For the tenth time that evening, my black roommate, Courtney, insisted that she knew the basics of frying chicken, she had just never had the opportunity to actually make it before; her parents had stopped frying things years ago, and so it was the practice and artistry of the dish that eluded her.

Courtney’s boyfriend and mine stood outside the kitchen door, watching with glee as I demonstrated how to determine if the oil was at the right temperature. Her significant other, a six-foot tall black musician, interrupted us: “I know how to fry chicken, you want me to do it?”

“No!” my roommate and I hollered back. He had already permanently blackened two pots with his attempts at simple things like reheating soup, and I had this. The chicken would at the very least be edible when I was done with my roommate’s instruction, if not divine. If we let her boyfriend into the kitchen, odds are we’d have to go scrambling for the smoke detector before it alerted the whole building to our cooking shenanigans.

The four of us spent the rest of the evening trading stereotypically racist jokes as the hilarity of the white suburban girl teaching the black city girl to fry chicken settled in. It took two hours to cook dinner because we kept having to stop what we were doing, as we were laughing too hard to be trusted with knives and hot oil.

This was not an uncommon sight in our household: we loved to laugh. One of us could frequently be found rolling on the floor in stitches, unable to actually get up because we were laughing too hard at a joke or impression, wiping tears of mirth from our eyes. Usually, it was at the expense of a stereotype that we had either landed smack in the middle of, or a stereotype that we found entirely inaccurate.

For example: the night of the fried chicken escapade, my roomie and her boyfriend had grape soda (though made on our “boozhy” Sodastream), but I also discovered that she hated watermelon. In addition, every time my large yet well-formed, very white butt managed to knock something else off the counter in our tiny kitchen, she would remind me that I have an ass that any black girl would kill for. When she was preparing to lead a workshop on etiquette for some inner city girls, I had to remind her that while her Cape Cod high school still had Home Ec., not a single one of her students was going to know the “proper” way to set a formal dining table. We were a household full of wonderful contradictions, and we reveled in it.

Learning to laugh at myself, and the absurdity of stereotypes, is not the only thing my roommate taught me over the two years we lived together. I learned what a twist out was, and just how much work goes into maintaining natural hair. We even had a running glossary of new terms to describe the discrepancies we encountered in each other’s culture. When a white person in a scary movie stands in shock instead of running, it’s because they are suffering from a melanin deficiency. Any black person would have taken to their heels ten frames ago and would be safe at home by now. When the movie Next Friday started playing on TV, I turned to her after 20 minutes of struggling to comprehend the film and asked her:

“Can I admit something to you?”

“You don’t like it?”

“No, it’s not that. I can’t understand a single thing they’re saying.”

When she stopped laughing, she insisted it was because I was suffering from Cedric’s Aphasia, and if I immersed myself in the dialog and stopped trying to parse it, it would make a lot more sense. She was right.

I also learned that she’s glad her parents named her Courtney Anne Jones because, as she says, “You hear me on the phone, you see my name, you don’t know I’m black till you meet me. It just makes things easier.”

I didn’t want to believe that was true, but I watched bartenders ignore her and her girls until, finally, a white patron refused to be served before them and the bartender had to acknowledge them.

Slowly, I had my eyes opened to the myriad little ways that my life is easier because I am white. There are small things, like having a better and larger range of beauty supplies to choose from, but then there are more serious things, such as the fact that I didn’t give a second thought about walking down the dark bicycle path by our house with a group of my friends in the early evening (though she insists that the long walks in the dark and cold that my now-husband and I enjoyed are a melanin-deficient behavior in general.)

Recently, I started a freelance book design project for a thriller novella, and I wanted to share my cover art with her, both for her opinion on the design, and because I knew she’d think the photo I found was gorgeous. He was a beautiful black man, with lovely eyes. She cooed over it, just like I knew she would, and then she started asking questions about the story. I only knew enough to do the design—I hadn’t actually read the whole story—but I told her what I knew: it was about a serial killer who was a nurse.

Was the killer the black man?

Yes.

Great, so the black guy is the murderer, again. And who wrote this story?

A white man from Missouri.

I thought so.

I tried to make a joke to help ease my discomfort with the situation. “But he’s a serial killer! You hardly ever see a black serial killer, they’re all white!”

She did laugh at that, then responded, “Not exactly the kind of equality we’re looking for.”

I tried to smile, but I was ashamed. While I didn’t write the story, I also had taken on the job without even thinking about the racial messages it perpetuated. My brain had started spinning together art concepts and I was too excited by the design possibilities presented by the novel to really grasp the connotations of the project. Since I was almost done with the design, the author had already paid me, and I didn’t feel there was an easy way to back out of the project. Besides, I genuinely liked the author; he was one of the best (and funniest) people I’d worked with yet, and I was pretty sure that he wasn’t aware of the impact of the choices he’d made in his narrative.

So I started backpedaling. “Once it’s up for sale, feel free to voice your opinion on it, because what you’re saying is entirely valid.”

“You should, too.”

“I…I am not sure I can. I don’t feel like I’m speaking from a place of authority, not like you. You’re a social worker, you have the mental health training, and you’re part of the black community. I’m just a white girl.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. If people like you don’t start saying something, saying stuff like this is wrong, it will never make a difference.”

The conversation drifted away from the book and back into lighter territory after that, but I don’t remember what we talked about because I was stuck on what she’d said about making a difference.

For the first time in the two years we’d lived together, and the five years I’d known Courtney, I felt ashamed of myself for something I’d said in front of her. It was not her intention to make me feel bad about being white, nor was she judging me for taking the freelance job. No, I was ashamed of myself, because she was right. Hers was a comment absent of any malice or grandstanding. It was simply a statement of fact, a truth she faces every day and something that I frequently forgot in our mixed-up, hilarious household. What she and I face every day is not the same. We both have master’s degrees, we live in the same middle-income neighborhood, and we both have good jobs, but when she and I walk down the street, our experiences are far from similar.

I used to think that being color-blind could solve the problems with race in our country. Like Steven Colbert in his old roll as host of The Colbert Report, I pretended to not see race, like it didn’t exist: we were all human, all the same. I smile at everyone on the street, greet everyone on my rounds of errands with a nod, and a have a good day. Now, though, I know differently.

A young black man wanted to play Pokémon Go, but was afraid to walk around by himself. A woman was set on fire on the streets of New York. Video after video appears on the Internet of minorities being beaten, harassed, and killed throughout our country, by citizens and police alike. Every morning when I open my Facebook feed I find more stories about protests and attacks and deaths and I feel helpless. What does a Facebook share, which will only reach my small circle of friends, really accomplish?

What can I—a white middle-class woman, who grew up in a white middle-class home—do that will actually make a difference? Courtney already told me. Do not stay silent.

So here are several things I promise:

I promise I will not stay silent when I am a witness to inequality due to race, gender, religion, nationality, or orientation. I will bring attention to the discrepancy and I will do everything in my power to make it better.

I will not perpetuate stereotypes in my own writing and work, nor will I take on projects where damaging stereotypes feature prominently.

I will draw attention to the good works that are done, the people who are helping to make this world better by highlighting the strength and beauty inherent in all of us.

I promise you are safe with me, whether you want to play Pokémon or sit with me while you wait for public transportation. The safety pin I wear on a daily basis is my sign to you that I can help.

Most importantly, I will ask how I can help, and I will listen. Every week, my roommate taught me something new, or drew my attention to something I had no notion was a problem. Not through anger or discontent, but simply by living gracefully through it. Those two years of living side-by-side with her in our little apartment opened my eyes to the ways in which stereotypes can haunt us, shape us, and make us laugh. Through humor, honest discussion, and fried chicken, we found our way past the burden of inequality to find ourselves as close as sisters, and I want to make sure I am doing everything in my power to be the ally and advocate she deserves.