Living in America is exhausting for African Americans, who face racism and indignity every day. But too many whites are more angry about hearing about racism that they are about racism itself.

“I’m simply tired, tired and tired of hearing about race,” he wrote last month in an email. He signed himself a “former racist” and in a postscript, wanted me to know that he used to have “a black friend” with whom he ate breakfast on workdays.

Take Ed as an example of the pushback that comes when you grapple with America’s original sin, as happens not infrequently in this space. Invariably, some people — almost always white people — will declare themselves well and truly fed up with the topic. “Tired, tired and tired,” to borrow Ed’s words.

And Lord, where to begin?

In a nation of mass incarceration, job and housing discrimination and resurgent white nationalism, Ed and people like him think the real issue is how race makes them feel? It is hard to even imagine the level of cognitive myopia that allows them to suggest that while missing the glaringly obvious. To wit: If race is so fatiguing for a white man to hear about, what do you figure it must be like for a black man to live?

“Tired?” Give me a break, Ed.

The latest from Leonard Pitts, Jr.: The Last Thing You Surrender

In a career that now spans 43 years, Leonard Pitts, Jr. has worked as a columnist, a college professor, a radio producer and a lecturer. But those are just the job titles. If you ask him what he does – what he is – he’ll tell you now what he would have told you then.

He is a writer.

Millions of people are glad he is. They read him every week in one of the most popular newspaper columns in the country. Many more have come to know him through a series of critically-acclaimed books, including his latest, a novel of race, faith and World War II called The Last Thing You Surrender.

Source: White Americans clueless about actually living with racism | Miami Herald