Hi Rebecca,

Thank you for this illuminating article. I admire your writing and freedom of voice.

I must admit when I finished, I was in a real quandary as to what I thought of it.

I believe Medium is not the realm of only an American viewpoint and yet many who write on the issues, ramifications and injustices of racism in society, do so through a view that seems to emanate from within the glasses of the United States only.

It puzzles me that the assumption, the United States perspective take precedence, seems to inundate Medium articles.

In light of that, I need some clarity on the four kinds of racism you describe.

Emphatic racists that march in support of racism and then turn around and slander and slash at that which moments before they marched in support of with disparaging jokes and vehement remarks, sounds incendiary. Really? You actually know people who do that or do you assume it? That doesn’t happen among any of the people I associate with and if it did, then that rope would be cut there and then. I’m sixty, have lived in dozens of countries and have avoided, fled, dealt with and shuddered at levels of abuse since I was three and never have I encountered that strange breed of duplicitous empathetic racist you describe.

The fetishist racist. Really? People enter long term relationships because of skin color and parade their partners? Really? People in your personal circle do that? To me it rings of alarmism and is inflammatory and a despicable comment against those of us in interracial marriages with children of one race—human.

The supremacist racist. Polish the lenses. I am sorry to say it, but as I read your article, I began to think your view of racism in some aspects bordered on myopic. I don’t disavow that there is a genetic throwback that are called white supremacists, but your parameters are very narrow. Have you lived in the orient and felt the altered view of prejudice there? Have you visited New Zealand and encountered it there? Have you seen the abuse of the Ainu? The Uyghurs? Look no further than the indigenous populations of the US, the abuse of Latin Americans in the US? The Inuit in Canada? Jews? Even white American soldiers brutally murdered in the Middle East. It is not a question of black and brown only. If you limit your perspective to only black and brown you become as you state a ‘non-racist’ rather than striving to be in your words an ‘antiracist.’

Sadistic racists. Without question are vile. Yet again I think your parameters need adjustment. It is not just inflicted only on those you identify as black and brown. Think back on the religious persecutions, which is a form of racism, over not only the centuries but the abhorrent abuses in recent memory. Murderous genocide of Hutus and Tutsi, the sufferings of the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, the Dalits, the Dinka, Zimbabwean whites.

You ask your reader to get off his hands and educate him or herself, that is admirable. A call to action and an insistence on active conscience is necessary, but it is a necessity that goes beyond the borders of the United States perspective and beyond the hues of only black and brown. It is global.

The covid pandemic is rattling the core of societies and how they function and interact. Let us hope that as a broader increased awareness of racial divides and the injustices occurring around the world escalates it will likewise rattle humanity’s core and we will all progress to being better individuals. For we can only first work on ourselves. As Mandela said,

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

I am proud to say I follow a worthy writer, you.

Thank you for the read

P.S. Rereading my contributions some of my phrases seem a little harsh. Please take no offense it is as it poured out and there is no personal attack. The emotion is directed toward racism not your fine article. K