@veralynn A public apology is clearly required!

This is my belated reply to @veralynn

Dear veralynn,

Recently you wrote about a topic we both clearly felt passionately about.
Racism, oppression and sexism

I've been following you for awhile.
Unfortunately I have a severe illness.

I wanted to hear you out. So I followed the link in my feed and I read what you wrote.

I say I read it, but considering my reply it's obvious that I did not understand it.
My wife did though and as she was examining my replies, she explained to me why we were both wrong.

You were wrong to try and redefine certain terms without giving a strong reason as to why. This setup the tone for the rest of the post and caused your actual message to become lost, because those such as myself, could only focus on that one part.

That was your only mistake!

I posted a few heated and angry replies. I used ad-hominems and I attacked you as a person instead of your ideas and your message. This had the effect of weakening my position, to the point of shining a bright light on my own ignorance.

It turned me into an ogre.
I must be right and therefore you cannot possibly be correct!

I know better than this. Ideas and beliefs exist within a spectrum.
We were both correct and we were both inaccurate.

You are not a bigot. I had no right to call you that.

The moment I attacked your character I lost the debate, when all I wanted to do was disagree with the message you were sending.

I don't like messages that tell people it's ok to have this internal dialog of I'm ok being a victim.
It's dis-empowering to those that hear it because it convinces them that someone other than themselves is responsible for their options and choices in life.
In other words, it confirms people's fears that they are powerless

To my mind a better message would have been, that any ism is a disease with roots in ignorance, regardless of your status, position or conditions in life.

The way I said it though, I ended up calling you ignorant.
You are not a bigot, you are not ignorant!

I'm the one who was ignorant. I had a plethora of evidence to the contrary in front of me and yet I refused to pull back and even look. I choose not to pull my head out of my ass and look around.

The truth is you have a powerful platform. This gives you an opportunity that very few people have.

You can send these incredible messages to men and women and inspire them to realize that they too have great power. That they can literally be anything they want to be. All they have to do is exercise their own "will to power" and find the strength to act on their convictions.

Everything I said about you before was simply wrong and I have no excuse to offer.

But here is truth...
You are this vibrant, incredibly intelligent woman who has strong convictions and powerful beliefs. This is true regardless of their source or what others (including myself), may think about the correctness of those beliefs.

The question then is what message will you choose to send to your audience both young and old? One which confirms their fears of being powerless, or one which slaps them in the face and wakes them up to the fact that only they can speak for them; That only they have the power to tap the power within themselves and that with that knowledge they can be as powerful as they choose to be. Just like you have been.

I ask you...
Which message is more powerful?
One which divides?
Or one which unites?

Either way, you have my apology and you have my friendship, I only hope that you will accept both.

p.s. I umm borrowed the top image from you, hope you don't mind! :D