I did it again. I took the bait. An old (and older) acquaintance on a mutual friend's thread commented the usual racist garbage about the protesters in Baltimore (Why do they burn their own stuff? Get a Job! Get an education! Fuggin animals!) and I tried to respectfully disagree. I posted links, I made arguments, I tried using empathy-building comments.
In fact, I used all of the articles and positions on the subject that I quite frankly don't bother to use with my mother-in-law, for example, because I need to keep the peace in the family, and she's too old and scared and Fox-soaked to get it (but she is courteous enough to put the TV on to HSN while we visit- we won't go into the room if she has Fox on).
A third voice on the thread commented abut how she sees all colors playing together nicely in her classroom, and that she hoped my poisonous ideas never got anywhere near them. When I told her I was a 19 year veteran teacher, she disappeared from the thread.
When I said that I had found the original woman's comments to be racist, she exploded at me in a flurry of capital letters and "how DARE I call her racist. She was poor growing up and she had NO white privilege" ect ect. This woman lives somewhere between Norwalk and Darien CT, which is NOT a neighborhood known for its poverty. South Norwalk, right next door, couldn't be more racially divided if you used a Sharpie.
The original owner of the thread, who started all of this by asking where the protesters were for the white 25 year old cop who was shot in NYC last week, blocked me not long thereafter.
These are three of the articles I posted. If EVEN ONE person clicked and read, and thought "Huh, I never thought of that" was it worth it to lose the latent (and not so latent) racists from my online world? My head says yes, but my heart is sad because I used to know and like these people.
Dear white Facebook friends: I need you to respect what Black America is feeling right now
Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Baltimore's Violent Protests...
I stood on a principle and lost a couple of (admittedly not very close, but still) friends over it. The spouse says good, because that way I can remove toxicity from my feed, but still. But still.