If You Feel Attacked When Someone Calls Out White Supremacists, Look In The Mirror

On the day of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, Biden enumerated in his speech several of America’s biggest threats such as climate change, the pandemic, and white supremacy, saying that we must confront and defeat “a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism.”

As expected, the usual suspects and leading conservatives made the media rounds, complaining about being called out by the president. “Much of it is thinly veiled innuendo calling us white supremacists, calling us racists,” complained Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Fox News.

Former Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to George W. Bush and actual human effluvia Karl Rove also went on Fox News to huff, “I was offended.”

Look, if such a bland, bare minimum declaration of being against white supremacy — I mean for fuck’s sake, it’s the moral equivalent of “stop punting babies” — has you feeling called out and some type of way, you really have to reassess your life choices.

Biden didn’t even name names. Like, I get it if Biden said, “Hey, Senator Paul, you racist twatwaffle. We’re gonna confront and defeat your blatant white supremacist ass.”

But he didn’t.

Biden made a general, sweeping statement about being against white supremacy — which I would certainly fucking hope the majority of America — even white Americans — would nod along thinking, “Yes, yes. This is the type of milquetoast non-controversial statement I have missed in my leaders.”

But noooooooo. Instead, conservatives felt personally attacked. Like Biden had them in a political burn book and plastered its pages all over the Capitol’s hypocritical, and recently poop-smeared, hallways.

Truly, they have a dizzying intellect.

If merely stating the words “white supremacy” has you thinking that folks are talking about you, then ummmmmmm… maybe you should examine why.

Why is it, exactly, do you automatically associate racism, hatefulness, and anti-Blackness with yourself? I mean, I don’t even think Biden was trying to lay traps, and yet, here y’all are, telling on yourselves and crawling into traps like cockroaches.

Perhaps, instead of your faux outrage — okay okay okay, let me extend a minor bit of grace — your sincere alarm — at being called a racist, maybe try applying just a smidge of logic and inductive reasoning (I know, I know, a hella tough ask) to examine how you may be behaving in such a way as to resemble a racist.

(Sidebar: let’s normalize admitting we’re racist; it is not the dirtiest of dirty words. We are all complicit. If POC can have internalized racism, white folks sure as fucking hell can be — and are — racist.)

If you look like a white supremacist, talk like a white supremacist, walk like a white supremacist… guess what? You’re probably a white supremacist.

White people, if you’re offended at the thought of fighting white supremacy, not only are you more annoying than an ass pimple, you’re dangerous.

Sure, maybe you don’t wear a hood or burn crosses or don’t say the N-word. Instead, you’re the friendly white supremacist who posts on Next Door wondering why a Black man has the temerity to exist in your neighborhood. You’re the racist who equates Black Lives Matter with the white supremacists who attacked the Capitol. You’re the bigot who says shit like “anti-white racism” or thinks white privilege is a scam because you’ve had to work hard and life wasn’t easy so how could you possibly have privilege?

But the real kicker is, even if you were to somehow be a conservative and the most anti-racist white person to ever anti-racist, you would still be contributing to a white supremacist society because you don’t need to be individually racist in order to do so.

Here’s the thing. As much as I enjoy inventing invectives to insult conservatives, if you’re still reading this article, you’re doing so likely because you also enjoy excoriating racists, or you’ve already made up your mind and now you’re just digging for ammunition against me to make all the appropriate indignant offended white people sounds.

You’re not actually listening.

Or worst of all, you’re still reading because now that you’ve been called out, you feel as if you need to make an adequate showing of your dismay. You need to cry your white tears and lament, “We didn’t know! We didn’t know!”

Bullshit.

You knew. You saw. You just didn’t care. You still don’t, except now you’ve been caught. But we won’t swallow your bilge anymore.

If you really felt actual remorse, you’d repent of your actions. You’d do the hard work of confronting your racism. You’d sit in the discomfort and shame and anger and despair and fear. If you really wanted to change, you wouldn’t ask your one Black friend to shepherd you in your anti-racist zygotehood. You wouldn’t ask your friends of color to hold your hand as you processed your feelings.

But if you’re not willing to do the work? If all you want is that social media cachet? Fuck off. Go peddle your self-congratulatory platitudes elsewhere. I’m full up.