When you say the things about me as you have here then a reply IS needed. First, I don't need a "reading list"; I'm not a child. I will admit, however, that my education doesn't go beyond Master's level in World Studies with a focus on Religion and its history. I had no desire, nor could afford, to pursue a PhD.

This reply is probably longer than you want to read, but I have a lot to say and hope you’ll be patient with me and read it all. I normally wouldn’t reveal details about my upbringing, out of embarrassment, but since you and others have the mistaken belief that I’m some white man born with a silver spoon, I’ll do it now. I recognize the white privilege I was born into but that certainly hasn’t blinded me to the plight of those born without it.

I grew up in a poor family. We lived in a 630 sq. ft. house, where I shared the same bedroom with three siblings. At age ten, my father lost his job at the chemical plant and then only worked part-time at an Exxon station a friend of his owned. He moved us to an old farmhouse a relative owned, but it hadn't been lived in for decades. Our heat was a fireplace and a wood stove in the kitchen. I could see daylight through the gaps around the windows of my "bedroom" and literally woke some mornings with a dusting of snow on top of the quilt that covered the blankets that I slept under, in my clothes. There was no bathroom and not even an outhouse. The only running water we had was me running out to the old well, priming it each time because the pump's seal had dried and no longer worked and then I'd bring water into the house by the gallon. Our baths were done with plastic dish pans of water heated on the woodstove. I split wood before school every morning because my father was too lazy to, then walked a quarter mile long dirt lane in rain, snow, ice or in good weather just to get to the bus stop. Instead of a toilet, we used a five-gallon paint bucket that I carried out of the house and hundreds of feet toward the woods to dump every morning and evening. The waste from everyone in the house splashed onto my legs every time. As a Social Worker, you can imagine what that did for my self-esteem. My father tried to use my older sister as a "second wife". She somehow obtained a small pistol and kept it taped under a desk beside her bed, although I didn’t learn that until years later. My mother hadn't worked an outside job since age sixteen and knew she was unlikely to be able to find work. The day I turn fifteen-years and eight months old, the legal age to work in Virginia, my mother took me to get a work permit. The next day, I was able to get a part-time night job as a dishwasher busboy, or whatever the manager needed, including scrubbing down the in a restaurant kitchen and tiled floor after closing and cleaning the dining room bathrooms, and the day after that, my sister and younger sister, mom and I packed the clothes we had into an old car my grandmother had given mom and we left. My older sister married her high-school boyfriend as soon as she turned eighteen, in order to get away from our father. As mom expected, no one wanted to hire a thirty-something woman whose only work experience was secretarial when she was in her teens anywhere but was able to get work babysitting. We rented a small trailer. I had to leave school after tenth grade to help support my mother, sister and myself. Although I got excellent grades, my sister did as well, and she wanted to go to college. I had never even thought I was worthy of doing that, both because of the way I’d been treated as a child and because I’d been told by my father that I was worthless. So, I worked in order for my younger sister could attend college. I’m gay and knew it then but didn’t admit it, even to myself. I got married, had a son and not long after my wife left me. She, of course, got custody while I had to have “supervised” visits on weekends that he stayed with me. When I was in my twenties, I made enough money that I could, with a roommate to split some costs, afford a mortgage on a small house but in Virginia, a homosexual could be denied a mortgage, a job, or a rental lease and could be evicted from an apartment or fired from any job without cause. Those laws didn’t change until 2007. I was eventually able to take over the mortgage payments of a couple who were moving to another state. After court ordered consultations with a psychiatrist who specialized in childhood growth, and the help of an expensive lawyer, I was able to get weekend visitation with my son, at my house. He was an extremely bright boy, but his mother had him thinking he wasn’t. The first weekend he spent with me, unsupervised, I found him writing on the wall in his room “Jake (not his real name) is a dumb boy, Jake is a dumb boy, Jake is a dumb boy.” I calmed him and explained that a “dumb boy” wouldn’t know how to write as well as he did at not yet six-years old. Living with his mother and whoever her boyfriend was at any given time, he didn’t do well in school, and I had finally, at age 30, enrolled in Virginia Commonwealth University. Even though I hadn’t completed high school, I’d gotten my GED and my scores on the university entrance exam were in themed to upper 90th percentiles in everything except math, where I was only in the upper 60th percentile. The day he began second grade was my first day at college and his mother called me that morning and asked me to pick our son up at school because she was moving in with her boyfriend and wouldn’t be there when he got home. She had the nerve to tell me that maybe I should start taking some responsibility for him, although I’d fought in court for years to get full custody. So, I drove forty miles to his school, explained to the school principal, who happened to have been my seventh-grade math teacher, what was going on. He said he was happy for Jake that he was going to live with me since his mother never bothered attending meetings Jake’s teachers wanted to discuss Jake’s behavioral problems. From age 16, when I felt responsible for ensuring my younger sister could go to college, I worked at many different jobs and met people from a variety of backgrounds, races, religions, and socio-economic levels and, combined with the racist people I’d met as a child and then a young adult, I quickly saw the extent of systemic racism. I am who I am and have experienced life from all sides (well, except for being a POC, but still discriminated against, but by both law and public opinion).

I'm well aware of the systemic racism built into this nation's governance and the bigotry of the majority of people in this country. It just happens to be that the “majority” is white. So, please refrain from speaking to me in such a condescending manner. Until you read this, you have no idea of my life experiences or education or how I see the world.

And life is not, nor has ever been, white and black. It has myriad shades of gray in between and most people fall into one of those gray areas.

You said you "trust that my feelings are abundantly clear" but I disagree. Perhaps now, they are clear.