somewhitenonsense:

I am an educator.  Not a teacher by training, profession, or plan; not compensated; rarely appreciated.  But I educate.  Mostly, I educate white people.  I don’t have to do this, and I often resent doing so, and it comes at great personal cost.  But life has taught me thus far that if I wish to be respected and understood as a whole human being, I must teach white people to see me as such.  So, mostly, I do it for myself.  And I do it for other people like me who lack the words, opportunity, energy, platform, or ability.  I wrote this weekend about an unsettling exchange with a white, male authority figure.  I took the risk of reporting a racial microaggression to him, in response to a recent request of his that I help elucidate the ways in which our academic environment is unwelcoming to students of color.  In response, I was accused of sounding racist against white people, admonished to be more sensitive to white people, and requested to educate him at length about why and how the incident was offensive.  This led to me feeling anxious, having my one day off this week marred by worry and apprehension, taking hours out of my time to find additional resources for him to read (focusing on scholarly articles so that he will be open to the ideas within them), writing and re-writing my thoughts with extreme care, concern that I would be reprimanded for speaking out, difficulty sleeping, second-guessing myself, and feeling unpleasantly vulnerable.  Despite this, I am still engaged in an e-mail conversation with this man.  Because the alternative is to let him go blissfully on ineffectively leading, teaching, and mentoring people of color in his sphere of influence.  And it always comes down to this: someone’s gotta do it.  I guess it has to be me.

I want the bolded tattooed on White people’s foreheads.

The two words most White folks need to say to people of color who are educating them (and chances are, if we’re talking about race with a White person, we are educating them whether they acknowledge this or not) should be: Thank you.