After the panel, I got a lot of criticism from women of colour about how I handled the issue of racial diversity in Trudeau’s cabinet. Indeed, I hardly addressed it, which may have been why so many thought I was a white person. My only defense for not discussing race more is because I was perplexed by having to explain to two people the most basic tenants of a 50/50 gender split in government.

I could have done more. I know that. I left the studio on Sunday night feeling like I hadn’t done my best, my stomach percolating with the food poisoning I got on Friday evening. I threw up outside the CBC, and went home blubbering. I called my dad and he answered the phone with, “So did you kill anyone?” Then he recommended I have some consommé, mostly because I think he likes saying the word consommé.

The criticisms, though some were unhinged and related solely to the fact that I was not dark enough, have a valid point: showing up and being the face of women of colour is not enough. The intersection of feminism and race doesn’t mean just finding the right voices, but using the platform you’re given to actually have a full conversation.

It leaves me feeling more despairing than before: how much are women of colour expected to do and be?

There’s a Nicki Minaj clip where she talks about how women have to be multi-talented to get by. “When you’re a girl,” she says, “you have to be everything. You have to be dope at what you do but you have to be super-sweet. And you have to be sexy and you have to be this and you have to be that and you have to be nice. It’s like, I can’t be all those things at once.”

It’s true for all women, but it’s doubly true of women of colour: they have to be everything. Any failure to any particular group is tantamount to a failure on all fronts.

I could have done a better job on the panel. I am, at every point in my life, in a position where I can do better. But the more I’m put in positions where I have to defend my existence, the more I wonder why it’s on me to defend my existence. Why it’s on the shoulders of women of colour who get those few, coveted public slots to actually have their voices heard. Why is this our job and not also the responsibility of the countless white voices in the public sphere?