Dismantling A Racist

It is wise not to respond to racists on their home territory, so I’ve taken the fight from Facebook to Medium

The above snapshot is of a racist comment I received in response to a Medium article I shared on Facebook. I have a rule of not responding to comments on Facebook because I dislike the style of discourse the platform encourages, but I was impassioned to write one this time because this racist’s comments have been insidious and consistent.

Once I had crafted my comment I received higher guidance not to share it on Facebook, but I feel it could be helpful or perhaps even amusing to others so I’ve uploaded it to the more thoughtful platform we have here at Medium. Names have been omitted for privacy. My profile picture is replaced with a green circle, hers with red.

Racist: Dammit glad I saw this article or I would never have known how white people feel or some white people feel.

Me: Almost every time I post about race, you show up in my comments with nothing supportive to say. Additionally, my article is specifically about racist white people, so surely you mean you would never have known specifically how racist white people felt, not white people in general or “some” white people, without reading my article? I’ll leave others to come to their conclusions on why you wrote “some” white people instead of “racist” white people…

This being said, your sarcasm is not lost on me. Of course you, a white woman, did not need to read my article to know how white people feel, because you are white. Moreso, I am Black so I could not possibly know how you or your kin feel, so me and my article are delusional. Haha. I get it. Thanks for hiding this point behind sarcasm so that you can deny it when I call it out. Fun game right? Also let’s just ignore the obvious fact that you can gain knowledge about the feelings of any social group by studying psychology. The knowledge is by no means complete, but it is abundant in books, webpages, conversations and staring you in the face when you actually pay attention to people.

Want to know another funny thing? Well, remember how I wrote that you’ve showed up with unsupportive comments on almost all of my posts about race? I am Black, so my posts about race are usually about the dismantling of racism, so for you to consistently comment unsupportively on these posts strongly suggests you don’t support the dismantling of racism. And what does that say about you? I might as well be blunt: your consistently expressed lack of support for the dismantling of racism says you are racist.

Racism is much bigger than any person. You are just a tiny cog in that vast and ugly machine. I rarely respond to what people comment on my Facebook posts, but I’ve responded this time not for you, but for me and other people, mainly Black, who care about dismantling racism, whether that be at an interpersonal or structural level. Thanks for the learning opportunity.

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