Question: My fear of inadvertently being racist and hurting someone, and being on the receiving end of a PoC’s (justified) anger is hampering my ability to make friends and connect with PoC. How do I remedy this?

Response: As white folks, we will mess up. We say racist things, we have been socialized to be racist. Most of our fear is coming from white guilt. Guilt and fear hold us back from our authentic selves.

If someone calls you out on messed up stuff that you say or do, you need to process that, learn from it, and move on.  Keep learning, keep standing, keep loving folks.

A great article about this from Sincere T. Kirabo (@sinkirabo) can be found here on The Humanist.

Being a white person standing against racism is a long journey not a quick transformation.

Also, “What is White Guilt?” from Race Equality Tools might be helpful.