Or the many who assume that any reference to racism constituted calling HER racist.
That brings up something I've noticed in discussions on any similar society-wide disparity to racism -- sexism, or many discussions of rape regarding the power imbalance... for me (white male), sometimes the discussions start to feel like "all {whites|males} do this..." (a few times they actually explicitly go that way). I have to fight a knee-jerk defensiveness.
And sometimes there's a discussion of some subtle aspect of sexism or racism, and I feel that defensiveness that's more the "holy shit, I probably DO that once in a while, they're RIGHT." Last time I remember having that feeling was -- I don't even remember now in what forum I saw this mentioned, but a black man was saying something to the effect of, "why is it that every white man who has a conversation with me has to throw 'man' in the first sentence?" (like "hey, man, can you help me over here?") I don't think I always did that, and there are times I did that with white men too, but I'm sure I did that more often if the person I was talking to was black). Then I felt that guilty "yeah, I never realized -- how stupid of me," ... but then I stopped doing it.
Re: Exhausting discussion
That brings up something I've noticed in discussions on any similar society-wide disparity to racism -- sexism, or many discussions of rape regarding the power imbalance... for me (white male), sometimes the discussions start to feel like "all {whites|males} do this..." (a few times they actually explicitly go that way). I have to fight a knee-jerk defensiveness.
And sometimes there's a discussion of some subtle aspect of sexism or racism, and I feel that defensiveness that's more the "holy shit, I probably DO that once in a while, they're RIGHT." Last time I remember having that feeling was -- I don't even remember now in what forum I saw this mentioned, but a black man was saying something to the effect of, "why is it that every white man who has a conversation with me has to throw 'man' in the first sentence?" (like "hey, man, can you help me over here?") I don't think I always did that, and there are times I did that with white men too, but I'm sure I did that more often if the person I was talking to was black). Then I felt that guilty "yeah, I never realized -- how stupid of me," ... but then I stopped doing it.