It is hard to disagree with a person who just wants to help people they’re close to overcome prejudices or find out how things they say will appear to others, but I am troubled by this post. The claim of “racism” has expanded to include an ever wider variety of supposed sins and an ever wider number of people. This post is an example of that trend.
The post gives advice on how to respond to a “racist” statement, but what is a “racist” statement? The only example it provides is this: “…Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a racist organization and that All Lives Matter.” Harter recommends saying something like “When you said that, it was a racist statement. It really offended me.”
But is the statement racist at all? It is a political statement about a particular social movement organization, one that is enormously controversial. BLM grew in response to a number of police shootings of unarmed African Americans, but it reaches far beyond that, and its mission statement indicts American society — largely white society — in general. It states as a matter of fact that black “genocide” is occurring, says that the burden black women bear, and the “unique” burden” of sexual minorities, of “state violence,” “heteropatriarchal society” are both “state violence.” Then it continues with how disabled people “ bear the burden of state sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by white supremacy…” and it calls that more “state violence.” (http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/). In all it makes striking claims about the nature of contemporary American society, outrageous claims that millions of decent people who might be potential allies will see for what they are and will decide this fight, or this organization, isn’t for them. Matters are often complex, and elsewhere BLM says it is not anti-white — but a person can come to the conclusion that the mission statement is racist without being anything like a “racist” herself.
And it gets worse, and more complex. At several BLM protests there has been serious violence against whites — for being white — and vocal calls to kill white people (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddY-VYEf9Mc). Responses of BLM leaders are mixed. Leaders have issued statements decrying violence (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/288077-black-lives-matter-leader-deray-mckesson-calls-for-end-to), but there have been individual statements seeming to support it.
And “all lives matter” being racist? Only if Richard Sherman and liberal Democrats Tim Scott and Martin O’Malley are “racist” — and Hillary Clinton, before she backed down in the face of protests for using the phrase. Those who use the term generally think there are larger issues at stake than the BLM movement espouses. One can argue that the phrase is dismissive of the BLM issues, but that is an issue for informed discussion or debate. To call it “racist” says a lot more about the caller than about the person who made the statement.
Harter believes she is giving advice on how to help people evolve, but what she’s mainly doing is telling how to shut people you disagree with down. The issues of Black Live Matter and All Lives Matter should be matters of discussion — perhaps sharp discussion — but Harter won’t let matters rise to the level of discussion. The critic of BLM is simply “racist” and the only remedy is to shut the person up— or if the person does not want to change, to avoid the topic entirely.
If you’re going to take this approach, you should be clear about what is really racist and what isn’t. Harter misses badly on this one.