Aaha! This is where I said my best friend was an interesting story. I don't think what I do is self fulfilling I am often not looking to make new friends, and I am generally not a social person (which is why I only have two friends anyway) and I am very well aware that there are white people who want to be friends who are going to feel some type of way when I reject them. I've encountered that too, and I'm perfectly willing to accept that.

I'm not expecting white people to change before I meet them. I'm expecting white people in general to be better or do better or I won't waste my time subjecting myself to their clumsy attempts to be colorblind. Ive been through that and I'm not going through it again no matter how rewarding it was with my current best friend.

With that out of the way that's exactly how I met my current best friend. She isn't anyone I would have ever become friends with and it took me years to get comfortable around her because she was someone who spouted all the usual clichés about being colorblind. I thought about ghosting her many many times.

We got thrown into each other's company at work, and each of us decided at some point to make a concerted effort to get along. Several times she triggered actual moments of rage as she asked insensitive questions about my race or my culture.

I am proud of her because in her efforts to be a good friend to me, she started to learn. She was actually paying attention. I did not whitewash my opinions around her, and tried to be as authentic with her as I could, and she listened, and learned because she thinks friendship is the most important thing, and she wanted to be a good friend to me. (She taught me how to be one, too) This leeway, this patience and tolerance of her mistakes that I gave her will not and does not carry over to other white women I meet. I am not the white lady fixer!

I still reserve the need to keep any white person who wanders into my orbit at arms length. If they change to be better that's fine, but if they make no effort then I'm done with them. Fixing racist white people is not where I'm spending my energy.

And now I think I'm all out.