I loved this and this is very true of life. Always have really respected your works once I first started, even if we take different stances on pretty sensitive issues. I’m in a line of work that’s inherently very sensitive where you constantly have to make decisions in moral gray areas in inner city education. I won’t go into specifics, but there are going to be people who don’t vibe with you and disagree fundamentally with you. There are more old fashioned people in Baltimore that call kids who have gotten locked up “thugs”, “punks”, and “knuckleheads”. It may have been more acceptable then but not as much now.

I realized earlier this morning that a prominent member of the writing community on Medium blocked me, likely as a result of the comment I made in Dreamers about MPPF that I could have easily gone without making. It was a writer I respected and looked up to, and it hurt and stung a little bit. But I was truthful and honest about my opinions and feelings. There are a lot of costs of having opinions that are very unpopular with a group that you just have to live with, that I’ve gotten used to.

What you can control is how civility and respectfully you engage in sensitive and emotional topics, something we don’t see frequently in online communities in general. I have seen a lot in my life and work so far. I believe somewhere deep down that disagreements don’t have to come with pettiness because we’re all on the same team, with the same goals, and the pettiness leads us to self-destruct. Traversing moral gray areas requires us to give that, even when others don’t.