Words Have Weight

There's a moment in every encounter where we get to choose what kind of person we want to be. Not in the big, dramatic moments, but in the small, overlooked ones. The ones in chat threads at odd hours. The ones where nobody's watching.

A friend referred me to someone celebrating his 60th birthday here in Bangkok, three evenings of photography work. I was already booked, but I told her I'd try to move things around. I was on holiday, the holidays meant people were off and hard to reach, and I was quietly working behind the scenes to find a trusted photographer in my network who could step in if I couldn't. I wasn't ignoring anyone. I was trying to serve, just imperfectly and slowly, the way real life sometimes looks.

When I finally responded with an apology for the delay and an explanation, including that I had been trying to connect with a Russian photographer friend in my network who might be able to take the job, his reply came swift and sharp:

"From when you didn't respond in a timely manner, I knew I couldn't work with you. I don't even know why K Tess recommended you."

And then, almost as an afterthought, he added: "I won't work with Russians either."

I read it all twice. Then a third time.

That second line changed everything. Because frustration over a delayed reply, that I can understand. Events have timelines, stress runs high, people want certainty. But the moment he extended his judgment beyond me and onto an entire nationality, it was no longer about a slow response. It was about something else entirely. Something older and uglier. He had never met my photographer friend. He knew nothing about him, his professionalism, his character, his work. The only thing he knew was where he was from. And that was enough to disqualify him.

That is the quiet face of racism. Not always a slur. Not always loud. Sometimes it's just a line in a chat message, delivered casually, as though it's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

I shared this with my friend and she gently offered her own explanation: he's stressed, the event is approaching, just extend patience and grace. And then, almost as a reassurance, she added that he's not racist because his partner is from another race.

I sat with that for a moment.

I understand what she was trying to do. She was being a peacemaker. But I also know this: having a partner of a different race does not disqualify someone from holding racial bias. Racism rarely announces itself with a placard. More often it lives in assumptions, in who we decide to trust before they've spoken, in who we write off without a second thought, in the tone we permit ourselves to use with certain people that we would never use with others. You can love one person across a racial line and still carry prejudice toward an entire people group. These things can exist in the same heart at the same time. That's precisely what makes it so hard to see, in others and in ourselves.

I'm not here to put him on trial. I don't know his full story. But I know what was written and I think it's important to name it honestly rather than explain it away.

What I keep returning to, though, is not what he said but what I almost said in return.

Because something in me wanted to match his energy. To be sharp back. To defend my professionalism, my reputation, my ten years of experience and to defend my friend who didn't deserve to be dismissed with a single careless sentence. And maybe I had every right to. But I thought about what God has been teaching me, slowly and persistently, through the work I do and the people I meet, about the power of the tongue and the kind of person I want to be when it costs me something to be kind.

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." — Ephesians 4:29

This verse doesn't just apply to racism. It applies to every exchange, every DM, every caption, every comment, every conversation where we have a choice between tearing down or building up. It applies to the stressed birthday celebrant who reduced an entire nationality to an inconvenience. It applies to the friend who minimizes hurt in the name of keeping the peace. And it applies to me, to the response I nearly typed and the one I chose instead.

I wrote back:

"No worries at all. God bless you. I hope you find a photographer who's the perfect fit for what you're looking for. Wishing you a wonderful 60th celebration and a beautiful time here in Thailand."

And I meant it. Not because I wasn't hurt. Not because what was said was acceptable. But because I know that what we send out into the world, even to people who don't deserve our grace, says everything about who we are and who we're becoming.

Kindness is not weakness. It is not naivety. It is not pretending that wrong things are fine. Kindness is the harder, braver choice. The one that requires you to be secure enough in your own identity that someone else's prejudice doesn't get to define your response. The one that refuses to let bitterness take root, not for the other person's sake but for your own.

Racism, at its core, is a failure of imagination. The inability or unwillingness to see a full human being standing in front of you. But so is every unkind word spoken in haste, every judgment passed before understanding is sought, every dismissal dressed up as directness. The antidote in every case is the same: to choose to see people. To choose words that build. To choose grace, even when, especially when, it isn't returned.

I don't know if he found his photographer. I hope he did. I hope his 60th was everything he wanted. And I hope, genuinely, that somewhere in that weekend, someone showed him the same grace I tried to give, because we all need it far more than we know.

Creativity is worship. And sometimes, worship looks like a kind goodbye.