I feel an obligation as a white guy to work on my fellow white guys. I’d love to kick them in the teeth, and support you doing so whenever and wherever you please. But as someone who benefits from the system whether I want to or not, I feel an obligation to try and do something positive.

In a sense I was lucky. As a teacher, I had younger and more enlightened people — Black and white — to listen to and gain some insight. They helped me understand that lecturing someone else what to do can be offensive, but to lecture people who I do not and cannot truly understand is doubly so.

Maybe it helps that I’m not a Christian. When someone who is one lectures me on how to feel about that, it makes me furious. Why should other people be any different?

Maybe this guy isn’t a complete loser. Maybe he could grow if someone would sit him down and point out just how arrogant it is for someone with his level of privilege to pass judgement on how Black (gay, female, etc.) people interact with a world he can’t understand. And that should be my job, not yours.

As a former student once said, “I’m done explaining myself to wypipo.” And I don’t blame her for that. But somebody has to, so it falls to me. Did I do her a disservice by letting my anger out rather than failing to enlighten one of my people?

Racism is strictly a white people problem. One of my privileges is not needing to do something about it. So maybe I failed here.

On the other hand, dude is a dickhead. So probably not…