I‘d emphasize that most white people do not understand their level of ignorance — especially the good ones, who mean well, and that negligence is part of the problem. Many of the white people I know have no concept of the role they have, passively or actively, played in perpetuating these conditions. They have no idea how much we long to hear them speak up for us, and to embrace some of the discomfort around these issues with us. Furthermore, the good ones are oblivious to the level of overt racism that is still out there. I have been among my white friends in all the times I’ve been called nigger by a stranger. In all these situations, my white friends seemed shocked. They had been misled to believe that that situation only occurred in the past, and when reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Comfortingly, they always leaped to me defense verbally, and the savior complex within them encouraged them to seek retribution. In one vivid case, at a bar in Cape Cod having just finished a conversation with a friend, one guy, not realizing I was still in earshot nor aware of my relationship with the friend, came over and asked “you really talking to that nigger?” My friend was stunned, but immediately came back at the guy, his anger for me visible. He then came to me boasting that he has black friends as if that should warrant him a pass. As much as each situation ruined my night, everything after went well, and I was embraced by a group of allies who wanted to fight for me when they heard that word. I had no further reason to be upset. Yet, probably only the friend who walked ahead of the group with me knows that I cried my eyes out the entire walk home; unable to explain how that word garnered so much control over me.