Everyone creates their own meaning to commonly used words; for example, if you asked thirty people to define love most of them would have completely different definitions, some of those definitions might even be on opposite ends of the spectrum. So when I send messages to people on Tumblr who post racist images towards Native Americans I see it as “educational” while most of the people I message call it an “attack”. When I think of the word attack I think of purposely seeking out someone to emotionally, verbally, or physically harm.

When I send a message to a person about Cultural Appropriation, for example, the point of the message isn’t to hurt them but help them, help them to realize why it hurts my feelings to be seeing these kinds of images and how it may possibly hurt someone else. And most importantly to defend those who are hurt. So when someone claims that I am attacking them by telling them how I feel I wonder about how they feel insulted. Was it insulting of me to say that their behavior was racist? I don’t think so, but I guess they do. And if you agree with them that pointing out racist behavior is a cruel attack let me ask you: the images you post that hurt me, are they attacks or are you completely innocent? In my opinion the real attack are the racist images not me telling you why it is problematic.