You've got me all wrong Daryl. No forgiveness is necessary. I don't think you're a bad person. I have no trouble seeing the good in you. Not least because you've engaged in a reasonable and mature manner and you are obviously genuinely oriented towards understanding and togetherness. I appreciate you.

You said something that I found insulting and almost breathtakingly lacking in self-awareness, and I told you. Maybe (apparently) it's not what you meant to communicate. No problem at all. We're all imprecise with our words from time to time. But the fact that you said it at all points to a blindspot which I think you should examine. And trust me when I say you'll get the same (or probably worse) reaction from pretty much any black person you repeat it to. In that sense, I'm doing you a favour by being honest about it.😅

But the fact that you said one ignorant thing doesn't mean that I think YOU are ignorant. Simply that any justifications you might want to raise about the books you've read or the work you've done are irrelevant to this particular point. It's not a balance where we weigh this comment against X hours of good deeds. I'm interested in your thought process and attitudes as expressed in this case.

My mathematics weren't sarcastic, they were illustrative. I've never denied the contributions of white people to the fight against racism. And I value those contributions enormously. If you haven't already, read this piece of mine. I don't think it could express my feelings on the matter more clearly.

Again, I would gladly thank every single one of the white abolitionists. I'd gladly thank the white people who marched with MLK. But let's not pretend that they were anything even close to representative of white people of their time. Let's not take their exceptional courage and goodness as something "white people", as a whole, deserve to take any credit for. Just as I don't take the exceptional evil and selfishness of the racists in the abolition era and the civil rights era as something white people, as a whole, should be demonised. for. It cuts both ways

White people today don’t deserve condemnation or thanks for the deeds of other white people in the past. White people today need to show where they stand today. They should be judged by what they do and don't do today. Not by what other white people did 60 or 150 years ago. I will glady thank today's white people too. After they've done something to merit my thanks. Not before.