Rebecca, thank you so much for playing an active part in educating the masses!

Though I am a white, Portuguese man, I was fortunate enough to have wonderful, sensitive parents who instilled only the best values in me, so all of what you said here for me is just common sense, and none of them are ever things I have done. Sadly, as we both now, for the majority of the white world, it isn’t. Also, possibly the fact I am gay has given me a first-person experience from a very young age on what it feels like to be labelled and judged for a fact which is out of our control.

Also, my sensitivity also comes from an innate curiosity about debunking historical lies and myths, which made me painfully aware of the reality behind what history books teach.

For example, regarding my country, Portugal: I am painfully embarrassed about how many millions of lives the Portuguese colonialist empire destroyed; (Africa, Brazil, India, Timor and Macao) and also painfully aware that what people call “the Golden Age of the Discoveries” regarding Portugese history was the beginning of an unprecedented age of carnage; both towards people of color in general, and the portuguese jewish communities who had to run from the Inquisition to not be killed. That’s right… the Portuguese weren’t brave adventurers… that was just all the richest white jewish families building ships and getting as far away from Europe as possible to escape death.

It is also with great shame that I confess what is NOT taught in history books. The Portuguese were actually the ones to first “invent” the slave trade. Our stain goes as far back as the late 1400s.

So again: thank you for your essay, which I ultimately see as an act of love towards building a better world :) Let’s keep teaching, my dear :)))) It’s exhausting, I know, but what’s our alternative?