I understand what you are saying, please allow me to offer a slightly different perspective. I am a person who struggles with daily chronic pain from fibromyalgia, I am a caregiver for an elderly family member who is spiraling down into dementia which hurts my heart to no end. I have been trying during a pandemic to run a small coaching business to be in service and doing everything I could as an empath to vote out a narcissistic sociopath from the White House. During all that, I’ve been using the platform I’m honored to have built over the past five years to feature voices and stories of people of color, LGTBQ+, differently abled, to speak out on crucial issues.

When I read an article like this, it doesn’t do harm to me personally, it does harm to the movement. Because it would be easy for me to go, well damn, I am trying the best I know how and committing to continuously learning how to do better and it just doesn’t matter, it’s just not good enough. White people who are less dedicated to this than I might read this and decide to give up, get complacent.

Fortunately, I’ve done a lot of self-reflection and learning as you mentioned, to know that so many black and brown people are hurting so badly from centuries of slavery and oppression that letting out pent up rage is normal and necessary.

Respectfully, white people are not the only ones that can cause damage because of strong emotions. Using shame as a tactic to get what BIPOC need and deserve, I believe, will never work wholesale. Shaming only leads people to become defensive about their viewpoints and dig in further.

I’m not looking for appreciation for simply doing what’s right by my fellow human beings and I will continue to do so, whether anyone believes it’s enough or not.

I think it’s important to recognize we have no idea what other people are going through in their lives and somehow, someway, we are going to have to learn how to work together.

I appreciate this real talk🙏🏼