Your commiseration came across as a patronising comment about how people other than yourself should live their lives.
People in minorities are always using some tools because they have to just to stand a chance against oppression. What you wrote made it sound as though we've been sitting on our asses for 40 years doing nothing. To me, and obviously to others, it sounded that as you were saying "toughen up" when we have the right to feel kind of crappy about it. Even though it is totally well-intentioned, what you said comes across as an utter failure to understand what was being complained about in the first place.
As a general rule, if members of a minority group expresses anger with their frustration, a member of a majority group telling them how to deal with it just exacerbates the problem.
I think that what would come across as commiserating is an acknowledgement of the problem faced and asking questions like what they can do to help, what they need, what, in an ideal world, they'd like to see happen, etc.
That being said, any comment you make here will be accepted, I try to make this space as free as possible. Your comment creating a thread of frustration isn't a rejection of you or what you say. It is a request that, when speaking of subjects that are both personal and societal, you consider how what and how you write comes across to others.
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People in minorities are always using some tools because they have to just to stand a chance against oppression.
What you wrote made it sound as though we've been sitting on our asses for 40 years doing nothing.
To me, and obviously to others, it sounded that as you were saying "toughen up" when we have the right to feel kind of crappy about it.
Even though it is totally well-intentioned, what you said comes across as an utter failure to understand what was being complained about in the first place.
As a general rule, if members of a minority group expresses anger with their frustration, a member of a majority group telling them how to deal with it just exacerbates the problem.
I think that what would come across as commiserating is an acknowledgement of the problem faced and asking questions like what they can do to help, what they need, what, in an ideal world, they'd like to see happen, etc.
That being said, any comment you make here will be accepted, I try to make this space as free as possible. Your comment creating a thread of frustration isn't a rejection of you or what you say. It is a request that, when speaking of subjects that are both personal and societal, you consider how what and how you write comes across to others.