I’m sorry, Sondra. That certainly wasn’t my intention. My concern is that white people in America never will understand because their experience is too far removed from what others experience, and we’ll always be judged on that basis. As a result, many people will stop making the effort. Personally, I don’t usually comment on discussions around race anymore because they’re such a minefield. I grew up in a town that was 99% white. I wasn’t in class with a black person until I was in college and that was one guy in one class. And that was in New York. In broad swaths of the country, there are towns where not only is everyone white, they all go to the same church, too, and most of them descend from the same ethnic background like Rose from St. Olaf in the Golden Girls. My husband’s family lived in Nigeria for several years. They were friends with both Nigerians and black Americans, and my father-in-law taught Black Studies when they returned to the states. But the people I met through them is hardly a window into the usual black American experience. These days, there are a lot of articles about what white people do or say wrong around black people. I wasn’t raised to treat people different from me badly, but it seems my whiteness implies that I do or I will. Whatever I say is liable to offend, which discourages me from entering into a dialog. I admit that there is systemic racism in America and it is a much bigger problem than I ever imagined. I guess the key for people like me is just to shut up and listen. Thanks for sharing your story.