So it turns out that I matter more than black people matter. More than
any number of black people, actually. Yep. How do I know, she
rhetorically asked? Because when racial injustice comes up, and people
of color explain what’s going on, they’re told to calm down. To be
rational. To be polite. Civil. To be careful because they’re sounding
strident. Militant. That they’re being exploited by the media. Exploited
by activists. Exploited by liberals. That everyone would listen to them
except that they’re so angry, except when they don't act angry, in which case racial injustice is not a problem or they would be more upset.
When I explain what’s going on, with my limited ability to do so, I get
none of that. I get defensive excuses, not offensive strategies. I get
red herrings: what about violence against police? I get false
equivalences: how dare [Some Progressive Somewhere] bring up gun
control, that’s just like blaming earthquakes on abortion! (Note: the earthquake claim is real. Actually, they all are, but this one in particular
sounds unbelievable.) I get ironically racist silencing strategies, like the demonstrably and obviously false claim that black people don't try to solve urban violence. I get tu quoques,
which usually go along with the other fallacies; those are deflections,
and thus defensive in nature. I get links to disingenuous apologetics
which the respondent can’t even explain in their own words. Related to
that, I get handed cherry-picked data, cut-and-pasted with zero
understanding that information does not exist in a vacuum—or, more
accurately, in the vain hope that *I* will not understand that and will shut
up. I get the No True Scotsman. One of
the most egregious examples of NTS in this context is summed up thusly:
When a white person commits a horrible act, they’re just mentally ill
(the unspoken followup being that when a black person commits a horrible
act, they’re violent just like the rest of them.)
In other words, they're not "really" white because they're irrational
and brutal, and everyone knows that REAL white people are rational and
sensitive.
I don’t get subjected to straw men on this topic. I don’t get ad
hominems thrown at me. Those are aggressive fallacies. They won’t use
words like riot and thug
directly to me; those are dog whistles, and they instinctively know
those won’t work outside their tribe(which itself tells me that they know the dog whistles
represent rubbish arguments and racism.) They won’t use genetic/social fallacies
against me; like the dog whistles, those are in-group code for “white
superiority”.
In short, when someone who has actually lived and witnessed decades of
systemic prejudice, disenfranchisement, abuse and outright murder speaks
about it, they are dismissed as emotional and harangued. When I opine
about it from my ultra-fucking-plush armchair, I get deference and
dodges. And quite often, dead silence, because they don't know how to
react outside of in-group reinforcement and out-group dismissal.
The apologists for racism accord me instant credibility on the topic
based on my NOT knowing much of jack shit about it. And I am sick of it.
I am sick of you asshole apologists. I don’t want your creepy fear of
“infighting." I don’t share your need to put up a unified front against
all the mean black people with their mean words, lest they spot weakness
and get, you know, uppity—which,
speaking of dog whistles, is what all those words I listed at the start
really mean. It pisses me off when you treat my words about other people
as being more important than their words about themselves because you
think that intellectual authority is derived from skin color.
When you ignore minorities who try to tell you what’s going on, but you
pay at least enough attention to me to duck and cover and prevaricate when I say the
exact same thing, you force me to talk about race more, and I don’t know
a damn thing about it. (However, I do know a lot more than you do about it.) You force me—us—to assume a false mantle of
wisdom in order to ensure that something is said that you aren't
emotionally able to dismiss out of hand. At least then you'll be
uncomfortable rather than simply blithe.
When it comes to minorities of any flavor, the rule is, Listen, Don’t Talk. You make me violate that rule. Even writing this post
is a continuation of that bullshit, and that pisses me off more. Stop
talking and listen, because you’re making us both assholes. Presumably
that is not the unified front you were shooting for.
.
"Indeed, a recent 2014 Stanford study indicates that just by telling
white people about how many black people are incarcerated, I am causing
them to want to put more, not less, black people in jail. There is a
strong sentiment that we want these complainers out of sight, out of
mind." - Peter Mosley
