How to tell someone they sound racist

This three-minute video by Jay Smooth is one of the most useful things I’ve ever watched. His advice is to keep the conversation focused on what they said, not on what they are. In other words, “that thing you said was racist”, not “you are a racist”.

This isn’t about letting them off the hook – it’s about keeping them accountable. It’s easy for someone to defend against being a racist, because you’re arguing about intent and motive and the contents of their heart, which is fuzzy and unknowable to an outsider. What they said is external and verifiable.

Besides, it doesn’t really matter what’s in someone’s heart. What matters is the impact they have. Who cares if Malcolm Turnbull was somehow 100% well-intentioned when he made false claims about “African gangs” roaming Melbourne? He still hurt people. He needs to be accountable for that.

*“When somebody picks my pocket, I’m not going to be chasing them down so I can figure out whether he feels like he’s a thief deep down in his heart. I’m going to be chasing him down so I can get my wallet back.”
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We might not be in a position to talk

But we can listen, and we can act, wherever we are. Remember, it’s not just America.
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“The reason that black people are in the streets has to do with the lives they’re forced to lead in this country. And they’re forced to lead these lives by the indifference, and the apathy, and a certain kind of ignorance – a very willful ignorance – on the part of their co-citizens.”*
— James Baldwin explains the riots of 1968

“The great evil of American slavery wasn’t the involuntary servitude; it was the fiction that black people aren’t as good as white people, and aren’t the equals of white people, and are less evolved, less human, less capable, less worthy, less deserving than white people. That ideology of white supremacy was necessary to justify enslavement, and it is that legacy of slavery that we haven’t acknowledged. This is why I have argued that slavery didn’t end in 1865, it evolved.”
— Interview with Bryan Stevenson, Civil Rights Lawyer

“I don’t want to see stores looted or even buildings burn. But African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer.”
— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge

“Just because you don’t have your knee on our throat, it doesn’t mean you’re not holding us down. I’m afraid that if we don’t use this momentum to think critically about our own situation and what we can do to make a better Australia for every Australian, then the next (inevitable) death will pass and we’ll have no justice and no answers.”
— Brooke Boney, So tell me again how ‘all lives matter’

Also: it’s long past time to pay the rent.