Hi all. I’ve taken a bit of time away from social media to reflect, but I see the conversation is ongoing. What I think is important is that we all show each other respect online. If you’re defending me by being disrespectful or racist then I would rather you didn’t. I’m horrified that a tweet about the importance of solidarity has somehow stoked tension. I am not a person of colour and understand the view that I am not entitled to mediate relations between two groups to whom I do not belong. I won’t try to moving forwards. At the same time, anti-Indian and anti-Black sentiments are running absolutely riot on this platform and I think we need to pay attention to it. Perhaps it wasn’t my place to call it out this time, but I hope others will feel emboldened to within their communities if they haven’t done so before. I always intend to respond in good faith, but I do sometimes make mistakes that make it easy for people to assume otherwise. I should have initially been more open to the interpretation that the creator’s video was an anti-Black micro aggression. I still feel that her intent is ambiguous. Some might disagree. I try to see the best in people. I am quite often called naive because of this. I appreciate that intent is not entirely relevant here also, as things can be racist regardless of intent. I tried to open up a conversation about this and I’m grateful to those who took the time to offer their thoughts. I decided to delete the thread because I saw a couple of QTs saying that people were using it as a reason to berate Black women and I had a responsibility to prevent this by deleting my tweets. As someone who has worked on the olfactory dimensions of misogynoir, it was galling to think that I could be inadvertently contributing to it. In hindsight, it feels inevitable that the post would draw that kind of ire. This is not an ideal platform for having nuanced conversations, but I do feel that I overstepped here. Being given a platform suddenly on an unfamiliar site is a challenging thing to navigate. I will inevitably get it wrong sometimes, but please know that I learn from my mistakes and am well-intentioned.