Just reading that, has started to make me feel exhausted....

As the lockdown has continued in the UK, I am finding I have increased energy levels from week to week, because I am meeting far fewer white people in my day to day life!

Thank you for bringing a touch. of humour to your account of the pain of invalidation, gaslighting and the discombobulation it can create ... the multiple choice response ... genius!

One of my most loyal long-standing white friends said to me, 'Azadi, you are always having problems...'

I felt as if my heart had stopped beating in my chest. I was silent for a long while, as I felt a wave of shame overcome me.

He knew I had been subjected to disciplinaries and dismissals, there was financial fraud at the college where I worked, which I refused to go along with, there was the white landord whose 'advances', I had to escape and who then went to my workplace and made up rubbish about me destrying his property. On his say so, the all-white women's group dismissed me on my first day as I arrived for work...

Unless you are comlinat and act like you KNOW YOUR PLACE, you will receive attacks too numerous to mention... but hey, even for white people who are allies, racism is a theory; it's we who get to live the practicing of it.