Fellow white people: we need some practice in saying " That's racist bullshit!" [View all]
Very few of us will be confronted by someone screaming the N-word or other overtly offensive racial perjoratives. But, those people and those comments are relatively rare. We need to be attuned to the more subtle examples of racism; the dog-whistles and the winks and nods.
I will not list examples of these less blatant racist remarks because any such list would be less than the tip of the iceberg and, please, you know the kind of nasty crap I'm talking about. But, can we agree that if we hear these racist remarks and "let them pass" unchallenged, we are participants in their racism and,in a real sense, no better than they are. Our silence enables their ignorance.
It may take some practice. Saying "That's racist bullshit!" is the easy part. How will you handle their response to that? My advice is that you refuse to "discuss" whether their remark was racist. It WAS or you would not have called them on it. If they deny it, state emphatically that "of course" it was racist, but you understand why they don't want to admit it because "all decent people understand that racism is shameful and ignorant and I believe you are a decent person." And, then, if you are able to, say "Look, I've said similar things. Most white people have at some point in their lives. But, it is wrong; it is mean and unfair and it is harmful to everyone. It's got to stop."
After me----"That's racist bullshit!,"
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