By Priska Neely
About a week ago, I called a friend on the East Coast, another black woman working in public radio, to talk about something weird that was happening.
“Hey, are you getting a bunch of texts from random white people asking if you’re okay?” I asked.
“What? No,” she said. “You are?”
I told her that I’d heard from a handful of people, some of whom I hadn’t communicated with for months, saying they couldn’t imagine the pain I must be feeling. That they were here for me if I needed them. I thought maybe this was just a thing people were doing in hyperwoke Oakland.
But then the next day, that friend sent me a screenshot from one of her friends with the same language, “Can’t imagine how black people are feeling. I’m so sorry.” Another friend got a text from someone she hadn’t spoken to in six years that noted that she was “important” and called her “a queen.”
Then, I started seeing more tweets:
