| | | | Hey Blogger,
Yesterday I sent you an email with a subject that said, "How do I speak up about racism as a white person?" Within the email, I spoke directly to my white subscribers and shared links to resources for white people about how to begin doing anti-racism work. I've since received several email responses letting me know that by centering my email solely on white people and ignoring my BIPOC subscribers, I caused harm to the BIPOC folks who received that email and the social justice movement as a whole.
First, thank you to each person who chose to put in the labor of emailing me to call out my white bias. I know it's not your job to teach me, but your emails gave me a tremendous opportunity to learn, and for that I am truly grateful. Thank you. I'm responding to each of your emails individually, but I also wanted to send out an apology to my entire community, and take responsibility for the pain I caused.
I completely understand now how my email ignored the BIPOC folks who are in this community, which is not only deeply hurtful, but reinforces the destructive narrative that white people are "the norm" and people of color are forgotten and unseen. Not only do I want to create an inclusive space for BIPOC at all times, but to ignore the black people in my community at a moment in history like this is literally contributing to the problem. I am SO sorry.
I recognize that I have plenty of work to do when it comes to learning about social justice and being a trustworthy ally in action, and I deeply apologize for causing any harm or making you feel like you don't matter. I'm committed to doing better, excavating my internal blind spots and biases, and continuing to educate myself about social justice and systemic racism now and moving forward.
Thank you so much for being here. <3
With love and humility,
Melyssa
p.s. For anyone who wants to learn alongside me, these are some of the people I have been learning from recently and I recommend following them, taking their courses, and reading their books:
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The Nectar Collective, LLC 520 Broadway Suite 200 Santa Monica, California 90401 United States |
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