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This conversation is happening shortly after you cancelled a talk you were scheduled to give on race and sexuality. Perhaps you could speak a bit about that decision.
Last Fall I was invited to give the Pride talk at the White Institute. I accepted, intending to give a paper that, in part, discusses Jeremy O. Harris's theatrical work Slave Play. But we didn't know then that June 2020 would find us in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's murder. Or that his killing would be followed by a tide of justified anger, deep sorrow, and ongoing protests. Among other actions, Black activists asked White people to de-center themselves, to not talk or post about Black experience and just listen. This period overlapped with the scheduled date for my talk on Slave Play, which in fact ends with one of the Black protagonists thanking her White partner for listening. As a White person, I wanted to honor the request to de-center myself and listen. I approached Dr. Esin Egit, chair of the LGBT study group sponsoring the talk, to postpone it. She was immediately receptive and supportive.
As I am saying this to you, I can almost hear in the background the anxiety voiced by some of my White colleagues that such stepping back amounts to being silenced, that we, too, as White people, have contributions to make, etc. I find that this anxiety is especially prominent these days in our professional exchanges, coming through, for example, on our institutional listservs, perhaps, precisely because it's becoming clear that Whiteness has to be taken apart. For example, many institutes have been having conversations about George Floyd's murder and police brutality. I teach in, supervise, and treat candidates from many institutes in NYC, so I feel confident in saying that there has been, in my experience, an uptick in racialized and racist enactments in several institutes precisely because race is more on the table. When these enactments are pointed out, White analysts tend to close ranks by step