Thank you for your immense courage and vulnerability in writing this letter. Thank you for sharing your pain and for shining a light on the shadows that many people who look like me do not understand. The shadows I am confident I, myself, do not understand.

I feel this letter to the the core of my soul. Yes I am exactly the demographic. I have white skin. No one has ever been afraid of me (at least not physically). I have so much more privilege and white guilt and white fragility than I even know. I dress like Ann Taylor, I live in the suburbs and I had relatives on the friggin Mayflower. That said, I am proud of my liberalism and love NPR.

I embrace the opportunity to hear and accept the anger that this understandably sends to me. I am certain that microaggressions come from my ignorance and I am sad to think that others I love are "letting them slide" or feeling that they need to hide authenticity from me.

I accept your challenge to feel the hurt. I do feel it deeply to my soul as well. It's strange to me that you are glad your words hurt me. I'm curious about that. It makes sense to me. The ignorance of me not knowing I am hurting you and living in a world where everyone sees my pain and no one sees yours. I hear that you are invisible and I am seen. I have the luxury to be seen so no one will kill me for driving a car with en expired license plate. No one will watch me to see if I'm stealing lipstick. No one will exclude me from purchasing a home. Here I am a female-identifying white person married to a male-identified white person with two fair skinned children.

Here is why I haven't written since I read your article 3 days ago. In the first paragraph you say I have tried talking to you but when I do, you remind me that "you catch more flies..." But it seems to me you DON"T want dialogue. You tell me to talk to my own kind. You speak to me this way and tell me if it hurts I should talk to a therapist instead of you or someone who looks like you. So I decided not to reply at first. I'm in a double bind. Even saying so wreaks of white fragility that I understand you shouldn't have to take care of. I agree, but I'm not sure the solution is that we don't have dialogue together. How about I do my work, AND we continue to dialogue instead of I just do my work and stay silent? How else will you be able to check out the million assumptions and accusations that you put forward in your "love" letter to the liberal white woman?