I agree that communication is difficult, and am well aware. There's a reason why you usually have to wait at least overnight to get a response from me. And there's a reason why, to date, I've only published six articles in total on Medium. It's because I try very hard to say things well. And I try even harder to think about things well. And it takes a lot of time and effort.

But I've gotten a little bit faster over the past year, and it's because I eventually realized something. I realized that no matter how much care I put into my writing, somebody can always misinterpret it.

And so I learned that it's usually best to put something out there that seems good "enough", and that, at least to me, doesn't have any obvious ways to misinterpret it. And then, if someone does misinterpret it, or has questions that I didn't anticipate, or questions that I did anticipate, but edited out for brevity or clarity, then I can address those questions when they are asked.

I can't say everything I think all at once. And people wouldn't want to read that anyway. It's much better that I wait for a question, and then I can respond with an answer that a real person asked for, rather than just writing to an imaginary, generic audience.

But it gets a lot harder when people don't simply ask questions, but instead jump to un-generous conclusions about what I've said, or why I said it. And it's not because I'm afraid of getting my feelings hurt, or my pride damaged. It's because assumptions are not facts, and every new assumption posed is a new falsehood I have to debunk. And so I spend the whole conversation debunking falsehoods, rather than talking about anything real.

Does that make sense?

You said I need to take responsibility for being clear, and believe me, I try. But responsibility requires power, and all communication has a point where the messenger transfers their power to the recipient. And at that point, the recipient has the power, and therefore, the responsibility, to interpret the message as accurately and fairly as they can.

I hope you'll be able to agree with most of that, without too many concerns, but I think where we may start to diverge is that I think I consider the responsibility of the recipient to be more important than you (or most people) do. I think a conversation can never be successful unless both parties take full ownership of any responsibilities that the other party doesn't have the power to fulfill.

But instead, I think the standard practice of the day is to try to assign responsibility based on perceived or historical social status or power of the parties in question. And I think the culture we've created by following this logic has drastically thwarted real progress. It's like if I prepared a nice meal for someone, and then you told me it's not enough, because they shouldn't be asked to chew it. There's a point at which we must necessarily hand off responsibility, not because we're not being generous, but simply because we literally cannot get to the finish line alone.

A good conversation really does require both parties to give their all in order to make it fruitful.

And I think comments like your last paragraph, and the culture it as created, have basically served to guarantee that most conversations are not fruitful.

I understand that you're making this argument with the intention not to blame, or place undue responsibility on victims of social injustice. But what I'm telling you is that it does more harm than good. Every bad conversation merely serves to perpetuate the biases that we all (you and me at least) want to go away. And the only way to make the bad conversations stop is to insist that every participant at least take responsibility for the parts of a conversation that other people literally cannot take for themselves. And the biggest, most important starting point, I think, is simply to insist that people follow the guidelines I mentioned before, again:

1. Don't project your assumptions.

2. Don't conflate someone's words to mean something they didn't mean.

3. Be willing to reinterpret your previous interpretations of people's messages.

That's all I really argue for. And it's completely confounding to me how much pushback I get (usually similar to you last paragraph) on what seems to me such a simple, earnest, sensible proposition.