I respect your decision and see the sense of it. I’m a white woman who cares about equity and justice for everyone. Whose story it is and who it is for are incredibly important questions to ask, as is who is responsible for teaching. It is my job as a white woman to learn about black pain, but it’s NOT your job as a black woman to teach me. I need to go and do that work on my own. In this day and age, there are plenty of ways for me to find and discover these stories, listen to/read them, and do the deep work of unpacking my own privilege, acknowledging it, and figuring out what my role needs to be in dismantling it. There have been many black people who have taken up the work of teaching me about the range of black experience, by their writing, by their activism, by their friendship, and I am grateful for their willingness to do that work. But I acknowledge it is their CHOICE. And I honor your right to choose differently.