Your struggle can produce burn out. Shining a light into darkness means should have to keep fueling the fire. But I can tell you as a white person from a family of Northern left wing activists and thinkers (who were always “woke”, what a negative dividing word the right put out to divide races even more) that there are white people and Asian people, etc., who struggle against injustice with a deep-feeling passion. It has always been an uphill struggle for freedom, liberty and justice for all. 1.2 million people, mostly all white peasants, had their heads chopped off literally during the French Revolution.
Repressive comments and actions is easy to do and has always been the norm, not the exception. It’s mentally easy to scream back racist or violent epithets, and much more of a cognitive load to devise answers of explanatory support or counterpoints. It’s overwhelming true blacks in America are the only group I can think of the were forced immigrants, slaves, sold by blacks to whites, then made to work under the whip and threat of death in the only country that had been founded with “liberty and justice for all” based on each human’s “inalienable rights.” Is that ironic their rights weren’t respected and given?
Only theoretically. In practice barely anyone understood these principles in full, and no white in the South wanted to. They willing did not want to cede their property and power for the sake of some ideal they could not fathom, an ideal made up by a bunch of dandy aristocratic elitists educated in Europe. Instead, they stick to the ways of the political system every other country in the world had, autocratic rule (king, queen, czar, dictator, tribal elder, emperor, whatever it was called). That darkness was all that ruled. I only recently learned about Stone Mountain and shocked this racist monument exists is America. It should be blown up. It is a Mecca of racism with the “pilgrims” being warped into believing the values it represents are some how dignified as “heritage” instead of revealed for the monstrous values it represents. I’m not willing to blow up, as I’m nonviolent, but advocating it be torn down and willing to sign a petition that helps do so and a petition forcing reparations to blacks.
Fighting against injustice is the only way spread the word. You’re right, it can take a toll, and it sounds like, you are entering a new phase where your tactics are shifting. Conscious didacticism is a tough pill for others to swallow, even yourself. And it abounds in the comment sections across the internet, knee jerk angry reactions against a whole group (as though any group has coherent values.)
What started out as a deep urge for justice, peace and consciousness may have turned into unpalatable diatribe. But you recognized the good you’ve done, the skills you’ve learned and the deep impact you’ve had. I can only hope you will continue in your art in your new direction of thought and activism, for the sake of blacks, true, but also for the sake of us all. Even if that activism is just making some of us smile.