A while ago, I wrote an article called “My least favorite racial arguments, part 1.”* This is part two. As always, I do not believe that everyone who uses these arguments is racist**. So let’s get started!
1. "I’m absolutely, 100% White."
It never ceases to amaze me when a White person makes it abundantly clear to me, nearly out of the blue, that they are “completely White” and have no ancestors at all of other races. I have a few theories on why they do this, but in general I’m pretty baffled as to why someone would think it’s a good idea.
It produces no benefits. It makes this set of differences between me and the speaker as pronounced as possible. It suggests that these differences are notably important, at least to the speaker. Sometimes it even becomes clear that they consider their “total Whiteness” to be a better thing than being only partially White. Due to the historical context of race relations in America the effects of this action are different when people of other races proclaim their "purity of race" out of context, but it can still suggest the same things.
2. "Here’s how I would handle your racial issues."
It’s usually a bad idea to give someone of a different race advice on how they should handle anything race related, especially when they didn't ask you or you're assuming they struggle with the topic without proof.
There are several reasons for this, but because there are so many I will attempt to bypass them all and simply argue that for a topic like race the best advice comes from someone who has struggled with nearly the same issue in nearly the same way, and this person will be of the most similar color and background as possible. Anything else will not be as effective, to say the least.
3. "You should care about this because it hurts Black people!"
I really, truly hate it when people try to make me care about an issue by showing me how it hurts Black people. I can care about an injustice based on the fact that it hurts people, period. The worst part about this is that often these people won't come out and say that this is why they are giving this information: they’ll say something like “And by the way 89% of people affected by this bad thing are Black!” and then if confronted they'll argue that they were only sharing this info because it was “an interesting fact."
So, those are three more racial arguments I’d love to hear less often. Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think about them.
*As with the last article, in this article I will be using words like “race,” “White,” and “Black,” despite evidence that these terms are inaccurate or significantly arbitrary.
**One of the readers of Part 1 of this article responded by bringing up research about implicit racism, which in short is the idea that everyone has unconscious preferences for and against specific races. This is an important point, so I would like to state here that when I refer to racism, I am referring to the intentional, conscious choice to believe that a particular “race” of people is either inferior or worthy of hatred, which not everyone does.
