In today’s episode, we wade into the treacherous waters of truth-telling,not the sanitized kind that fits into TED Talks or team-building retreats, but the inconvenient, marrow-deep truths that threaten fragile egos and polished optics. We ask:
🗣 What does it cost to tell the truth in a room that’s built to collapse under the weight of it?
🗣 How do we discern the difference between spaces that are uncomfortable and those that are unsafe?
🗣 What scripts have we been given to avoid conflict that actually protect the very systems we’re trying to dismantle?
Truth-telling, especially for Black, Indigenous, neurodivergent, queer, or otherwise marginalized folks, often becomes a paradox. We’re told to “bring our full selves,” but punished when that full self challenges the structure. This conversation is an offering for those who have been silenced, self-censored, or scapegoated for telling the truth too soon, too loudly, or too clearly.
3 Key Takeaways & Reframes
1. Truth doesn’t always belong in every room.
“I’ve watched people shrink themselves to fit into rooms that should have never had the right to host their truth.”
Reframe:
If a space can’t hold your truth without retaliating, it’s not a safe (or brave) space, it’s a surveillance zone with snacks.
Reflection Prompt:
Where have you been contorting your truth to protect a system that won’t protect you?
2. Weaponized ‘Safety’ is just comfort for the dominant culture.
“They call it ‘safety’, but what they mean is control.”
Reframe:
Safety that comes at the expense of truth is not safety, it’s silencing. And comfort isn’t liberation.
Reflection Prompt:
How have you been conditioned to equate safety with silence? Where does that show up in your work, family, or organizing?
3. Thought-terminating clichés protect power, not people.
“Let’s agree to disagree,” “You’re being divisive,” “We need unity right now,” these aren’t neutral phrases. They’re designed to shut the door on deeper reckoning.
Reframe:
Unity without accountability is just oppression with better PR.
Reflection Prompt:
What language have you been taught to use that ends conversations instead of expanding them?
Practice Your Praxis
Self:
Audit your own responses. What phrases do you say to yourself to avoid uncomfortable truths?
Try journaling:
“What am I afraid will happen if I say this out loud?”
“What is the truth I keep swallowing for others' comfort?”
Home / Community:
Choose a low-stakes space this week and speak one honest thing you usually avoid. Not to provoke—but to practice liberatory honesty. Watch what shifts.
Work / Organizing:
Challenge one thought-terminating phrase when you hear it. If someone says, “Let’s not make this political,” try:
“I hear that, and I wonder who benefits when we remove politics from this conversation?”
Closing Note:
Truth-telling is not a betrayal of community, it’s a birthright.
Let’s stop making people choose between honesty and belonging.
Let’s stop demanding thesis statements just to say “this harms me.”
Your voice is a map.
Your truth is a mirror.
Speak it, even if the room breaks open.
With you in truth and fire,
Desireé B Stephens
Thank you
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