Many Americans watched in shock and dismay as Fox News contributor Lawrence Jones was subjected to racial taunts and slurs during the “Impeach Trump” rally in New York City. For Jones, honest, straightforward questions only resulted in leftists telling him how they truly feel about him as a black man.

Sadly, this type of experience is all too familiar to me and to other black conservatives who have walked away from the Democrat Party. Jones’s experience echoes the plight of many black Americans who believe in upholding America’s constitutional values, support President Trump, and desire a better way of life for their own communities that have been stuck in a dismal cycle of left-wing policies for far too long.

Whether online or on site at a rally or protest, black conservatives are hardly met with intelligent debate and a hearty exchange of facts. Instead, we part ways with protesters, carrying with us a litany of racial slurs — ironically from individuals who claim to love “people of color.”

Leftists will proudly wave the “Black Lives Matter” banner and at the same time tell a black conservative that our president will “send him back to Kenya,” as Jones was told at the NYC rally. These people don’t hesitate to call us coons and Uncle Toms, making us feel like strangers in our own country, yet conservatives embrace us as Patriots, friends, and Americans. Tell me which of these gestures is more unifying and welcoming?

Unfortunately, this hatred from the Left doesn’t stop when the rally is over. Each night I (and many, many others as I have witnessed) come home to an inbox filled with hate mail — much of it from people who look like me. Not a day goes by without attacks from other black Democrats and even so-called “moderates” who cowardly lob their hatred for me from behind their computer screens. Witnessing the vitriol on my screen, I stop to read these messages anyway, with two thoughts in my mind: 1.) What will it take to set my own people free from the Democrat plantation? And 2.) Will I have prepared my four sons well enough for this war of ideas once they start using social media someday?

Still, despite the hostility, we conservatives continue our walk in the right direction, leaving behind us the angry, pitchfork-carrying Democrat supporters to shout their slurs in the distance. Because no amount of vile, racist retorts will cause the #BLEXIT movement to abandon its course. My hope is that as we walk on, we remain generous enough to leave behind breadcrumbs so others will follow us to a place where people of all backgrounds have a seat at the dinner table, as equals and as Americans.