Dear Prudence,
I come from a large, conservative family where I’m the youngest of six. I’m the only family member on my coast, and we mainly communicate via text and email. They frequently, often daily, send me lengthy emails about current social issues, explaining their perspective and asking me for mine. Many of them strike me as sincere; others less so. Whenever I’m home for the holidays, they question me about all kinds of political issues. Sometimes I’m up to discuss them, but sometimes I just don’t feel well-informed enough to have a conversation. Often up to 10 people question me at the same time.
Is it OK that these conversations exhaust me (white, straight, cis female)? I’d like to draw some kind of boundary here, but I feel like it’s white fragility, or some other kind of privileged fragility, to claim “exhaustion.” To be honest, though, when it comes to these sometimes daily emails, or family dinners where I’m outmanned by 10, I am exhausted. Valid? Problematic? Somewhere in the middle?
—Progressive Point Person