I've spend many hours this past few days reading thousands of hard words being exchanged in a number of diaries with long comments threads that were painful to read. So painful that several good folks feel the need to leave in order to take care of themselves, and I see others determined to stay and fight the good fight, as each perceives it.
I see some people standing on one side of the tall wall of racism that has stood between us forever, who see it so clearly they can count every single brick in it , because they have spent a lifetime behind it. Life behind the the race wall is their known reality.
I see others here who have never lived behind that wall, not ever, and may not even believe it exists. Or if they do believe it exists, they cannot possibly know for themselves how living ones life within it's limitations could possible feel. Or what effects it has over whole lifetimes. White Americans can only experience the life they have known: a life spent unconstrained by walls of racism.