• being in your late 30’s, having never lived anywhere more ‘diverse’ than this 80% white town
• acknowledging of your own volition that you’ll never know what it’s like to be a PoC
• admitting that you STILL sometimes ask “stupid white guy questions”
• telling me that the anti-immigrant rhetoric you’re spouting isn’t xenophobic because you didn’t mean it that way (despite the fact that it’s verbatim what I’ve been hearing from racist assholes for most of my life)

AND YET

• feeling qualified to tell me that racism is not as bad in this town as I seem to think it is
• suggesting that some of the instances of casual racism I experience might be my fault in some way
• saying you work “damn hard” to understand experiences of people who are not like (in the face of numerous instances of you doing the opposite)
• telling me I’m “kind of a bully” because I don’t accept your “generally a nice person” vouchers that you usually use to get out of being held accountable for your bullshit.