Yes, best practice if you want to take a break but not hide comments is to set comment screening to "all comments" and comments to "don't email"; that way you don't have to see them at all, if you need time to get yourself together. (Also, it's probably a good idea to edit the posts to mention that you've frozen or hidden all comments, why, and whether you ever plan to re-open comments)

I was offline to see your posts w/comments up, so I don't have all the context to say too much, but I hope the reaction you got doesn't completely turn you off from continuing to try to talk about racism (and other isms) here, and to work with the community to learn to do it better. Stepping away to work through your own reactions privately was a good first step.

(I really hope Dreamwidth comes up with a way to disable comments on an entry without hiding current ones; I'm going to go check in a minute, because that's something that's so obvious I hope they have it on the list, but I don't actually remember ever seeing it.)

(sorry for the many edits, oops.)