Excellent post, and thanks for the perspective. I hope you're keeping your sanity, given your wife's job and your circumstances. I am struggling a bit myself to be honest.
If I gave the impression of whitewashig history I apologise. I realise that the wealth of the west is founded on slavery and exploitation, and deporting and denigrating and even exterminating the 'lesser' white races as they would have been described at the time (Welsh, Irish, Italians, Poles; yes I've been to Pittsburgh). What the English did to Paraguay in the late 1800s is a little known case in point ('who gives a shit' as they say...). I am aware of the 'science' that proved that black people have smaller brains than whites (the classic marbles in the skull volume measurement study, where the investigator packed them into small white skulls, by his own admission). All that stuff. However, I often let my emotions, my exasperation with current day dick headery, to overly inform my perspective.
The bottom line for me in all this is I support BLM, accept I have unconscious bias, and am making an effort to be nice, be engaged, drop all the racist and sexist and genderist jokes (I think I'm doing OK, although I have in the past sniggered at comments like 'friends of Dorothy'. Damn. Did it again. It just sounds so....silly.). I don't have any answer, really, other than to oppose obvious badness, and avoid whataboutery.
As an aside I have been inrigued listening to black people interviewed here, talking about their lives and experiences. Not least because when I was younger I'd switch off (literally). I liked their music but (etc etc). Saddens me that some posters on here haven't even got to the stage of liking their music, let alone dealing with all the other attitudes that white people can acquire. Ian Wright, for one, is inspiration, and touching, and so unbelievably generous of spirit. Love the man.
And, yes, 'race relations' isn't one thing, and I may or may not be surpised by your experience. Not, would be my guess.
