with genuine curiosity. Sometimes they wonder what could motivate a white woman to spend nearly two decades facilitating conversations about race and writing a book called, Liabilities of Whiteness.
My answer is always the same: My motive is me. At first, that answer can sound selfish. But I don’t believe it is. I think it is honest.
Years ago, I worked in sales, where we were taught a simple principle: WIIFM “What’s in it for me?” Human beings are far more likely to commit to something when they understand why it matters personally. I don’t think antiracism is any different. If we want white people to remain engaged in dismantling racism not out of guilt, obligation, or fear, but for a lifetime we need a motive that reaches something deep within us. For me, that motive is reclaiming my humanity.
Over the years, I have come to understand whiteness not as an identity but as a system, a social construction that teaches separation. It conditions us to distance ourselves from the experiences of others, to normalize inequality, to prioritize comfort over truth, and too often, to look away from suffering. That distancing comes at a cost.
One of the central ideas in Liabilities of Whiteness is that systems don’t simply shape society; they shape us. They shape how we see, what we notice, what we ignore, and how we relate to one another. When a system repeatedly teaches us to suppress empathy, rationalize injustice, or disconnect from another person’s pain, it also limits our own emotional and relational lives.
As a mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend, and facilitator, I don’t want to live with those limitations. I want to become someone whose capacity for compassion continues to expand, not contract. I want to see every person as fully human not because I am told I should, but because that is who I believe we were created to be.
This work has never been about becoming a “good white person.” It has never been about earning approval or avoiding criticism. It has always been about asking myself difficult questions.
How has this system shaped me?
Where has it narrowed my understanding?
How has it diminished my ability to love, to trust, to empathize, and to build authentic relationships across difference?
What parts of my humanity have been buried beneath the assumptions I inherited?
I have come to believe that one of the greatest liabilities of whiteness is not only the harm it causes to people of color. It is the humanity it suppresses within us, white people ourselves.
When whiteness teaches us who to fear, who to ignore, who to pity, who to center, and who to dismiss, it doesn’t simply distort our understanding of others. It distorts our understanding of ourselves.
It teaches us separation when our deepest need is connection.
It teaches emotional distance when our hearts long for belonging.
It teaches us to protect comfort rather than pursue truth.
And over time, we begin to mistake those patterns for who we are.
I don’t believe they are.
I believe there is something deeper within each of us that longs for relationship, compassion, courage, and love. The work of dismantling whiteness is, in many ways, the work of uncovering what has been buried beneath generations of conditioning.
That is why I continue.
Not because I expect perfection.
Not because I believe I will ever “arrive.”
But because every step toward greater empathy, honesty, humility, and connection is also a step toward reclaiming the humanity this system has expected me to surrender.
So I would like to leave you with an invitation.
Take a moment to reflect.
What is my motive for doing this work?
What has whiteness cost me personally?
How has it shaped my ability to love, trust, empathize, or build authentic relationships across difference?
What part of my humanity am I trying to reclaim?
These are not questions to answer once. They are questions to return to throughout a lifetime.
In Liabilities of Whiteness, each chapter concludes with reflection questions and practical actions because awareness alone does not transform us. Transformation comes through practice, honesty, and commitment.
The book also ends with a personal and community pledge, an invitation to intentionally examine the ways whiteness has shaped us, to remain open to learning, to choose connection over comfort, and to hold ourselves accountable in community. Real change happens not through isolated moments of insight but through sustained practice with others.
That matters because we cannot simply read our way out of conditioning that was formed in relationship with other people and reinforced by the world around us. Books can give us language. History can deepen our understanding. Private reflection can help us recognize patterns within ourselves. All of that is necessary but none of it is sufficient. We need other people because other people reveal what we cannot always see in ourselves. In community, our assumptions get challenged. Our defensiveness surfaces. We discover the difference between who we believe ourselves to be and how we actually show up. We learn to listen when we would rather explain, stay present when we are uncomfortable, repair relationships when we cause harm, and speak when silence would be easier. There is no perfect version of ourselves waiting on the other side of enough books, podcasts, workshops, or private reflection. This work is relational because humanity is relational. We become more capable of empathy, courage, accountability, and connection by practicing those things with other human beings. And community gives us something else we desperately need: accountability.
Alone, we can rationalize our choices, retreat when the work becomes uncomfortable, or convince ourselves that awareness is the same thing as change. In relationship with others, we are invited to keep showing up, to be challenged, to make mistakes, to repair, and to try again. That is why I believe we need communities of practice not communities of perfection.
Places where we can wrestle honestly with what we have inherited and practice becoming who we want to be.
If these questions resonate with you, I invite you to continue the journey. Read the book. Gather a few friends, colleagues, or family members and form a discussion group. Sign the pledge yourself. Invite your community to sign the pledge or create its own commitment. Find spaces where honest conversations can flourish, where we can challenge one another with compassion, and where we can practice becoming more fully human together.
My hope is that you will begin by finding your motive.
Then let that motive become your practice.
Because dismantling whiteness is not simply about ending oppression.
It is about reclaiming the humanity that oppression has diminished within all of us and choosing, every day, to become more capable of love, compassion, and connection than the system ever imagined possible. White people must do this work.
Peace and Love,
Michelle
Michelle Chalmers, MSW, is an educator, author, speaker, and anti-racism facilitator who has spent nearly two decades creating spaces for honest and courageous conversations about race, identity, whiteness, and systemic racism. She is the author of Liabilities of Whiteness: How Whiteness Hurts White People and How We Regain Our Humanity, a deeply personal examination of how whiteness shapes not only our society, but our identities, relationships, and capacity to see one another’s humanity. Michelle’s work challenges people to move beyond awareness and toward reflection, responsibility, and meaningful action.
