Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like the distinction you are making is between intentional and unintentional racism. I reference this distinction in my essay as well. But is one any better than the other if the outcome of both is the systemic oppression of Black people?

Further, you suggest that any racist thought or behavior expressed by a self-identified White person is intentional. How can you claim to know this, unless you are also suggesting that ideology and intentionality are somehow intrinsic to the phenotype of one’s skin color? Is that not itself an assumption rooted in racism?

In full disclosure, by society’s standards my mother is Black and my father is Palestinian and White. Due to my multi-racial background, I have researched and pondered the concept of race far more deeply than most people in effort to understand how it applies to someone like me. Your thinking seems to align with that of the late Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, may she rest in peace. While I believe Dr. Welsing made some great contributions to Black people and the body of discourse on race, I find many of her conclusions deeply problematic. Regarding her claim that White people are genetically disposed to warfare in order to ensure survival of the White race, my mother personally asked Dr. Welsing how that theory would apply to bi-racial children. Dr. Welsing refused to acknowledge this contradiction to her theory, which I can empathize with because doing so would have negated her own research.

Interestingly, Dr. Welsing also hypothesized that White people originated as albino mutants who were exiled from Africa due to their genetic inferiority. If that were true, wouldn’t it make dark-skinned Africans the original racists?

My point again boils down to this: people of any race — whether self-identified or externally perceived — can espouse racist ideology. White people’s racism can be unintentional just like Black people’s. All racism is deeply harmful, specifically the anti-Black racism that persists today. It must be identified, confronted and corrected with equal vigor, no matter who espouses it. However, we can also have empathy for those who are unintentionally and ignorantly racist as they did not choose to be conditioned that way.

I hope you and other Black elders will be willing to consider the youth’s perspective on this point. We may not have the credentials, but we have the same goal of Black liberation and see that the world needs new language and understanding of race in order to push the movement forward. We need our Black elders to help us to that end, not by anchoring us to flawed intellectual artifacts of the past, but by sharing with us Black culture, history, personal narratives, values, and legacies, which are rapidly being erased and assimilated into capitalist culture.

Again, I say all this with love and respect. Thank you for hearing and receiving my words in that spirit.