My People: It is not your job to educate racists.

You are tilting at windmills with little chance of success

My people: You know who you are. Those people who understand our world is a complex and challenging one.

• There are people who live in our world, unconscious, never forced to see the world as it is, not as they have been told it was.
• They are often living in fear, in psychological prisons, often not of their own making.
• Raised in cultures of fear, or of entitlement, of frustration, of fabulous wealth, many racists simply don’t see themselves as anything other than good folk.

The truth of trying to educate racists is simple:

They are not interested in learning anything beyond what they already know, absorbed from the hate-filled DNA of a nation run amok; drunk on the power and violence inherent in systemic structures which empower Whites to the exclusion and often misery of anyone else who isn’t White.(A generalization — deal with it.)

They will NEVER see that. So stop tilting at that windmill.

If you choose to tilt anyway, understand, it is not in your best interest to do it for too long.

America will not run out of racists before you run out of patience.

Our nation, no matter how much we may love some aspects of it cannot deal with the cultural racism supported knowingly or not within its confines.

If you are going to write on Medium, my advice is to find something you LOVE to write about. Pour your passion, your zeal, your enthusiasm with something meaningful to you and write about that instead.

Take the materials you create on Medium and put them on your own blog on Tumbler or WordPress and create a body of work you can be proud of. Let your writing show the best aspects of who you are and what you believe. Know that racists do this and it is a terrifying thing to behold.

Don’t lose your cool when a racist says something completely hateful but stylishly written to avoid censure. Because if you respond to them, they win twice. They get to make you angry, shortening your lifespan, while you are struggling to have an argument which cannot be proven to a person who cannot be convinced of anything.

Write about these issues like #BlackLivesMatters, for as long as you can.

Justice needs champions.

When the mind is willing but the spirit is no longer able, walk away with the understanding you were a light in the darkness, not the darkness they turned you into. Take time to heal yourself.

Be the light. Write for your future, not their past.

Create and release yourself from their fear, their hatred, and their expectation you are not a luminous being deserving of respect.

We are. We just have to stop defining ourselves by their measure. They cannot see us. If a racist cannot imagine you as a person, deserving of support, respect and a life free from fear and loathing, it won’t change no matter how persuasive you may be.

They have never seen us. They likely never will.

Fly. Be free.

Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding. You can follow him on Twitter or support his writings on Patreon.