Drenched in white woman guilt....

I was paralysed for a season after George Floyd was murdered. How could I have been so blind, what have I not done, what can I do, I don't know any black people, oh god oh god (and so on, you get the idea).

Then my brilliant friend in Minneapolis (Sarah McNally) told me about a white women group she attended run by a black man called Jesse Ross. I logged in on a Saturday afternoon and it was quite a site on my Zoom screen. Jesse in the middle talking, answering questions, explaining thing and over 200 white women (200!!!) writing in the chat, raising their hand and getting stuck in to what is agreed to be not an easy topic.

It was incredible - and also in the wrong part of the world for me. I couldn't go to meet ups or spend more time with people so asked if there was anyone from the UK on the call. There was, Helen, and she and I talked and agreed we wanted to set up something UK specific.

It took forever, we were both nervous. We had many titles, most of them a bit sappy,. Then we hit on "The White Women Privilege Group: Exploring our contribution as white women to the racist systems we say we are against". It felt edgy and provocative, and that we wouldn't get people who were not up to do the work.

It took me 2 week to post on Linkedin - I was really nervous of some sort of backlash and cancel energy...white fragility in play. There was none and we started off with 8 of us. We were all terrified at being exposed as terrible racists and turned up very nervously.

Then the worst did happen; we were exposed, we realised we are racist, we could see that, and nobody was shamed because of it. We accepted it and we got on with the serous job of doing 'the work'. We used Layla Saads's work Me and White Supremacy and went through the chapters. We realised our biggest fear was bieng called out, we decided that is part of the work and to embrace it when it happened, not hold back to try and avoid it. And it has happened, to all of us over the years, it's not comfortable and we have worked through it and been better for it.

We bought challenges we had, unconscious racist thoughts we'd had, we did courses on how to tackle casual racism, we watched films, we read, we expanded our communities to be more diverse and we got stuck in. Four years on the work is still going on.

We're now called The Anti Racist Gym - in the same way you work out at a regular gym so you can be fit for those unexpected moment like running for a platform change at Crewe station, we work out for those unexpected racist moments where we have to step up and be ready to be a true ally.