White colleagues: Lean into the clunkiness of challenging status quo

I was just on a call with an all-white team trying to stand up equity advocates in their search committees. A points I thought worth sharing:

• The team introduced a new question in interviews about how candidates have challenged problematic statements or behavior in a professional setting. The senior person on the call was a bit surprised none of the candidates had a real response to that question and wondered if they should remove the question altogether. I told her a) keep the question; it's essentially one about challenging microaggressions, and b) I was not surprised. In a mostly white, mostly female field like public health, we are professionally socialized to be polite and collaborative as opposed to aggressive or confrontational. 
• After some more conversation, one of the other people on the call mentioned that in trying to lean into her role as an equity advocate, she's finding that she doesn't have the words to eloquently challenge other search committee members. She said it feels clunky to challenge microaggressions or problematic assumptions about candidates. She asked if I had any resources for finding the right words. My advice: Lean into the clunkiness. You don't find the right words for you unless you put in the work of using the wrong words.
  
• Ultimately, it's about redistributing discomfort. Do nothing and the discomfort stays primarily with those that are the targets of microaggressions. Take on some of the discomfort of challenging it yourself or making the perpetuator of a microaggression feel uncomfortable for having done or said something that you are signaling as socially unacceptable.