Hi Cyborg, I appreciate both your comments to him and to me. I’ve been torn up all day about his comments, my response, and subsequent discussions. I absolutely meant it when I said that I respect and agree with him on so much.
Nor am I unsympathetic to his anger. I can’t tell you how much I’ve struggled with my own anger on this issue, and it isn’t even me or my family being threatened. Does it make detachment from empathy a necessary thing, as you’ve suggested? I can’t honestly say as I know, not having walked directly in those shoes, but I hope not. (I suppose it also varies from person to person regardless of experience.) I can imagine many things, but I can’t imagine not having empathy. It is such an important part of who I am, it is (to me, at least) one of the most important components of being human, and I feel like if I were to lose it, the racists and haters will have won. So when I said that I was sad for SOB, it appears that I sounded condescending but I was really truly just sad for him.
Does all of that make sense? I will of course continue to care about him and appreciate what he brings to the fight. I hate the scourge of racism so much, and what it’s doing not only to the oppressed, but to the humanity in all of us. We could be so much better than this.
❤,
S
