It’s great not to be alone when dealing with crap. Other people know what you’re talking about and often sympathize.
If you’ve ever been in a forum or thread about racism, you may have seen that one clown that demands of proof of racism. Evidence is presented from articles, excerpts from books or books themselves, videos, charts, data, statistics, graphs, scholarly writings from academia, stone tablets, whatever. You’ve given the doubter everything and anything you can find to make him/her see that you’re not lying.
To the doubter, that’s not enough. Nothing you can give enough. You’re just wrong. Your proof is wrong based on questionable or straight-up false sources, information and data. Either it’s from a right wing outlet or it was just pulled out of thin air just to not only discredit you but also make you look stupid and insane.
Another thing they could do is pull the old you-don’t-know-what-white-people-think dodge. Son of Baldwin at Medium writes how it’s done:
They will ask you if you can read the minds of white people. Yes. That’s their favorite one. That’s their standard of proof. The only way you will be able to prove racism to these white folks is if you’re telepathic. And even then, they’d question the accuracy of your telepathic abilities and will request a white telepath to verify your knowledge — and they will only believe the white telepath if they disagree with you and agree with them. Anything to avoid having to confront and admit that racism exists, that they benefit from it, and often participate in and perpetuate it…
Nothing you say will refute that. That’s a round-peg claim they will push through a square hole while getting folks to believe that they’re communicating in good faith. But as Son of Baldwin continues:
Beyond being a sign of intellectual laziness, psychological ineptitude, and a gross exploitation of unearned authority and privilege, it’s emotionally sophomoric and an insidious and pathological deflection strategy designed to protect white people from encountering any reality that doesn’t make them feel like the most special and innocent snowflakes at the dead center of the alabaster and crystalline universe.
And there are plenty of snowflakes that hate to melt but end up dripping with intense negative emotions. As such, they will revert to a childlike state, resort to immature name calling, bullying and an obsessive drive to break the patience of the people they’re confronting and will deflect and deny any accountability for their actions. It’s the lowest form of racist Jedi mind tricks to run down any conversation about racism and drive you mad and exhausted.
But as Toni Morrison says on the same piece:
“The function, the very serious function, of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
And like the author of the piece, I WILL NOT put up with it anymore. They can cry about how their “freedoms” have been taken away. They can pat themselves on the back for winning the mental war on liberal PC culture. They can continue to bad mouth me, call me racist – which is another tactic they love to throw at you – and my blog. But I will NOT put up with any more drippy attitudes from a bunch of assholes running from the truths about racism like a thief running from the cops.
Click here to read the Son of Baldwin’s entire article.