And then there was the day last month when my nephew tagged me in a Facebook post listing the names of white people who have been killed by people of color this year, with the comment, “See. I told you this happens to all races” – the fear that I had kept stowed away since that day he said I looked like a monkey.

His Facebook post came after a series of tweets calling the predominately African American protestors in Ferguson after the grand jury refused to indict Darren Wilson “animals”. It came after his mother – my sister-in-law – found my tongue-in-cheek suggestion in a Facebook status that people donate to the Ferguson Public Library in the name of their racist relatives so dÃ©classÃ© that she unfriended me. It came after a series of texts from my nephew which started, “What you need to understand is” and then denied both the existence of racism and my own experiences as a black woman who has spent her entire life navigating white spaces.

I was sad and I was hurt, but I wasn’t shocked. Of course he said and wrote those things. I know that racism is learned, and I know that he grew up with parents who are more offended by the acknowledgment of racism than racism itself. I wasn’t crazy to worry some 15 years ago about who my nephew would become – but knowing that doesn’t make it any less painful or exhausting.

If he were a stranger or someone about whose approval I didn’t care, things would be easy: I would cut him out of my life. “There is no room here for people who do not value my very being,” I would say. But this is so very different. This is my nephew.

So I’m mourning the loss of the little boy who I have loved so much, and I fear that I can never get him back. I don’t know if there is a way to reverse not just the years of exposure to indifference to racism, but the adamant faith to which he was exposed that black people are just making it up. I don’t want to say it – I’m afraid there will be no going back if I do – but I’m terrified that my nephew is just another racist white man. And I’m more terrified that he is proud of it.

Having a black aunt didn’t save him. Having a black aunt like me – one who is loud and aggressive about her beliefs – hasn’t made him consider changing his mind. The hurt I’ve displayed to him hasn’t made him wonder if he could be wrong. I’m afraid it might’ve just given him more ammunition.

I’ve been contemplating whether this is a relationship worth working on. I want to believe that this is a wound that can be healed. I just can’t help but fear that he is simply another one of those men that I hate.