I love the folks I've interacted with in Jazz Nation. I really do.
But I gotta get this off my chest: a significant number of you guys do a terrible job of listening to and understanding perspectives other than the white experience that you are familiar with.

I see it so often that some of you folks tend to minimize the struggles and concerns of others, including those in our own fanbase because their experiences differ from yours. That reaction leads to seriously toxic gaslighting that shows how little you care about us.

And when someone disagrees with your stance, the default response is either to continue disregarding perspectives other than yours, or talk about how you're going to stop tweeting about "politics".

Well here's the thing. Everything is politics.

But the difference is that many of you get to live in a world where you have the privilege to be "apolitical". That doesn't exist for all of us.

To you, it's simply a difference of opinions. To us, it's our lives!

We've spent our entire lives listening to people that aren't us tell others about us. And when we finally get a platform or a voice, the hostilities start. For those of you that are Mormon, I'm sure you understand where I'm coming from with this.

But understand that this experience is magnified for others. Imagine how I've felt for decades seeing non-Muslims who have no Islamic scholarship explain what words like "Jihad" mean to you. And imagine how angry I am that you'd rather listen to their perspective vs. mine!

And yes, some of this has to do with the reactions towards Rush Limbaugh's passing, but I've felt this way for years.

And I'm not trying to tell you the right way to react to his death, but instead of pretending to take a moral high ground, understand why there are some of us that are so furious that we react in a way that seems so irrational to you.

I don't want to be angry.

For so much of my life, I've been called a "coconut" and a "potato" (brown on the outside, white on the inside) by friends just because of something as simple as the sports team I associate with. And I've told them that you guys are not the stereotype that people portray you as.

But man, there are some days where even I start to wonder.

But like I said, I don't want to be angry. I know you guys can improve on this. There are some of you that I've followed for a while and seen that progress. But we still have some in our fanbase that haven't taken that first step forward.

Anyway, let's go Jazz! Let's show the world tonight why we're the best team in basketball.